Venus Time: 19:47, March 16, 2295

  ISV Polaris — In Transit, 6 Days from Venus Orbit

  H?kon had discovered a new word today.

  "Stay-dough-scope." the little Diabolisk said for the fourth time, perched on Xin's left shoulder as they walked the corridor toward the Polaris's medical bay. "HAW-koon want try stay-dough-scope."

  "We tried it yesterday, buddy."

  "Yesterday different. Yesterday Doctor Lady listen to Pappa heart." H?kon tapped his tiny claws against Xin's neck. "Today HAW-koon listen to heart. Doctor Lady say HAW-koon has two hearts! Two!"

  Xin adjusted his glasses. He'd put on his good old green hoodie again. "She said you might have two. Need to confirm with the scanner, though."

  "Two hearts," H?kon repeated with seeming certainty. His scales were bright azure, practically humming with anticipation. "HAW-koon special."

  The medical bay door slid open, and Nikki Chakraborty looked up from a spread of holographic readouts hovering above her desk. The older woman's dark eyes found H?kon first, and her tired expression softened the way it always did when the Diabolisk was around.

  "There's my favorite patient." She set down her scanner and held out her palm.

  "Doctor Lady! HAW-koon heart check. Stay-dough-scope!" H?kon said excitedly before leaping from Xin's shoulder, landing on Nikki's hand.

  "Are you now?" Nikki lifted him to her shoulder, where he settled immediately, tiny tail curling around the strap of her lab coat. She looked at Xin over her glasses. "And where are you off to?"

  "Thought I'd go find Sigrun." He kept his voice casual. Tried to, anyway.

  Nikki's expression didn't change, but her eyes held that knowing quality Xin could never quite decode. Years of reading patients must have made the woman impossible to fool. "She's been in the gym since seventeen hundred. Jabari told me."

  "Thanks."

  "Xin." Nikki's voice caught him at the door. "Eat something tonight. You've dropped weight since we left Mars. I can see it in your face."

  He touched his jaw reflexively. She wasn't wrong. His appetite had been strange lately, pulled toward things he couldn't get from the Polaris's galley. Things he didn't want to think about, or admit thinking about.

  "I'll…grab something from the lounge."

  "See that you do." She turned back to H?kon, producing the stethoscope from a drawer. "Alright, little guy. Let's find those two hearts of yours."

  H?kon's scales burst radiantly. "Yes! Yes-yes!"

  Xin left them to it.

  The corridor stretched ahead, dimly lit in the Polaris's standard evening cycle. White overhead panels had shifted to amber two hours ago, mimicking dusk. Diego kept the interior temperature at a steady twenty-two degrees during transit, but Xin could feel the faint vibration through the deck plates.

  Three weeks in a metal tube. That was the reality of interplanetary transit aboard an Orca-class transport. The first week had been tense, their teammates still carrying the adrenaline from the Brynhild encounter, checking corners, sleeping in shifts. Haylen Shih had stood watch for three straight nights before Marcus physically sat her down and invited her to tea. The second week, tension mellowed into routine. People found their rhythms. Jabari played his Echo Drum in the observation lounge after dinner. Iron Roach cleaned his double-barrel in the cargo bay and told war stories to anyone who'd listen. Thomas did push-ups in the corridor because his bionic arms needed recalibration and he said the exercise helped him feel where the servos lagged.

  Xin had spent most of his time in Associate's Suite 2, the one he shared with H?kon, working through encrypted data files, reviewing spells and 10mm usage tips on his Nucleus Watch and trying not to think about Sigrun sleeping a few doors down.

  Since that night in the Poison Dragon Flute Motel, back on Mars, they'd existed where he couldn't name. She didn't push him away nor pull him close. Since surviving the fight against Sigrun's sister Brynhild, they've talked about the mission, about H?kon, about the kind of "safe", "neutral" topics that let two people orbit each other without colliding.

  She'd held his hand once, three nights ago, while they watched Venus growing larger through the observation deck's viewport. Just for a moment. Then she'd let go and said goodnight, and he'd stood there for ten minutes afterward, replaying the feel of her grip in his mind.

