Brightly Burning(68)

I looked up to see him leaving, and took stock of the other absences. Xiao, Sergei, Albert, and Poole were gone, leaving me with two people for whom I had opposite feelings.

“I’m glad you’ll be my sister.”

I swiveled my chair around to meet Jessa’s open arms, pulling her into a hug. She was right; we would be family. I held her tighter, glad to have another ally, even if she was eleven.

Hanada leaned back in her chair, arms crossed over her chest, clearly playing the long game. Reluctantly I sent Jessa down to her quarters, promising I’d come down in a bit so we could talk more. Hanada would track me down eventually to say her piece, so I might as well face it now. The morning couldn’t get worse.

“I understand where you’re coming from, you know,” she started. “Getting swept up in a ship romance. It’s stupid. But understandable.

“Ten years ago, I was just like you. Eighteen, from a succession of cold ships with no affection, landed here on the Rochester and thrown into the company of a brooding Fairfax.” Hanada was never without some dramatic pretense, yet this was an earnest admission, I could tell, for her. “Phillip was . . . everything.”

“Wait, Hugo’s dad?”

“Of course,” she snapped. Then her fury quickly ebbed as she fell back into her story. “I was his lab assistant. Hired because his son, who would surely follow in his footsteps, was not old enough. We learned all the basic scientific techniques and theory aboard the Marie Curie, but Phillip pushed scientific boundaries. Invented new life out of nothing . . .” She trailed off. Took a sip of tea. Regrouped. “Science is pure. Love is messy. I don’t regret it. But I should.”

“What’s your point, Hanada?” I was out of patience. She appeared impressed.

“You’ll need that bite if you stay. But you can still leave. It’s fortuitous the shuttle captain is still here.”

“His name is Sergei, and I’m not leaving. Are you actually going to tell me what your problem is, or are you going to keep throwing vagaries at me?”

“It’s not my place to tell you anything.” She made for the door, but left me with a parting shot. “You should have a frank conversation with your fiancé about what’s going on on this ship.”


I found distraction in an afternoon of movies with Jessa, who was all too happy to skip lessons for the day. After an uneventful dinner—?it seemed everyone decided to eat in their quarters except for Jessa and me—?I paced before Hugo’s study door, rehearsing what I wanted to say. After five minutes, I still didn’t have an eloquent solution.

“Frex,” I cursed.

The door slid open, revealing Hugo and a curiously quirked eyebrow.

“Cursing before you’ve even talked to me. That’s bad.” He gestured for me to come in and had a drink in my hand before I could protest. This was becoming a bad habit.

“I should have come and found you after this morning. I’m sorry.” Hugo sat in his normal chair, and I in mine. We had a routine, like a proper couple. I felt a temporary surge of warmth in my stomach, briefly assuaging my nerves.

“I figured you needed to cool down. That you would want to be alone.”

Hugo cringed. “I hate that you think my default is to be alone.”

“Isn’t it?”

“Yes, but you’re the exception.”

I felt a brief stab of doubt, the onslaught of feeling setting me off-kilter. Hugo had gone from coy to devoted in the space of a few weeks. How could I know he wouldn’t change again a few weeks later?

But I had a feeling my concerns—?that Hugo’s feelings were not real, that I may have accepted his proposal hastily—?were not the same concerns Xiao and Hanada had. Those were still dangling in the air, like a sword above my head.

“I feel like you’re not telling me something,” I said. “I’ve thought that for a while, but never said anything, and after this morning . . . Hanada said some concerning things to me.”

“Mari has her own issues when it comes to me.”

“What do you mean?”

Hugo seemed to weigh his words carefully. “Mari has her own reasons to dissuade you. I wouldn’t listen.”

“And what about Xiao? She seems perfectly reasonable, and she, unlike Hanada, seemed to like me. Until now.”

“Xiao thinks she’s my mother,” Hugo said darkly.

“I’m not good enough. Because I have no ship to barter.”

“I told you that doesn’t matter.”

“To you, maybe.”

“Stella,” he said my name like a prayer, crossing the short space between us, pulling me up from my chair and into his arms, “you can’t let them get to you. They have their reasons, but all that matters is I love you. Xiao will come around, I promise. And what Mari thinks doesn’t matter.”

But what about what I thought?

What did I think?


When I retired to my quarters for the night, I laid my head on the pillow and willed sleep to capture me quickly, so that I might wake up sooner, to a better, happier day.

My dreams kept me from a sound slumber. Their subjects were nebulous, the settings obscure, but there was something dark, something that pinned me down, sucked the breath from my lungs, tore me from sleep, gasping. The room was pitch-dark but for a single stream of light, dim. And the laugh. It reverberated down the corridor and made the hairs on my arm stand on end.