“I can do it,” Taryl said, reaching for the satchel and sounding cross.

“Taryl…” Lenaris said, not wanting to finish, but knowing that he had to. He couldn’t have tension with her, not now. “Don’t be upset with me about Seefa. It isn’t that I have anything against him. It’s just…”

“What?” she asked, and the anger had gone out of her voice. Lenaris thought that she wanted to hear him say it—he hoped she did—

“I can’t help how I feel,” he said stiffly.

She put her hand on his shoulder, as if to remove the satchel, but she didn’t remove it. “And how do you feel?”

He couldn’t say anything else, and he thought she looked disappointed for a moment before he realized that she was crying softly.

“Taryl!” he said, alarmed. “I…I’m sorry! Seefa will be all right…I should never have said anything…it wasn’t my place…”

She came into his arms and he held her close, feeling as he did that it was wrong to enjoy it so much when she was so obviously hurting.

“It’s not just that,” she said, her voice muffled as she pressed her face against his chest. “I feel as though I was wrong to leave him. What if I never see him again, and the last words we had were angry? I’m…the only family he really has, since his aunt and uncle passed.”

“You’ll see him again. He loves you, and the two of you are going to be married.” The words tasted less than sweet in his mouth, but he wanted, he needed, to console her.

“I don’t wantto marry him, Holem.”

His body went rigid for a beat. He wondered if he’d heard her correctly.

“I care about Seefa, but I haven’t wanted to marry him for a long time. Maybe I just got angry with you because…I felt so guilty.”

“Guilty?”

“Yes. Because…I was…glad that he wasn’t with me. With…us.” Taryl began to cry again, her face pressed against Holem’s shoulder, her body warm against his. He found that he could not resist holding her a little bit tighter. After a long beat, she turned her face closer to his, so that he could feel her breath on his skin. He brushed her forehead with his lips…and before he had quite realized what was happening, he was kissing the ridges of her nose, and then her mouth, softly at first, and then harder as she responded, and then his hands had begun to move across her back, underneath her tunic and around her waist, and her hands were finding their way across the front of his chest, and she had removed the satchel from his shoulder and it dropped to the floor.

Their clothes seemed to fall away as they tumbled to her bed in an eager meeting of mouths and limbs and fingers. They moved slowly, and then quickly, and then slowly again, becoming a single, breathing, living thing for a few stretching moments, their hearts and bodies perfectly in rhythm. Lenaris had been with a few women, had even loved two of them—but this was different, it was Taryl,and the depth of what he felt for her far surpassed any love he’d known before they had become friends.

Entangled in her arms, Lenaris felt like he could sleep for days, exhausted and happier than he had been since he was a boy. But there were things that must be done…things that he hardly felt like considering now that Taryl was here, pressed against his body. He wanted to just hold her a little longer…

But she stood up abruptly, retrieving her clothes from the rough floor where they had been discarded. She didn’t look at him as she dressed. “Come on, Holem,” she finally said. “We’d better get back.”

“Sure,” he said, quickly dressing and retrieving the fallen satchel to loop it across his chest. This time, she did not argue with him about carrying it. She seemed determined not to meet his gaze, and he sadly decided that if he hadn’t wanted things between them to remain tense, he’d just done exactly the wrong thing.

Damar sat before the companel in his quarters with an unhappy knot in the pit of his stomach. He was not looking forward to this, but it could not be helped. He hoped she would understand; after all, his responsibilities were greater than they had been before his promotion. Veja had to realize that. She had to realize that his obligation to Dukat was immense. He entered Veja’s communication code with a great deal of reluctance.

“You are looking beautiful, as always,” he said, as Veja’s face appeared on his screen. “It pains me to tell you that it will be longer than we might have hoped until I will be able to see you again in person.”

“What do you mean?”Veja did not look like she was going to take this very well.

“My darling, you have my deepest apologies, but—”

“Oh, no, Corat. Not the trip to the vineyards!”

Damar hung his head. “Please, Veja. My duties to the station come first, no matter how much I wish it might be otherwise. You know that as well as anyone.”

“But, Corat, this trip was planned months in advance! How, at this late date, can your duties suddenly have become so pressing that you cannot even take a single two-day pass—only your third since you arrived, I might add?”

“Veja, do not make this any worse. Dukat asked me if I would be willing to sacrifice this weekend for an important update to the security systems. What could I say? I owe my promotion to him.”

“You mean to say that he gave you a choice? And you chose to do a favor for Dukat, rather than to spend time with me?”

Damar sighed, his patience waning. “Veja, that isn’t how it works. Please, I need your support.”

She was quiet for a moment, and Damar hoped she was reconsidering her reaction, which he felt was tremendously unfair. If she was going to be the wife of an officer, she was going to have to learn to accept certain things. A soldier’s duty was always to his superiors.

Her voice was cool when she spoke. “Fine, Corat. It is regrettable that you cannot come along with me, but—”

“What do you mean, come along with you? We will postpone the trip to a later date.”

“Oh, no, Corat. I requested this time from my superior, and he gave it to me. I’m not going to spend that time sulking around the settlement. I’ve always wanted to see Tilar.”

“Veja! Are you mad? You can’t go away by yourself, it is far too dangerous to travel alone.”

“Of course, I’ll bring Natima. She always has her weekends free.”

“Natima!” Damar scoffed. “She is hardly fit to ensure your safety! No, Veja, you’ve made your point that you are angry. I have apologized, but there is nothing more that I can do. Please, end this foolishness.”

“I accept your apology, Corat. But I am still going to Tilar. I’ll be sure to contact you from the vineyards, to let you know what you are missing.”

Veja ended the transmission before Damar could argue further, and he smacked his palms in anger against the surface of his desk. He decided that she was probably only trying to bait him. He was not going to give her the satisfaction of contacting her again to argue about something so utterly preposterous. He turned off his companel and went to bed, anticipating a sleepless night.

Miras lasted another week before she made her decision, a week of deep consideration, of working up the nerve—a week of terrible, relentless dreams. She dreamed now, knew she’d fallen asleep because she had to watch it all again, relive the nightmare. The Hebitian woman was gone; now there was only the hidden object, the murder, the twisted, smoking ruins of her homeworld.

Someone touched her, and she woke.

It was a stranger, the man in the seat next to hers. “I’m sorry to wake you, but we’ve gone back down into the atmosphere, and we’re approaching Lakarian City. The pilot says we’ll be there in just a few moments.”

“Oh, thank you, Mister…?”

“Raaku.”

“That’s right, I remember now.” They had briefly introduced themselves shortly after boarding the shuttle. Shortly after Miras had walked away from her old life, possibly forever.