Free Queen of Starlight by Jessa Slade

pinpricks. All reflected in his upraised eyes.
    She gasped.
    He slanted a glance at her along with a smug grin. “Amazing, isn’t it?”
    He thought she was looking at the stars.
    She nodded, letting him be wrong. To see that pleasure in his eyes and want it when he looked at her… No, that would give him too much power, the kind of power that launched a ship into space. “Amazing,” she murmured.
    The curve of the planet blazed as the sun rose again, time rolling backward. The rings shone with luminous beauty as the Asphodel danced between them, guided by Evessa’s nimble fingers.
    “Qv’arratz has a strange confluence of radiation belts and these mineral rings,” Corso said.
    Benedetta nodded. “According to our studies, that confluence is what allows some of our people to meld with the qva’avaq.”
    “We can use that to our advantage against your attackers. We’ll hide the Asphodel in the sensor dead zones and, when they return, we’ll blow them out of the sky.”
    Benedetta swallowed. The beauty of space had stunned her and now the violence did the same. But she’d brought this to them; they needed it to survive.
    To distract herself, she continued her history lesson. “I’m afraid the value of the crystals, in creating the l’auraly, has also prevented Qv’arratz from exploring our other resources. We import nearly everything, even many foods despite the abundant harvests you sampled, and that has made us vulnerable to this attack. We can’t bring in traders if we have a mortar drop overhead.”
    “It won’t be there for long.”
    “You are very sure of yourself.”
    “I assume you are too, or you wouldn’t have brought me.”
    She shifted. The friction of his thigh against her made her want to squirm again. “I think I’ve been unfair to you.”
    His lips quirked. “Which part? Where you brought me here with a threat? How you haven’t paid me yet? Am I missing anything?”
    She grimaced. “I didn’t know… No, I did know what I was doing, what I was forcing you to do. I just didn’t know I would feel so conflicted about it.” She breathed out a long sigh that sent her leaning back into him. “As captain, you must have sent people into danger. How do you stand it?”
    “It helps when they buy into the danger voluntarily.” He gave her a nudge and a significant stare before relenting. “But it should never be easy to send someone into danger. That makes for a bad captain. And I never ask anyone to do what I won’t do.”
    She contemplated his words a moment. “That’s why you were able to break with the other squadron commanders at L-Sept, isn’t it? You said you’d sold yourself to become commander, but that was never true. You gave up a corrupt command of many, for one ship that was only yours. All yours.”
    He stared out at the planet spinning above them. “I didn’t think about it.”
    “Of course not; you didn’t have to think. You just acted. There must be a certain relief in that.”
    He scowled. “Being a dumb mercenary.”
    “Being so confident in yourself,” she countered.
    “You seem very confident.”
    “Only in what I’ve been taught to do. Outside of that...” She shook her head. “When we were attacked, I realized how dependent we’ve grown on others. Not just us l’auraly, but all Qv’arratzy. We’ve never relied on ourselves the way you and your crew must.”
    He grunted, as if that were an answer.
    Benedetta found herself less interested in the vastness of space outside and more in the unfathomable inner life of the man beside her. “Why didn’t you change the Asphodel ’s name? An ancient flower is not very...”
    “Mercenary?”
    “I was going to say it’s not very masculine.”
    His lips quirked. “That was her name.”
    “But you bought her. You could change her name to whatever you wanted.”
    “That was her name,” he repeated.
    She tilted her head. “Why, Captain Deynah, are you a sentimentalist?”
    He snorted. “Do you know