Skyfall by Catherine Asaro Page A

his temple. “In our minds.”
    His lips quirked. “It isn’t your mind I want to hold.”
    “ Eldri. ”
    “Why do you worry so? If we like each other, you can come back. You will, won’t you?”
    Roca hesitated. The better she knew him, the greater her reservations about revealing his mental gifts to her government. If they took control of his life and the colony here, he and his people could end up losing as much as if the Allied developers exploited Lyshriol. And there was Kurj, her son. She dreaded how he might react to a relationship between her and Eldri. She reminded herself of Dayj, the prince everyone wanted her to marry, but all she could remember about him right now was his chilly reserve.
    “I can probably never come back,” she said.
    He grasped her shoulders. “Don’t say this.”
    Gods knew, she longed to stay. But what she wanted was irrelevant. Too many people would suffer if she shirked her duties. She didn’t want to add to the hurt Eldri was already suffering because of Jacquilar’s death, so she said only, “Perhaps anything can happen in this universe.” She motioned as if to encompass Windward. “This place has magic.”
    He spoke in a low voice. “Then for one night, let that magic be real. If I never see you again, gift me with memories of you, the golden woman from above the sky, that I can hold forever close to my heart.”
    Roca was more tempted than she dared admit. And Brad was wrong—if Eldri realized they came “from above the sky,” he knew she wasn’t from some other province. Or perhaps she misinterpreted his pretty words, longing to believe he understood the situation and despite that, he still wanted her.
    “Is wrong for me to stay,” she said.
    “Why is it wrong?” He slid one arm under her knees and the other around her back, then stood up, holding her in his arms. “Never worry about tomorrow.”
    “Eldri—”
    “One night,” he whispered.
    Perhaps if he had continued to tease, she would have resisted. But his intensity caught her. As he walked across the room, Roca couldn’t stop looking at him. When he laid her on the bed, she put her arms around his neck and drew him down with her. They sank into handmade quilts turned soft from many washings.
    Eldri was strength and warmth, and he held her with a need born as much from grief as desire. They undressed each other with both urgency and care. Scars covered his body, but whatever battles had left those marks hadn’t injured his heart. Unrestrained in his passion, he cracked the ice that surrounded her emotions. For the first time in years, maybe in decades, she felt no separation, no distance, no sense of standing behind glass, outside the circle of warmth a man and a woman could create.
    They loved each other in the dim firelight, isolated in a mountain fortress, pretending for one night that no storms raged beyond their precarious refuge.

5
Son of Stars
    K urj Skolia, son of Roca Skolia, had no equal.
    Rumor claimed Kurj was more machine than man. His ancestors had settled a low gravity planet and engineered themselves with larger, stronger bodies than normal humans. He stood seven feet tall and had a massive physique. The military had enhanced his skeleton and muscle system, and he had personally arranged yet more augmentation. The biomech web in his body controlled his enhancements, with a micro-fusion reactor to provide energy. Nanomeds maintained his health and youth. Despite his size, he could move many times faster than an unaltered man. He thought nothing of crumpling a metal block in his fist. When he entered a room, he dominated it by the sheer force of his size.
    He was a man of metal.
    Kurj had inherited his coloring from his mother, Roca Skolia, who inherited it from her father, Jarac Skolia. His gold skin reflected light. His hair and eyelashes glinted, and his eyes were molten gold. His ancestors had engineered inner eyelids as protection against intense sunlight, and Kurj had inherited