Empress of a Thousand Skies(78)

But his past was everything that made him him.

Kara didn’t know who she was.

“Does this work?” Kara asked. He turned around to see her messing with a purple scarf around her head. When all her hair was tucked away, it brought out the shape of her face, like a heart. There were freckles across her cheeks he’d never noticed on her tan skin. He tried to memorize her, tried to soak in every detail, as if he could absorb the truth of her, of this moment, through the heat between them. “Do I blend in?”

What she didn’t get was that she would never blend in. Not really. Plus she was wearing the duhatj too far back.

“Not exactly,” Aly said. He stood up and brushed himself off. “You gotta kind of . . .”

He reached behind Kara to unravel the scarf, and her messy black hair fell everywhere. It smelled good—just a little bit sweet—and he brushed it out of her eyes for no good reason.

“Your eyes are still changing color,” he said. Her right one had specks of green and yellow in it, like the first days of spring. And her left one was brown and deep and perfect for exactly those reasons. Aly cupped her face and she grabbed his arm; he thought she’d pull it away, but her hand stayed there, soft and warm.

“You don’t have to help me,” Kara said.

“I want to help,” Aly said, taking in her face, the slight pout of her lip. His cube wasn’t on. He’d have to remember every detail. Gods. It felt more important, precious somehow, knowing that once the moment passed it would be gone forever. “I’m not going anywhere, Kara.”

She squeezed his arm, just a little. But a little was all he needed.

He ran his hand up the back of her head and felt her thick hair tangle in his fingers. She ran her palm up his chest, then grabbed a handful of his thin cotton shirt and pulled him in. Closing the distance between them was fast and slow at once, a desperate sprint to the finish line, where there was everything he’d ever wanted. Then, finally, his mouth was on hers—her lips soft and yielding and opening, a tiny gasp, a hot breath. The warmth of them finding each other in that dark spot, in that very center of their souls, was so perfect he thought he might lose his mind. Aly wrapped his arms around Kara and felt the small of her back, right there where it dipped—and when she wrapped her arms around him he pressed his mouth in harder. She met him, and pushed back, and it felt like the only battle worth fighting. It didn’t matter if he won or lost; he just hoped it would never end.

This was home, with Kara, with the girl who’d always believed he was innocent.





TWENTY-SEVEN


    RHIANNON



ON board Dahlen’s ship, they floated. Here on the outer edges of the Desuco Quadrant, massive rocks were adrift in the darkness, like giants curled up in a long slumber. The Fisherman often made catches here. Perfect conditions for the octoerces’ feeding ground, Rhee had been told. And a perfect place for them to hide.

She pulled out Julian’s telescope and sought out the octoerces in the darkness. There was enough radiant heat coming off the rocks to keep the temperatures warm, but there was no air, no atmosphere—and still somehow the creatures lived.

Before, she saw herself in them. Rhee, too, was resilient. She’d survive.

But now she thought differently. The octoerces were merely trying to feed. Swept up in the gravitational pull of any nearby bodies, their life was one of constant movement, from one food source to the next. Survival, it turned out, wasn’t the same as living.

Dahlen balanced Rhee’s coin across his knuckles, moving it back and forth between his pinky and index finger. It was the souvenir her dad had given her, the very coin that she’d snuck off the craft for—the one that saved her life. Rhee thought she’d lost it in the move to Nau Fruma, but Tai Reyanna had it this whole time. She’d planned to give it to Rhee on the day of her coronation.

“Focus,” her Tai whispered as she snatched the coin from Dahlen’s hand and shoved it into Rhee’s palm. She’d made it clear—it annoyed her to no end that Dahlen was allowed to handle it as he did. The Fisherman shifted in irritation, passive-aggressively huffing in hopes they’d both be quiet. Despite his temperament, Rhee was thankful he was there.

After Rhee and Dahlen had rushed off Tinoppa in the wake of Seotra’s death, it was Tai Reyanna who’d found the Fisherman. She’d reached out to a network of what she called “unsavory characters,” seeking out the person capable of creating the mark on Rhee’s face. Enough bribes had led her to the Fisherman, and a small fortune commissioned him for a new job: a jailbreak. Though Dahlen suspected, after all, that the Fisherman did have political leanings, and that perhaps he was a loyalist.

This was Rhee’s trusted crew. She looked down at the coin in her hand. She didn’t believe in lucky charms, but she hoped it would save her life once more.

“As I was saying,” Tai Reyanna said, spinning back to face the holoprojection. They’d pieced together rumors from the Tais, known locations of safe houses from Dahlen’s contacts, strange gravitational disturbances according to the Fisherman’s research, and finally profiles on the people Nero had targeted for his horrific scheme to Ravage the scientists. Rhee knew there were answers and patterns, and that they would emerge, given time.

If they had the time. Nero’s droids were equipped with a soft plastic similar to the Fisherman’s. The droids had saved him, and Rhee thought bitterly that it was true—he always had a plan. His war effort had become even more aggressive. Attacks and retaliations had razed parts of both Kalu and Fontis, and deep-space combat was playing out between the two armadas just outside of Wraeta. Nero was angling to build an army, to make anyone with a cube his slave.