But Zaku won’t let any of us leave the front rooms, and I’m becoming curious about what he has hidden within his strange, ancient human home.
Outside his home, it’s different. It’s almost calm. The terrain near Zaku’s place is rough, sprawling, but still serene. There’s a view of the gorge, the mountains, including the one Daisy crashed into. We’re at the peak of one, and the view goes far.
It's nice as long as I keep my eyes off the lawn, where there are skulls everywhere and a pile of rotting pig corpses. But it’s easy to ignore them being as exhausted and numb as I am right now.
When my thoughts grow bleak, I can just look out the window and feel better. I forgot what it’s like to see trees, grass, and animals through a window. Even dead ones.
It’s usually stars, nebulas, asteroid fields, and planets.
We’re far from the facility, farther still from Vruksha’s bunker. I’ve been trying to map it out in my head. Zaku lives in the opposite direction from the facility, in a mansion built into the side of a mountain, like a king.
King Cobra…
I didn’t like Zaku at first, blaming him as the reason Daisy and I were sacrificed, but I’ve decided to hate him a little less.
He cares for Daisy. He never leaves her side, just like Vruksha never leaves mine. He worries constantly, and though he’s obstinate, almost bullish, and I want to slap him even when I’m sleeping, I can forgive him. He gazes at Daisy as if she’s his entire world.
But I keep my doubts. I still don’t know why Daisy stole a skiff. I wonder how long she flew it before crashing, where was she trying to go?
I hear a moan and I sit upright, flicking my eyes to her. Zaku is asleep across from me, sprawled over a cushiony chair, his large tail draped over the glass shield of the pod.
Daisy twitches. Her chapped, peeling lips part slightly, and another moan escapes.
“Daisy?’ I whisper.
One of her eyelids cracks open and finds me.
I sit forward. “Daisy?”
“Gemma?”
“Yes, it’s me.”
She shudders, and her eye closes. She tries to raise her hand, and I stop her.
“Don’t move.” But as I say it, the pod goes into action and a screen of Daisy’s current vitals appears in the glass. A robotic arm from the side injects her with something that makes Daisy sigh.
“Where am I?” she asks when the pod returns to normal.
“Zaku’s… house? Den,” I correct. “In his medical pod.”
Her one eye looks around, stopping on the large naga tail above her on the glass. She follows it over to the male snoring on the seat beside her. He’s still asleep, and I have a feeling his snores are drowning out our whispering. I debate waking him, but I want to speak to Daisy first.
I sense Vruksha at my back.
Daisy stares at Zaku.
My brow furrows, trying to read her, but her face is swollen almost beyond recognition. Is she afraid?
“Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?” I ask. “Anything at all? I’m glad you’re awake. We were terrified for a bit there… You were in so much pain.”
Her tongue pokes out to taste her lips. “I don’t feel anything right now.”
“I think the pod is pumping you with painkillers.”
Daisy’s eye shifts back over to me. “I crashed.”
My face falls. “Yeah.”
“I shouldn’t be alive.” Her voice is barely more than an airy, strained whisper.
“But you are.”
Despair washes over her, and my heart squeezes. “Daisy,” I continue, “you’re alive and you’re going to stay that way.”
But I need to know, I need to know if Zaku can be trusted. If she’s safe with him. I won’t leave her here if she isn’t. I’ve been watching the King Cobra, and though I now like him okay, it doesn’t mean he’s not a monster. Peter turned out to be a monster.
“I shouldn’t be,” she chokes. “I fell so far. My escape pod wouldn’t eject…”
“Don’t think about it anymore. It’s over. I have something I need to ask you, something important.”
Her lips tremble. “What?”
I lower my voice, leaning right up to the glass. “Are you… Are you with Zaku?”
Confusion flutters across Daisy’s face for a split-second, but then it’s gone. “He caught me.”
“But do you want to stay caught?”
Her eye turns glassy, and she looks up at the ceiling. “He calls me his queen.”
“That’s not what I’m asking…”
Her gaze goes to Vruksha. “Do you like him?”
I don’t think I could explain how I feel about Vruksha to another. Being with him is like being sated, free. It doesn’t make sense. My breath whizzes through my teeth. “I like him a lot,” I tell her.
A lot.
But does she feel that way about Zaku? I eye the naga male.
“I’m glad,” she croaks. “Gemma...” Daisy says, dodging my question.
“The crash wasn’t your fault.”
“I was shot down.”
Shot down? My brow furrows. Daisy shudders, clearly upset, and all I want to do is hold her, tell her it’s all going to be okay.
“Who?” I ask.
Daisy shudders again.
And a streak of fear bolts through me, constricting my throat. The ship here on Earth, the transport ship we took from The Dreadnaut, isn’t equipped with weapons besides a couple of turrets that can only be used while landlocked to protect it from thieves…
So that only makes one other option.
“The Dreadnaut shot me down,” she whispers.
Zaku groans, his tail slides on the pod. He’s waking.
“How? Why?” I ask. “They wouldn’t do that. Captain Michal would never fire on our own.”
Daisy’s eye goes wide, flicking between Zaku’s tail and me. “Gemma, I was trying to reach them. Tell them what’s happening down here.” Her hand shakes like she’s trying to rise again. “They know.”
She did what I
