Sigrun collapsed forward. Her full weight landed on him, one hundred and fifty-two pounds of Psi Lynx pinning him to the mat, and he wheezed but wrapped his arms around her back and held on. Her hips still twitched. Small aftershocks that made them both flinch. His face was buried in the curve of her neck, breath coming in ragged gulps against her skin, and he could feel her heartbeat slamming against his chest, fast and real.

  His own pulse hammered back. Two hearts, out of sync, slowly finding each other's rhythm in the quiet gym.

  For a long minute, neither of them moved. His hands rested on the small of her back, tracing absent circles on sweat-slicked skin.

  "Your Aether just went up," she murmured against his throat. "I felt it."

  "Yours too." He could feel it in the psionic resonance between them, the Void-Lunar exchange still humming faintly. His brain was already reaching for the passage he'd bookmarked that morning. "Canto 9 of the Void-Desire Tantra, the bit about complementary attunement cycles during sustained physical bonding, the quantum flux models that explains why—"

  "You're doing it again," she said. "Overthinking."

  "Sorry. The theory is genuinely—" He stopped. Took a breath. "It felt good. That's what matters."

  She lifted her head and looked at him. Her face was flushed, her blue eyes bright, her expression unguarded in a way he suspected she only allowed in the minutes after orgasm, before the walls rebuilt themselves.

  "It did feel good." She said it like she was testing the words. Like she wasn't used to saying them and meaning it.

  He pushed a blonde strand of damp hair from her face. "We should…probably move before someone comes in to use the gym."

  "Nobody uses the gym at this hour." She held his hand, fingers intertwining. "Roach lifts at oh-five-hundred. Marcus does before dinner. Jabari doesn't lift at all, and everyone else is scared of the free weights."

  "You know people's gym schedule?"

  "Habit, I guess. You learn who's where and when, so you don't get caught off guard." She sat up, still straddling him, and the motion made them both wince at the sensitivity. She climbed off agilely and reached for her shorts.

  Xin lay on the mat for a moment longer, staring at the ceiling, feeling the warm thrum of shared Aether in his veins, the slick mess of their mingled juice—his cum mixed with her vaginal fluid—cooling on his softening shaft, the pleasant ache of muscles he barely used.

  "Hey, Sigrun."

  She paused, shorts in hand, looking back at him over her bare shoulder.

  He wanted to say it. Those three words that had ruined everything last time. They sat behind his teeth, heavy and true and terrifying. But he'd learned. Saying them in the motel after climax had been too much, too soon, had tripped every alarm in a woman who'd been trained by years of paid intimacy to read "I love you" as either a weapon or a delusion.

  So instead he said: "Thank you. For letting me take my time."

  A hint of amusement in her sapphire eyes. Her lips curved up. She pulled on her shorts, picked up her tank top, and walked over to where he lay. She crouched beside him and pressed her lips to his forehead. Gentle. Brief.

  "Get dressed, Rigger. We've got someone to pick up."

  "You mean…"

  "Yeah. H?kon."

  He dressed. She dressed. She wiped down the squat rack and the mats with a spray bottle and towel, thoroughly, the same way she cleaned her weapons after battle. Xin watched her work and said nothing. There was something in it that didn't need commenting on.

  She tossed the towel into the bin and crossed to the wall-mounted water station, filling a steel bottle from the filtered tap. She drank first. Long, slow pulls, throat working, her eyes half-closed. When she lowered the bottle, she held it out to him.

  Xin took it. The rim was warm where her mouth had been. He drank, and the water tasted faintly of her, salt and something sweeter underneath.

  "Slower," she said, watching him gulp. "Small sips. Lots of them."

  He forced himself to ease off. "Speaking from experience?"

  "Sex dehydrates you more than sparring does. Most people don't think about it." She took the bottle back when he offered it, drank again, then handed it to him once more. Back and forth. Unhurried.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  "Hmm." He stared at the bottle.

  "Your muscles cramp if you chug. Drink too little and your Aether recovery stalls. Steady intake, over the next hour or so." She glanced at him. "Especially you. With that Resilience stat, your body's overworked."

  "Understood." He took one more sip and capped it. She slid the bottle into the cargo pocket of her gym shorts, and they stepped into the corridor together.

  Halfway to the medical bay, Sigrun slowed.

  "Wait." She lifted her arm and sniffed. Then looked at Xin. Really looked at him—his mussed hair, the pink flush still visible on his neck and ears, the way his hoodie sat crooked where she'd yanked it off him twenty minutes ago. "We look like we just..."

  "Oh. Yeah. We do."

  "Nikki's going to know."

  "Nikki knew before we did." He adjusted his glasses. "She told me to eat something tonight. I think it was code."

  Sigrun exhaled through her nose. Something between a laugh and a groan. She ran her fingers through her hair, retightened her hair clip, and straightened his hoodie collar with two sharp tugs, like she was field-stripping a weapon.

  "There," she said, with absolutely no conviction. "Normal."

  "We do smell like a gym."

  "We were in a gym."

  "We smell like a gym where two people—"

  "Xin." Her Nordic eyes narrowed, but the corner of her mouth was twitching. "Walk."

  The medical bay door was open. Amber light spilled into the corridor alongside H?kon's voice.

  He spotted them in the doorway and his entire body lit up. Scales flared from blue to excited azure, so bright he looked like a tiny lamp on Nikki's shoulder.

