Born of Ice

“Sway’s wife.”


She’d known from the gold band on his arm that Sway was married, but it still caught her off guard. “Is she not part of the crew?” Since runners could spend months at a time on a mission, it wasn’t unusual for a married man to have his wife on board.

“No. Claria’s a junior senator for the Hyshian government. Since she travels so much, and they don’t have any children for him to watch, Sway stays with me.”

Alix frowned at him. “That sounds odd.”

He shrugged. “Only by most humans’ standards. The Hyshians are obscenely matriarchal. The males can’t do anything without female consent. The men even take their wife’s name.”

She found his good humor infectious as he looked at her with those dark eyes. Still, the thought of owning someone, even in marriage, was revolting to her. Having been a slave her entire life, she couldn’t imagine voluntarily subjugating herself to someone else. “How does he stand it?”

“He loves her more than his life. But it can be hard for him to submit. Hyshian males are as aggressive as any other. I’ve been told that some wives drug their spouses to keep them in line. Some even surgically alter them.”

“And their culture allows this?”

He held his hands up in surrender. “I hear you. Believe me, I’m grateful to the gods that I’m not one of them. But in defense of their culture, Sway’s mother was never like that. Probably because her father was human. Jayne has always been respectful of her husband and sons, and Claria’s the same way . . . most of the time. It’s why she allows Sway to travel with me even though she takes a lot of shit from her family and others for not riding herd on him. She’s a good woman, so I stay out of it.”

He entered the room and started checking over the system’s gauges. “That being said, because of their laws, I’m Sway’s legal chaperone—which is why he gives me such grief about my mom’s calls. He considers it justice over the way I taunt him.”

Alix wondered at his words. “So how did you end up as his chaperone?”

“Our parents are close friends and we grew up like brothers. When he married, Claria wanted to keep him happy, so she asked me to take custody of him. It felt kind of weird to have custody of someone older than me, especially at first, but I didn’t want him forced to live with Claria’s mother, who would have driven him mental with her bullshit rules for his behavior.” He glanced up from the panel. “What about you? You have any siblings?”

A cold, twisting lump coiled in her stomach, and she feared for a moment she might be sick.

Don’t think about it. Because when she did, she wanted to cry. Her sister was only fifteen, and she’d do anything to keep Tempest safe.

Not to mention her mother.

But she couldn’t tell Devyn about them. If she did, he’d want to know where they were and why she’d left them.

Alix dropped her gaze and looked over the control panel for the shield’s leak. “I told you I don’t have any family ties.”

“Sorry, I forgot.”

She hadn’t meant for her reply to be so curt. She tried to ignore her guilt—and his presence—as she concentrated on her task, but it wasn’t easy.

It didn’t take long to isolate the leak and correct it. “There.” She stepped back to show him. “It’s all fixed.”

Devyn checked the gauges.

She studied his frown of consternation and smiled. “How is it a pilot of your abilities doesn’t know anything about ship maintenance?”

He shrugged. “My dad tried his best to teach me engineering all through my childhood, but I’m missing that gene—too much like my mom. For some reason, I can’t wrap my mind around mechanics. All I know is how to check things, fly them and shoot them when they really piss me off. What about you? Can you pilot?”

“I can do a launch sequence, but that’s about all. I couldn’t get near the directional controls unless my father passed out.”

She bit her lip in shock at the slip she’d made, but she couldn’t seem to help herself. There was something about Devyn that stripped away all the careful barriers she’d built for herself. In spite of the fact that he was lethal, he was way too easy to talk to.

A flicker of anger touched Devyn’s eyes but quickly vanished, and it made her wonder why.

“Is that why you became an engineer?”

She brushed her hand across her cheek, skimming the tiny scar just below her right eye from when her father had slung her against a control panel a few years ago after she’d made a simple mistake. “No. My father didn’t like paying the extra money to hire an engineer, so one day he handed me a wrench and a manual and told me to fix the side stabilizer or get off the ship.”