Their Fractured Light (Starbound #3)(63)

And then I find myself remembering Gideon’s words back when we first met: that he was certain the Icarus survivors had encountered the same creatures that had terrorized Avon last year—whispers, Flynn called them in his broadcast.

I’m still gaping up at them, every last play from my hard-earned book emptying out of my head, when I realize Lilac LaRoux is staring straight past me. I glance over my shoulder to find Gideon standing there. My heart kicks up another impossible notch as I see his face. Grave, unsmiling, rigid; and when I look back again, Lilac LaRoux’s face has gone absolutely white.

Her mouth opens, lips working the shape of a word I can’t identify. It takes her long seconds to put breath enough behind it to speak, and when she does, it’s in a thin, frightened whisper.

“Simon?”

Our keeper’s daughter; the green-eyed boy of the gray world; the girl whose father will die and leave her broken; the poet with steel and beauty in his soul; the orphan whose dreams hold such hope…

They will all soon shatter because of the man with the blue eyes, and when they do, we shall see what they become. For if they fall as we are falling, we will turn away from this universe forever and leave it to its darkness.

Tracing their paths, their possible futures, we see a dimness where the lines intersect. A nudge this way or that and they will go their own ways, never meeting, never showing us what humanity can be.

But there…a sixth path. Add him to the others and the dimness clears. It is not so very hard, for his path lies close to that of our keeper’s daughter already.

Six lives, six threads. We shall see what fabric they weave.

TARVER MERENDSEN’S GAZE SNAPS FROM my face to Lilac’s, his own expression tightening with surprise. “Simon?” he echoes—the name means something to him. “Simon, the boy who…”

“Who she was supposed to be with,” I finish for him, when Lilac makes no move to answer. “Simon who died for her, Simon who she forgot the second he was shipped out to the front lines.” I don’t want to look at Lilac’s face, but I can’t help it. She’s staring at me like I’ve risen from the dead—she’s staring at me like I’m simply one more ghost, one ghost too many.

Tarver has to take her elbow as they make their way down the stairs—she’s not looking where she puts her feet, and she nearly stumbles. “What the hell is going on?” he demands, all but ignoring Sofia now. Sofia, who’s standing just a few feet away, silent, expressionless. Sofia, hearing me reveal yet one more lie—I hadn’t realized just how much of what I’d given her was false. But now, seeing the lies lined up one after another…and I’d thought I couldn’t trust her?

“Simon—” Lilac’s voice is barely a breath, but her brow is furrowing, the initial shock of seeing me starting to wear off. What’s more surreal than anything about this moment is that neither she nor Tarver seems to think it’s impossible that I could be Simon, even though he’s been dead for years.

“No,” I say finally. “But you’re close.”

“Oh my God,” she whispers. “Giddy.”

I haven’t heard that nickname in four years, and it goes through me like a knife. Suddenly I want nothing more than to curl up in the bottom of my brother’s closet again, stowing away amongst the shoes and circuits and card collections. I swallow, forcing my voice to come out level. “Bingo.”

Tarver reaches out, hand coming to rest in the small of Lilac’s back—how many times did I see my brother touch her like that?

“Lilac,” Flynn says carefully. “This is my friend Sofia, she’s from Avon. This guy’s here with her. You know him?”

Visibly pulling herself together, Lilac straightens and swallows hard. “This is Gideon. Tarver, he’s Simon Marchant’s little brother.”

Tarver’s eyes widen a little, and though he doesn’t relax, his voice is calmer when he speaks. “Simon, the boy you were…the one your father had killed for falling in love with you?”

“The very same,” I reply before Lilac can. “But actually, you both know me.”

The man’s eyes narrow. “I don’t think—”

“You call me the Knave.”

In the silence that follows my voice, I can hear Sofia’s intake of breath—when I glance out of the corner of my eye, I can see her take a slow step toward the stairs. I can almost see her thoughts as she considers making a run for it. And I don’t blame her, really. She’s still reeling from learning I’m the Knave who’s terrorized her for the last year of her life—now I’m adding that I’m an old family friend of the people responsible for her father’s death.

Though “friend” is stretching the definition a bit.

“He’s the one who dug up the information you sent to us on Avon?” Jubilee asks, staring at me.

Lilac ignores the question. “You’re the one who helped us set up our security system?” she bursts out, breaking through her shock, finally sounding for a brief moment more like the girl I knew as a child. “But why…you weren’t really helping us, were you?”

The muscles in my jaw seize, a flare of anger making me want to grind my teeth. “What a conclusion to jump to, Miss LaRoux. I’m hurt. Historically speaking, it’s not usually my family screwing yours over.”