“Good morning, Jenny.”

Jenny paused, a smile on her face. The young man who’d spoken to her was bent over a small flowering garden that had been helped along by seeds brought to Revant Two from other planets. “Hello, Perin. It looks like that stuff is growing well.”

He grinned at her. The tattoo on his forehead and the scar on his arm—the spot where he had once had a massive chip implanted that would track his moves—marked him as a former slave. “It is. Thank goodness. I was afraid I’d ruin it somehow and get sent to another task.”

Her smile was sympathetic. “I know how you feel. But here nobody punishes anyone for a task gone wrong.”

Perin nodded. He was vaguely humanoid but he was completely bald and his skin was a strange, shifting thing that took on the color of his surroundings. “I know. That’s why I want it to be well.”

That too she understood. He asked, “So you are to go to med now?”

She sighed and shifted from foot to foot. “Yes, I’m to go there.”

Perin stroked the leaves of a small plant with one stubby digit. “Perhaps that is where you will be of the most use.”

“Perhaps. I should get going.”

He nodded and then said, “Here.” He dug into a small basket and handed her a small pale-orange root. “Try this. Just brush the dirt off.”

She took it with a smile. The root went between her clean white teeth. It was crisp, but not hard, and it tasted of fresh dirt and some mild and sweet flavor as well. “It’s delicious! What is it?”

Perin gave her a sheepish look. “I don’t know. I don’t think anyone does. Talon pretty much buys any seed he can find that promises food since we don’t have any printers, and they don’t want them either.”

That was a slight sore spot for some. Many feared hunger and voted for the printers, but many more were tired of the things able to be made by the printers and wanted to eat as naturally as possible.

“Renall and the others have sworn that if we lose food and need it badly, they will use the printers on the ships to feed us. We won’t go hungry.”

Perin said, “I think I fear having to eat printed food far more than being hungry these days.”

Their laughter was rich and true. Jenny brushed the small bit of dirt that had gathered on her palms off by rubbing her hands together. “Have a good day, Perin.”

“You too, and good luck at your new task.”

“Thank you.”

She set off again, her smile widening as others called out greetings to her. A young woman carrying a basket filled with small rocks drew up close. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”

Jenny’s head went up and back, and her eyes scanned the blue sky overhead. That wild sense of elation that filled her every single time she saw that endless blue dome rocketed through her. It was so beautiful!

How had she ever lived without seeing the sky?

How had she managed to shunt aside the very real and very human longing for the sight of the sun and stars, the clouds and the things that flew across the heavens?

Back on old Earth, she had never seen the sky at all, not even once, except in a book her mother had. Jenny had stared at the book’s illustration for hours on end and for years, always trying to work up the courage to sneak above the tunnels where she and others of her station were forced to live—and always failing. She had always wanted to see that sky, and she had never had the bravery to actually attempt to do what it would take to do so.

And with good reason.

Back on Old Earth, she had lived Below, down in the underground section of the city where the poorest people lived. To go above ground, to risk stepping out of the place where she had been born and consigned due to her class and birth circumstances, meant risking death.

Actual death!

Only those who were wealthy or important and the few of those who lived Below who were allowed to work on the surface had ever seen the sky. They often told stories about it, and tales of what the parks looked like, what the air smelled like. Real air, and not recirculated air brought underground by the massive vent fans.

Her own mother often went above, but hers had been a clandestine visit every time and, in the end, that had cost Jenny’s mother and her father their lives. Jenny had never been able to ask them; they had been executed, and she had gone into hiding to avoid being executed simply because she was a family member, but she was positive, now that she had the ability to see the sky and feel that air on her face, to feel earth and grass below her feet, that both of her parents would have said that death was worth it.

They would have had other reasons for thinking that too though.

As she walked, the grass brushed against her bare legs. Little insects raced away from her and the songs of the winged ones above trilled out into her ears.

How could she have ever lived without knowing those things?

“Jenny?”

