These Broken Stars (15 page)

“If I’d known you cared, I’d have said so right away.” Except I wouldn’t 
have. I reach for the next plant to break open a broad leaf and check it against my arm. I know my mother’s name impresses, but I refuse to use her as a password. It was one of the reasons I agreed to that stupid public relations trip—they said they’d keep her name out of it. I don’t want to be acceptable because of who my parents are, or have her garden invaded by paparazzi. I guard the secret of our connection as fiercely as I guard my own writing. Nobody who looks at me sees poetry there. But somehow this moment with Lilac is different.

I look down at my arm. The third plant is stinging a little, and I carefully pour water from the canteen over the spot, watching as the skin reddens—not too much, though, not too bad.

Lilac’s still staring down at the picture of my family. “I
love
your mother’s poetry,” she whispers, almost reverent. “I had a book of her poems when I was a little girl, a real book. There was one about a lilac bush, and you know how you love things with your name in them when you’re a child. But I got older, and the words … they’re so beautiful and sad.
She weeps, perfumed and pale, at summer’s end.
” She looks up at me, eyes shining. “Is there really a lilac bush?”

“Hell yes, there is.” I ignore the stinging on my arm. It’s already fading. “I nearly killed it when I fell off the roof and landed in the middle of it, but it was tougher than it looked. Kind of like another Lilac I know.” The words come out before I can stop them, the compliment bypassing my better judgment entirely. But she smiles instead of brushing it off as condescension. It feels like the first hint of warmth all day, and suddenly I’m talking again. I want to keep her smiling.

“People come to our house to see things from the poems. Half the time the fence is broken and the shingles are falling off the roof, but my father puts the visitors to work helping him keep the cottage in one piece until my mother’s done working for the day. Then she comes downstairs to see them.”

She’s coming to life as I watch, laughing in her delight. “Oh, Tarver.” It still feels strange to hear her say my first name. Not strange—thrilling. It’s as though I’m in an actual conversation for the first time 
in days.

She’s shaking her head. “I can’t believe it. Wait, no! The one about the tin soldier boy. Tell me that’s not you, I’ll die. I learned to recite it!”

I shake my head, leaning forward a little to look down at the photo she holds. “That was Alec.” And perhaps because I’m looking at the photo, I can smile when I say his name. I point to him. “That’s him there in the picture, with me on his shoulders.”

“He’s in the military too?” She leans down to get a good look at his face.

“He was,” I say, quieter. “He was killed in action.”

She looks up at me, eyes wide. “I’m so sorry.”

In this moment I know that this is what I wanted. This is what I wanted that night in the salon, and it’s what I’ve wanted every day since then.

She’s not looking at me and seeing a guy brought up on the wrong type of planet. She’s not seeing a soldier, or a war hero, or an uncultured lout who doesn’t understand how hard this is for her, or an idiot who knows nothing about the right kind of anything.

She just sees me.

“The two of you were becoming closer.”

“And?”

“You confirm it?”

“You made a statement, I thought you already knew it 
was true.”

“Can you elaborate on how that came about?”

“I thought the purpose of this debrief was to discuss my 
impressions of the planet.”

“The purpose of the debriefing is for you to answer whatever 
questions we choose to ask you, Major. We’re asking about 
Miss LaRoux.”

“What was the question again?”

“Nevermind. We can come back to it.”

“I’ll look forward to that.”

I know a thousand different smiles, each with its own nuanced shade of meaning, but I don’t know how to reach the few feet away to touch this person next to me. I don’t know how to talk to him. Not when it’s real.

I settle for smiling at his stories, and spreading ointment from the 
first-aid kit on the rashes he’s getting from some of the plants. As dusk threatens, he heads out to check his snares. The second he leaves my side the world seems darker, bigger, and I brace for a new voice to slice the quiet. But instead there’s only the wind sighing through the tall grass and, in the distance, the sounds of Tarver moving across the plain.

I avert my eyes as he tends to the small, furred creatures he brings back, the fruits of his traps. I’m hungry enough that I’ll eat them, but that doesn’t mean I want to watch him gut them. He keeps up a steady stream of his stories as he works to distract me and cover the sounds, stories about his platoon, each more outrageous than the last. In the growing dark I can almost feel as though we are comfortable together, as though he enjoys my company rather than merely tolerating it—as though he’s volunteering these stories because he wants to make me laugh, not just keep me moving.

I watch as he builds the fire, paying attention for once. I should have been doing this from the start, in case he did leave me on my own—but now I don’t watch out of fear. Now I just want to know so I can help. He’s able only to have the tiniest of fires here due to the lack of fuel, 
nothing to help keep us warm tonight. But it’s enough to cook minuscule slivers of the meat, and for the first time since crashing on the planet my stomach feels as though it’s full of something real.

