Current Break

by Sarah Silver · Neurodivergent Romantasy

The captain is Tideborn. Alexithymic. He feels every emotion at full intensity and can name none of them. His skin glows in colors his body uses as language — teal when he is processing, amber when he is alert, indigo when something is too deep for words. After the last person who read his light used the reading to leave, he started wearing long sleeves. The mason is autistic. Tactile-seeking. She reads star-iron damage with her hands and people through how they hold a cup. She is warm, direct, hands-on, and she has spent three years patching dock pilings on backwater islands because she once let someone with a gauge override her palms and watched an arch fall because of it. The Guild contracts her to assess a dead node on Toreth. His ship is the only one that runs the dead-zone route. Four days at sea. Three weeks on an island that should not still be sending signal.