Grant lets out a frustrated gust of air. He flops back into bed.

His first impulse is to be ashamed. Then a font of righteous, inebriated indignation bubbles over and past it. She did the same thing, he thinks. Only I stealth-saved my secret, and she stealth-killed hers.

Those differences between them, how oppositely their scales weigh lives and loyalties. He knows they’re not alike, him and his wife. Normally he’s all right with it. Welcomes it, even. Right now it prickles. This bed, round and recessed into the floor. It disquiets him. It doesn’t feel right.

This is their first fight, he guesses. He’s drunk for their first fight.

Well—their first fight that isn’t about his freedom.

Which she begged for, from the most terrifying person in the firmament.

He sighs. He knows how she feels about things being kept from her. Knew it when he was making the decision, even. And he’d make the same decision again, he would, but that doesn’t mean he can’t apologize. When she comes back in he ought to. Or not apologize (these goddamn Taiikari and their aversion to sorry) but find some way of recompense.

A rustling sound. A wispy brush on his shoulder. Is that Sykora? He didn’t even hear her come in. He turns; there’s no one there.

“Hi,” Sykora whispers into his ear.

“Baby?” He looks at the curvaceous hump in the covers where her legs aren’t. “Where’s your uniform?”

A silky giggle in reply.

He rolls over and puts his arms around his wife; she flows like water out of his grasp. The covers spill off her. The shift of the bedspread and the source of her voice move over to his other side. “You want to see a Princess Trick, Grantyde?”

Intermingling drunken waves of relief and desire wipe the last of his trepidation away.

He reaches toward her voice. “You’ve tried this one before, Princess. Can’t trick me.” He closes his hand around her tail. “I know where this is.”

He gives it a tug, summoning a gasping giggle of “Grant,” from thin air. Her butt lands in the crook of his arm.

“I know where this is, too.” He pokes her bellybutton and makes her squeak. “And this—this one’s tricky but I think it’s right—here.” His thumb brushes the firm bud of her nipple. Her air-chilled skin makes a velvety rasp against his as she squirms in his embrace.

“And I bet anything that these—” He reaches up. A breathy moan from Sykora; his hands have found her horns. He grins. “Are out.”

She huffs. “What do you expect? A big insufferable Maekyonite poking and pulling and—”

Another squeak as Grant’s leg comes up between hers and boosts her into his lap. The bedsheets shift with her weight.

His touch slides down his wife’s horns into her downy hair. He cups her face.

“Even when I don’t see you, I see you,” he whispers, and he feels her hot, cider-sweetened breath against his face, and he finds her lips. When your eyes are closed, kissing an invisible woman is all the same.

“I was—I was going to—” Sykora cuts herself off with a melting moan as he nuzzles into her neck. A damp patch is growing on the thin sheet that separates him from his invisible wife. “I had a whole thing, Grantyde. Nura has an entire textbook on invisible seduction.”

“Yeah?” The anger is gone, gone completely. The aggression is still there, but it’s kindled into something else, a familiar and welcome heat that closes his hands tight around her supple waist. “What were you gonna do?”

“I—” Her breath falters as his hands travel downward along her warming body. “Oh, who gives a shit.” An unseen tail wraps around his neck and yanks him on top of her.

He traces her contours, mapping her by touch. The slim, sinuous arms. The ripples of her abdomen, muscle sliding beneath the skin as her body takes its fill of his. The racing tri-part heart. The quivering lower lip, the mouth that plants urgent kisses against his fingers. The squish of her thick thighs. His boxer briefs slide down his legs seemingly of their own accord. He kicks them the rest of the way off and anchors his grip on the curve where invisible legs meet invisible hips. He caresses the smooth interplay between firm bone and plump curve. His thumbs slip along the inner tendons of her legs as he opens them wide and seats himself between them.

Tiny unseen fingers guide him to the damp edge of a throbbing, hungry heat. “Okay, Mr. Maekyonite.” His wife’s singsong voice, inflected with a translucent smile: “Are you ready for the Princess Trick?”

Invisible ankles wrap around the small of his back, and pull.

His cock disappears.

A sharp inhale, a shivery sigh, and then Sykora sings: “Ta-daaah!”

***

They lie in the soft saffron light from Taiqan’s surface. The world hanging before their cabin’s broad window like a golden medallion. Grant admires the cool blue of his wife’s skin in the pockets of shadow his body makes on hers.

“I take it you’re not angry,” he says.

“I was.” Her tail’s dark paintbrush tuft traces figure eights on his thigh. “I was quite angry. I took a walk, and I took a few breaths, and got a tad more sober. And you’re right.” She sighs. “I would have fallen apart if you’d told me. I’d have had a nervous breakdown on the damn command deck at the thought I’d put you in danger. And you did handle it. That’s what royals do.”

