River’s End ch 59: Feed Impossible to the Flames

A hiss. My door opens, and I stiffen. A being of galaxies steps inside my room, trailed by stars like skirts or chains. Sazlii. My heart tries to flee again. To my sight, there are no walls, simply speckled darkness stretched forever.

No matter how far my mind runs, my body will still be here, sitting on the floor of my room aboard this tiny ship. Trapped.

“No,” I say. She’s here to put me back in that box. Silvika is suspicious. She knows her vedia keeps something from her, and at random throughout the last five days, she has demanded to see me in that coffin. Each time, I’m terrified they’ll leave me in there.

Sazlii huffs something between a laugh and a grunt. “Alright, you do not want a piece of the cake. Understood.”

I turn toward her, half rising. “There’s cake?”

“No, but if there were, you would have turned it down already.”

“Don’t get my hopes up then.” I sink back to the floor and return a three-sided book to my lap. My fingers slide over the pages. If only I can feel the difference between light and dark, if the Lorsknu can help me see the letters in some form, I’ll be able to read again.

“Valon requests your presence in the forward control room.”

My brows scrunch. “What for?”

“He did not say, but I would assume it involves a task unique to you. My sister is in an herb-deepened sleep. I will watch over her until you can return to this sanctuary.”

Sanctuary. As if I should want to be in here. I am grateful for some respite, but I’d feel safer if they didn’t barge in every couple of hours demanding I pretend to be dead. What’s worse, a small, insane part of me actually looks forward to these occasions. It’s the only time I get to leave this room.

I know I should be more patient. Sojourners spend decades between the stars, stuck within the same small number of chambers like this, but maybe being able to see those walls would make a difference. To read. To study. To do something worthwhile. Every time they try to look at something, they don’t see the edge of the universe taunting them.

They’re not racing across the sea of stars to save a friend either. This is my chance to be useful.

Murmuring thanks to Sazlii for the message, I slip past her, book closed with one finger marking my place. Not that it matters. I have no idea what’s on that page. Valon brought me the volume this morning, and for all I know, it’s another embarrassing title. But who’s here to laugh? Him?

He’s not laughing now.

“/Speaking in circles wastes both our time,/” he rattles off in Ahairiki. I don’t know the language well, and while I try to piece together this first sentence, I miss the next several. They’re talking about me, though.

“/Efereodonidii is a child of my clan observing his elders in well-disciplined silence./”

I hold back a snort. From what I saw of him through his pet, we look nothing alike. No matter how I’ve been introduced, people have always taken one look at my red hair and refused to believe I’m a Lokma. Believing I’m related to Valon would be even more of a stretch.

But I get the hint and play the part. Standing straight, I rest my hands behind my back and listen.

“/Is that not a great many syllables to heap upon such a tiny thing? That vine is a vast and fruitful entity./”

If someone told me a xylophone just spoke, I’d believe it. Though the voice is a bit deeper. More like timpani disguised as a xylophone.

What am I doing gawking at the voice that just insulted me?

“/Ezezete-ki,/” Valon says, and I’m not sure about the honorific. -ki is the plainest one, I believe, acknowledging that the addressee is capable of sapient thought, but it assigns neither honor nor disrespect. “/Have you seen the vessel I seek? Yes or no./”

“/Again, this being asks what will the Sojourner give in exchange for this information?/”

“/The goodwill of this Sojourner clan, naturally./” A faint rustle accompanies Valon’s last word. Does he perform the complete Iniahara-na Stance of Goodwill? Are his fingertips aligned as if he holds a sphere, pinkies pointing at the ground?

That image is as ridiculous as the bargain he offers, and I try to hold back another laugh. River Guardian goodwill was a vague notion at the start and means very little anymore. At best, it manifests as protection from invaders. River Guardians don’t fight, though, so this usually works out as potential attackers getting talked into going elsewhere by skilled-but-arrogant negotiators.

At least Valon has the latter half of the required traits.

