“Rush—”
“No. I—I believe you,” he said, holding out a staying hand, keeping her at arm’s length while he tried to clear his head. “I believe you,” he repeated more softly.
Ambrea no longer knew what to say or do. For the first time in days, she felt at a complete loss for action or even thought. She was tangled up in the confusion of a body in need and a man even more so. But he said he believed her.
That was when she realized there was nothing she could do for him. She couldn’t push him over a line that he was clearly unwilling to cross. She couldn’t give him a faith that he needed to find for himself. She would need to mean far more to him than she did in order to do those things. He had very steadily made it clear to her that she was a brief stop in his life, that all his devotion was to the IM and the family he had made for himself there. And in truth she had never expected anything more from him.
Had she?
Of course not. It was impossible and they both knew it. A Tarian as lover to the queen of Allay? Bad enough she was looking to him for protection. And whoever became the empress’s consort would be expected to provide future heirs for Allay. Ambrea was no fool. She had known the very first time they made love that his withdrawal from her had been much less about protecting her interests and much more about his personal dislike of the idea of procreating. And frankly it didn’t surprise her. Why would he ever want to pass on the very genes he swore to be the bane of his existence? Why would he ever take the chance of subjecting a child to all the pain and rejection he himself had suffered?
Not that she was thinking …
Ambrea hastily turned away from him, reaching to grab the robe that one of the women had left handy for her. Her unsteady hands craved occupation, so as soon as she had tied the robe shut she reached for the platinum goblet that Eirie had left behind. The tonic was still cold, a thin mist wetting the outside of the metal cup and getting lost in the sudden dampness of her palms. She raised the cup to her lips, but before she could touch it to them his hand covered the mouth of it, urged her to replace it on the table. He turned her toward him gently, a finger touching under her chin and raising her gaze to his.
“I’m sorry. I know I’m a mess,” he said, forcing himself to give her a half-smile. “Can’t seem to make up my mind, can I? One moment I’m indulging in everything about you that makes me feel so much, and then the next I’m—”
“It’s all right,” she said softly. “I understand. I overstep myself. I take advantage of the intimacy you’ve been forced into because I know your secret.”
“Forced intimacy?” He frowned so deeply and darkly that she felt a frisson of fear touch her spine.
“I meant you were forced to me, not that I was forced to you,” she hastily made sure to clarify.
“I know what you meant,” he snapped. “Is that what you think? That I’m using you for the sake of convenience?”
“Not so much using as taking advantage of an opportunity. And after all, isn’t that what all love affairs are?” She tried to turn away but he held tight, refusing to let her.
But Rush didn’t know why he wouldn’t let go. What she was saying made sense. It was the perfect escape clause. It freed him from everything. It kept their relationship on the logical ground it belonged on.
So why did he want to shake the hell out of her? Yell at her? And what would he demand from her? Nothing. He could ask for nothing because he knew he could give nothing she needed in return.
“Rush, you’re too close,” she said suddenly, refocusing his attention on her face. She was perspiring, he realized. In his temper he must have been generating too much heat. And yet she wasn’t pushing his hands away, wasn’t being burned by his touch on her face. Maybe she was right. Maybe he could control this thing even when his emotions were out of his control. Maybe that came more naturally to him than he was giving himself credit for.
Still, he was generating too much heat for her, so he stepped back because he didn’t know how not to without dumping a bucket of water over his head.
Ambrea fanned herself with her hand, trying to cool herself as she pulled at the collar of her robe. And that was when he saw the red flush of her skin. Not on her face and neck, but from the collar of the robe downward, over her shoulder and chest. No sooner did he notice it than she gasped, pulled on the material some more, and looked at him in confusion.
“You’re burning me!”
And for the first time in his life, Rush was absolutely positive he was under complete and easy control of himself. He was in no way burning her. But he also became aware of something in his senses clicking to attention, becoming aware of the rising heat of her body. But all of it was taking place from her neck downward. Clarity and understanding came the very instant she started to scream.
