Zodiac (Zodiac, #1)(89)

Mathias goes without answering.

When I’m alone, I strip off my clothes and step inside the shower. Once the water is scaldingly hot, I sit on the tile floor, huddled against the wall, and I let the sticky steam fill me with something—anything but this awful, gaping, deadly absence.

I rub Sirna’s rose pearl between my fingers, thinking of Dad. The last time we saw each other, I was on vacation from the Academy, a year and a half ago. Stanton was home, too, and it was almost like going back to when we were kids, and the three of us lived together. Mom’s ghost still haunted the bungalow’s darkest corners, but mostly she was gone, and we had a great visit.

The last day of vacation, I helped Dad clean our old schooner. I told him about starting a band with my best friends Nishiko and Deke, and we even talked about my plans after the Academy. It was the closest he and I had come to a real conversation in years.

There’s so much I wish I’d told him. The tears flood my eyes all of a sudden, one for every truth, story, and feeling I should have shared with him—all the unsaid things I kept stuffed inside my shell.

I should have told him why I left home. I should have asked how he felt after Mom took off. I should have admitted I was angry with her, but that I was angry with him, too—for not protecting me from her mania.

Everything pours out from me in sobs that shake my chest and scrape my throat, like my memories and emotions are trying to claw their way to my surface.

By the time I turn the faucet off, my eyes feel desiccated and my fingers look shriveled. I slip into a cottony white robe and sit in front of the mirror, passing a brush through my wet hair, staring into my dull and deadened eyes. Their pale green reminds me of the bioluminescent microbes that glow in the inner lagoon where Dad keeps his nar-clam beds.

Where Dad kept his nar-clam beds.

My exhalation gets caught in my throat and won’t come out. Just like my brain won’t accept this nightmare as my new reality. Dad can’t be gone.

Suddenly, I hear drumming in the distance. No—knocking. It sounds faint and far off, like it’s coming from somewhere in my head.

Then I realize someone is at my door.

My face comes back into focus in the mirror. Enough time has passed that my hair is dry. Since I’ve been brushing it nonstop, it’s almost straight. I have no idea how long I’ve been sitting here, thinking of Dad. Of our home on Cancer. Of everything I’ve already lost.

So what’s the harm in one more gamble—one last trip into Space?

“Rho? Everything okay?”

Hysan’s voice wraps around my soul like a blanket, and I feel myself pulling out of this stupor, peeking out from my shell. This cold aloneness isn’t what I need right now. I need warmth.

“Come in,” I say, tucking the pearl necklace under my robe and cinching the belt tighter.

“I brought you something to sleep in,” he says, stopping short when he sees me. “Your hair . . . I like it.”

“Thanks,” I say, taking the sleeping shirt and stretchy pants he hands me. He’s wearing his gray coveralls again, and there’s a stylus in one of the pockets, like he’s been working.

“Room service will bring you anything you need—toothbrush, food, clothes. Just tell the wallscreen what you want, any time.” He’s silent a moment, then turns to leave.

“Will you stay with me awhile, or do you have somewhere to be?”

My whisper hangs in the dimly lit room, the words so low I’m worried he didn’t hear them.

“Somewhere is where you are, my lady.”

His voice is like a caress; it brushes softly down my spine, until every knotted nerve within me begins to loosen and liquefy. Until all my body wants to do is finally let go. I’m tired of holding on so tight when everything has already fallen apart.

“Can room service bring us any Abyssthe?” I ask when he’s in front of me again. “Or that Geminin drug?” I’m only half joking.

Hysan frowns as he registers the heaviness in my gaze. “What’s happened? Something’s changed from before.”

“My heart stopped beating,” I gasp between waves of emotion, “and I can’t feel anything anymore.” I won’t tell him I’m an orphan now, like him. I won’t say those words yet.

Instead, I move closer, until all that’s between us is the lumpy knot of my robe, pressing against my waist.

“You be my drug then,” I say, looking into those green eyes. “Make me feel something . . . while we still can.”

“You’re sure?” he whispers, his breath soft against my skin. He combs his fingers through my hair. “You’re not afraid?”

“Of you?”

“Of crossing a line. I don’t want you to do something you’ll regret.” His stare scans my face like a laser, and I wonder if I even need to speak my answer, or if he’s already found it.

“I don’t have many lines left to cross,” I whisper. “And this one hardly seems like the worst.”

My friends on Elara are gone. Millions more Cancrians have died since. Virgos, too. Dad, Mathias’s sister, Deke’s sisters, Kai’s parents . . . I can’t stop any of it. Ochus is too powerful to avoid or defeat, and he’s bound to destroy me, too.

After all, I’m at the top of his death list. Any moment I’m going to go like the rest of them, and I’ve barely lived. My world’s axis is off-kilter, and I can’t set it right.