Sheerspace, Tome 1 : Queen of Starlight

Corso stepped outside, breathing out hard to clear the lingering sweet scent of pixberry from his lungs, and stared up at the sky. At the almost inaudible pad of bare feet behind him, he stiffened. Benedetta’s more subtle perfume teased him, and his heartbeat ramped even higher than it had that long-ago day when the sheer-ship plasma scorched the earth around him.

“Is it strange to see the stars from this angle?”

He glanced at the woman beside him. The silver l’auraly markings curled up the slender column of her neck to brush the points of her jaw, and the traceries glimmered even in the faint starlight. Every soldier knew, a sharp blow to those pressure points could disable. A kiss along those same lines could… He crushed the wayward thought. “What?”

She gestured upward, and the inner skin of her wrist glinted. “In your ship, you’re so much closer to them. They are beautiful from here, even through the ice rings and the light of three moons. They must be utterly amazing when you are up there alone with them.”

“You don’t see them at all in the sheerways. It’s all black. Unless you’re tangled, and then I’m told you see every star and moon and nebula at once in the nanosecond before your ship is shredded.”

She blinked. “Well, Captain Deynah, and here I wondered if you had any music in your soul.”

“Keep wondering.