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Lex Talionis
by Tara O'Shea

Part III

They'll tell you that the pain will go away and time will heal all wounds and that everything will be all right.

And they're lying, but not about everything.

And they're not lying to you—they're lying to themselves. Because it hurts. It hurts so much you think that the entire world is red and raw and bleeding. But it's not all a lie. Not all of it. He promises, and he always keeps his promise. Post-holer. For digging posts.

Remember. Remember.

It's not all lies.

Zoe stared out the flight deck ports at the stars. Wash had set the autopilot, and she would join him in bed. But she'd wanted to sit and watch the worlds go by first.

She'd grown up on ships. Never spent more than a day or two planetside before the war. Her daddy had been a supply ship's captain, running cargo from world to world. Her mamma was an engineer and a damned good one. Uncle Marcus had been their pilot. He'd been an honorary uncle, just like half that twelve-man crew had become Zoe's family from the second she'd been born, her and her brothers and sisters. The other half of the crew had actually been blood-kin. By the time she was seven, she'd had five or six cousins to play with, grow up with, train to fly the shuttles, patch the electrical systems and patch each other up in the infirmary.

Marcus had married—and they'd hired on a new pilot. The