Ezezete seems to have the other half. “/River Guardian goodwill is far too valuable an offer. How about a more even trade? Knowledge for knowledge./”

“/Go on./”

I bite the inside of my lower lip to keep quiet. I barely know anything of Iniahara, but even I know what they want: the tech to send their own to space. To leave the shackles of their world and travel the stars like us.

“/Little knowledge in exchange for little knowledge. Valon-aya wants to know if a certain vessel has been seen, and we of this humble world wish for the designs of the ship he rides./”

My incisors sink further into my lip. No matter how many flattering -aya honorifics they tack onto Valon’s name, he will tell them “no” like the River Guardians always do. They must work through the challenges inherent in leaving their homeworld. We will welcome them. We will gently guide them, but solving one problem usually creates others. If they can’t handle the first one, it would be cruel to throw them so ill-equipped at the next set.

Valon steps forward, and his fingers whisper over glass controls. “/This button will send the desired designs. It will be pushed on the condition that, should the answer to the initial question be yes, details will be readily forthcoming./”

I stumble back. Only the wall’s flexible embrace against my shoulder blades keeps me upright. He’s not actually going to send it to them, right? I must have misunderstood. Did he say where he would send it? Maybe that’s the catch.

Ezezete accepts.

I’m too dumbfounded to catch anything other than yes, they saw the River’s End several days ago. Nearby. Between this world and its star.

A tap precedes a whoosh of the computer acknowledging a launched message.

I’m still trying to figure out which number was paired with the days. Wait, was that even the word for days, or was it weeks? How long are their days?

“/Open the message./”

Did he really send it to them, then? What right does Valon have to make that decision, to alter the space race of an entire world?

Straightening, I whisper his name, but he ignores me.

Voice low, I speak in Menyaze. “{What are you doing?}”

He retreats two paces from the console and steps firmly on my toes. I scowl but refrain from jerking my knee into his backside.

“/Betrayal./” Voice more gong than xylophone now, Ezezete snarls a whole sentence, but I only catch that one word. How much of the exoskeleton adds to that resonance?

In my mental image, metallic plates rattle over mottled green skin. I’ve only seen Iniahara-nas in photos, and I try to match the sounds of the movement to those generic models. An androgynous, curved face and narrow chin. Square pupils, pointed teeth, and ears like a fish’s fins. Two legs, four arms, and a pair of large, iridescent wings like a butterfly’s.

Valon chuckles. “/There is no mistake. The file sent does detail the plans of this ship. In Menyaze verse./”

What poor soul was bored enough to convert blueprints into poetry?

Okay, I was that bored this past week. Maybe this is what Valon was doing when he wasn’t in my room prodding me with half-answers to my ever-flowing questions. Giving them designs they can’t read is perfectly in keeping with his policy of not saying anything useful. Or at least, not useful unless you’ve turned your brain inside out thinking about it.

“/It is incentive to continue aiding this venture,/” he explains. “/For every worthwhile update on the River’s End received, one translated line will be sent. This Sojourner will await further messages./”

As background noise from the transmission fades, I flinch, still stumbling over that middle sentence. This is worse than just furnishing the tech they want.

“If you give them a translation for comparison, won’t they learn Menyaze?”

The air from his dismissive wave buffets my cheek. “They are not that intelligent.”

I wrench my foot out from under his and retreat. “Worlds are lost with such assumptions.”

“If they can do all that, then perhaps they deserve the freedom and responsibility that comes with it.” He sighs. “Eventually, they will scrape up enough to pay the Veloi-nas for what they want, and I would prefer to be their benefactor instead.”

At mention of the pirates of the stars, my nose wrinkles. Literal rodents. Venomous, too. It would be better for the Iniahara-nas to learn from us than from them, but Valon doesn’t get to decide that for a whole world.

“You didn’t even run it by our honored elders.”

“I did not ask them about keeping you alive either.” He plops in a chair, fingers flitting over glass again. “Now, tell me what the scene outside looks like to the Lorsknu.”

