Free Unbound by Kay Danella Page A

bod in some backwater station or in the hands of slavers. Again?
    He had that look of weary defeat of someone who’d hit a grav well and was falling into the star. Like he was struggling only because he didn’t know what else to do. She knew the feeling well, having tangled with it a time or two.
    She at least had Amin and her cousins to help pull her out. He didn’t have anyone. That look tugged at her heart, another weight to that already burdened organ but one she couldn’t seem to avoid.
    The darkness pressed in, filled with only the normal noises of the Castel in flight. It didn’t sound as if she wasn’t alone. The night cycle sounded entirely normal. But the knowledge that Romir was out there leavened the solitude.
    Sleep claimed her without her realizing.
     
     
    Romir forced himself not to return to Asrial’s side. He did not want to leave her—and that alien desire kept him where he was. He could not afford the weakness of preference, of emotional attachment. Of thinking his wishes could change this uncaring universe. Bitter experience had shown that to be a lie.
    The walls winked at him seductively, hinting at hidden knowledge, at new horizons . . . at challenges to his skill—things that had long been lost to him. In truth, they were things that were still lost to him, trapped as he was in this existence.
    Drawn to their mysteries, to the unfamiliar weaves within arm’s reach, he walked the corridors with new eyes, no longer looking for the hand of the Mughelis. In the past, he might have given in to temptation, tested the limits of his knowledge. But the time when he was free to indulge his curiosity was gone.
    He could not trust this dubious freedom. His prison continued to call to him. And if he should succumb, anyone who possessed his prison would master him.
    So he walked the corridors, waiting for Asrial to wake. His feet led him to the plant room. Of all the rooms in the starship, the plant room was the only one that did not make him feel lost. Though most of the plants were nothing he recognized, the smell of green and growth was a reminder of familiar things. The abyss between worlds, the starship, the sparkling walls, the harnessing of that vortex—these were all beyond his ken.
    This night the smell of the room was different.
    Several plants bloomed in the low light, one of which offered a sweet fragrance. He filled his lungs with its scent, realizing only now how much he had missed such things. His prison was a deprivation of the senses. He walked down a row, trying to find the source of that fragrance.
    So much had been taken from him; others he had surrendered. He had forced himself not to care; if he did not care, it would have no meaning. And yet he found he still cared, if only for his loss. The smallest things still mattered.
    He touched a slender white petal, marveling at its bristly texture—another memory that would taunt him should he return to his prison. The flower snapped shut around the tip of his finger, its petals clinging tight. A surprise. Rather like the woman who flew this starship.
    But this memory was better than the others that awaited him in the mists. The faces of the vyziers who had commanded him were blurs lost in a miasma of bitter self-disgust and helpless rage. If only he could forget the results of his betrayal.
    Entire cities melted beneath his weaves, slain by their refusal to surrender. The graceful spires of Xabun, the ancient arches of Gavor, the stone lace of Yalixo, and countless others too many to name, the proud and ancient strongholds of Parvin all fell victim to his failure to resist his masters. He had destroyed them—them and the Parvinese who had remained, trapped within their walls.
    Their deaths were a stain on his soul that could never be washed clean. A damned traitor such as he had no business touching someone like Asrial.

Seven
    “You don’t have to have sex with me, if you don’t want to. I don’t expect you to pay for your passage