Their Fractured Light (Starbound #3)(45)
I try to find some way to leave, if only for a few hours, but Gideon’s stuck to me like glue—which he has every reason to be. Somehow I have to get back to my apartment, just for a moment, to retrieve the plas-pistol from Kristina’s bedroom. Getting such a highly illegal weapon took me months of work, and there’s no way I’ll get another before we execute our plan to board the Daedalus. And I don’t want Gideon to know why I want to sneak a gun in with us.
Two days before the gala, I finally give up. “I’ll need to duck out of here for a while at some point,” I say, keeping my eyes on the screen of the latest burner palm pad he’s given me. I can tell he’s looking at me—his breath has an audible catch to it when he’s watching me—but I don’t look up. I keep my voice casual. “Just need to pick up our clothes and a few other things.”
“Sure,” Gideon replies easily. “I’ll come with. Help you spot trouble before it spots you.”
I clear my throat, glancing up finally from the ground and locating a smile. “Not to wound your macho sense of chivalry, but I can handle it myself.”
“Like you handled it at your apartment?” His grin flickers, and I can tell he regrets the words as soon as they’re out.
I wish I could act nonchalant, like it doesn’t faze me. But instantly I’m back in my penthouse again, hiding in the kitchen from men twice my size. I swallow and settle for dropping my eyes so Gideon can’t see me afraid. “I can disappear easier on my own.”
When he doesn’t answer me, I look up. He’s still watching me, and utterly unashamed to be caught staring. He doesn’t look away but rather tilts his head slightly to the side, as though trying to see me better from some other angle. I’m struck all over again by the quick intelligence there, so easy to overlook when he’s playing the arrogant, smug * he projects to the world. Suddenly I’m not so sure I’m fooling him at all with my excuses for wanting to be alone. And worse—suddenly I’m absolutely certain I don’t want to.
“I have to go back to my apartment,” I whisper, before I can stop myself.
Gideon’s eyes close a fraction too long, and I can tell I was right. He knew I was hiding something. Let him think this is it. “Sofia, you can’t.”
“That’s why I didn’t tell you,” I reply, voice sharp. “I know it’s dangerous. But I’ll be in and out in no more than a minute. No time for anyone to show, even if they have surveillance.”
Gideon grimaces, scowling at the floor. “What’s so important that it’s worth risking your life for?”
My gun. The words rattle around in my mind. My only way out of this hell. My only shot, literally, the only weapon I can get through LaRoux’s security. My throat starts to close, and to my horror, I can feel my eyes starting to burn. I try to shove it down, try to channel it into something else—resentment or fervor or confidence, anything—but I can’t. He keeps looking at me, and right now, in this moment, I’m realizing I can’t lie.
“My father,” I croak finally, blinking and sending half a tear spilling out to cling to my cheek. “The only picture I have of him is in that apartment. If I lose it—” My hands clench around the blanket I’m sitting on, a useless attempt to grab for control. “If I can’t get it back, then I lose him entirely. Forever.”
It’s the truth. I do want that drawing, tucked safely behind one of the fake photos on the sideboard, almost as much as I want the gun in my bedroom. Almost—but not quite.
Gideon’s face, what I can see of it through the blur of tears, softens. “I get it, I do. You know that I do.” His eyes go to his pack, and I can see, for the tiniest moment, my grief reflected there in his face. Abruptly I’m reminded of that book he brought with him, the only thing he grabbed from his den that wasn’t computer equipment. “But Sof, it’s just a thing.”
I shake my head, the movement sending another tear to join the first. Even now my memory of the picture—a drawing Mihall made for me, since we didn’t have a camera—is blurring. I try to picture my father’s face, imagine his voice, and the fragments of memory flutter past, fleeting, impossible to reassemble. The particular pattern of calluses on his palm, the half-tuneless ditty he’d whistle to himself while he worked, the shuffle of his boots on the doormat when he came home—each time I grab for one memory the others fly away.
But with that piece of paper in my hands the fragments settle, drawn to the lines of ink and graphite like moths to the paper lanterns lighting the undercity at night.
“It’s not just a thing,” I whisper.
Gideon hesitates a long moment, then sighs. “No. It’s not. Just…be careful, okay?” He lifts a hand, the movement slow enough that I can pull away. I don’t. The edge of his finger brushes my jaw, and the tear clinging there comes away at his touch.
I blink to clear my vision and find his eyes—hazel, with a ring of green—on mine.
He clears his throat and lurches back, regaining his balance as he stands up. “After all, if you get snatched and I have to go to the Daedalus on my own, some socialite is probably going to ask me to dance, and then I’ll be done for.”
Surprise is enough to give me a handhold to pull myself out of my grief. “You don’t know how to dance?”