Starflight (Starflight, #1)(64)
At the dinner table, she sat facing him, smiling sweetly while she tightened one fist on her lap. “The chili’s amazing,” she said. “Did you do something different?”
“Actually, yes.” He perked up and launched into some spiel about replacing one spice with another, but Solara wasn’t listening. Instead, she studied him for signs of guilt: inconsistent eye contact, fidgeting, widened pupils, flaring nostrils. He betrayed nothing, which made him either a natural-born actor or a sociopath. Probably the latter. “Thanks for noticing,” he added.
“My pleasure.”
A sudden rustling noise shifted their attention to the cabinet, and Kane pulled it open to discover Acorn’s head buried in a bag of lentils she’d torn wide open. Some of the tiny dried beans spilled out, clinking to the floor. Acorn seemed to know she was busted. Her furry body disappeared completely into the bag.
“Damn it,” Kane swore, gently scooping her out. “There goes tomorrow’s supper.”
The captain reached across the table and took Acorn in his palm. “It’s your own fault,” he told Kane while stroking Acorn’s head with his thumb. “Food belongs in bins, not bags. It’s in her nature to forage.”
Unaware of the trouble she’d caused, Acorn closed both eyes and purred contentedly. In Solara’s next life, she wanted to come back as a sugar bear. Must be nice to have no worries.
“It’s your turn,” the captain said to her. “Ask us a question.”
“Make it good,” Renny added.
Solara pursed her lips, tapping them with an index finger to feign deep thought when, truthfully, she’d chosen her question hours ago. “Okay, how about this? Would you rather confess your darkest secret to the whole galaxy, or tell your best friend’s darkest secret to their worst enemy?” The question was designed to test Kane, so she looked at him first. “What’s your answer?”
“That’s easy,” he said. “The first one.”
She raised a challenging brow. “Your secrets must not be that dark.”
“You’d be surprised,” he told her, and stared at the scattering of lentils on the floor. “But I’d do anything to protect my best friend.” He flicked a glance at her and stressed, “Anything.”
Solara frowned at his response. It wasn’t what she’d expected.
One by one, the rest of the crew gave the same answer until the meal ended, and then empty bowls were piled into the sink, and tin mugs were gathered in preparation for customary after-dinner drinks around the fireplace.
Doran caught her eye and gave a slight nod—a signal that he would keep the crew occupied in the lounge while she rifled through Kane’s bunk.
“I’m heading back to my room for a minute,” she told the group. “Go ahead and start without me.”
She strode upstairs and passed through the lounge, then continued to her open doorway and waited there for Doran’s next signal. The ship’s quarters were connected to the lounge by one short hallway, making her easy to spot by anyone who moved to the far end of the room. So she stayed put until she heard Doran challenge the crew to a poker game and then for the noise of bodies settling into chairs before she tiptoed into Cassia and Kane’s chamber.
The room carried traces of Cassia’s floral scent, so subtle that Solara wouldn’t have noticed it had she not known about the implants. She felt a twinge of guilt for pilfering through Cassia’s things, but not enough to stop her from searching every drawer built into the storage wall.
Beneath a stack of Kane’s shirts, she discovered a small pouch containing twenty fuel chips, which was about two months’ wages for a ship hand. Nothing out of the ordinary. In his sock drawer, she found an assortment of basic possessions: an older-model data tablet with a cracked screen; a few photographs, all of Cassia; assorted souvenirs; a Solar League ID fob bearing the name KANE ARRIC.
There was no evidence of a reward, nor of an electronic credit account. He didn’t even own a laser blade, which explained why he kept using Cassia’s. A peek beneath the bottom cot didn’t reveal anything but dust balls, and if there were any hidden panels in the room, Solara couldn’t find them. It wasn’t until she swept a hand under the bottom mattress that she discovered something interesting.
For the second time in her life, she touched gold. But this necklace made Demarkus’s choker look like costume jewelry. At the end of a thick, sturdy chain dangled a palm-sized amulet with a faceted blue stone at its center. Even in near darkness, the stone captured the glow from the exit lighting and sprayed prisms over her sleeve. Peering closer, she admired the intricate design work that adorned the piece in an interwoven circle of flowering vines. That kind of artistry proved it hadn’t come off an assembly line. She turned it over and noticed the other side was damaged by light scratches, but not badly enough to conceal the name carved there in bold script.
Princess Cassia Adelaide Rose
Solara dropped the necklace and had to perform a feat of acrobatics to keep it from hitting the floor. Blinking hard, she read the text two more times in case her eyes had deceived her.
They hadn’t. Cassia was royalty.
But from which planet? Dozens of colonies were classified as monarchies, either by active reign or as symbolic figureheads of a democracy. As long as Solar Territory laws were obeyed and taxes rendered, the League didn’t care how the colonies governed themselves. Narrowing down Cassia’s home world would take time and research.