He’s asked me that several times in the last five days, and I haven’t gotten any better at explaining it. Especially the distance. But even if the words that dive off my tongue don’t make much sense, at least I’m starting to understand it better.

“There’s a planet,” I say, not because I see the land, but because I see the life on it. Teardrops falling in the eternal night, millions of them, separated from the rest of the glittering sea. “It’s directly beneath us, closer than all else.”

A warm notion sinks all the way to my bones. He’s impressed, but he shouldn’t be. He was speaking to someone on Iniahara with little lag. It’s an easy guess that we’re in orbit around their world.

“Where is Rose?”

This close, finding her is easy, like knowing where my hand is. I don’t even have to look. “Near. On a planet, but not this one.”

“Iniahara is the only inhabited planet in this system. There isn’t another for lightyears.”

I’m not sure of the distance, but I see another. She’s drowning in its light, one diamond in a river of molten crystal. The string that connects us is thin but shorter than my galactic arm span. I could reach out and pluck her from that hiding world.

I’m not sure what that would do. It wouldn’t teleport her to me physically. And despite Valon’s favoring the vague when I ask about the bonds, he made one thing clear this week. My transient, distant connection is unlikely to erase Rosa. Still, if I alert my brother to our rescue plans, there’s no telling what he’ll do.

“I will scan the system.” Three soft beeps acknowledge his touch on the controls. “Any plans for when you reunite with her? Will you confess your enduring love and loyalty?”

“No.” The word slips out, a rock falling on my foot. “I mean, I am her loyal mykta, and she knows that. Me coming all this way for her says that better than I ever could.”

He stands and pats my head on his way to the door. As if I’m a dapkie who just sat on command.

“A thorough scan will take half an hour. I will pass the time in my room.”

I should let him go, be a proper child and keep quiet. Conversations with him are torture. But I don’t want to be alone, and something bothers me.

My fingers dig into my palm. “What was the question you skipped?”

“From The Girly Gab?” He turns and leans against the doorframe. “Once spoken, you will have to answer it.”

My jaw locks. “You obviously didn’t think it would be that entertaining.”

He clucks, and a whole era somewhere probably passes before he quotes, “How does her kiss make you feel?”

One garbled word escapes before I initiate lockdown, and I choke on it.

The false pity dripping from his tone completely fails to hide his chuckle. “That bad, huh?”

“Dollii—” It’s more squeak than word. Clearing my throat, I try again. “Dollii’s kiss…”

None of my thoughts are clear enough to form a coherent sentence. There are no words, only feelings. Her kiss was home. Or something I wished was home.

“How telling that you mention the Lokma daughter first.”

Every inch of my skin bristles. “She’s the one I’ve actually kissed.”

“And how many points was it worth?”

Would it be possible to punch him and hide in a corner at the same time?

“Five.”

“How generous.” His amusement is akin to fire. If it were a literal fire, I wouldn’t have any eyebrows left. “Perhaps I should steal a perfect-scoring kiss from the Lokma daughter sometime.”

“Don’t you dare.” My hand is tangled in his shirt front. When did that happen?

He shakes with laughter. He doesn’t mean what he said. I can’t let it get to me.

Forcing my fingers to uncurl, I shove away from him. “Sure, tease me, but Dollii?” My cheeks blaze, and I run my hands along them, then through my web of braids. “Dollii’s kiss made a blind man see what he never thought he would.”

He places a hand atop my head. “Someday, when it matters, choose her.”

It matters now. My feelings are no less real because I’m young. I’m inexperienced but not stupid. If I say this, he’ll make another joke at my expense, though. My head understands what he said before. I have to hide from Rosa’s family. Anything between us will always have to remain secret. But my heart doesn’t want to let go.

Feed impossible to the flames. I want to give this a chance.

I straighten so I’m almost as tall as him. If he wants to twist words, I can play that game, too. “Rosa’s kiss set off fireworks in my soul, one emotion after another. I didn’t understand half of them.”

