Page 20 of Ashes & Aether

There is a smear of blood across Orien’s cheekbone, his dark hair is wild, falling over his forehead, and his chest is heaving.

He looks feral. He looks exhausted. He looks breathtaking.

I step forward, stopping ten feet from the ruined Rover.

Orien spots me. The exhaustion vanishes, replaced instantly by that infuriating smirk. He wipes the blood from his cheek with the back of an armored hand and stalks toward me.

He doesn’t stop at a polite distance. No, he walks right into my personal space, towering over me, bringing the stench of war and the intense heat of his body with him.

“You ruined my Rover,” I state, staring up into his burning amber eyes.

“I improved its aerodynamics,” he counters smoothly. “The windshield was causing unnecessary drag.”

“You dropped a tunnel on it.”

“I dropped a tunnel on fifty infected humans. Your vehicle simply caught some of the collateral debris.” He tilts his head, his gaze sweeping over my face. “You didn’t lose a single man, Maggie. Seven wounded, none critical.”

“I am aware. I can count.” I refuse to back away from him, despite the fact that my nose is level with his chest and the sheer physical presence of him is overwhelming. “You disobeyed a direct order. You were told to follow Miller’s lead.”

Orien laughs. “Miller was about to lead them into digestive tracts. I intervened.”

“You showboated.”

“I survived.” He leans down, closing the remaining distance until I can feel the warmth of his breath against my forehead. “And you were terrified.”

My eyelid twitches. “I do not experience terror.”

“Your heart rate is elevated.” He drops his voice to that low, intimate frequency. “Your pupils are dilated. You are standing perfectly still, yet your muscles are coiled tight enough to snap. You thought I was dead, and it frightened you.”

“Do not project your alien ego onto my physiological responses.” I glare at him, pouring every ounce of frost I possess into my voice. “The only thing I felt was annoyance at the prospect of explaining to your prince how I managed to misplace his spymaster.”

Orien’s grin widens, showing off the sharp points of his upper canines. He knows I am lying. He reads people perfectly, and right now, he is reading me like an open dossier.

“You are an exceptional liar, Margaret Elmsleigh.” He raises a hand, his armor-clad fingers hovering an inch from my face. For a second, I think he is going to touch me. I brace myself for the contact, my skin humming in anticipation.

He drops his hand without making contact, and I raise my chin a notch higher.

“Go scrub the blood off your armor, Orien,” I command, stepping sideways to break his gravitational pull. “You smell like a sewer.”

“And you smell like adrenaline and denial.” He turns, walking backward toward the decontamination showers, keeping his eyes locked on mine. “We make a wonderful team.”

“We are not a team!” I snap, finally raising my voice.

“Keep telling yourself that, Maggie,” he calls out, turning around and sauntering down the corridor. “Eventually, you might even believe it.”

I watch him walk away. The sway of his shoulders, the arrogant confidence in every step. He just fought his way out of a collapsed tunnel, slaughtered a nest of infected, and returned to my bunker simply to aggravate me.

Infuriating alien.

5

ORIEN

Three rotations have passed since I pulled Margaret Elmsleigh’s soldiers out of a subterranean meat grinder, and the atmosphere in the bunker has shifted from overt hostility to a simmering, deeply entertaining resentment.

The human generals resent me because I’m right. Maggie resents me because I’m breathing.

I stroll through the damp concrete corridors of Hampton Court’s underground fortress, my matte-black nano armor retracted into the ports along my neck. I wear my standard synth-weave combat trousers and a dark shirt that leaves the glowing orange neural filaments along my throat exposed. The ambient temperature of the bunker is perpetually freezing, a damp chill that seeps into human bones. It does nothing to me.