  The gym was at the end of Deck 3, past the crew bunks and the shared washroom facilities. Someone had bolted a squat rack to the deck, hung a heavy bag from a ceiling strut, and laid rubber mats over the metal floor. A few free weights sat in a rack against the far wall. Military functional. Nothing pretty about it, but it felt okay.

  The door was open.

  Xin smelled Sigrun before he saw her.

  It hit him mid-step, and his hand caught the doorframe nervously. Salt and heat on skin and something underneath that was purely her, a scent that his body recognized the way a compass recognizes north. His Void attunement and excessively high Libido stat had done this to him. That was the clinical explanation Doctor Nikki had told him.

  He raised his Nucleus Watch to read the holographic note he'd bookmarked earlier today:

  { BOOKMARK #77

  Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

  "He who walks the Void and then knows a woman's body

  will find his mouth forever seeking what she gives.

  Her sweat becomes his wine. Her milk, his morning meal.

  The dew between her thighs, the sweetest water

  he will ever drink. Deny him these

  and watch the color leave his face,

  his words grow fewer,

  his eyes turn inward toward the dark

  from which his power came."

  — Void-Desire Tantra, Verse 71

  (Xing Hong Translation, Recovered Archive) }

  The descriptions were ancient, poetry filtered through academic translation, but still wouldn't at all prepare him for this—that the half-lavender, half-musk scent of Sigrun Fjeld sweating made him want to press his face against her neck and stay there until the stars burned out.

  She was at the squat rack. Two hundred and fifty pounds loaded, from the look of it. Her feet planted shoulder-width, back straight, the bar settled across her muscles as she dropped into a deep squat. She wore a light gray tank top, white gym shorts, and her hair was pulled back, keeping it in a tight, functional bun. Every visible inch of skin shone with sweat.

  Xin stood in the doorway and forced himself to breathe through his mouth. It didn't help much. "Hey."

  Sigrun racked the bar and turned around. Those blue eyes found him and something shifted in her expression, subtle as a cloud passing.

  "What's up?" She picked up a towel from the bench and pressed it to her face, then her neck. The fabric came away dark with moisture.

  "Thought I might come chat for a bit." He stepped inside. "Nikki's got H?kon for the evening. He's learning about his second heart."

  "Second heart?" She raised a golden eyebrow.

  "Yeah. Nikki theorized that it exists, but needed a deeper stethoscope check to be sure." He let the door hiss close behind him. "Boy's already decided it's a fact, though."

  The corner of her mouth lifted. Just barely. "Special, like his father?"

  Xin chuckled as he sat on the bench press. "So…how's the session?"

  "Good." She toweled her arms. Each motion pulled the tank top against her chest, the fabric clinging, accentuating the curve of her bosom. "Needed it. Haven't been sleeping well."

  "Huh. Is it the ship noise or something else?" Xin looked away, at the floor.

  "Not that." She sat on the edge of the squat rack's safety bars, facing him.

  "Hmm. Something about…what we've seen on our way here? Your…sister?" He looked at the ceiling. Then at his hands. None of it helped because her scent was everywhere, thick and warm in the recycled air, and his mind was doing things his brain had not authorized.

  "Bryn and I, we were…pretty close. But I always knew she'd do what Mother expected." She moved closer. "Xin, I want to ask you something."

  He waited, nodding.

  "The Frost Man." She said it carefully. Watching his face. "In H?kon's dreams. Do you know about that?"

  Xin leaned forward, forearms on his knees. "I think he's mentioned it a few times? Some figure that—"

  "Teaches him Lunar incantations." She cut him off.

  "Yeah, in his sleep. J?turmál words, based on what he's been casting." He scratched his head.

  "And you don't find that strange?"

  "I find it fascinating." The word came out with more energy than he intended, the way it always did when his brain latched onto a puzzle. He caught himself and dialed it back. "I mean, yes, it's unusual. Radi-Mon dream states aren't well documented. Most academic work focuses on their combat applications."

  "And?" She inched further towards him, now close enough that the sweaty scent and heat radiating off her body reached him like sunlight through a window.

  "Dream-state psionic instruction implies either residual imprinting from the egg, some kind of ancestral memory encoded in his DNA, or..." He paused, pushing his glasses up.