He remains silent for several seconds, probably blinking at me. His amusement cools like lava, heat replaced with rock I’m not sure I can identify.

“You have kissed the sarquant?”

No, but she accidently shared that memory of her kissing Grenswa’s prince, and that was exactly how it made me feel.

Before he can ask me to rank it, I step past him. After years of pretending, I want easy answers. I want Rosa to just talk to me honestly.

If I tell her that I kissed Dollii, that I love them both, what will she say?

As I enter the corridor, my arm slides along the wall, keeping my bearings. My galactic fingers stretch toward Rosa and the sea of light around her. They shake. The moment I touch her, she’ll flinch away. I know this, so why am I still reaching?

I’m close enough to feel her warmth. It flutters like breath. My fingers wrap around a shoulder, but it’s like a balloon. It’ll pop. I pull back, but strands stretch between us. Wet glue. She is yanked after my retreating hand.

I freeze. ‘Say something, Rosa? You feel this, right?’

‘Fredo?’

Her hope flows to me as a spring breeze, then congeals into something softer than down feathers. As if it’s a blanket, I bundle her in it, and my arms barely reach around this Rosa taco. A smile pulls across both of us.

‘I’m close,’ I murmur into the top of her head, ‘but I need you to show me exactly where you are.’

Like a dying flame, her smile flickers and vanishes. Her hope transmutes into fear and shatters, leaving my embrace empty and lacerated.

‘I won’t fall for it.’ Her words tumble back to me, brittle like autumn leaves as she flees.

The glue between us stretches. Strands snap and pelt my skin—whips made of my own loyalty. Despite my wish to keep close and the elastic pull of the bond, I can’t move. Fog constricts around me with the chill of midnight winter, and wherever it touches, my stars fizzle and fade.

‘How many do you think he can lose?’ The evil vedia, Alaysq. The fog is her. It stings even more than the fraying bond. How do I fight something like this?

‘It’s a trick. You haven’t captured my Fredo.’ She shakes her head, but her confidence in the statement is thin and cracked. The Rosa of a few weeks ago believed me invincible. She has since seen me nearly killed.

Still, ‘My Fredo.’ My heart swells at the claim.

Alaysq laughs a whisper in my ear. ‘Prove yourself to her. You need to know where she is.’

I won’t be bait, though. If she wants Rosa to reveal her location, it can only mean this evil vedia doesn’t know where she is. They don’t have her. That should be a good thing, but knowing my Rosa, she’s probably gotten herself into a worse predicament.

I don’t need her to tell me and risk Alaysq overhearing, not if I can directly see what she sees. The sting persists, but I shove it to the recesses of my mind, staring at the galactic version of Rosa. My goal.

They’re speaking. I hear the sounds but comprehend none of it. My body of stars becomes a river. Some remain in the fog. Others flow toward Rosa and merge with the edges of her galaxies. I am her fingertips.

Slowly, a scene fills in. Red sand. Round buildings. A pool. A plaza. A tree.

Memorize every line, Fredo. Any detail could be a clue Valon can match to a map.

A part of me doubts, though. It’s not enough. Valon’s maps don’t show another inhabited world anywhere near here. I need more. Are there signs, written language? What do they say? To see that much, I need to go deeper.

My stars burrow further—her arm, her chest. There’s a symbol on the tree.

‘Fredo, what are you doing?’

It’s too far away. We have to get closer. As I will the carving into focus, her foot lifts.

Warm droplets of awe rain around me, collecting in puddles of wonder.

‘Everything is stars. Fredo, what is this?’

I still can’t answer, though not for lack of a passive try. My own mental voice does not respond to the command. Instead, Rosa’s mouth opens, and it takes so much effort. Lifting her hand is easier. Someone yells at her. An adolescent with the fuzzy ears of a Shlykrii-na and gaudy orange paint striped across his face. I can’t bother answering him either.

