I Was Matched to Seven SSS Beast Husbands novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Two Hands

Isak finds her two elements, Lucan steals her pot lid, and the first supply crate falls with ten days of food for seven and the slip reads bride allotment none.

Maxine woke in a bunk in a dead warship's sickbay, with a bear sleeping across the doorway.

Bram had refused to go anywhere else.

"In case you need something," he'd said, folding himself onto the deck plates like a hill settling.

She lay still and counted what she had.

One dented pot, one folding knife, a grey jumpsuit, and two hands that did not belong on the same woman.

"You're awake," said a dry voice.

A lean man stood at the foot of the bunk, silver-blond hair tied back, a white coat gone grey with age.

He held a scanning wand.

"I'm Isak Lund. I was the Ninth Fleet's senior surgeon." He had pale eyes and no expression at all. "Roll up your sleeve."

"Do I get a say?"

"You get a say after I find out what you are."

She rolled up her sleeve.

The wand hummed up her arm and the old screen on the wall lit a muddy green.

Isak studied it for a long time.

"The Court's gauge reads one number," he said. "Fire, Spring, Wind or Stone, whichever is strongest. It reads you as nothing."

"I know. I was there."

"It's wrong." He tapped the screen. "Your left hand runs hot, your right runs cold and wet."

"Two elements, both strong, pushing on the gauge from opposite sides. They cancel. The machine sees zero."

Maxine stared at him.

"So I'm not Null."

"You are the least Null person I have ever scanned." He put the wand down. "And someone at the Court knew."

Her stomach dropped.

"Vesper," she said.

"Who?"

"My best friend. She stood behind me at the gauge for three years of practice tests."

Maxine laughed once, without humor.

"She always asked to see my numbers."

Isak said nothing, which was somehow kind.

Something rattled in the corridor.

"Lucan," Isak said, without turning around. "Give it back."

A man swung down from the pipes above the door, landing in a crouch with a dented lid in his hand.

Silver hair, messy on purpose, a gold earring, a scuffed flight jacket.

He looked about twenty-eight and extremely pleased with himself.

"I was admiring it," Lucan Fell said. "It's a very serious pot lid."

"Where does a girl on a Court drop get a lid like that?"

"My grandmother's," Maxine said. "Give it back, or I'll boil your hair."

He grinned, bright and quick, and tossed it onto the bunk.

"Fox," he said, tapping his chest. "Pilot. Thief. Seven kinds of charming."

"You've met the bear and the wolf, and you've been poked by the leopard. The rest are still crawling out of their holes."

"How many of you are lucid?"

"Today? Four, if you count me, and I don't." He winked.

"Bram says you made soup. We haven't had hot food since before Kell Reach. What did you put in it?"

"Rust-vine and old flour."

"That's it?"

"And both hands."

Lucan stopped smiling.

He looked at Isak, who nodded very slightly.

"Make more," Isak said, and for the first time something shifted under the deadpan.

"Please. My hands have shaken for three years. I want to know what it does."

She made more.

The sickbay had a steel sink and a scrap stove that Bram had fixed in under an hour, whistling through his beard.

Maxine worked fast, the way she had in the famine.

When the smell rose, even Isak closed his eyes.

She filled three bowls and watched them eat in the narrow light, three big men sitting on a dead ship's floor with spoons.

Isak's hand lifted his bowl and didn't shake.

He stared at it.

He set it down, held out his fingers, and watched them stay still.

"Three years," he said softly, to nobody.

Lucan, who had not stopped talking for ten minutes, was silent with his mouth full.

Then he said, "Oh. Oh, that's unfair," and ate faster.

Rhys appeared in the doorway.

He leaned against the frame with his arms crossed, and she saw him count the bowls, then the faces, then her.

"Fever at dawn?" he asked Isak.

"None," Isak said. "Not in anyone who ate."

Rhys exhaled through his nose.

A boom shook the whole hull.

It came from above, and then from the plain outside, a falling-metal thud that rattled the bowls on the floor.

"Supply drop," Lucan said, springing up. "Early. They never come early."

They went out together.

The crate lay half sunk in the red dirt, a grey steel box the size of a coffin.

The Court's white seal was stamped on the lid.

Bram pried it open with the wrench.

Inside were ration packs, grey and tightly sealed, about ten days of food for seven men.

Lucan picked up the slip taped to the lid and read it aloud in a bored voice.

"Contents, seven. Count verified. Bride allotment, none."

Nobody laughed.

"They put it in writing," Lucan said.

"They always do," said Rhys.

Maxine took the slip out of Lucan's fingers, folded it twice, and put it in her pocket.

"What are you doing?" Isak asked.

"Keeping it." She looked around the circle of men. "Someone wrote this. Someone signed for the crate. I'm going to remember that."

"You're going to remember it for forty days," Rhys said.

His voice was quiet, and it stopped everyone.

"The six before you lasted forty days. Every one." He looked at the cairns on the plain, then at her. "I won't dig a seventh."

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