A guilty smile filled her face. “I’m sorry. I was just enjoying the sky so much that I forgot I had not answered you, Oliina. It is so very beautiful.” She eyed the basket. “What are you doing today?”

“I’m working on a new room of the hut.” Oliina’s smile went dazzling. “We are expecting a child.”

“Oh!” Her first instinct was to say maybe Oliina should not be carrying such a heavy load. Then she recalled that for Oliina’s race, it was the males who carried the children and birthed them. “Congratulations.”

“Thank you. Have a good day.”

“You too.”

Jenny looked upward again as she crested the last of the hills and began to wind her way down toward the buildings she was working in that day.

She had her very first glimpse of how vast the world was outside her Below home where she had been when she had woken up from the cryo- chamber she had been placed in by armed Capo officers.

She had been convicted of a crime she had never committed. Which was just to say that the Capo had spotted her one day and decided she would be perfect for a bride ship.

A bride ship was a ship that carried human women to outlying planets where women were in short supply. No woman ever actually agreed. Most of the women on the ship had been criminals, or they had simply been pawned away by their fathers or their husbands if their debt had not been repaid.

Or they, like her, had been accused of some petty crime and convicted without even a trial then hustled onto the ship and told they would make a good bride and then sent into cryo-sleep to, in the soldier’s words, make the trip easier.

Really the purpose behind the cryo-chambers was to keep them from being able to resist their new status as brides.

Of course, that had been a lie.

They had been earmarked for delivery to a pleasure planet where they would have been sold to brothels and forced to work off a ‘debt’ that would never lessen, and they would never be able to free themselves of. If it had not been for the wrecking crew that had taken the ship, she might very well be stuck in some pleasure palace right then—and still unable to see the sky!

The Federation knew, of course, that the ship was carrying them to a different destination than the one they had been told they would be arriving at.

The Federation knew, and had always known, what happened to the women that were placed on those ships. The Federation profited from those bodies and women, and they always had.

And the Federation always lied.

Always.

There was rebellion all across the universe at the moment. The Federation was fighting for its very survival. Many beings were tired of being subjugated, of being cast into class systems and depressed due to their species or gender.

She knew that, but that seemed so far away at the moment.

Revant Two was a private planet with little tech or communication with the larger universe. It was a simple place, and it had been designed to stay that way so that it could grow and thrive at a more natural rate. Its resources were plentiful, but it was near no wormholes or trade routes. It had little to offer to any who would plunder it. The nearest planet was also held by survivors of the death of the original Revant system, and they too shunned tech and other things that would make their planet appealing for space and land pirates.

They had no trade interests, no import or export products. They had no fleets but for the few ships piloted by very little, and those ships did bring in needed supplies. They needed supplies because the planet had so little to offer to any advanced race. This made it even less likely to be plundered.

It was the first time in her entire life that Jenny had felt any kind of safety and comfort. It was the first time that she had ever felt like she belonged in the world and that she had a place based on not who she was born to but what she was capable of, and her smile grew wider and longer as she moved forward, heading down the steep hills and away from the small hut that she lived in, and had helped to build as well.

The fact that she had wound up there, on that planet purchased by four brothers, the last of a royal bloodline that had once ruled over a large section of a planet now gone and dead, still seemed so far-fetched to her.

That she did belong, that she would never be forced to live in the stale air and dimness of the Below ever again: it still seemed like a wild dream, a fever dream, and she often prayed that if it was just a dream that she be allowed to sleep forever.

It often did feel like it wasn’t even real. There were times that she would wake up in the middle of the night and find herself having to concrete herself into her current place and situation by taking stock of everything in the small hut that she now lived in.

The hut was mean and simple, made of nothing more than stacked stone carefully mortared with mud and roofed with simple straw held down by cornerstones. But it was the first place she had ever been that was truly hers. Nobody had assigned it to her. There was a small window that let in light and stars shine.