  "PAPPA! SKY LADY!"

  He launched himself from Nikki's shoulder, and Xin caught him against his chest, arms closing around the small, warm weight like a reflex older than thought. H?kon burrowed against his collarbone, trilling, tiny claws hooking into his hoodie.

  "HAW-koon has two hearts! Doctor Lady says! For-real-for-real, yes?"

  "For-real-for-real," Xin confirmed.

  Twenty minutes ago, Sigrun's heartbeat had hammered against his chest. One heart, human and strong, slowly syncing with his own in the quiet after.

  Now H?kon's twin pulse tapped against him, and something in Xin's throat tightened.

  "That's amazing, buddy." His voice came out rough. He covered it by adjusting H?kon on his shoulder. "We'll have to write that down in your health log."

  "BIG letters?" H?kon insisted. "TWO HEARTS. Under-line."

  "Would this mean any health concerns for him?" Xin probed. H?kon's double heartbeat drummed against his palm through the Diabolisk's thin scales. Ba-bump-bump. Ba-bump-bump. Two rhythms layered, slightly offset, like a song harmonizing with itself.

  "Not in the slightest. Though it does suggest he's capable of channeling far more potent incantations than his small frame would normally permit." Nikki remained beside her desk, arms folded across her chest, regarding the trio with an unreadable look that Xin found difficult to interpret. "Might prove invaluable in your conflict with Skarn and his forces."

  "I mean, you're part of it too, aren't you?" Xin shifted his gaze, sensing something was amiss.

  "Naturally. I'm a Terra Alliance-registered physician, after all." Nikki turned back. Perhaps with a hint of amusement. Her attention moved between Xin and Sigrun, settling on them for just one beat too long.

  "Good workout?" she asked.

  The question was perfectly innocent. Nikki's tone was perfectly even. Sigrun's jaw tightened by a fraction of a degree.

  "Yeah," Sigrun said. "Hit a new PR on squats."

  "Mm." Nikki adjusted her glasses. "You're certainly glowing."

  Sigrun said nothing to that. Xin stared at the far wall. H?kon, oblivious and golden on Xin's shoulder, sniffed the air.

  His scales flickered. Azure to beige. Beige back to azure. His small head tilted, nostrils working.

  "Pappa smell different."

  Xin's stomach dropped. "I was—it's the gym. I was spotting. For Sigrun. Spotting is when you—"

  "Pappa smell like Sky Lady." H?kon sounded delighted by this discovery. His scales settled on happy azure as he looked between them. "Same-same! Like when HAW-koon sleeps in Sky Lady's blanket."

  "Okay, buddy." Xin's voice pitched higher than any forty-year-old man's should. "Time to go, yeah? Say thank you to Doctor Lady."

  "Thank you, Doctor Lady. For finding HAW-koon two hearts!"

  Nikki mirrored the little Diabolisk's tiny claw-wave. "Anytime, H?kon. You're my most interesting patient." Her eyes flicked to Xin and Sigrun one more time. "Get some rest tonight. All of you."

  The emphasis on 'rest' was so faint that Xin might have imagined it. Sigrun's ears went pink. He was fairly certain his own were the color of Martian soil.

  They walked the corridor together, H?kon perched on Xin's shoulder, babbling adorably. "HAW-koon two hearts, stay-dough-scope good-good. Maybe Big Sky Fish has two hearts too? Three? Pappa think three hearts paw-see-ball?"

  "Well, the universe is big, right? Anything's possible." Xin said.

  "Then, four hearts paw-see-ball?"

  "Hey, you never know."

  Sigrun walked beside them, her hand hanging at her side.

  "Pappa, two hearts mean HAW-koon run two times fast?" H?kon's voice carried down the corridor.

  "Not sure it works that way, buddy," Xin said.

  They'd reached the junction. Left led to Xin's suite. Right to Sigrun's.

  Sigrun's knuckles brushed his. Not an accident. The touch lingered half a second longer than last time. "Alright. My room's over there."

  "Goodnight, Sky Lady!" H?kon waved from Xin's shoulder, scales cycling to sleepy gray. "HAW-koon draw more picture tomorrow?"

  Sigrun's expression did something complicated. "I'd like that, H?kon." She looked at Xin over the Diabolisk's head. Held his gaze for a beat longer than casual. "Night, Xin."

  "Goodnight."

  She turned the corner. Xin watched her go.

  Through the viewport at the corridor's far end, Venus hung in the void like a sulfur-gold lantern, growing larger by the hour. Six days out. Six days until landing, and the city called Jin Syue, and answers that might unravel everything they'd built in the fragile space between.

  H?kon yawned against his neck, a warm little gust of breath.

  "Pappa?"

  "Yeah, buddy?"

  "Sky Lady's heart go fast-fast when close to Pappa." His voice was drowsy, fading. Scales gray-silver now, eyelids drooping. "HAW-koon feel. HAW-koon's two hearts feel."

  Xin's hand came up to cradle the small body on his shoulder.

  "Yeah," he said quietly. "Mine too."

  H?kon was asleep before they reached the suite. Xin stood in the doorway for a moment, the Diabolisk's twin heartbeat steady against his palm, Venus burning gold through the viewport, and the taste of Sigrun still on his lips.

  He let the door hiss close behind them.