Ambrea was on fire. There were no flames she could see, but she was burning as savagely as if she were. She screamed as sudden pain ripped through her, the burn coming everywhere at once. She began to frantically rip at her robe, trying to see the source of the fire on her skin. In her panic she couldn’t seem to act. Her hands were numb and clumsy. Nothing she did was helping. She ripped away from the man she thought was the cause and stumbled blindly for the only source of relief she could think of.
Water.
“No! No!”
He locked his hands onto her, holding her as she screamed from the pain blistering all over her skin. She fought him madly, not even realizing he was grabbing for the tie to her robe, trying to unknot it. Finally with a curse of frustration he burned through it, the softer, plusher fabric much more dangerous to do that with because he could indeed end up setting her on fire. But there was no time to think about it, no time to worry about his fire because something else entirely had a scorching hold on her.
He stripped her robe off just as the outer doors to her chamber were flung open. The guard she had handpicked to help Rush protect her came barreling in and saw her fighting him off, saw her screaming as he locked an arm around her waist and yanked her close to his body, forcibly keeping her away from the water she was seeking.
“Release her!” the guard demanded, not caring that Rush was nearly twice his size and for all purposes his highest superior next to her. Ambrea’s screams were climbing over one another. Rush didn’t have time to explain himself. He was positive that Ambrea was on the verge of death, and as he watched her skin blister and bubble right before his eyes, he thought he was watching her die.
He didn’t think. He couldn’t think. The years of training he’d had keeping a cool head as all hell broke out around him seemed to evaporate. None of it helped him. None of it could.
The woman he had fallen in love with needed him. Needed something more than the steel-spined soldier in him.
Rush closed his eyes and exhaled.
Durbin Cara, the guard who had burst into the room, was about to open fire on the Tarian man when suddenly the force of an explosion struck the room, the epicenter of it the place where his empress had been held imprisoned in his general’s arms only an instant ago. Fire roiled out toward him in a mushrooming cloud, and he hit the deck in an effort to avoid it. As it blanketed mere inches above his head, it also dissipated and then almost as fast as it began it disappeared. When Durbin dared to peer up again, the entire room was black with soot, except for the spot on the floor where he had been lying, he noted as he got to his feet.
The general and the empress were gone.
Eirie ducked around the corner of the hallway, her heart racing with joy. The pandemonium taking place in the royal quarters was all she had needed to see to know that her well-laid plans had finally come to fruition. Curta’s poisons never failed, although this one was far more obvious than the others had been. But Suna had laid that robe in the empress’s path, as Eirie was very willing to testify. And it would be the truth of the matter. Blame and suspicion would fall squarely on Suna’s head. Perhaps Eirie would enrich the accusations to come by mentioning Suna’s discontent and
jealousy. That part would be a lie, of course, but who was there to say otherwise? In the face of such evidence, the death of the Empress of Allay would be unsurprising and such a tragedy, but would in no way cloud Balkin’s immediate rise to power.
Eirie laughed and moved quickly down the hall to seek out Curta and thank her. Perhaps when Eirie became empress, she would elevate the witch to the status of her personal advisor.
It was the very least she could do.
Otherwise she would have to kill her because she knew far too much.
Bronse was pacing the open areas of the medical bay, not doing a very good job of waiting while Jet and Ophelia took their time balancing Ravenna’s hormones. Their success was measured by the occasional plaintive cries of his wife from the diagnosis bed asking him to—well, the host of ideas and choices was far too revealing of their sex life in mixed company. He was rather grateful that Jet and Rave’s little sister pretended that they weren’t hearing a single word of it.
