It had been twenty-six days.

Twenty-six days without sunlight. Twenty-six days without a room to call my own. Twenty-six days without feeling like it might be my last.

Twenty-six long, long days.

The underground bunker beneath Pentaba was hardly a bunker at all. It was massive, spreading across most of the kingdom in a series of tunnels and alcoves and atria that seemed to lead nowhere but could easily take you miles from where you intended to be. There were no windows, of course, no semblance of natural light, but the walls were lit from behind with some kind of glowing plasma that flooded the corridors in a fluorescent green glow. Only the alcoves dedicated to sleeping were unlit, but there were so many of us crowded into one at a time that there was always somebody with a candle to read or a lantern in the center of a small, whispering group.

The conditions weren’t nearly as unbearable as one would expect for an underground living space, particularly one built for military purposes. There were tables for eating, rooms dedicated to food preparation and storage, recreational areas with strange games involving thick, flat circles or slivers of wood. It was much like a normal house except it was teeming with people and it was much, much danker.

To my surprise, Donna was hardly stir-crazy at all. She was normally the one who needed to get out, to see and do things. In fact, she had only lasted two days during my own personal lockdown back in Montemba. But she was in her glory. Male A’li-uud were everywhere, walking the passages with no shirts and thin, form-revealing pants. Their abs seemed even sharper in the dim green light, their faces more masculine, and Donna could hardly keep her jaw off the floor long enough to speak to one. I had hardly seen her since we’d been sent to live in the well-guarded barracks.

Unlike the last time I was confined to one place, however, I saw Lokos daily. Sometimes, it was only for a brief while, and then he had to leave to meet with other chiefs or the Elders, but, other times, it was over several-day stretches. One thing was certain in the midst of this: I was falling for him.

On that twenty-sixth day, I was stretched out in a shallow nook off one of the atria with Lokos beside me. He’d just returned from another conference, and he was so tense that his muscles were marble to the touch.

“Tomorrow is thirty days,” he said by way of greeting. It was the first words he’d spoken since finding me in the bunker and pulling me to the nook.

I blinked. Though I’d counted the twenty-six days faithfully, it hadn’t occurred to me to do the math. In fact, I had almost completely disregarded that the whole reason we were below ground indefinitely was because the Novai had said they would be coming in thirty days. The reminder was not well-received by my mind, and I felt a wave of fear.

“Are you sure?” I whispered as several Montemban A’li-uud passed us.

“Yes,” he replied, equally as quietly. “The warriors are rallying. The Elders have the plan in place. The only thing we can do is wait.”

“What is the plan?” I implored him with my eyes to answer the question. “The only thing I know is that anyone who isn’t a warrior is supposed to be down here. I don’t have a clue what you’re doing aboveground. And what about the A’li-uud in the other Albaterran kingdoms? Do they have these kinds of shelters too?”

He averted his gaze, choosing instead to stare at a particularly bright square of green-lit wall ahead of us. “You are not to know the plan.”

“Why not? What’s the difference? I might die tomorrow anyway,” I exclaimed.

Lokos shook his head. “You will not die tomorrow.”

“You don’t know that.”

He looked at me, then, and it was the kind of look that drilled into me until I could feel him deep in my belly. “Yes, I do,” he said fiercely. “You will not die tomorrow.”

“Will you?”

I didn’t want to ask the question. I didn’t want him to answer it, either. But it came flowing out of my mouth before I could stop it, and, by the time I realized I’d asked, it was too late to take it back. He stared at me silently. At first, I thought he was processing the question or trying to figure out how to answer me. When the seconds passed and his mouth didn’t move, I realized his lack of response was his reply.

My brain went numb. The panic at knowing tomorrow was D-Day was harsh enough, but the idea that he was possibly volunteering to sacrifice himself for the safety of all of us hunkered away underground was too much to handle, and I just stopped thinking. When my mind restarted again, however, something had switched on. It was as if I’d been blessed with a new sense of clarity, and calm seized me by the middle.

“What were you like as a child?” I asked softly.

Lokos blinked at me, clearly thrown by the sudden change of topic. “What do you mean?”

“Tell me what it was like,” I urged, sliding nearer to him and gazing into his face. “What kind of kid were you? What did you do?”

He still seemed out-of-sorts, but he answered anyway. “I was very active,” he said, a faraway look dousing his features. “Most A’li-uud children are. My father was a warrior in the Montemban army, and my mother was a very skilled seamstress. I oftentimes went hunting for small animals to bring back for her to make clothes. She gave them to expecting mothers in the village.”

“Do you have any siblings?”

“A brother.” He swallowed hard, and I realized he’d felt a sudden jolt of emotion. “I had a brother.”

Pity streaked through me. “Had?”

“Yes. He was killed on Earth last year.”

I remembered the war that had raged, though it hadn’t affected me in the ways I saw on the news. Night after night, images of the aftermaths were front-and-center on my TV. The A’li-uud troops had only made it as far as New York; they hadn’t made it to the coast. Knowing his brother had been a casualty, however, somehow made it more real to me.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, leaning forward to press my forehead to his shoulder.

Lokos tilted his cheek, resting it against my scalp, and I breathed in his scent. He skimmed his hand up my leg and wrapped his fingers around my thigh. I reached down to wrap my fingers into his.

“Are you scared?” I murmured into his neck. “About tomorrow?”

“No.” He meant it; I could tell by the solidity in his voice. He pulled his head back to look down probingly at me. “Are you?”

My chest ached as I admitted, “I’m scared of losing you.”

He studied me, his eyes flicking from my mouth to my nose to my cheeks. I felt like he was drinking in the sight of me. Then, he gently lifted me off him and stood. Holding out a hand, he said commandingly, “Come.”