These Broken Stars (Starbound #1)(90)

I witness the moment it dissolves, crumbling into fine dust while I stare, paralyzed. The dust rains down on my outstretched hands, slipping through my fingers and falling to the ground. Shock holds me in place, and slowly I tilt my hands so the rest of the dust can slide off them and disappear into the still-scorched dirt and grass at my feet.

It’s when I finally lift my gaze that I realize Lilac’s standing at the edge of the clearing, staring at the place where the remains of the canteen fell.

It might be the fifth day, or the sixth, or the seventh, when I wake up and she’s gone again. My boots have been moved over to the doorway as a signal that she didn’t vanish in the night, and I climb down to stomp into them, making my way through the common room to grab a ration bar, and out into the clearing.

I’ve been trying desperately to push aside the thought of the canteen disintegrating just like her flower did. The whispers somehow re-created those two things, and Lilac’s the only thing left that they’ve given us. Did they dissolve because it was too much effort to hold them together? Were they sending us a message?

All I know is that the things they create aren’t permanent. If these beings, whatever they are, are behind that locked door, then that’s where we need to go. The source of the energy that made her—if we can tap into it somehow, maybe we can stop her from falling apart. If there’s a way to save Lilac, that’s where I’ll find it.

I’m chewing on the ration bar and standing in the doorway for nearly a minute, sleepily surveying the clearing, before it hits me. The door to the shed is standing ajar. Why would Lilac go there? I cross the clearing and stick my head inside. Something’s missing.

The shovel’s gone.

And in a moment of horrified realization, I know why.

The morning walks, despite her weakness; the way she waits for me to sleep before she slips out; the way she returns each day at dawn, before I can go looking for her.

She’s looking for her grave.

The ration bar turns to ash in my mouth, and I throw the rest aside as I break into a run. I dodge through the trees and break out the other side, coming to a halt at the edge of the stream.

I’m too late. My mound of flowers—dead and wilted now—has been churned up and pushed aside. She’s on her knees, shovel by her side, gazing down into the hole she’s dug. From here I can see only a glimpse of red hair in the grave, but Lilac can see everything.

I want to drag her away, take away the memory, somehow get her to unsee what she’s seen. I wish I could turn back time and stop her before she ever found the grave.

But I can’t. And now we both know.

“You can glare at me as long as you like, Major. I am in no hurry whatsoever.”

“Was I glaring? Must’ve drifted off there.”

“If you’d care to answer the question, perhaps I can send for some dinner, and we can take a break.”

“What question?”

“What reason would you have to lie?”

THIRTY-SEVEN

LILAC

I LET HIM LEAD ME BACK TO THE STATION, and even after he lets me go and retreats to the common room, I can feel his hand in mine.

Now, back in the dormitory, I’m standing in front of a mirror. It shows me freckles. Scattered across the nose, pointed up, too pert for real beauty. This nose I’ve always hated—now it doesn’t even seem like mine. A tiny white line graces the edge of one cheekbone, a memento of the blow Tarver delivered in his delirium. The lips are chapped. The eyes sunken, the skin below them like a bruise. Under the freckles, my face is pale.

For a moment I’m standing again in the forest, looking into a shallow grave at the translucent gray porcelain skin, the long lashes sweeping the cheek, the hair a bright mockery against the dull gray earth. Her lips are violet, slightly parted, as though she might draw breath in another moment. My own breath stops, the sound of my heartbeat roaring in my ears.

For a dizzying moment I don’t know which body I am: the one in the grave or the one in the mirror.

No. I’m not her.

I’m not her.

Then I am once again back in front of the mirror in the station, staring at this too-thin body wrapped in a towel. Not my body—something else, something other. Something created.

The towel chafes at me, an agony of sensation. I let it fall. Tarver isn’t here anyway. There’s no one to see this body but me.

I close my eyes, shutting out the sight of the face in the mirror. Before I found the grave, I was a prisoner in my own body, feeling the impulse to reach out, to touch, to love, but unable to act on it. Now it’s like I’m an echo, inhabiting nothing more than a statue. A memorial to the Lilac who once lived here.

The old Lilac, the one Tarver loved, would have patted herself dry, combed out her hair until it dried shiny and smooth. She would have stood near enough for him to feel her warmth, for their arms to brush now and then, her hair to tickle his shoulder, until he could not help but turn and reach for her, on fire. She would have loved him.

For the first time in a life of balls and salons, designers and high fashion, flirtations and intrigue—that Lilac came alive inside her own skin. Who am I now?

Tarver is so certain I’m me, I’m his girl—but how can he know? I want to believe him. Sometimes I almost do. I want to believe I’m more than imaginary smoke drifting from an imaginary chimney. But for the scrape of fabric against my bare, raw skin as I dress, I would think myself no more than a memory.