Chapter 95

The vehicle to take them up to the spaceship crouched like a wild beast upon the tarmac. It had none of the practical functionality of the transport they had taken between cities, this was a vehicle designed to transport the Arken and his higher officials in style, and it stated as much from its sleek exterior to the thick carpet that covered the steps up into its belly. They mounted the steps and Rikash saw her to a heavily padded seat, buckling her into place as Nadyr and Harper sat opposite to them, the green-eyed man positioning himself directly opposite to Amelia. However long it took, she thought, to travel from land to spaceship, they would spend it staring at each other across a distance no further than the reach of his arm but that might have been a galaxy, as they could not cross it. She met his eyes and tried to put into hers everything that went unsaid between them, to hold him by pure will as hers despite his body being Harper s and hers being Rikash s. Fate was cr