Their Fractured Light: A Starbound Novel (24 page)

We head through the doors and find ourselves in another world. The vaulted ceiling soars above us, glittering chandeliers refracting crystal light across every surface, the finishes all velvet and gold, priceless polished wood. Hovertrays glide through the crowd, taking orders and offering up food and drink, and the guests swirl in a kaleidoscope of color, the men in sober black and the women in every shade I’ve ever seen. Musicians play on a dais at one end of the hall, and for an instant I’m a child again, looking for my mother somewhere in this crowd.

Then Sofia’s nudging me and nodding to a red rope cordoning off one exit. A group of partygoers appear through it, led by a tour guide dressed as a soldier—as one of the dead passengers from the
Icarus.

“This is sick,” I murmur, forcing my gaze away. “This should be LaRoux’s greatest shame. Fifty thousand people, dead. Does he think if he puts it out in front of everyone, like he has a right to show it off, they’ll just accept that it wasn’t his fault?”

“It was the biggest headline in decades,” Sofia replies softly. “For these people, the only thing worse than dying on that ship was missing it. This lets them pretend they were there.”

“Without the inconvenience of dying,” I mutter. “LaRoux deserves to have his plans exposed to the galaxy.”

She looks away as the musicians shift to a waltz, the music growing a little louder, and couples start to spill onto the dance floor. “He deserves justice.” There’s steel in her tone that sends a shiver up my spine—that makes me wonder for a moment what the word means to her—though her smile’s as soft and pleasant as ever. Both dimples—not the real one. Maybe I’ll never see her real smile again.

The folks around us are starting to migrate toward the dance floor to join the waltz, and soon we’ll be left standing on our own. Before I have a chance to ask her what that justice she’s chasing might look like, she’s tugging me after them and into the thick of it. No better place to hide.

Moments later I’ve got my arms around her like I did just the day before yesterday—a lifetime ago. It’s exactly the same, and nothing like, our Butterfly Waltz. I’m still transfixed by her face, aching to lean in and kiss her, feeling her touch like electricity. And it’s a world away, because though I’m gazing at her, she’s looking away, tracking the ebb and flow of the crowd, watching the exits, soaking in every detail. For her, this is duty. She’s counting down the moments until our work is done and I’m gone forever.

“The speeches should start in about ten minutes,” she says, finally turning her face toward me so she can speak in my ear, if I bow my head. “That’s why I wanted to be on the last shuttle. Less time to blow my cover. You see the guys at the edges of the room?”

I spin her around so I can take a look, letting my gaze run along the folks who aren’t dancing, men and women ranged around the room at regular intervals. They’re watching the crowd just as Sofia is, and like the view has suddenly come into focus, I see them for what they are: LaRoux’s security detail. “Got them,” I breathe. “Let’s hope one of them doesn’t decide to go for a stroll during the speeches.”

“They won’t,” she says confidently.

“Give me machines any day. Throw people into the mix and all bets are off.”

“Not really,” she replies, as we turn past another couple, the music swelling. “People are predictable. It’s when you think they might not be—that’s when you get in trouble.”

And that’s enough to shut me up. I spend the next few minutes practicing and discarding apologies, searching for the words that will convince her to look me in the eye without that wariness that lives in her gaze now. Trying to ignore the ache that wants to close up my throat and render me completely silent. And while I do all that, I follow her whispered instructions, guiding us through the crowd, trying to hide the way her breath on my skin sends a spark straight down my spine.

She guides us across to a pillar beside the exhibit entrance, where we can pause a moment out of sight of the security team. We’re still visible from some angles, though, and without hesitation she leans back against it, twining her arms up around my neck to tug my head down so she can whisper in my ear. “LaRoux will be here in a moment,” she murmurs, and I make myself smile for anyone who’s watching.

The next few minutes will determine our fate. If we’re caught sneaking our way into the exhibit when it’s off-limits, our lives could depend on our ability to bluff. I have to say something before we do this. I have to try. “I’m sorry,” I murmur, taking my turn to whisper in her ear. “I have excuses, and I know you don’t want to hear them, so I won’t try. I just—I’m so sorry. I never meant to hurt you. I never meant to hunt you.”