  "Or?"

  "Or someone is actually communicating with him." He said it flatly. "A living entity, establishing contact through H?kon's subconscious during REM sleep. Dream-frequency contact."

  Sigrun's jaw tightened. "He told me about him. Frost Man. Including his appearance."

  Xin noticed. "What did H?kon say this Frost Man looks like?"

  "Yellow hair. Uses a blue glowing sword. Uses frost spells."

  Xin studied Sigrun's face, and he could read the tension in her shoulders.

  She gripped the towel more tightly now. "He says the man is kind. Even calls him a 'nice man.'"

  Silence.

  "You think it's Ivar."

  Her blue eyes held his. For three heartbeats, he saw something behind the mask: old pain, held tight and hot, the kind that could burn you if you touched it wrong.

  Then she exhaled. "I don't know yet. Maybe it's nothing." She looked away, at the heavy bag swaying slightly in the ship's subtle vibration. "I just... that description. It reminded me of Ivar."

  He wanted to ask why. He didn't. Because twelve years of social isolation had at least taught him to recognize when someone needed him to stop pushing.

  Instead, he said: "This past week, I've run small analysis on H?kon's neural patterns during sleep. Trying to make sure he's getting restful sleeps. Nothing conclusive yet. But if someone is making contact, there should be a traceable psionic signature. I'll keep looking."

  She nodded. Still not looking at him.

  "I'll find out. It's what I'm good at."

  "Pulling answers? Out of some data?" Now she looked at him. And the mask cracked, just a little, just enough to let something warm leak through.

  "Yeah. That."

  They sat with that for a moment. The gym's ventilation hummed. Somewhere in the ship, metal settled against metal with a low groan. Sigrun dabbed her neck with the towel again, and a bead of sweat traced a path down her collarbone, going beneath the tank top.

  Xin's eyes tracked it. Involuntarily. Completely.

  "You're staring," she said.

  "Sorry." He looked away. His face was hot. "I didn't mean to..."

  "Xin."

  He looked back.

  "What are you actually thinking about right now? Don't filter it."

  The honest answer was: I want to undress you, see you naked, put my mouth on your breasts and taste the salt and I've been thinking about it every night for two weeks and my Nucleus Watch keeps telling me my Libido rating exceeds safe parameters and I don't care.

  The filtered answer was something about data analysis and sleep patterns and any other safe topic that would keep him from embarrassing himself.

  But she'd said don't filter it.

  "I love how you smell when you're sweating." The words fell out of him like stones. He immediately wanted to swallow them, stuff them back behind his teeth, maybe launch himself out the nearest airlock. His face burned. His hands gripped the edge of the bench press hard enough that his knuckles went white.

  Sigrun stared at him.

  The silence lasted so many seconds it felt like an entire geological age.

  Then she reached down, grabbed the hem of her tank top, and pulled it off over her head.

  She wasn't wearing bra underneath.

  Xin stopped breathing.

  Sigrun sat there, bare from the waist up, her chest rising and falling with the slow, controlled breathing of a woman who'd just done hours of heavy lifting. Sweat made her ivory skin gleam, the gym's fluorescent lights tracing the lines of muscle across her stomach, the curve of her shoulders. Her breasts were full and heavy, damp with perspiration, and Xin could see the faint sheen of moisture gathered in the hollow between them. Her nipples had tightened in the cooler air.

  "Smell me all you like, then," she said, voice steady. Her eyes held that look he'd seen only once before, in a cheap motel room on Mars.

  Last time, she'd offered him sex as a transaction. A body for a bounty split. He'd accepted because he was desperate and lonely and she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. And then he'd ruined it by saying three words too soon, and she'd shoved him away like he'd burned her.

  Xin stood up from the bench. His legs were unsteady. His heart was pounding so hard it almost hurt. He crossed the space between them, three short steps that felt like crossing a canyon, and knelt in front of her.

  "Can I?" His voice came out rough.

  Sigrun looked down at him, and something in her expression softened, something like impatience, like she'd expected him to grab and he'd asked instead.

  "Yeah." She whispered.