“Oh, love. That’s never going to happen.” Mathiras steps in front of me, right into my line of sight. He cradles my face in both hands and presses a kiss to my forehead. “I get that you’re worried, but the last thing you need to be concerned about is how I feel. I love you and I don’t care if you’ve been trained to be an assassin. You’re still my Helen.” He presses another kiss to my brow, then one to the tip of my nose. “You worry too much. If I asked you to spare someone, would you?”
“Of course.” I’m puzzled at such a question. “I trust your judgment.”
“Exactly. And have you wanted to kill Bethiah? Or the humans?” When I shake my head, he continues. “There you go. You’re not an indiscriminate killer, Helen. You just have a very strong sense of justice and protection.”
“So you don’t think I’m too tampered with?” My heart breaks at the thought of him being scared of me, or thinking I’m terrible because I don’t feel guilt when I take out the bad guys.
“Not at all. Do you think Bethiah is too tampered with? Because she scares me a kef of a lot more than you do.” He places another light kiss on my lips.
That makes me giggle. “It’s because she’s unpredictable.”
“Exactly.” His thumb strokes my cheek and he gives me an affectionate look. “I know what you are, Helen. And I’m not afraid of it. I’m glad, actually. Because it means you can defend yourself. This universe is ugly enough without me worrying that someone’s going to snatch you away from me. Knowing that you can handle yourself makes me relieved. And if you ever question your thoughts or if they seem too dark to you, we can talk through them. Understand?”
“I love you,” I blurt out to him, wanting to grab his cock and show him just how much. We’re alone on the bridge right now, but the others will be joining us soon. “Can we go to the showers and I can show you how much?”
Mathiras shakes his head and presses another kiss to my face. “I already know how much, love. It’s evident in everything you do. And I love you, too. So please don’t worry, all right? Focus that deadly brain of yours and help me figure out how we’re going to get on that ship without being seen.”
An idea comes to me. “Why not let yourself be seen? It’s a slave ship, right? Pretend to be a slaver and I can be your slave. Then we get on board and we take them out.”
He blinks at me, considering. “That’s not very stealthy.”
“It’s not. Once we’re there, we can send word for the others once we determine how many bad guys are on board. If it’s too many, we play along.”
“Play along?”
She nods. “Let them enslave me and when their backs are turned, I break their necks. They wouldn’t see me coming.”
“No, they wouldn’t,” he murmurs, and I can tell he’s considering it.
CHAPTER 82
MATHIRAS
We lurk a safe distance away from the decrepit wreck all day and try to come up with a good plan of attack. There’s no way we can sneak up on the ship itself. They’ll see us coming from leagues away. So we need a rock-solid plan or we’re going to be shot out of the sky. We meet up on the bridge and discuss, sitting around and hashing out ideas while the two humans rest in their quarters.
Helen’s already suggested that we use her as bait. While I’m not entirely crazy about the suggestion, it’s the most sensible one so far.
Adiron suggests we pretend to be stranded and request fuel cells. Once they approach us to share, we take over the ship of our “rescuers” and sneak back.
Zebah thinks we should use the escape pods, launch them both, make a diversion with the Sister, and then sneak aboard the ship.
Bethiah doesn’t like their ideas. She votes that we destroy our comms to make them “malfunction” and head straight in and dock.
All of their ideas aren’t bad, but they all have serious drawbacks, too. Adiron’s plan hinges on the other ship sending out someone to aid us. They could easily ignore us—or worse, shoot us down—the moment we come into view. Zebah’s plan assumes that we make a diversion with the Little Sister to distract and we don’t get destroyed. We don’t know what kind of weaponry is on that ship, so it’s hard to agree to that…which also makes Bethiah’s plan garbage.
I rub my jaw, thinking. “I hate it, but I think our best plan is to use Helen to our advantage. We can’t get to the ship unless they know we’re coming—or we put ourselves at serious risk. And while I’m fine with risking myself, I don’t want to risk Dora or Ruthann. Not after we’ve promised them safety.”