She snatched her hand away from me. “That’s not going to happen.”
Her words were sharp, but her voice wavered. The Gerwyn was oblivious to the tension crackling between us as he sniffed around us, finally curling up on the cushion beside me.
I lay back and let my eyes close. “We will see.”
Chapter Sixteen
Juliette
I curled up as far as I could get from the sleeping Raas. His words had made it impossible to sleep. How could he possibly think that I’d want him to make me scream and would be begging him for more? That was the last thing I wanted.
I focused on the shadows dancing on the dark ceiling, the flames from the eternal fire sending a warm glow across the room, even if they didn’t make it any warmer. I missed my small bedroom in our dwelling on Kimithion III, with its single bed and heavy blanket across the foot. The wide-open space of the Raas’ quarters were the opposite of cozy, even if they were more luxurious and the blankets covering me made of silky furs. I didn’t care about the cool Vandar tech, or even their healing pools. No matter how much more sophisticated life was on the horde ship, it would never be home. And nothing the Raas could say would change that, even if he did make my pulse race and heat coil in my core.
I huffed out a breath and turned away from him. Even though I knew he was completely wrong about me and well, everything, I still couldn’t fall asleep. His tossing and turning wasn’t helping either. Even though the Raas had fallen asleep quickly, his breath deepening almost as soon as he’d closed his eyelids, he’d almost instantly started to twitch in his sleep.
The Gerwyn I’d decided to name Furb had retreated away from the Vandar, and was now sleeping in a ball near my feet. I didn’t blame him. The Raas was not a peaceful sleeper, and his thick legs could crush something as small as the fur ball if they kicked out too wildly.
“No!” The Vandar’s scream made me almost scurry off the bed after Furb, who’d woken and run on his little legs all the way to the corner of the room.
When I sat up and peered through the dark room at the Raas, he was no longer twitching in his sleep. He was thrashing, as if he were being stung by a pod of electric sea eels. His legs moved almost as if he were running in place, and he swung his arms like he was holding a weapon. Even in the shadowy light from the fire, it was obvious that sweat was running down his face, which was set in a tortured grimace.
“Raas!” The pain in his cry made my stomach clench and my heart squeeze. I’d had bad dreams before, but this was on a whole different level.
I didn’t know if it was safe to wake him, but I couldn’t bear watching him suffer. I tentatively shook his shoulder, dodging his flailing arms. “Raas, wake up. You’re dreaming.”
But he didn’t wake. Instead, he sat up and pulled me to him, cradling me as he wailed. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled as he moaned over me, clearly thinking that I was someone else. I tried to wiggle away, but his grip was too tight, so I tried a different approach.
“Vassim,” I said over his moaning. “Vassim, wake up!”
The sound of his name did something. He stilled, his eyes flying open. He blinked down at me, clearly not sure why he was holding me.
He loosed his grip. “What’s—?”
“You were having a nightmare. I tried to wake you.”
He pulled back like he’d been burned, and I moved back to my side of the pallet. Staring down at his hands, he asked, “Did I hurt you?”
“No, but I was afraid you might hurt yourself.”
He shook his head. “It is never me who gets hurt.”
“You’ve had bad dreams before?”
He rubbed a hand over his brow. “All of my dreams are tormented. It’s my curse.”
I stared at him for a moment as the words sunk in. “This is your curse? To have bad dreams? This is what we went to the witch about?”
He reached for the nearly empty carafe of wine, slugging it straight from the container. When it was empty, he put it back and glanced at me. “They are not just any bad dreams. Every time I fall asleep, I’m forced to relive the battle in which my former Raas was killed. I experience all the sensations as if I were back on the battlefield, including the agony of not reaching my Raas in time to save him. But the curse doesn’t allow me any deviation, so each time I believe I might reach him in time and each time he dies in my arms.”
Silence stretched between us as I absorbed the horror of his fate.
“That would be torture enough, but the alien who placed the curse on me also made it so that I wake up feeling like I never slept, the exhaustion of the battle and the aches of my body just as fresh as they were that day.”
“So you never get any rest, no matter how much you sleep?” I couldn’t imagine how he’d been living with such a curse, but now I understood why he was so desperate to end it. “No wonder they call you deranged.” As soon as I uttered the words, I regretted them. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
“No, you are right. They do call me Lunori Raas because I walk the ship at all hours to keep from sleeping, sometimes talking to myself to stay awake. Even my raiders fear what will happen when the madness overtakes me.”
I glanced at the spikes on the walls and strange contraptions that seemed to me to be torture devices. “That is what those are for? To keep you awake?”
He followed my