Rosa’s fingers touch the carving.

“Lily!”

The cry is a bullet through my brain. Images flash. This tree, huge. Then a sapling. Times in between. A girl stands beside it, sometimes suited up for a spacewalk. Sometimes her long curls fly in the wind. They’re the amethyst hue of my eyes, a hair color only vedia possess. She smiles at me, fascination and joy sparking in a gaze even pinker than Rosa’s.

I’m on the floor, frigid tiles flat against my palms and knees. Retching. The ground is wet.

Solid hands pat my back, wrap my shoulders, my chest, and pull me away from my mess.

“What happened?” Valon drags me through the narrow hall.

A door hisses closed. Right, I’m on his ship, not on a rapidly changing, half-designed world.

“There was a tree.” My words are more cough than anything else, but Valon manages to understand.

“Trees are not known for attacking people in spaceship hallways.”

The images keep flipping faster and faster. I’m dizzy. Stop. Make sense. Balance. Which way is supposed to be up?

Lily was my sister’s name.

That realization is a pin. The images slow. They’re memories. They belong to someone who knew my sister. Someone who saw her buried beneath this tree.

Rosa is wherever my sister died, but wasn’t that supposed to be on Shlykrii? A world with a violet sky and fierce, cold wind. Rosa’s surroundings look nothing like that. Red sky, red sand, red walls. Tepid breeze. Harsh sun.

“Valon, what is in that syringe?” Sazlii’s voice, faint with distance. Is she really as far away as she sounds?

“His heart races in a way it cannot handle. This should sedate him.”

“No.” I intend it as a shout, but what escapes can’t even qualify as a whisper.

Yol’s voice echoes in my memory. The doctor’s hand trails down my arm. Pokes the wound on my leg. The void beckons me into its embrace.

I won’t return to it. Ever.

“Red. Sky. A tree. My sister.”

The images flip too fast. Why is it so hard to form a simple sentence?

Warmth on my shoulders. Solid hands.

“What about your sister, child?” Sazlii’s stars surround me. The images still whirl and jump, but I barely see them beyond her. With a sweeping gesture, she gathers me back to myself, away from Rosa, away from the evil vedia.

No, I can’t just leave them like this.

The words die before I can say them, withered by the blazing arrow of her attention. I am not its focus. Alaysq is. Recognition burns as cobalt, intertwined with wariness and doubt in the various hues of sunset.

Like a baby bird hiding beneath its mother’s wing, I tuck closer into Sazlii’s side. ‘You know her?’

‘It cannot be whom I think. Come.’

As she tows me away, I shift through the scrambled pieces of myself. Alaysq does not know where Rosa is. Finding the River’s End will not help in finding her anymore. I’ve seen her surroundings. I don’t have anything of my own experience to match them to. But if for once my being this cursed thing can come in handy, please let it be now.

The box Sjaealam gave me slides onto my mental lap. The lid won’t open.

Far away from Alaysq now, Sazlii shrinks and sits knee-to-knee with me. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Fastening a handle on this blade of ignorance.’

‘Sjaealam gave you truth sealed away. You might hate knowing it.’

I ignore her and continue trying to pry the lid off. If only I had a real blade.

I have Lorsknu. They swarm around me, flickering with each rapid heartbeat. At my will, they converge on the box and nibble at it. Flickers turn to studders and sparks. Some scream. Some flee. I can’t tell where one heartbeat ends and another begins.

The box appears undamaged.

I claw at it. ‘Why give me a gift I can’t open?’

‘Calm, child.’ Sazlii’s hands cover mine and still them. Color pours into the specks that form her, a glass pitcher filling with ink. She stares at me with eyes of the purest blue. ‘Sjaealam did not mean for you to learn of these things in desperation.’

At first, the tranquility she offers crashes over me like frigid waves. I jump, dreading the next slap, but once fully immersed, the world becomes weightless. I float, but this isn’t the void. There’s no notion of falling or spinning. As the box rises, I catch it. I can move. I can feel its polished sides.

