Reaching up to my chain, I carefully undid the links that attached it to the nipple rings, one side then the other.
She watched me, then looked up and frowned. “Why are you doing that? Are you… giving me back?” Fear blanched all color from her cheeks.
“Oh, gara, no.” I stroked my finger over that soft, pale skin. “I want to adorn you in another way. You have pleased me today. Made me see you… me… things in a new way.”
I took her hand and led her to my bed, had her sit in the middle upon the blankets and furs. Lifting the lid on my small chest that sat beside the bed, I pulled out the gems and held them up.
“I am not sure of the custom on Earth, but a man on Trion adorns his mate with jewels.”
She nodded. “On Earth, it’s usually a ring.”
I looked at her unadorned fingers. Fingers that had until just a short time ago been bathed in blood. In that moment I realized something important. Perhaps I’d known it all along, but her actions today confirmed it. She had the hands of a healer, not a killer.
“You aren’t a murderer.”
She frowned, a deep V forming in her brow. “What does that have to do with jewels?” she asked.
I looked down at the green gems in my palm. “Nothing.” I met her eyes. “Your crime. You said you’d committed murder.”
She didn’t respond, for I hadn’t asked her a question.
“That’s not true, is it? The match, I know the match is true. Our connection—” I pointed between the two of us, “—is not a lie.”
Tears filled her eyes. “No. We are not a lie.”
“And the rest?” I asked, my voice soft. I felt as if the weight of Trion was in her response.
“Lies,” she whispered, a tear slipping down her cheek. She wiped it away with the back of her hand.
I sighed, imminently pleased.
“Tell me. Tell me everything.”
I sat on the rug before her as she told me what happened.
“I work in a hospital, a med unit, on Earth. People come there if they are sick or injured, like the wounded today. I save lives. That’s my job. One night someone came in who’d been shot.” She described to me what that meant, the kind of weaponry used. “He’d been stabilized and ready for a room. On Earth, it takes days or weeks to heal. While he was waiting, someone came into the hospital and killed him. He was part of a crime family—a family that does bad things—and his death was required to settle some kind of turf war between the families. That part of the story isn’t important, only that I was the only witness, I saw the killer through the curtain that separated his bed from others.”
I clenched the gems tightly in my grip. The idea of Eva being that close to a killer—a real killer—had me ready to transport to Earth and hunt the man down.
“He didn’t see me, didn’t know I was there. When the police came, we were all questioned and I was able to identify the man. Turns out he’s wanted for many such crimes, but has never been able to be convicted for them. He’s a known assassin, with many deaths to pay for. And I am the only one who can stop him. My testimony would put him away, would bring down a very powerful and well-connected crime family.”
Dread filled my gut at where this story was going. I knew what she would say next.
“They sent you away to keep you safe, so the killer couldn’t reach you.”
They’d sent her all the way to Trion.
She nodded. “Yet the only way I could do so was to join the Interstellar Bride Program as a criminal. On Earth, the worst criminals are expedited and my match was made quickly.”
I was angry. Furious even. Eva had been forced to give up her life, to go off-planet, because she’d witnessed a crime. “You’re the innocent one and instead of that fark, you were made out to be the criminal, the murderer. What Bertok and the others said to you.”
I swallowed down the bitter anger in my throat.
“Yes, but I was matched to you,” she replied.
I looked at her fiercely. She was right. We’d been matched because of this random act. It never would have happened otherwise. She would never be a criminal and therefore never would have been put in the Interstellar Bride Program. Had it been fate? It seemed like destiny to me.
“Then it doesn’t matter. None of it. You’re here, safe and away from the danger to you on Earth.”