The bed was a simple pallet structure, but it was the finest she had ever had. There were several shelves on the wall, and she was forever finding small things that she found beautiful, and she placed them on the shelves with real pride and often stood at the shelves looking at the small stones, the hollowed out bird’s egg, the seashells, and the delicate and abandoned bird’s nest with true appreciation and joy.

Sometimes, looking at those things, she would first shiver with joy and then the terrible fear that they were not real, that none of this was real and that at any moment she would wake again, in the six-by-ten-foot room that had been home to her and her family since her birth. The space assigned to them had been small because her father had a labor job and her mother had as well. They earned very little credits, and many of them were taken before the pay dates even arrived. The Federation took their taxes and their due for the space they occupied. They had to pay a tariff for the air pumped into the Below, for the power grids, and everything else the Federation regulated and gave, or withheld for lack of credits.

There had rarely been enough left over for anything beyond the nutro-loaf and coarse bread that so many who lived Below subsisted upon.

Her entire life had been drudgery and darkness. Was it really possible that she had escaped that?

Even when she was awake, there was many a moment when she would have to pinch herself or ground herself into her present reality by dipping her fingers into the grass or the river or by stepping into the ocean.

That last was what kept getting her in trouble.

The sea drew her in a way she could not explain. The water at the shore was shallow and warm and salty, and she would stand in it sometimes for hours just letting it lap against her ankles and legs. She had not known that it would rise so suddenly and that it could carry her out into the depths of the ocean where she would most assuredly drown and die until it had almost happened.

Marik had seen her being dragged away by the tide and he had rushed in to save her, but he had not been happy about the situation. In fact, he called her a silly little idiot.

Marik.

Her heart gave a powerful contraction as she thought about him. He was tall, taller than any human she had ever seen. He stood at least seven feet tall, and his shoulders were broad from so many years of working as a slave in the mines on a mining planet. His arms rippled with muscle, as did his chest. His waist was lean and narrow and his stomach flat but also thick with muscle. His legs were long, and everything about him sent her senses staggering every time she thought about him.

She could not continue to indulge in the small daydreams and fantasies that sometimes leaped into her mind at the sight of him. Unlike his brothers—Renall, Jeval, and Talon—Marik’s eyes were a deep brown. They had a way of looking right into hers and making her feel as if he was seeing things that she would rather he did not see.

Unlike his brothers, he had a gentle air about him despite his massive size and the scars from battle etched across his face and arms. Talon especially frightened her. He was no longer on the planet; he was gone somewhere, probably wrecking Federation ships or engaging in some bloody battle along with one of the women who had also been on the ship with her: — Jessica.

Jessica was a Capo at one point and one of the law officers whose job was to keep order on old Earth.

Old Earth was in chaos. The war had begun there and rebellion had been vicious. Much of the planet had been destroyed centuries before and now even more of it was gone due to the war between the Gorlites, the Federation traitors, and the humans and those who had assisted them during that uprising.

The uprising that Jessica and Talon had started!

The very idea of all that fighting made Jenny shudder. Her soul was too gentle and she knew it. Her heart quailed at the very idea of war.

And why wouldn’t it?

She had watched her parents be dragged away, kicking and screaming and begging for their lives, by Capo officers when it had been discovered that her mother had found a way to first collect and then plant seeds in small containers that she hid along no longer used corridors of the Below.

Those small plants, mere herbs and the occasional vegetable, had sometimes been the only thing that stood between them and starvation or illness.

That small bit of freshness from those herbs, that green and textured crispness, was often all that stood between Jenny and despair. It was the knowing that there was something that could grow down there after all that made it better.

And the herbs did prevent illness. Her mother had also managed to first collect and use and then grow things that could create medicine. Her mother had been daring enough to go above ground to get the things that she needed. She had done so with the help of a book that she had Jenny memorize, teaching her how to read from it and how to identify things from it before Jenny was barely old enough to talk.

Her mother had used those things to feed them and quite a few of the people who lived Below. She had used the things that she collected from her excursions, illegal and dangerous as they were, above ground to make medicines that would help those who were in need. She gave the medicine to healers and to those who could not afford to go to the pharmos.