She turns her face up to mine, and our eyes meet—it’s as though the crowd around us simply melts away as she holds me captive. Then she whispers, perfectly clear, dousing me with cold water. “Gideon, I don’t care what you think, and I don’t want to hear what you have to say. I’m here for one thing, and that’s LaRoux. He deserves to
die
.”

Ice trickles down my spine. In that instant, our gazes locked, I see the depth of it in her eyes. “Death is simple,” I murmur. “We…” But I trail off. Because it’s
right there
in her eyes. I see just how far she’ll go—I see what she wants.

I don’t know how she’ll do it, but I see what she means to do.

I lean in closer, robbed of breath, scrambling for words. I have a minute, maybe two. “Sofia, I…I didn’t sleep last night.”

Her lips part as she draws breath, and I shake my head, blocking out the unsympathetic response I know is coming.

“I couldn’t sleep. I was talking to my brother. Do you ever talk to your father?”

Her mouth snaps shut, lips thinning, and she tries to push away from the pillar. Desperate, I tighten my grip on her arm to hold her there.

“Please, I’m begging you, just hear me out for one minute. I realized last night what this pursuit of LaRoux has made me. It’s turned me into someone who’ll walk over anyone, who’ll pay any price to ruin the man I hate. The man who took my only brother from me. And I did it, Sof. I tried to destroy your life because I thought you were someone remotely connected to LaRoux. I realized, while I lay there, not sleeping, talking to the guy who used to be my hero, that I haven’t listened to him in a long time.”

“How nice for you,” she replies, deadly quiet, her whisper rasping like the words are being dragged out of her. “This has nothing to do with me.”

“Don’t you see?” I’m practically tripping over my words, my own whisper fierce. “It has everything to do with you. I realized last night that there’s a price I
won’t
pay, no matter what. That there’s a price my brother never would’ve wanted me to pay.”

Our gazes are locked still, and I see something stir in hers. I press on, desperately. I have to make her see.

“I think your father would tell you the same thing. I think he’d tell you there are some prices not worth paying. What it would do to you, what you’d lose—you’re not this person. Trust me, I’ve been to the edge of this cliff, I’ve looked right over. I won’t let you do this.”

“You’re not me, Gideon,” Sofia hisses, her expression fierce. “And you don’t know me. We’re different. I’ve lost my father, my home, everyone I’ve ever cared about—if I lose one more thing taking LaRoux out, so be it. It’ll be over. It doesn’t matter.”

Her eyes are brimming, and I’m aching desperately to touch her—not like I am now, my hands banded around her arms to keep her from running, but properly. Slowly, carefully, so she could turn her head if she wanted, I lift my thumb to brush it across her cheekbone, wiping away the tears. “It matters,” I whisper. “You don’t know how much you’ve got left to lose. Oh, Sof. It matters.”

She doesn’t turn away, and the fact that she’s letting me hold her makes my whole body hum. She’s one degree softer, just one, but when her eyes flick up to meet mine again it feels like the first drops of the thaw. “I don’t know what else to do,” she whispers. “This is all I have.”

“We do what we planned. We find the rift, we stop LaRoux from taking over the Council. We can do it,” I promise, heady, knowing I shouldn’t—knowing I can’t make that promise.
And then, when we’re done, there’ll be time to earn your forgiveness. There’ll be time to leave the Knave behind.

Another degree. Another couple of drops, the snow melting. She tilts her chin up just a fraction, and my heart seizes as I recognize the invitation. Slowly, reverently, I duck my head to brush her lips with mine, then deepen the kiss. My hand presses into the cold marble at her back, and hers slides under my jacket, fingertips pushing over the equipment I have strapped to my torso to find a place they can press through the thin fabric of my shirt, against my skin.

I’m buzzing, I’m electricity, and it takes me several beats to realize that some of that buzzing is external—the dancing has halted for applause. Something’s happening on the dais, but I’m still too distracted to care. I lift my head, blinking, and she shows me her dimples for a moment as she lifts one finger to check her lipstick hasn’t smeared.

“He’s here,” she whispers, though she’s still looking at me.

I nod, still reluctant to pull away. Still searching her gaze. “Promise me,” I murmur. “We do this together.”