“I should have told you.”

“We just saved a fucking civilization,” she says. “And we were about to bicker about a communicator call. And I…” she burps. “Hellfire. I am still rather drunk.”

He laughs under his breath. “When you put it like that…”

“It was my call that exposed you in the first place. And I was about to be quite a hypocrite. You’re not angry, are you?”

“I was getting ready to be.” He reaches out and finds an invisible shoulder. “Now I guess I’m not.”

“Me neither,” she says. “I, um. I am working on my temper. I have sworn to myself that before I unleash it on you, I’ll give my stupid brain a chance to vent it out.”

“You’re not stupid.”

“Yes I am. I—Grant ohmygod put me down”

“No way.” Grant hoists her higher and curls her legs up in his arms to halt her erratic kicking. “You insulted my wife.”

“I will bite you.”

“Say you’re a genius and I’ll let you go.”

“I’m a genius.” Her tail wraps around the nape of his neck. “Release me, Maekyonite.”

“Changed my mind.” He flops backward and holds her in place against his chest. “Go ahead and bite me.”

She nips his shoulder.

He grunts, more out of surprise than any actual pain, and chuckles. “You little gremlin.”

Her tail wags. Her fangs rest lightly against his chest. “Yu toldmi tu,” she says, in stilted English.

He rubs his shoulder and feels a few flecks of damp under his hand. He jolts momentarily—is that blood?—but when he brings it to his face, it’s clear and shiny. “What’s this?”

“Oh Hellfire.” She sits up and wipes her palm across his chest, where a little more of the sweet-scented stuff sits. “That’s the, uh… nectar. If you get excited enough, you can accidentally, um. Sprinkle some.”

“For real?” His lips curl up. “Nectar like for the breeding bite?”

“Not enough to do anything. Even if I’d broken the skin.” Her blush deepens. “I wonder if perhaps we could talk about something else. Or stop talking altogether, even.”

“Mmm.” He wipes the rest of the nectar on the bed and rolls her over into little-spoon position. “Okay.”

They watch the world hover out their window. There’s a line of pinprick lights from the Eqtoran ships bringing their people home again.

“What they were about to do,” Grant murmurs. “Burn in defiance, I mean. There’s a piece of me that gets it.”

“Is there?”

He nods into her hair. “This nagging little Maekyonite piece of me. It thinks the moral, ethical thing—the only thing that would make me righteous—would be to die fighting the Empire.”

She draws his arms over her shoulders.

“But I’m not going to do that,” he continues. “Because I want to live. I love my life too much. I love you way too much. I love these abs.” He cradles her stomach. “And the little noise you make when I kiss them. I love how gentle you are with me. I love the shit that you let me get away with, that you’re willing to try. I love that I can see the kindness in you, even through all the Imperial decrees and the bomb in your head and the planet-killing warship and the cold face you show the firmament. I can’t see you as the enemy. I could never. I think you’re the best fucking person I’ve ever met, and it’s insane to me that you love me back as much as you do.”

“It makes perfect sense to me.” She kisses his wrist.

“So,” he says. “In conclusion. I’m not going to fight.”

“Next time you want to squeeze me into a costume as ridiculous as that fishy goddess one, you’re going to have to.” She twists around. “I’ll claw your face off.”

“That’s a shame.” He plays with her fingers where they interlace with his. “I have a lot of costume ideas I’d love to see you in.”

“Oh.” Her horns twitch. “Uh. I mean—we could negotiate. You’re good at negotiating.”

He pokes her little stomach. “You’re good at negotiating.”

“You’re good.”

“You’re good.”

“You’re fucking great.” She flops her thigh over him. “You—your guitar tamed a fucking solar system, Grantyde.”

His vision unfocuses and turns Taiqan into a bokeh smear. “Yeah. I guess it did.”

“You should be so proud.” She plays with his hair. “You are proud, right?”

“I am. I just—” He tries to find the words as his mind comes sloping gradually down from its drunkenness and high emotion. “I mean of course it doesn’t bother me. Not considering what the alternative would have been.”

Outside their window, a sliver of moon has begun to rise from the rim of the world. Soon the sigil of the Pike will be visible on its surface.

“I can’t help but feel, though,” he says. “Their myths. Their songs. We took advantage of them.”

She shakes her head. “I disagree, dove.”

“You don’t think that’s what did it, in the end?”

“That’s not what I disagree with,” she says. “I disagree it was a myth.”

His brows knit.

“The Eqtoran legend spoke of an angelic being,” she says. “That would descend from the heavens in their darkest hour. To bring songs of salvation, and deliver the children of Eqt from war and cataclysm.”

Her nose rubs his.

“I was the one in the costume,” she whispers. “But isn’t that exactly what you did?”