Starflight (Starflight, #1)(4)
“I’m ready,” she said.
But Doran had fallen silent. She glanced down and caught him staring at the felony tattoos on her knuckles, his face leaking color by the second. The whites of his eyes kept growing until he looked like he’d seen a demon, and Solara half expected him to retreat to his bedroom and pull the covers over his head. She cursed herself for leaving her room with naked hands. She should have remembered to put on her gloves.
“You didn’t have those when you were at my academy,” he said, tugging absently at his earlobe. “I would have noticed.”
“No.” Her first instinct was to look at her knuckles, but she fought it. She didn’t want to see them. “They’re fresh. Only a few months old.”
Doran swallowed hard, his gaze never leaving her hands. She found it odd that he hadn’t laughed at her yet, not that she was complaining. “That’s why you didn’t graduate. You were expelled.”
“I still graduated,” she said. “Just not from the academy.”
“What did you do?”
The question made her shoulders go tense. It always did. She knew she could give him the easy answer—she’d been caught stealing. But that wasn’t the half of it. As the nuns always said, the devil was in the details. It was the details that shamed her beyond any punishment a judge could hand down. The details hurt like a slash to the heart, and she would die a thousand deaths before sharing them with Doran.
“I don’t remember,” she told him.
“You’re a liar.”
“Yes, Mr. Spaulding.”
“You have to tell me,” he insisted. “It’s my right as your employer.”
No, it wasn’t. She knew the law. “I made a mistake and I learned from it. I didn’t hurt anyone. That’s what matters.”
“How do I know you’re telling the truth?” he asked, and swallowed hard enough to shift his Adam’s apple. He almost seemed afraid of her, which couldn’t be right. Nothing scared the Great Doran Spaulding, except closets and possibly the absence of mirrors. “We’ve already established that you’re a liar.”
Solara didn’t want to play this game anymore. She would clean Doran’s suite and fetch his slippers, but she wouldn’t give him a piece of her soul. “If you trust me enough to let me in here, you must know I’m not a threat to you.”
“You’re not going to tell me?”
“I don’t like talking about it.”
“Fine, then.” He thrust a finger toward the door and ordered, “Get out.”
She drew her eyebrows together. Was he serious or just jerking her around? Sometimes it was hard to tell. “But what about the—”
“I don’t want your help,” he said. “Be at Miss DePaul’s suite before breakfast to tend to that thing she calls a dog. Aside from that, I don’t care what you do.”
Then he stood from his chair and turned off the light in a clear dismissal.
Solara blinked a few times before setting down the tablet and backing out of the room. She returned to her bunk expecting another summons, but she slept undisturbed until the morning alarm rang.
The next day, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong, a sort of prickly sensation in her stomach that lingered throughout her morning routine. There was no logical reason for it. The ship traveled smooth and steady, only two hours from the next refueling post. Her roommates smiled and gossiped about their onboard crushes while braiding one another’s hair. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
It wasn’t until she reached Miss DePaul’s suite that Solara realized the cause for her unease. Her wristband had remained silent for too long. Doran hadn’t demanded predawn breakfast in bed. He hadn’t ordered her to warm his bath towels or set the telescreen to his favorite news program. He hadn’t even asked her to pull an outfit from his closet.
That definitely wasn’t normal.
She knocked on Miss DePaul’s door and tried to ignore the worries nibbling at the edge of her mind. The girl answered wearing nothing but Doran’s T-shirt—Solara had laundered it enough times to know. After tucking a gleaming pink lock behind one ear, Miss DePaul hitched a thumb over her shoulder.
“Baby had an accident on the carpet last night. Take care of it before you walk her.” She sniffed a laugh and added, “You can’t miss it. Look for a reeking pile the exact shade of your hair. I’ll be in the shower, so lock the door when you leave.”
In that moment, Solara decided to “forget” locking, or even closing, the door. She cleaned up after the dog, then tucked it gently beneath one arm and carried it to the mezzanine, where passengers brought their animals to exercise. By the time she finished six laps around the artificial park and returned the dog to Miss DePaul, the Zenith had stopped to refuel and Doran finally sent instructions to meet him outside the auxiliary engine room.
An odd request, but Solara knew better than to question it.
When she slid open the door to the utility hallway, a chill of foreboding prickled her skin into goose bumps. The passage was empty and cool, illuminated by flickering overhead lights that cast menacing shadows on the floor. All engines had shut down, and without the rhythmic hum, an eerie silence hung in the air. She heard only the creak of her new boots as she strode toward the stairwell to Doran’s meeting place. She saw him in the distance, but he kept his back to her while she climbed the steely stairs. Even when she joined him on the upper platform, he didn’t turn to face her.