Page 81 of Smuggler's Beauty

“And our beautiful secret weapon,” Veronique said. She rubbed his neck and gave the space between his shoulder blades a soft kiss. “Take a break.”

“She’s ready for the plants? You’re ready for the plants?” Cairn removed his arms from the soil mixture and wiped them off on a towel he had tucked into the waistband of his pants.

“I am, theoretically, ready for a plant. Just one. Start small, I say. Are they bigger than they were? What did you do?”

Cairn picked up one of the small houseplants and gave a leaf an affectionate tweak. “I just repotted them in some decent growth medium. Water. Light. Plants are easy once you know what they want.”

Evelyn reached a hand out, and Cairn relinquished the plant he was holding to her reluctantly.

She grinned at him. “Relax, Cairn. It’s not like I’m going to set the thing on fire.”

“As far as you know!”

Evelyn nodded solemnly. “Yes, as far as I know. There is an element of uncertainty at play here. Still, I’ve not knowingly developed pyrokinesis.”

“Aye. You’d notice that,” he said. He reached for another of the seedlings. “Take a friend with you. And a lamp.”

“Maybe I should just bring it back here when I’m done with it? You can be the guardian of the plant matter.”

It took everything in her not to laugh aloud at the look of relief on his face. Cairn tried to school his face as soon as he realized he’d telegraphed his opinion on her ability to keep the seedlings alive, but they all knew the damage was done. Evelyn and Veronique both burst into laughter. Cairn grinned and grabbed his wife around the waist.

“And a better plant guardian you’ll be hard pressed to find,” he said. He tucked Veronique against his front, propping his chin on the top of her head. If the soil caked on his armsbothered her, Evelyn couldn’t tell. Veronique wrapped her arms around Carin’s embrace and leaned against his body.

Evelyn had a brief stab of jealousy, witnessing the unabashed affection on display for everyone to see. How beautiful it was to belong to someone, and to have them belong to you in turn. Then she paused to reflect on the dozen examples of the same behavior Aiden had exhibited in the last day.

Fixing her lunch.

Casually touching her when being introduced to another man.

For fuck’s sake, the man had moved most of her possessions into his room.

Take the hint, Evelyn.

Feeling slow on the uptake, but happy with the conclusions she’d drawn, Evelyn took her seedling back into her storage area and placed the plant on the folding table.

It was a small thing, really. The pot was only a few inches around. A few green, leafy tendrils were poking out of the damp soil, rich and black with recent watering.

It was also a much larger hurdle to jump than Evelyn had been willing to let on.

It was easy to joke about her power, to plan robbing some high-tech building with Aiden.

But this was a living thing.

This was the reason she’d been told to hide her gifts since they manifested.

If she could drain this little seedling of its life’s energy, what could she do to a bigger plant? A bush? A field of crops?

A pen of livestock?

A person?

Could she drain the life out of a person?

Wouldshe?

Evelyn’s life had been so much easier when all she had to worry about was making sure she had enough time to read her books and write her essays and make it to a concert on time. It had been easier, though far less fun, when she had been wasting away in a medivessel, playing her part in Emil’s coup ashisbattery.

Her biggest philosophical problem had been who to back in a fandom love triangle. Now she was sitting on a ship full of people planning to overtake an occupying force, possibly preparing herself to murder another human being if the need arose. She couldn’t pretend anymore that Corrie didn’t intend for her to take the limits of her power as far as they could go. Evelyn was now another tool in Corvinia’s war chest, and her job was to hone herself into a sharper-edged blade than she’d ever wanted to be.