These Broken Stars (Starbound #1)(81)

I press my shoulder blades against the wall at my back and clench my jaw at the pain. Every inch of me is raw. The fabric on my body scalds me, like I have no skin, like I’m only blood and bone and pain.

And he stares, always staring, watching me, waiting for something.

Tarver, I know. I know him. I know—

He shifts, the whisper of his shoe on the stone screaming across the distance between us. I gasp, try to retreat through the stone. But I am blood and bone, and I cannot pass that way.

He jumps as I flinch, the barrel of the gun retraining on me, a cold metal eye in the darkness.

“What are you?”

His voice—I can’t hear it. It’s all wrong. Not supposed to—

“Answer me.”

He’s so angry. So afraid. I remember—I want to take that fear away. But I don’t know how. I can’t move, pinned to the wall by his stare. I can feel him dissecting me, peeling me away layer by layer, trying to understand.

I swallow, trying to remember how to answer. “Lilac,” I whisper, the name sounding strange. I try again, better this time. “Lilac.”

His face ripples, muscles standing out as he clenches his jaw. He leans forward, gesturing with the gun.

“We both know that’s not true. She’s dead.”

Dead.

Dead.

“Tarver.” I try his name again, and it sounds better on my lips than my own. “I don’t—”

“Don’t say it!” He’s on his feet, electrified, blazing in the glare of the dark cave. “You say it like—like her.”

Then I remember. “Your Lilac.”

He’s across the space between us before my eyes can follow him, pushing me back against the wall; his hand grasps my shoulder, sending ribbons of pain down my arm.

“Don’t say that.”

The grief and horror on his face cut deep. I don’t recognize my own hand as it reaches for his face.

“Tarver, it’s me.”

His hand clenching my shoulder shifts, slides up to touch my cheek. Fire. It’s all I can do not to jerk away. Grief and anger battle on his features, banishing the flicker of hope that surges there.

“What are you?” he repeats, whispering this time. I realize the gun was pressed against me only when he lowers it, letting it clatter to the ground.

I wish he had pulled the trigger. It would have been easier.

I make myself look in his eyes, fighting every instinct to flee, to find some way back to the dark and the cold and the quiet.

“I don’t know.”

“Did you and Miss LaRoux wonder why the structure was abandoned?”

“We wondered, but there wasn’t much we could do about it.”

“Why is that?”

“We had no information.”

“And no theories?”

“We had better things to do than speculate.”

THIRTY-FOUR

TARVER

I HAVE TO KEEP HER CALM. She could be anything. she could do anything.

I’ve brought her back to the cave, and she’s been huddling in the corner for nearly three hours. When I come close, she flinches; when I move, she squeezes her eyes shut. Whatever she is, she doesn’t feel like much of a threat.

That’s not the problem.

The problem is that she looks like Lilac, and she sounds like Lilac, and I can’t stand this.

I reach for the canteen and take a long swig. When I set it down on the rock floor of the cave, her breath catches. The sound hurts her ears. I try to remind myself that she’s something created, not the original. Not her. But is there really a difference? My mind whispers the question.

“Are you in pain?” I can’t use her name.

“Everything hurts.” She speaks in a tight whisper, trying to keep her voice steady, failing. “The sun, the air. It’s like when we came out of the snow in the mountains, so frozen you can’t feel anything, until everything starts to burn in the thaw.”

“Do you know what’s happening?” My voice is rough, agonized. How does she know about the mountains?

“No.” The word’s nearly lost as she swallows. “What did you do?”

I didn’t do anything. This is just another one of the ways this planet screws with your mind. “What do you remember?”

“I don’t know.” She’s still whispering. “Nothing.” And then a moment later: “I remember you. Your face. A picture of you…of your family. I remember poetry.”

This is impossible. How can she know? God, if only she didn’t sound like Lilac. My heart twists inside me. She’s still huddled against the rock wall like she’s trying to melt through it, and as I watch, one hand creeps down to her side, fingers pressing to the spot where her wound was. There’s only the ruined satin of her green dress.

“It’s okay,” I whisper, because she looks just like my girl, and I can’t help myself. I don’t want her to be scared. “I don’t understand either, but you’re here, you’re safe.”

But is she? She came from nothing, will she dissolve right back? Creating a canteen’s one thing. This is a human being.

I can be kind to her as long as she lasts, at least.

“How long was I gone?” Her voice is still quiet, quavering.