The Lorsknu hover around me. Waiting. Expectant. They no longer flicker. As I exhale, my heartbeat reverts to a gentle throb at the edge of my awareness.

‘There you go. Now you may lift the lid and draw out one item.’

Panic flashes. ‘One? What if it’s not the knowledge I need?’ I plummet, but like a mother dapkie, Sazlii catches the scruff of my neck.

‘Trust your subconscious. The one piece you need will come.’

Trust the deeper, never-seen part of myself. The part that insists on reliving the fire island over and over. The part that can throw a knife and hit the target every time.

With a nod, I banish doubt and fear to my periphery again. Sazlii releases her hold, but I remain in place, weightless. My fingers fold over the edge of the box and slip into the thinnest crack. The lid swings up to reveal a wavering glow. With one last glance at Sazlii, I thrust my hand into the container’s luminous pool.

Laughter. Red hair full of braids and flowers. Two nearly identical young women stand in the center of a crowd. They are adults now, Asaqrin and Asafrán. The older sister barely notices me, but the younger’s gaze lingers.

A hallway, white and glaring. She is its only splash of color, staring with amethyst eyes that outshine any sun. “Kel?”

My knees shake with an urge to flee.

No, these are not my legs, though they feel connected to me. I will them to straighten, to step forward with all the grace of a river.

‘You are braver than that.’

The encouragement begets determination.

She still stares.

Our legs freeze, and our mouth opens. “I fancy you, Asafrán, and I need to know if you feel the same.”

With that sentiment finally free, pride unfurls, crowding my chest. Kel has been trying to say this for months.

Asafrán huffs a laugh. “You need to know if I fancy myself?”

The background blurs and morphs. Blue sky and white, puffy clouds. Palm trees, mountains, and sand. Salty air. Seagulls caw and dive. The wind blows through her twisted hair as she continues to laugh.

I hold two tiny bundles. ‘Do you see them, Sjaealam?’

I do more than see. In this moment, I am Kel, a father cradling his daughters in his arms, inhaling their powdery scent. Such sweet faces. The elastic walls of my heart bulge with love.

‘They are perfect.’

“What an expression, Kel. Here.” Asafrán straightens a violet curl on each head and weaves it around a petal, naming each flower in turn. “Wisteria. And Lily.”

The bundles stretch and grow into preteen girls sitting across a table from one another. One pokes at florescent sand while the other takes notes on a screen. They blur at the edges of my vision, but I keep glancing at them.

My eyes burn, but my fingers do not slow, rapidly flicking through menus on a tablet.

‘Kel, stop altering Wisteria’s medical records.’

‘She cut her finger. I need to ensure none of the blood analytics reflect what she is.’

Concern is a tiny worm writhing in the chambers of my heart. ‘Was she badly injured?’

‘No, but they always test for infection when we have been in contact with a foreign world. Especially Earth. Beautiful land but lots of microbes.’

The worm poofs into a cloud of relief, and I cannot help a frustrated sigh. ‘You fail to convince me, Kel. If there truly is nothing wrong with a keilan, why hide it? We should be honest and rely on logic to safeguard her.’

Our hands freeze. ‘Because the girls seem to have a bond?’

‘Exactly. If Wisteria dies, so will Lily as her bonded vedia. Lily is an eteriq. They will not risk losing her.’

On the screen, the box waiting for us to input updated data blurs into a flashing blob. The device hits our knees and slides onto the floor with a clatter. ‘The Abaeyoi were reluctant to take me in the first place. Our honored elders warned me against pursuing Asafrán, that our genes would not mix well.’

They hate that Lily is both a vedia and an eteriq. I cannot deny that. Yet, there is something more lurking beneath the surface of his mental sea. Something dark and prickly.

‘What do you hide from me?’

‘Did you see what happened yesterday?’ Kel’s voice is an ember crumbling to ash.

