“Not just a high priestess, Kali. The high priestess.”
“That’s just completely ridiculous. Rain is a much better person than I am. Plus, she has faith, and I don’t. There’s no way I’m the high priestess.” I start to laugh again, but then something else occurs to me—something that gives me pause. “What does this have to do with you coming to find me?”
The watchful look in his eyes only makes my heart pound faster.
“Does being the high priestess have something to do with activating the heptosphere?”
He nods. “It’s not just about the high priestess, Kali. Activating the heptosphere means you have alien DNA. You’re what the Sisterhood calls the Star Bringer.”
“So you came after me because you decided I was this…Star Bringer? And if I touched the heptosphere—” I break off as the truth slams into me, powerful and undeniable. My stomach burns, and my lungs tighten so much that it’s hard to draw a breath.
I’ve always felt an undeniable connection to this ship. It’s given me comfort in a way I’ve never been able to explain. Drawn to the heptosphere, too, so strongly sometimes that it almost consumes me.
And…when the Starlight disappeared, they said I disappeared, too.
Not Rain. Me.
Ian pulls me into his chest then, his strong arms wrapping around me. And though I know I should pull away, know that things are so strange between us that I shouldn’t be taking comfort from him right now, I can’t help it. He feels so good, so big and strong and solid, that it’s impossible to pull away from him. Instead, I curl into him, my hands clutching at his shirt as I bury my face in his chest and breathe in the warm coffee-and-gerjgin scent of him.
The tears I haven’t been able to shed since Lara and Arik died burn in the back of my eyes, mixing with the grief over my father and the anger over my mother, until I can’t breathe. Can’t think. Until all I can do is sob, my entire body shaking against his as I cry and cry and cry.
He holds me the whole time, his hands stroking down my hair, rubbing my back, holding me tightly against him. And I know things are messed up between us, but right now, he feels like the only solid thing in my life. The only thing that’s not shifting in a world that’s suddenly gone completely topsy-turvy on me.
Eventually, I cry myself out, and Ian’s here for that, too. He sweeps me into his arms and carries me down the hall to his cabin. Gage and Max are still in the bridge, so it’s just the two of us as he pulls back the sheets on his bed and lays me gently beneath them.
I’m exhausted, physically and emotionally, and all I want to do is sleep. But I don’t want to be alone. Not yet. Not right now. “Please,” I tell him as he starts to back away. “Please don’t leave me.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Princess,” he whispers. And then he kicks off his boots and crawls into bed beside me, wrapping me back up in his arms. “Sleep. I’ll be here when you wake up.”
I nod, burrowing against him as he turns off the light. And only then, when we’re in the dark, do I finally work up the nerve to say what I’ve been thinking ever since he told me about what my mother did to Rain and me.
“She killed my father, didn’t she?” I whisper, the words burning away all the sorrow inside of me and filling my heart with rage. “She couldn’t afford for what she did to get out, so when he told Merrick’s father, she had him assassinated.”
Ian shifts in the darkness. “I don’t know about that,” he says. But I can hear in his voice that he thinks it’s possible, too.
“I do,” I tell him as the rage coalesces deep inside me into a powerful need for justice. “She killed him to keep her secret and then used it as an excuse to capture and torture hundreds of rebels. People like Beckett and her brother.”
“Maybe.” He nods.
“There’s no maybe about it,” I tell him as the need to sleep finally creeps through me. “And I’m going to find a way to prove it.”
Chapter 86
Beckett
Everyone else is asleep, and once again I’m sitting on the bridge alone. Rain came in earlier, tried to convince me to come to bed. And I wanted to—I really wanted to. The days that I have left to hold her and kiss her and press her sweet, soft body against mine are running out.
But I put in the call to my mother’s emergency number nearly twenty-four hours ago. Which means I should be hearing back very soon. We’ve always had a twenty-four-hour rule about returning calls on that channel, and I have to believe that hasn’t changed.
Everything else certainly has.
A sharp pain rips through my skull, and for a second it takes me over so completely that I can’t do anything but endure it. Even breathing is impossible. It goes on longer than the last one, which was longer than the one before it. Just another sign that something is wrong. Just another sign that my time is running out.
I stare at the comms link, willing it to ring. I have to get this done. I have to make sure Rain and the others are safe before I go. The thought of leaving when they’re still in danger makes the pain, and everything else, so much worse.
I reach below my chair and pull out the painkillers. I’m almost out, and to be honest, I’m not sure why I take them anymore. They barely touch the agony. Hope springs eternal, I suppose, which seems ridiculous—I thought I lost my ability to hope right around the time I lost my father.
I swallow a couple of the painkillers because taking them is better than not taking them, then start fiddling with the Starlight’s commands. Every day, I learn something new about this ship, something that blows my hair back and makes me wonder what the hell kind of technology the Ancients had access to. I’ve flown a lot of ships in my life, and none of them—none of them—come close to doing what the Starlight can do.
She’s the strangest and most kick-ass ship I’ve ever seen. I think I’m going to miss her almost as much as I’m going to miss Rain.
I yawn as I glance at the clock on the Starlight’s dash. Seventeen more minutes until the twenty-four hours have come and gone. Seventeen more minutes until I can crawl into bed with Rain and pretend, for just a little while longer, that everything is okay.
At eight minutes to go—just when I’ve convinced myself that she isn’t going to call—the comms link starts to ring. It could be any number of people, but I know even before I pick it up that it’s my mom.
Sure enough, the moment I hit accept, her familiar face fills the screen. She looks older than she did the last time I saw her. But a lot has happened in the last ten months, so I guess that’s to be expected.
“Beckett!” Her yellow eyes light up when she realizes who she’s speaking with. “You’re alive! I thought—”
Her voice breaks. She clears her throat, tries again. “All the reports I could glean together said that you disappeared from the prison compound months ago and that the Empire was reporting you as deceased.”
“Fuck the Empire,” I answer, and she laughs merrily. No one can say I don’t know my audience.
“Tell me where you are, baby, and I’ll send someone to get you.” Now that her happiness at finding I’m still alive has leveled out, she looks me over with critical eyes. “What did they do to you?”