She had to say something—do something. But all she could think of doing was leaping on him and finishing what they’d started. And she wasn’t even intoxicated anymore. This was a different feeling. Her mind was clear, her self-awareness sharp. This was just her very own desire.
She’d never wanted somebody so suddenly and without reservation—let alone a male of an entirely different species. She’d had relationships with human men, and had even enjoyed the cold-blooded touch of a Ravanoth male. But this feeling was potent and primal and—
Asier looked abruptly away from her. “At your pace, the ship is three days’ walk,” he said brusquely. “I could carry you and cut the time in half, but I don’t think that would be wise.”
Lyra smiled faintly. “No. Probably not.” She slowed, putting more distance between them.
They walked on in uncomfortable silence. She followed him through the forest, barely registering where she was walking. She knew better than to be so careless, but she couldn’t get a grip on her mind. Her thoughts raced between worry over the other women, fear that she would never return home, despair that her sister would forever wonder what had happened to her, and a bone-deep physical and mental exhaustion that had her questioning her own judgment.
Had she given her trust to this alien too readily? Was he deceiving her? She couldn’t bring herself to entertain those very legitimate concerns. Because underneath everything, ran a current of acute desire. She wanted to walk closer to the him—to touch him even just briefly. A brush of their fingers, a bump of her shoulder against his torso…
Asier’s deep voice cut into the anxious, racing scatter of her mind. “I’ve been on this planet for twenty-seven days.”
Lyra tried to collect her thoughts. “How long are the days on this planet?”
“Approximately two zeitraums.”
Lyra did the math in her head. Time adjustment was a complex formula, but one she’d worked with nearly every day of her life since before she’d even entered flight school. The computers ran it for her aboard ship, but she always checked their numbers against her own calculations. Systems could fail. Algorithms could be corrupted. After more than a decade as the fretful human backup to the most advanced tech humanity had, she’d managed to condense the most common formulas into fairly accurate approximations that she could do in her head.
After a few seconds of thought—blissful seconds in which all the fear and worry and confusion fell away before the clean, cold clarity of mathematics—she had it. One day on this planet amounted to a little more than half of an Earth Standard day. Their three-day walk here would be less than two days of her circadian cycle.
“This is not a hospitable planet,” Asier continued. “It’s climactically unstable. Much of the vegetation secretes dangerous compounds.” He paused. “And then there are the spiders.”
Lyra shivered at his ominous tone. Bipedal anthropoids weren’t the only biological template found scattered across the universe. There were all kinds of alien creatures bearing marked similarities to ones found on Earth—most commonly fish, snakes, and… spiders.
“The spiders?” Lyra echoed warily. “How big?”
“Have you ever seen a Ravanoth kuriel?” Asriel asked.
Kuriels were rusty-orange ape-like creatures that had inspired the Ravanoth slur for humans—kuri. They were slow-moving, docile, fungi-eaters, but they were as big as coyotes.
“You’re about to tell me how adorable and harmless these spiders are, right?” Lyra picked up her pace, closing some of the distance between them. Dangerous attraction be damned—she wasn’t going to march around in the dark on a hostile planet without having help in arm’s reach.
A low rumble emerged from Asier’s throat, and Lyra realized he was laughing. The sound made her feel flush and unsteady, but she didn’t move away from him.
“No. I’m telling you that these spiders are very large. And carnivorous.”
Lyra shuddered again. “Good to know.”
“They prefer wet, dark, lowland. We will stay on the ridges as much as we can. But be alert. They will climb to hunt, if they have to.”
“What am I looking for?”
“They’re colored gray-brown, and blend very well into the forest floor. Eight legs. Armored carapace.”
Lyra instinctively scanned their immediate surroundings. It was still too dark for her to see much. Suddenly every shape and shadow became a giant, man-eating spider. She shot forward, gripping the back of Asier’s jacket. He stiffened.
“I’m sorry,” Lyra whispered, clutching his jacket more tightly. It was all she could do not to climb onto his back.
Asier reached into his jacket and withdrew a folded black cloth. He shook it out, folded it into a triangle, and tied it behind his head, covering his mouth and nose.
“Is it my scent?” Lyra asked, oddly flattered.
“Yes,” he answered gruffly.
“I’m sorry.”
He shrugged stiffly. “It is safer if we stay close.”
They walked on through the darkness, with Lyra clinging to the back of Asier’s jacket like a frightened child.
Around them, the twisting, whippy trees rustled and swayed in the wind. Stands of canes rattled dryly against each other. Small, dark shadows scurried across the ground in front of them, leapt from tree to tree above their heads. They passed bottle-shaped fungi that pulsed with anemic yellow light. Insects and night creatures called and whirred and chirped and hooted.
Every once in a while, something in the distance let out a scream like a dying rabbit. Each and every time, Lyra nearly jumped out of her skin. Seconds later, each and every time, she had to peel herself off of Asier, who stood rigidly and made pained noises.
“Stop doing that,” Lyra said shakily as he groaned at the feel of her body against his. “You’re making it very difficult to—” she stopped herself.
“What?” Asier asked hoarsely.
To let go of you. “Nothing.”
They walked on. Lyra’s hand was a cramped claw, fisted in Asier’s jacket, but she didn’t let go.
The darkness faded, bit by bit, until they were walking in daylight. The planet’s sun was as yellow and bright as Earth’s. But the trees around them were nothing like Earth’s verdant forests. Instead, Asier and Lyra walked through a feverish blend of scarlet, cobalt, and gold foliage. The bark of the trees and the woody stems of vines and bracken ranged from shades of pale ash to bone white. The loam-scented soil was charcoal gray.
The predominant species of tree towered high above them, more than three stories tall. The trunks twisted and curved like rheumatic fingers. The bark was white and papery, sloughing off in dangling sheets. The massive leaves were wine red, shaped like scalloped hexagons, a foot in diameter. They hung in crowded rows beneath the branches, dangling from a long stem. They looked like ladies’ parasols that had been turned inside out by the wind.
There were stout, bulb-shaped conifers, barely any taller than Lyra. Their ashy-gray branches bore midnight-blue needles as thick and long as porcupine quills. A viscous, mint-green resin dripped down their trunks.
Growing in clusters, were narrow, willow-like trees. Their hanging fronds were thick with frilly, heart-shaped, harvest-gold leaves.