I have pushed him aside too often lately. By necessity, my mind is rearranging, the dynamic between my bonds restructuring. In the place reserved for my primary mykta, there now stands a gaping black hole vacuuming up everything that gets close. I mourn her loss, but I wish to spare my entourage this pain.

‘Show me now.’

Yet, he does not. He holds the experience at a distance like an adult holding an open flame away from a child.

‘Sparrow is in a comatose state. No one knows what happened, but Wisteria told me the boy was teasing Lily. After repeated warnings, he would not stop, so Wisteria said she “made him understand.”’

The worm in my heart is back, but this time it has teeth. ‘You will keep this secret?’

‘Sparrow’s parents are already beside themselves. They lost their other child when on Earth to an acidic red fruit.’

‘This is dangerous, Kel. Perhaps you should send her to me. If I meet her in person, something can be worked out through the bond.’

I no longer see what he sees. Either he has blocked me or closed his eyes. It takes him much too long to answer. ‘Lily would be lost without Wisteria.’

Time disconnects and jolts, yanked by a thick cord of pride. It has been years since Kel spoke to me. Occasionally, I watch the universe through him, but it irritates him. He cannot shut me out completely, but I do not like asserting our imbalance of power.

Now, he freely shows me the scene, and I forget to breathe. An infant rests in the crook of his arm, swaddled in scarlet cloth. The color of Asafrán’s hair. Has he fathered another child? Is it like Wisteria?

‘It was a silly notion. An indulgence,’ he says as he pushes the blanket away from the top of the baby’s head. Its hair is dark, and its ears are lupine.

‘Surra-na.’ I gasp. ‘You did not.’

‘No, this child is of no relation to me genetically. But Lily crafted him. She wanted to take what was good of Surra and Seallaii and make something even better. I never thought anything would come of it, but she is a young eteriq, so we let her experiment, and she has taken a barren world and made it live.’

The worm is back, fatter and more feral than ever. ‘Live? With one life form?’

‘Hundreds of species of flora and fauna all tangled in a web of symbiosis. This is the crowning touch, a sapient race. This infant is one of twenty that live, each of a different ethnicity.’ He shakes his head, smile so wide it hurts. ‘I have to hold him. Otherwise, I begin to doubt he is real.’

Kel’s walls are fabric stretched taut, but for the first time in decades, they slacken. He wants to share everything about this novelty. The child’s solidarity in our hands—heavier than a Seallaii-na his size should be. His faintly iron scent.

Like rolling fog, my curiosity spreads over our surroundings. Gravity claws at every part of our being, staved off by shaky, sore muscles. The air clings, dry and charged, a storm poised for release, yet no cloud blocks the scene above. The sky stretches wide, a brighter scarlet than the Abaeyoi’s famous hair.

Kel holds none of it back. This is his daughter’s masterpiece, a network of pieces he barely understands, but he knows it is beautiful. The notion bleeds into me, stains my fear, and erases the part of me that considers this wrong.

Maps brand themselves into my subconscious. The Inihiri system. An inner world ravaged by the elderly star’s fits. Arabala. Lily calls it Rablah.

I shut the lid. This is enough. I have what I need. I push the box away. Like sunken treasure, it’ll wait here until I’m ready to see more.

It doesn’t move, but I do, like a rising diver. Sensations greet me gradually as if light filtered through a wavering sea. Sazlii’s hands rest on my cheeks. I lie on a soft bed of vines, surrounded by the syrupy scent of night flowers. Something cold rests above my heart, softly echoing every beat. A medical scanner?

I reach for the arm that holds it, fingers tangling in a loose sleeve. “Valon?”

His other hand folds over mine, and he sighs. “I thought I would have to truly put you in that coffin this time, child.”

He thought I was dying?

My body must have thought the same. Despite the weak gravity aboard this ship, I weigh more than a million stars. Just drawing one more breath is exhausting.

But I don’t let go, and I have to say this. “I know where Rosa is.”

Continued in chapter 60

Thank you for reading!