Apparently we’re going to put that assertion to the test.
Fear turns my insides to mush, and to keep from screaming I bite my lip until it bleeds. One of the many rules of being a princess? Never, ever scream in a spaceship crash. Instead, die with dignity.
Too bad I feel anything but dignified right now.
Beside me, Max mutters something vile beneath his breath. Rain gasps. Merrick merely looks ill. Gage covers his eyes with his hands while Beckett laughs, a high-pitched, wild sound that has every hair on my body standing straight up. And through it all, Ian looks straight ahead, face grim and jaw locked as if willing the doors to open through sheer grit alone.
I’m not sure if it works or if something else happens. But at the last second, the doors miraculously slide open, and we glide straight through into the airlock.
I have one second of relief before they close behind us, leaving us in total darkness.
“Come on, you son of a varnook,” Gage growls. “Open sesame.”
A few more seconds of darkness. A few more seconds of holding my breath. And then the outer doors slide open, the light of a thousand stars burning away the darkness.
For a second, we hover; then the ship shoots out into the vastness of space, leaving the burning hulk of the Caelestis behind on its path to who knows where.
Chapter 10
Kali
My mother says, To get what you want, smile until it’s time not to. And as we cruise through space with absolutely no destination in mind, I’d like to think that I’ve legitimately reached the “time not to smile” part, but I don’t think that’s how it actually works. Mom taught me smiling has nothing to do with being happy—it’s a way to elicit a desired response. And not smiling is exactly the same.
She’s had me practicing my regal smile—not to mention my regal bored expression—in the mirror since I was four, and sometime around age ten it became second nature. She used to tell me it was building my armor because we need to be strong for the good of the system.
Except it doesn’t feel like second nature right now.
I’m trying to smile—really, I am—but my lower lip refuses to stop wobbling. I clamp it steady with my teeth and blink against the sudden, suspicious prickling behind my eyes. If emotions are off-limits, then tears are a fate worse than death.
In the rear-view screen, I can see the Caelestis implode, smooth outer shell folding in, as all imperial space stations are set to do in case of critical error so we don’t cover the system in deadly debris. And I’m trying hard not to let my imagination loose on what must have happened to Lara and Arik and Vance and all those other poor people still on board. Maybe they all got away after we did. But I know that’s wishful thinking—which is just escapism for the masses, according to my mother, and not to be indulged. We have a responsibility to think ahead.
I guess it doesn’t matter that Lara and the others died on the ship—maybe it was actually a blessing, considering the rest of us are going to burn in the not-too-distant future. The Caelestis was our hope for salvation, and now she’s turning to ash.
And me? I had such high hopes that I would finally be able to be useful. To do some good.
Ha.
The Empress’s minions will all no doubt say “I told you so” as soon as they hear about what happened. More than likely, they’ll also find a way to heap all the blame for this disaster on me.
I can hear them now, whispering to my mother that I blew the Caelestis up out of pure incompetence. Or worse, out of spite.
I’ve never been popular with the Council—or any of the upper echelon of the Ruling Families, and not just because they’re hoping to take my family’s place in the hierarchy. Most of them were against my mother’s marriage to my father because he wasn’t one of them. He was a priest from Serati—part of a delegation to Askkandia—when he met my mom and fell in love. My father used to tell the story to me when I couldn’t sleep, and I always adored it.
Of course, that was before I realized that their love was one-sided and that my mother hid her true contempt from him for the years she needed him, and not for one second longer. She smiled until it was time not to smile…and my father and I are the ones who paid the price.
Most of the minions believe I have weak blood because my father was not from Askkandia or even from one of the Ruling Families. I don’t care. I wouldn’t swap his blood for anything.
An abyss of sadness beckons—like it has every day since his death—but I ignore it…as I have every day since his death. Time to take stock and decide where to go from here, literally and figuratively. If I’d wanted to drift aimlessly around space, I could have just leaped off the Caelestis in a space suit and hoped for the best.
Reaching down, I tug at a loose strand of cloth from the frayed hem of my Imperial Regalia. The dress is hacked off just above the knee, revealing more bare leg than I’ve ever shown before. And bare feet, dirty bare feet. I lost the cloak somewhere on the run from the lab to the docking bay—though that’s definitely not a loss. Good riddance to bad fashion, if you ask me, but Lara would have a fit if she saw me right now. All her hard work reduced to this.
At the thought of her, my lower lip starts to wobble again, so I shut it down, banishing her from my mind even as I press my lips together so tightly that my jaw aches. What would my mother tell me?
One day, I’ll be able to think of Lara, when I can do something positive with the memory. Just not now.
And maybe not ever, considering I’m stuck on a piece of space junk that will likely disintegrate around us any second, leaving us floating in space for eternity. Add in the company I’m presently keeping, and what happens next is anyone’s guess. Especially considering everyone in this group seems to be looking out for number one and no one else—except maybe Ian, who’s looking out for Milla, whoever that is.
All I know is he was ready to hop aboard this thing without a second thought just for the chance at saving her.
I’d like to think that makes him honorable, but the truth is, it just makes him even more dangerous.
I can sense someone staring at me, and I raise my gaze to find Beckett, the escaped prisoner from the Reformer. She’s leaning against the console, and she has that look in her eyes again—the one I can’t quite decipher but I’m pretty sure means nothing good. When she sees me watching, her lips curve into a small smile and she waggles her fingers at me in a way that sends shivers of unease prickling along my spine.
I tell myself it’s because she could have done anything to earn her spot on that ship. For all I know, she could be a murderer of prupples and kanadoos and baby varlens and deserves everything that happens to her.
Or maybe she was planted on the Caelestis to sabotage her. She could even be part of the Rebellion. I grit my teeth at the thought—I hate the rebels and everything they stand for. They killed my dad. Blew him into so many pieces that there wasn’t even a body left to bury.
But when I look at Beckett again, both her hands are twitching. They’re hanging at her sides and bear the same dark stain as around her eyes. As though she senses my gaze, she screws her left hand into a fist. It hides the stain but doesn’t stop it from trembling.
I remember Ian’s comment that they were carrying out what surely must be illegal experiments on the Caelestis. To be fair, they’d have to be illegal—my mother may be a stone-cold political operative, but there’s no way she’d countenance experiments on her citizens.