By the Sea of Sand Read online

  “I’m sorry,” he told her in a stiff, formal voice. “I shouldn’t have.”

  She gathered her robes in front of her, holding them closed as she rolled to face him. “You think I couldn’t have stopped you, if I wanted?”

  “You couldn’t have.” In the next pass of light, she saw that he was staring at the ceiling, one arm behind his head.

  “No. You’re right. But you didn’t force me, if that’s what you were thinking.”

  He was silent for a moment. “Still. I shouldn’t have . . .”

  “Did you do what you just did as an apology?” Teila pushed herself up on one elbow, wishing she could see his face. The sound of the wind had gone quieter, though the occasional spatter of sand against the window told her the storm hadn’t yet died.

  He said nothing.

  Stunned, moved, touched, her heart full, she leaned to kiss him. “You didn’t make me do anything I didn’t want to do.”

  The lights came back on. At the look on his face, awkward and clearly uncomfortable, Teila sat up and moved away. Giving him space.

  Kason—because that was who he was and who he would always be in her heart—sat up, too. “I’m a stranger to you.”

  It was her turn to stay quiet.

  Frowning, he gave her a long, steady look. “You fuck a lot of strangers, Teila?”

  Her chin went up, though his tone wasn’t accusatory as much as merely curious. “No.”

  “It’s not your habit, then?”

  “No,” she repeated and got to her feet. Her fingers fumbled with her laces as she closed her robes.

  She felt it when he got up behind her. Waited for him to turn her. He didn’t touch her, at least not with his hands. He didn’t have to. She felt him all over her anyway.

  “Teila.”

  She wouldn’t look at him. Couldn’t. She half-turned to give him the illusion of it, but cut her gaze from his.

  “Have I been here before?”

  Teila kept her words careful. “Do you think you have been?”

  “Curse it! Answer me!”

  She braced herself for his grip. His fists clenched, but he didn’t touch her. Her throat dried even as her eyes burned; she closed them against the tears and his look.

  “Am I a stranger to you?”

  Her breath hitched inward, choking. She backed up a few steps, her head spinning, the Rav Aluf’s warnings echoing in her head. Don’t tell him anything. Don’t lead him. Above everything else, do not trigger him.

  “You’ve been here long enough,” she said, thinking desperately of how to tell him something, anything, that would open the locked door between the present and the past. “No. You’re not a stranger.”

  “But when I came here? Was I a stranger then?”

  “Did you . . .” She had to swallow hard. “Did you feel like a stranger?”

  Kason’s back straightened. His eyes narrowed. “Yes. I did. All of this felt new to me. But now . . .”

  “Yes?” Teila couldn’t stop herself from hoping.

  “Now, I doubt.”

  Everything inside her began to shake—joy or terror, she couldn’t be sure. “It will take time for you—”

  “Did you know me?” His tone brooked no more confabulation. Without waiting for her to answer, he did it for her. “You did. I can see it in your eyes. You knew me, Teila. Before I came here this way, you knew me.”

  So close, so close, but she couldn’t risk it. Not for any reason. “Do you remember me?”

  “No.” He shook his head, fingertips working at his temples again. “I don’t, and I don’t remember knowing you. But I did.”

  She couldn’t say yes. But she could not say no. She let her silence answer, and that wasn’t good enough for him.

  Kason let out a low, angry growl. That was the only way to describe it. It was a sound of animal fury, culminating in a roar that had her cowering. With one swift motion, he swept the nearby table clean of the glass vase and tray. Both shattered on the floor. The table was next, toppled and broken.

  Was this it, Teila wondered, terrified. Had he been triggered? Was he gone over?

  When he turned on her, she stood her ground. Not from any bravery, but because she had no time to move before he had her in his arms. She’d been in just this place so many times before, sometimes with love or lust and a few times, lately, in anger. All she could do was look up at him and beg the Three Mothers to let him see her for who she was.

  His fury drained as she watched. His grip loosened, though he didn’t let her go. He leaned in, and she thought he might kiss her. Instead, he closed his eyes and took a long, slow breath. His nose traced a line up her throat to her jaw, the heat of his breath not quite a caress.

  When he looked at her again, his gaze was flat. “You knew me. But you won’t tell me how. Or who I am.”

  I can’t. But even that was too much to say. All she could do was stare.

  Kason put her from him so firmly it was as painful as a slap. He gave her his back. “Get out.”

  “Everything takes time—”

  “Get out,” he repeated. Softer this time, but far more dangerous.

  The man she’d married would never have turned his back on her that way, no matter how angry. Perhaps it was time to admit it, Teila thought as she left the room. He was no longer the man she’d married.

  Chapter 17

  This was a dream, but a real one. Knowing it gave him no more control over it than he’d had during any of the hallucinations, but that was all right. This dream wasn’t full of sex or gluttony.

  It was filled with flowers.

  A field of them, red and blue and yellow, on a carpet of lush green. That’s what had tipped him off to knowing this wasn’t really happening. Sheira was a planet of dust and sand, its foliage gray and brown and dry. The only time he’d ever seen plants like this had been in his mother’s greenhouse, grown at great effort and expense, or on the Sheirran sister planet of Asdara. That world had all the green Sheira lacked. He’d only been there for a short time during his training.

  Training.

  For the Sheirran Defense Force.

  He remembered that.

  His time as a soldier had been so much a part of him he’d never lost it, no matter what the Wirthera had ever done to him. Just as he’d never lost the Wirthera themselves. He could’ve gone without remembering them forever.

  He wasn’t training, now. He was in uniform, his hair shorn, his feet weighted with the heavy boots he remembered that had been so hard to get used to after wearing sandals for his entire life. He was alone, though, not paired with his training partner who’d never leave his side until one of them got promoted or died.

  He’d been promoted, he remembered that. But only after his partner, Leora, had been killed during one of their initial missions. A Wirtheran hornet had launched a laser missile, catching a stupidly vulnerable section of the scouting craft they’d been in.

  Leora. She was not a dream, even if this was, and he’d forgotten her until just now. He looked around, expecting to see her—after all, the dead did come back in dreams, didn’t they? But there was still nobody. Just him and the field of green and red and blue and yellow. And the blue sky. Brown earth. But she had been real. He knew it and clung to that memory even though it tried to slip away and become fantasy.

  Here, at least, he didn’t suffer the constant stream of scrolling data in the corners of his vision or the pain that went along with trying to constantly suppress it. The relief of it set him to laughing. Then running. Leaping. Turning handsprings, backflips, athletic feats he’d have been hard-pressed to manage in the waking world even with all his enhancements.

  If he tried hard enough, he thought, maybe he could even fly.

  A soft breeze tossed the flowers. He drew in their scent, heady and rich and unlike anything he’d ever known. He wanted to throw himself down into them and roll around, and with that thought he was in the thick of them, the sweet stink all over him. Then, as is the way of