But in the end, it had been a healer who had turned them in. A healer who had been so desperate to save his own life and to get the treatment that he needed for the disease that was killing him that he had gone to the Capo and betrayed her mother.

Her father had, of course, attempted to intervene, to save the life of the woman that he loved. His own death had been assured by that. Jenny had been held back by concerned neighbors and Ben, the man she had been engaged to.

Ben’s strong arms had wrapped around her, and his warm breath had washed across her cheek and ear as he had whispered, “You cannot save them, Jenny. You will simply die too. You must stay with me.”

She had stayed with him. Not only because he was right but because she could not bear to witness the public execution in the center of the Below’s business district.

That was how the Federation operated. They made examples of people who were simply desperate and starving. They killed them but not before they tortured them to try to discover if there were any others engaged in the same activity that they had been caught in.

Her parents had known quite a lot about what happened there, but they had kept their silence. They were stronger than she would’ve been; Jenny was sure of it. She had heard of what happened to people in the interrogation rooms, and she was sure that even if she had not known any of the things that the Capo asked, she would’ve made some things up in an effort to end the torture.

The sound of the wind rushing toward her, flattening the grass and making the leaves of the tall trees rustle and clatter together, the hushed roar and murmur of the ocean on the shore and the sound of the flying creatures above as they called and sang while they made their way across the sky, jerked her out of that terrible past and into the present.

Her eyes went to the small buildings erected along a shining stretch of sandy earth. Everyone was given a job. Everyone did whatever work they felt called to do or were capable of doing. She had yet to find her niche, and so she kept getting bounced from one task to another.

She did not really mind that. She had discovered that she enjoyed learning things and not having one specific skill meant that she was accruing quite a few.

Her mood soured though as she considered that she was now being sent to the buildings where Marik tended to the ill and injured.

Marik was a natural healer. She knew he had abilities beyond any that she could imagine and that working with him would be an honor. There were many who had tried and who did well. Not that many stayed on because Marik had said that their skill level wasn’t quite up to what it should be in the case of emergency. That while they knew simple healing that would stand them in good stead if someone was injured while they were working on another task, and they could help them there, he would prefer to continue to try out new people.

It was not just that Marik was hard to please. He and his siblings had decided that it would be best if everyone knew some simple healing. At the moment, it was only the small town made up of less than seventy-five huts and a few other buildings on the planet.

That would change though; there would be new life born of those who were already there, and others would come. The population would spread out, and healers would be necessary in every place, even if all they knew how to do was tend to the smallest and mildest of injury and illness.

She was fairly sure, given her background, that she would enjoy the work if only she did not have to see Marik!

Her feet, bare and browned by the sun, carried her through the soft grass and wildflowers. There was a small track, barely visible, running through that grass now. The track had been made by feet, not by tools and she regarded it as she went.

How long would it be before massive cities like the ones on Old Earth took over this planet as well?

None of them wanted that. Not the siblings who had purchased that planet and brought what remained of their families and those most loyal to them there. Not those who would come along. She did not want that either. She liked the fact that things were so simple there.

Jenny knew that it would happen eventually, but she hoped that it would be a long time in the future. Every day was a struggle for survival, but she was used to that. The struggle there on Revant Two was a vastly different struggle than the one she had known on Old Earth.

On Revant Two, everyone shared. Food was distributed equally and evenly. Those who could not hunt or gather or go out onto the waves of the ocean and boats were not denied food because they too had a purpose and a task and everything and everyone contributed to the whole.

On Old Earth, the struggle was for power and just to live. The death of those who had less was so common that those who lived in the Below rarely had time to mourn one death before another one came. In many ways, they had become desensitized to the deaths of their family and their neighbors.

Here, every loss was counted. Just a few days ago an older and frail being had passed away. There had been much ceremony in burying him, and they had all sat around for very long time in the center of their little town listening to those who had known him speak of him and his deeds.