Then, suddenly, there was a percussive explosion. After he slid down the wall he was thrown off his feet and into a nearby wall. Everything that wasn’t fastened down went flying, crashing and breaking and becoming dangerous projectiles. He managed to crouch, making himself as small as possible as a matter of instinct, and instantly looked for Rave. All three of the occupants of her care bay had been thrown aside like paper dolls. He would have run to her side, but the explosion wasn’t over. The power of it continued to press against him, on and on in a way he couldn’t understand. This was like no explosion he had ever experienced.
Then there was a huge fireball, about the size of half the open area. Had it come a moment sooner, Bronse would have burned to ashes. It first appeared as a sphere, as though a live comet had struck the room, and then it swirled into a cylinder. Only a second later it belched toward the ceiling and dissipated.
There, in its place, stood Ender and the Empress of Allay.
Violently bruised and battered, Bronse got to his feet. His ears were ringing, so he didn’t hear the screaming at first. He realized very quickly that Ambrea was suffering, in terrible agony, her naked body covered in burns and blisters, her skin peeling away and just about cooking before his eyes.
“Ophelia!” Ender roared, stumbling as he turned to look for her. Bronse could see the absolute panic on the arms master’s face. Rush was pulling Ambrea’s unburnt cheek against his. “It’s all right, honey. I’ll make it all right!”
“Rush! Help me!” she croaked, her voice giving out, her whole body shuddering in his hold. Then shock finally set in and she went suddenly limp in his arms.
Bronse acted, running over to the bay that Rave and the others were in, pulling toppled furniture off the stunned trio and snagging Ophelia’s hand.
“Are you hurt?” he demanded.
She gave him a look.
Satisfied she was all right, he yanked her to her feet and hurried her over to Rush’s side.
“All right,” she said in a soothing voice as she touched Ender’s hand. “I’m here,” she said softly to him.
It was all her teammate needed. They had worked together long enough to know how to trust each other. The moment it registered on Rush’s face that Ophelia was there, he fell to his knees and gently laid his burden at the young woman’s feet.
“It’s … it’s a chemical burn,” he rasped, his big hands shaking as he smoothed aside Ambrea’s gleaming red-gold hair, carefully pulling it away from her skin. “They put it in her clothes. Some sort of alkali I think.”
“Go wash your hands with the chemical wash,” Ophelia instructed him as she knelt beside her new patient.
“I’m fine. It won’t burn me.”
Bronse found that remark very interesting. The whole thing was pretty damn enlightening, but he was too busy lifting his wife out of the rubble and checking her for damage to dwell too much on Ender.
Rush grabbed for Ophelia’s hand and tried to pull her into contact with Ambrea. When the girl resisted, he felt himself explode with frustration and fear. “Help her, damn you! She’s dying! Do … do what it is that you do! What the hell good is it being a freak like we are if you aren’t going to use your power when it matters most?”
But Ophelia remained calm in the face of his tirade, as she almost always did. She met his eyes, continuing to pull away from his efforts to make her touch Ambrea.
“We have to wash away the chemical first or she will continue to burn while I heal her. It will only serve to exhaust me before I can heal her all the way. Isn’t that what you want? For her to be healed?”
“Yes! Heal her. Please,” he begged her in the barest of whispers.
“Then bring me all the bottles of chemical wash you can find, Rush.”
Finally faced with something he could do to actually help her, Rush looked up and around the room. The clinic was a disaster. He could see Bronse, Ravenna, and Jet picking themselves up out of the mess. Then he realized he had no idea what chemical wash looked like or even of the most likely place in the room to find it.
“I’ve got it,” Jet said suddenly.
Relief flooded through Rush so fast that he felt completely weak, the weakest he had ever felt in his life. The whole experience was like being invaded by some kind of disease, some kind of alien thing he didn’t know how to cope with or fend off. All he could make himself do was hover protectively over Ambrea’s head, his fingers touching her pale, pale cheeks as gently as he had ever touched anything.
