Their Fractured Light (Starbound #3)(40)
I glance at the archway to the kitchen, making sure frustration doesn’t cause my voice to rise. “Nothing! God, Gideon, you don’t think I’d give anything to just sit here and watch a movie and be safe, for once, for once?” To my horror, I can feel my eyes starting to sting, and not because I’m trying to cry. Tears now would just make Gideon even more certain I’m trying to play him. Yet there they are, threatening to spill out, making me blink hard to keep them back.
Because even as I’m saying the words, I’m realizing that they’re true. For the first time since my father’s death, the desire to be here, safe, on a couch with this boy I barely know, feels more real than the need to make LaRoux pay. And that scares me more than anything.
“I trust Mae,” he says, voice low and tight. Just now, I can see the toll the loss of his den has taken on him. He’s not ready to lose this last safe haven on top of it. “I trust her a hell of a lot more than I trust you.”
I take a slow breath, trying not to acknowledge how much that cut actually burns. But I can’t really blame him—he shouldn’t trust me. “Anyone can be bought,” I reply softly. “Everyone has a weakness. Does her loyalty to you outweigh her value of her own life? Her kids’ lives?”
In spite of himself, Gideon’s gaze flicks over to the mantel shelf over the HV screen, where pictures of the twins adorn every empty space.
I press my advantage, as hard as I dare. “Tell her we’re going to go check on a lead, meet a contact, anything. Make some excuse for us to leave, and if she tries to get us to stay, then you’ll know she’s stalling us here for a reason.”
Gideon just shakes his head, mute now, staring hard at the HV screen as a scene plays out aboard a space station to the strains of a recent pop hit. When Mae comes back in, bearing a large bowl of popcorn, he looks up at her with a smile, his anger melting away. My heart sinks.
“Here you go,” she says, handing us the bowl. “None of that synthetic stuff—this is real corn. Made the mistake of getting it once, now my kids won’t touch the other stuff.” She clears her throat and turns away to go back to the kitchen.
“You’re not going to watch with us?” Gideon asks, resting the bowl on his lap.
“Oh, no, got some things to do.” Mae doesn’t turn around.
Gideon pauses, looking down into the bowl, jaw clenching visibly. Then, slowly, he says, “Well, we can’t really stay long either. I’ve got a ping on one of my contacts, and we need to go to the drop point before the hit goes cold.”
For a wild moment, I want nothing more than to reach out and wrap my hand around his, but I bury the impulse. Even if he’s testing my theory, it doesn’t mean he wants my comfort.
Mae’s standing still in the archway. It takes just a fraction of a second too long for her to turn around, and then the too-casual way she leans against the doorframe must be obvious, even to Gideon. “Don’t worry about that,” she says, smiling. “You both look exhausted. Just send a text, tell your contact you’ll swing by tonight, or tomorrow. You need rest more than you need one more bit of info.”
Gideon leans forward, placing the bowl on the coffee table and rising. “I wish we could, Mae, really. But this might give us some proof of what LaRoux’s up to, which we’ll need even if the police stop what’s going down on the Daedalus.”
Mae straightens a little, eyes darting to the side—where the time display was in the kitchen—and then back. “I’ll wave XFactor or one of the undercity admins, they can go to the drop for you.”
Gideon’s casual air melts away, his shoulders dropping. “Mae,” he whispers. “What did you do?”
A ripple runs through Mae’s features, and as her smile crumples, my heart constricts. I was right. I wish I could feel vindicated—instead my lungs ache. Betrayal is the hardest wound to recover from.
“They’ve got my kids,” she replies, voice tight with withheld tears. “I had no choice.”
Gideon’s voice bursts out with a curse, and he starts shoving things back into his pack. “What do they know? How’d they know to take the kids?”
Mae shakes her head. “I don’t know, but it was Mattie on the phone.” Her voice is shaking. “They took them from school. He told me I had to keep you guys here until—”
“Shit, shit, shit.” Gideon shoves his lapscreen into the pack, then looks up, eyes meeting mine. There’s something like apology there, amidst all the other emotions tangling in his features.
“LRI must have people within the police force.” My thoughts are spinning, weariness making it hard to understand what’s happening. “People who intercepted the threat before…but how could they have traced it back here?”
Gideon shakes his head, eyes wild. “I don’t know. They shouldn’t have been able to. I must have made a mistake, slipped up somewhere.” He’s only had a few hours sleep since before he left to rescue me from LRI—suddenly, I don’t know how we didn’t see a stumble like this coming. His jaw’s clenched, and I know he’s panicking as much for Mae’s children as for our own safety.
I want to cry, to throw myself down on the floor and give up. Mae’s house is just the latest in a slew of safe havens that LaRoux’s been ripping away from us. If his people intercepted our threat, then we haven’t stopped him at all—haven’t even slowed him down. He’ll still bring the rift to the Daedalus, and the Council delegations will still fall to his whispers’ mind-altering abilities, and our universe will still become something unrecognizable—they’ll do whatever he wants, and there’ll be no way to stop them. Every ounce of the tension I’d been carrying up until we sent that bomb threat comes crashing back down on me, a weight made all the more impossible to bear by the fact that I’d actually begun to believe we were free.