That last part was what touched her heart the most. Here people were remembered not for what they had accrued or what they were born to but what they had done with their lives.

The building was right in front of her now. She put a hand up to the carved wooden door and pressed just slightly. It opened, and she entered. The building had a long central hallway that led both east and west. Small rooms had been placed along the hallways for patients. She could hear voices coming from the eastern side of the building, and she headed that way, the simple blue dress that she wore flapping around her knees as she went.

She rather liked the dress. One of the beings, a gentle and shy creature named Willow, of indeterminate race and species, had begun to make them for the women there on the planet. Willow spun the fabric out of simple things and dyed it with berries and grasses. Jenny had never owned a dress before, and now she had three. She preferred it to the stark tunic and trousers that were given out to every citizen of Old Earth.

Marik stood in a room, conversing with several others. His dark eyes lifted from the thing he was looking at and he stilled.

Again that feeling came back. His eyes were probing deep into her heart and mind and soul, searching out things that she didn’t even know herself yet. Jenny looked away quickly.

Marik’s voice was soft and calm. “Jenny, I’m glad you are here. Come in. Today we have no patients, so we are just discussing ways to treat things.”

Her bare feet whispered across the floor, and she came to where the rest of them stood. On the long table that had been set up there in the room sat a variety of small bowls. Many of the ships had carried in furnishings and other supplies, and even now Talon brought a great deal of things to them that they had much need of.

Her head tilted to one side as she regarded the bowls. “What is this?”

Marik said, “We are trying to figure out a way to stretch the medications that we have here. There’s never enough, and even though the supply ships will probably bring us more at some point, we're going to have to begin supplying those who would create colonies further away from this one.”

Jenny lifted her eyes to his. “And you do not want to rely too heavily on having it brought into a supply ship.”

Marik’s lips lifted his cheekbones. His face lit up. Her heart gave a hard and heavy pound in her chest, and she looked away quickly.

The image of Ben came back up in her mind.

Ben was not much taller than she was, and very slender due to the diet that those who lived in the Below were allowed. His hair had turned gray while he was still in his teens, and they were slight but there were wrinkles around his eyes and mouth. His skin, like the skin of all of those who live there, was incredibly pale and slightly gray.

He was kind, considerate, and funny. After her parents died, he had hidden her for weeks just in case the Capo decided to come back and take her and execute her due to her familial connections.

That had not happened, but what had happened was even worse. She had been put on a ship and sent away.

Her eyes went back to the bowls. A frown creased her high brow. She asked, “What is this?”

Marik said, “It is the bark of a tree. It’s known to reduce coughs and other things.”

Jenny’s heart began to pound. There was a secret about her family that she had never told anyone. It was not so much the herbs growing in the small pots that had gotten her parents killed. It was the way that they had gotten the seeds that had begun those things that had done it. And it was not just the seeds either; it was her mother’s vast trove of knowledge, the knowledge of growing and green things that could only be found above ground in the cities massive parks. The parks that were only to be used by those who lived above ground.

She shook her head. “It’s the wrong tree.”

Marik looked at her, one eyebrow tilting up. “It looks like the tree that I found in the database book.”

She nodded. “They do look alike, but it’s not the same tree. See the bark? See how the lines in it go in a sort of waving pattern? That pattern is the wrong pattern. It should look more like this.” She used her fingers, and traced along the bark to show them what she meant. She added, “Not only that, there should be a white powder here below the outer layer of the bark, but there isn’t any. If there’s none of that there, then you can’t use the bark for what you want.”

Marik asked, “How can you be sure?”

Jenny’s head lowered. Fear started up, and she had reminded herself that she was no longer on the planet of her birth. That here the knowledge that she held, the knowledge that she had grown up learning at her mother’s knee was not just valuable but needed.

Jenny said, “I don’t know if there’s a difference because we're no longer on a planet that I know, but I do know that without that inner layer, that white powdery stuff, this bark is maybe not useless, but not the bark that you’re looking for.”