Bottles of chemical wash began to appear and Ophelia tore off the seals. She and Jet dumped the wash onto Ambrea, coating her twice with the stuff before rolling her over and repeating the act. Once she was on her back again, her hair and body were in a puddle of the blue gel. It had soaked into the knees of Rush’s pants even as it made its way slowly toward the drain in the floor. Ophelia gingerly examined the damage so brutally done to Ambrea’s skin. Rush knew that those puckish touches were not Ophelia’s healing touch, and it took everything in him to keep from roaring at her in fury, to beg her once more to do something.
The frustration of it burned tears into his eyes. In just a moment they were spilling free, dropping onto Ambrea’s face, settling into the wells of her eyes. Those startlingly beautiful blue eyes that he realized he might never see again if Ophelia failed him.
“Please, don’t fail me, Phee,” he said aloud to Ophelia without even realizing he was speaking.
“I won’t,” she promised him softly.
Then she reached out and laid her full hand on the only other unburned place on Ambrea’s body—her lower calf, where the robe had not reached to touch her. When she did so, a feeling crashed through Rush as though he had been holding his breath and had suddenly let it go.
“Thank you. Thank you so much, Phee,” he rasped.
Then he looked up into the bright, steady regard of his commander’s eyes. Rush had worked under the man long enough to know what that look meant. It said that when the crisis of the moment was over, Rush was going to have a lot to answer to. He hoped his commander could read his expression equally well, because it said he really didn’t give a shit.
No. Everything he gave a damn about was lying on the floor covered in blue gunk and hovering on the brink of death.
No, he had no idea how it had come to this. Yes, he was pretty damn sure he was signing himself up for nothing but trouble and disappointment because no matter how he sliced it, there was no future for a Tarian barbarian from the IM and an empress from Allay. But none of that would even matter if Ophelia couldn’t make good on the promise of her mutation. Rush lowered his gaze and stared at the only thing that mattered—the blistered and bloodied flesh of the woman he loved.
“I’m such a damn fool,” he spoke softly to her, bending to press a gentle kiss to her forehead, uncaring that the gel wash chilled his lips. Then he realized she was shivering. Hard. Between being in shock and lying doused in chilled chemical wash, it was no wonder. He looked up at Ophelia. “Phee, can I warm her?”
“Blankets would be cruel on her skin. Even though she is unconscious, she will still feel it, and we need to let the wash chill the burn for a little—” She broke off and met his eyes. “Or did you mean something else?”
There it was. The first moment he would speak of it aloud to the family he had never trusted enough after the betrayal of the first family he’d had. Oh, they had already witnessed an incredible feat of his making, but speaking it somehow gave it life. Somehow made it real and undeniable.
“With my touch. I can warm the core of her without warming her skin.”
How peculiar that he spoke of it as if he had done it a thousand times, as if he really knew if he could do it. But he had never before tried to control it in such a direct way.
But then again, he had never before traveled through space as a fireball either. And he had done so without burning a hair on Ambrea’s head. It was exactly as she had said. By relaxing and letting what was instinctive have free rein, it had come with a natural reflex of protection that had kept her safe. He was counting on that now. After all, it wasn’t as though he could burn her any worse than she already was.
Ophelia looked absolutely fascinated. She nodded to him almost eagerly and then watched him very fixedly as he gently rubbed his knuckles over the rise of Ambrea’s cheek. He spoke to her softly, things he himself could not hear or understand. All of his focus was on the horrible shivers wracking her body almost like a seizure. He knew that shock could kill her long before the actual damage from the burns could. It was very important that he succeed. The more he could do to help Ophelia along, the better Ambrea would heal.
And then, slowly, he became aware of Ambrea’s body settling, of her shivers softening. Afraid it was a negative development, he sought Ophelia’s guidance. She was smiling at him with such wonder and strength. Such acceptance. It was the expression he had first seen on Ambrea’s face. Always she had accepted him. As a Tarian. As a mutation. As a soldier. As a man. Always.
Seduce Me in Flames Page 29