“Together,” she whispers, and my heart soars. Now, all she needs is the gentlest of pushes to ease me back and away, so I can turn and trace the applause to the platform at the front of the ballroom.

Monsieur LaRoux is taking the stage.

He looks the same as he always has—piercing blue eyes and close-cropped white hair, a face that’s recognizable all over the galaxy. He’s flanked by a pair of bodyguards, and just behind him come a couple who’ve spent the past year on nearly as many HV screens as he has. Even in black tie, Merendsen still looks military—it’s in the way he stands. He only softens when he rests a hand at the small of Lilac LaRoux’s back, ushering her up the stairs after her father, so that he can stand between her and the photographers at the bottom of the stairs.

I’ve talked with them on text chat dozens of times, and via the feeds I hijacked when I locked down their personal security arrangements, I can get a look at their faces any time I like. But this is the first time we’ve all been in the same physical space, and I’m transfixed. They look exactly like their publicity pictures, from the way she turns her head to gaze up at him, to the way he keeps an arm around her, smiling faintly as their eyes meet. Everybody knows the way those two look at each other. Like there’s nobody else in the room. I swallow down a moment of the bitterness that always surges when I watch them together on the screen. They make it look so easy, being together.

Sofia’s staring alongside me, but we’re hardly at risk of blowing our cover. The whole room’s transfixed. Then she shifts her weight, starting to step forward toward the trio onstage, like she’s forgotten I’m even there. I grab her arm, and she tries to shake me off. “What are you doing?” I whisper, stepping up beside her.

She ignores me, turning her head to conduct a slow sweep of the room. She takes in the security goons one more time, lets her gaze pause on the stage, every muscle in her body tense—like a hound on a scent, pointing her quarry.

I squeeze her arm. “Time to go,” I whisper in her ear, tugging her back toward the pillar—nervousness surging up all over again, the fear that she’ll forget her promise to me.

And abruptly, as though some decision is made, or conclusion reached, she lets me draw her away. She turns to take hold of my lapels and pull me back against the pillar, then stretches up on her toes to kiss me. Her hand curls around the nape of my neck, sending another shot of electricity down my spine as her skin touches mine, and her lips brush my ear. “Time to go,” she agrees. “We need to look like we’re sneaking out to…Well, try and look like you want me.”

No problem, Dimples. No problem at all
.

We keep our hands linked as we slip through the door, the space between my shoulder blades twitching with the discomfort of turning my back on all that security. She uses her grip to drag me to a halt when I’m about to stride away down the corridor, instead pulling me a few steps in, and then leaving me to skip back and press her ear to the door, listening for pursuit. After a few seconds, she nods. “Hold still,” she says, stepping in close to reach up and start pulling my tie undone with one hand, unfastening the top buttons of my shirt with the other.

“Is now really the time?” I hesitate as soon as the joke is out of my mouth—I might have her agreement, but I know I don’t have her forgiveness yet.

But she flashes me a small smile and pulls out a tube of lipstick from her purse, reapplying it carefully, then pulling me down so she can press her lips to my collar, leaving a crimson smudge there. She steps back to give me another once-over, then tugs at one side of my shirt until it’s untucked from my waistband.

Next it’s on to her own preparations. She musses her hair, running her fingers through her curls until they’re sitting askew, then leans down to unfasten her towering heels, stepping out of them and hooking her fingers through the straps to carry them. If anyone finds us, they won’t be that confused about what we were doing, looking like this.

When she looks back up at me, she’s steel once more, nothing but determination in her gaze. “Let’s go. The clock’s running.”

The blue-eyed man comes to the thin spots only rarely now, and never again does he bring the little girl with the delighted laugh that so transformed his face. But the same pieces of sound and color that flooded the stillness flood the thin spot, and through them we can see more of this universe. We struggle to learn much from their words and letters and messages, but the images speak, carry ghosts of the hearts behind them.

It takes us years, but we find the blue-eyed man and his daughter, and we discover that she is not such a little thing anymore. We have learned, over the years of our captivity, the name for the look on the man’s face that so fascinated us. And now her face bears it too, but for someone else, a boy her age. She is in love for the first time, and we feel it as if we are in love for the first time too.