Marik leaned back against the wall. His eyes glowed with interest, and she had to look away again. He always did funny things to her heart and emotions. That was wrong. No matter what, Ben was still the man that she loved and was engaged to.

Fear shot through her like a bolt of lightning. Had he died in the rebellion that Talon and Jessica had created? Was he down on Old Earth right now suffering and hurt, injured by weapon fire or even dead? Would she ever know?

Marik said, “Tell me, Jenny, have you seen any plants and the like that you thought might have medicinal purposes?”

She didn’t dare meet his eyes. “I haven’t looked. I don’t know why I didn’t think to.” She had not thought to because she had not considered that she would be sent to this particular building for the task ahead of her.

She had no idea why she had not considered it anyway though.

Part of her knew that it was an ingrained thing, that she had been taught to hide her knowledge for so long, that the idea of admitting it or showing it had never entered her mind.

Marik said, “Well, we have no patients today, so I think we should go look. The rest of you stay here in case a patient comes. If it is a serious emergency, then shout as loud as you can before you ring the bell in the center of town. I don’t think we will go too far but if you can’t shout us back, then ring the bell.”

The others nodded their agreement. Jenny’s heart sank. The last thing on earth she wanted to do was go wandering around with Marik!

Marik began walking, and she followed him. The sun struck her again, warm and pleasant. She paused for a moment, letting it soak into her skin down into the bones below. Marik paused, and she glanced over at him a trifle guilty.

She began walking, and he fell into step beside her. He said, “You seem to enjoy the sun.”

Her fingers twisted together. She had always been shy and quiet. She was very timid as well. Speaking up like she had inside the med-bay building was not something that she was used to doing, and she wasn’t used to talking a lot either.

“I’ve never really seen it before. I’d never really seen the sky until we were on the ship and space is a lot different.”

She glanced over at him expecting to see disbelief there. Instead, there was a kindness written across his face that startled her. Below that kindness was something else. Understanding. He said, “I remember when I first came out of the mines. I hadn’t seen sunlight in so very long. Not that you could look at the sun there; the entire surface was so scorching that it would burn you alive if you try to cross it. We were on the ship for quite some time after that and the first time that we set down on the planet that had a sun, I stayed out underneath its rays for so long that I burned my skin.”

She had known that he had been in the mines of course, but she had not realized that he had been trapped there and had not been out to see the sun. She said, “I’m sorry.”

She was. She knew exactly what that felt like, to be kept away from the things that all beings craved. Light and fresh air and the smell and scent of things growing in a natural fashion were those things.

Her heart hurt for him a little bit as she spoke the words, and her heart hurt even more when he said to her, “I’m sorry that you didn’t get to see it before now.”

Confused and not sure what to say to him, especially given how often she had had those little daydreams about him, she pointed to the hills up ahead. “Maybe we should try up there.”

Marik said, “That sounds like a good idea.”

Jenny struggled for words. She had never felt the things that she felt whenever she was around Marik, and those things often left her tongue- tied and confused. He made her heart race and her pulse as well. He made funny little flushes of heat start in her belly and go writhing up along her chest as well. It was nothing that she had ever known, and she wasn’t sure if perhaps she had some sort of allergy to him or if it was those daydreams that she had about him kissing her that caused it.

Either way, being that close to him was uncomfortable.

They walked in silence, but it wasn’t an awkward silence. Marik stopped occasionally to survey a plant or tree but he always walked on, and she did as well. At the top of the hills, they came to a long flat meadow ringed by a thick growth of various trees. There were plenty of creatures about, little insects that danced through the grass, winged creatures that landed on the branches of the trees and then flew away again, and animals that gathered away from them when they caught sight of the two beings entering the meadow.

Marik said, “That is the tree that we took the bark from.”

She followed the direction of his pointing finger. Her mind went back to the book, and she squinted at the tree. “I think… I think you can boil that bark and use it for coughs but not for pain relief.”

She spotted a slender tree not far away from that one and said, “Can we go look at that one, please? I believe that has the stuff that I am looking for.”

Marik said, “Of course. Here you’re free to walk wherever you want to.”

That understanding was back in his voice again. She flinched away from it. Oh, how she wished she was a bolder person, one who could simply put the past behind her and move forward with real bravery. She nodded and said, “Thank you.”

He followed along behind her as she headed for the tree, discomfiting her even further. When they reached it, she put a hand to it and then used her fingernail to peel away a small section of bark. Excitement hit. She exclaimed, “See? I believe this is it!”

Marik leaned in close. She caught a whiff of the scent: a clean and fresh smell that made her want to lean in closer to him. She backed away instead, her hand curling over the small shred of bark that she held in her palm. Marik’s eyes lifted away from her hand to her face. His eyes fastened on hers and that feeling that she always got around him came racing back in, making her shift a few times from foot to foot.

Marik said, “So what can we use it for?”

She gulped and turned her gaze away from his face to the tree. “It works well for pain and fever. If it’s boiled away from the bark and then left to cool a sort of thick white stuff forms at the top of the liquid. You have to skim it off, and you can dry it and give it out as a powder, or you can allow someone to drink some of the liquid. But it can be strong.”

Marik said, “Good to know.”

He moved away from the tree, and she moved in a direction away from him. Her heart pounded again as she sneaked to glance over her shoulder at him to see him kneeling by a patch of flowers, a look of utter concentration written all over his handsome face.

She was betraying Ben. Or was she? How could she betray a man who was not even there? A man who might be dead? A man who might have already found another?

Realization hit, hard. Jenny’s mouth opened and then closed as she realized that the reason she was so uncomfortable around Marik, the reason she always felt that she was betraying Ben when she was near him, was simply because she had some sort of attraction to him.

That left her feeling dazed and bruised. That was not something that an engaged woman should feel for another being! Especially one who was not even human.

She turned her attention away from him and toward the fields. A bright flash of purple caught her eyes and excitement mounted in her as she raced towards it. She bent to examine the small roots and stems of the plant, and that excitement rang out from her voice when she called out, “Marik! Come here! I think I found something!”

She was still kneeling on the ground, her knee pressed into warm dirt and grass when he appeared at her side. She looked up at the length of his body, and her heart did another fast series of pounds in her chest. Her mouth went dry. The sun lit his hair and shone around him in a soft gold nimbus that outlined every inch of his powerful body in a way that made her aware that he was very definitely male.

He knelt down beside her, one long finger stroking the leaves and blossoms of the plant that she had discovered. “What is it?”

Jenny gave him the name and then said, “It works to heal bones that are broken. You can use it as a poultice or as a drink.”

Just then, the sound of ships flying overhead caught their attention. Jenny looked up to see a battered ship circling, and she said, “It looks like Talon and Jessica have returned again.”

Marik nodded. “We will gather some of these plants and some of that bark and then head back. There’s plenty of time to collect more things later.”

Their hands touched as they began to harvest the plant and a slow thrill ran up and down her spine. That that was sexual attraction had never occurred to her before. She had heard of it of course, but she had never felt it, not even with Ben. That she felt it now made her feel even worse.

The plant gathered, they stopped and took a small bit of bark from the tree then headed back down the hills. Marik walked faster than she did due to his long legs and she had to hurry to keep up. The sound of the ship died, and it dropped from view, letting her know that it had landed.

As they approached, they saw the crew, as well as Jessica and Talon, exiting the ship. Renall stood nearby, a frown on his face as he watched the battered group disembark.

Marik said to Jenny, “Go back to the med–bay, if you don’t mind, and put those things away. I need to go see what’s happening.”

She nodded and took the flowers and stems and bark that they had collected and headed for the building, casting one last look over her shoulder. Her heart gave a painful throb and she wasn’t sure if it was because it was breaking over her betrayal of Ben or because she felt something new growing in the place of the emotions that she had for Ben.