My eyes grow heavy as I huddle by the smoking remains of the fire. Tarver sits writing in that notebook of his by the last of the light, head bent low and close to the pages. The sun has set while we cooked, and what was a mildly unpleasant evening chill has turned into a piercing cold mitigated not at all by the tatters of my green dress. My cheer has plum-meted with the temperature, and with his absence when he puts away his notebook and goes to deposit the remains of our dinner far enough away to avoid attracting visitors in the night. He doesn’t think the giant cats come out on the plains, but as he says, better safe than sorry.

I can’t help but wonder how many times over I would’ve died out here without Tarver keeping me alive.

When he returns I lift my head, but I’m too tired to try harder than that. Though I can feel the dynamic between us changing, I still don’t quite know how to talk to him. Wounded pride and bruised confidence keep me from saying what I wish I could say. I drop my head back onto my knees.

“Miss LaRoux.” Tarver crouches down beside me, a movement I know now so well I don’t need to see him to register it. “Lilac. It’s too cold out here on the plains. There’s not enough fuel to keep a fire going, and the wind is that much colder than in the forest.”

“No kidding.”

He laughs, and I realize I’ve borrowed his words. I sound like a soldier. I feel my cheeks beginning to heat. “If you insist,” he continues, watching me, “we can sleep back-to-back. But it’ll be warmer if you let me put an arm around you and tuck the blankets around us. I promise to think only the purest of thoughts.”

Surely he can see my face burning even in the darkness. I turn it away, letting the chilly wind cool my cheeks, as the rest of me shivers. “You don’t have to do that.”

“What’s that?”

“Pretend I’m—” I shrug, shake my head. I’m not angry with him, but there’s anger in my voice anyway. At my body’s betrayal, the way I 
can’t control my blush. How awkward he makes me feel, as though we’re partners in a dance where I don’t know the steps. Like I’m the ignorant one.

I try to summon some dignity, a last-ditch effort. At least I don’t have to look like I’m foolish enough to think he’s an admirer. “I know I’m not your choice of—of companions. This is as much a trial for you as for me.”

At that he laughs again, this time not bothering to do so quietly. It’s a full laugh, rich and without restraint, nothing like the genteel twitters and chuckles in society. My mouth wants to respond with a smile, even as the rest of me recoils, certain he’s making fun of me.

He gets to his feet, shaking out the blankets and making up a bed. One bed, tonight. “Miss LaRoux, before you martyr yourself, I should warn you that I’ve had to curl up with my large and hairy corporal under certain undesirable circumstances. By comparison, a beautiful girl sounds like a vacation.”

Beautiful? I’ve always been reasonably pretty—but enough money would turn even a cow into a catch. Still, aside from those first days on the
Icarus
, he’s never looked at me that way. He’s made it clear my status and money mean nothing to him. The opposite, in fact.

I’m grateful for the darkness, that he can’t see my face. For him to see me incapable of concealing my smile for one tiny compliment? That would be the ultimate humiliation.

I turn around, and he’s kneeling at the edge of the bed, hands braced on his thighs. He gestures for me to lie down first, barely visible through the darkening night. The first of the moons is yet to rise, and the stars overhead grow brighter by the second. The air is clear and cold and sharp.

He’s right. Neither of us will sleep if I insist on separation. Part of me recoils from the very thought, too well trained. But who would know? There are no rescue teams flying over, no sign of my father’s cavalry coming for me. I can cave, just for one night. And it is so—tempting. To be warm, that is.

I swallow and creep forward to slip beneath the blanket, making myself as small as possible. “Only while we’re on the plains and can’t 
have a fire.” The words come before I have a chance to stop them. He’ll 
think I’m disparaging his gesture. Why can’t I just accept his offer?

But he just nods, readying himself for bed, unhooking his holster to set it beside us and placing the flashlight nearby. When he lifts the edge of the blanket to lie down, it brings a rush of cold air, and I curl up more tightly.

“Sorry,” he murmurs, voice not far from my ear. “Close your eyes, you’ll be warm in a minute.”

He’s not subtle about making himself comfortable, reaching out to wrap an arm around my waist and draw me close. His body is warmer than mine, and after a moment he lifts his hand to rub my arm. I try not to shiver at his touch, at the heat of his palm on the chilled skin exposed by my idiotic dress.

Eventually he stills again, ducking his head so that his nose brushes the back of my neck, and his breath stirs my hair. Already his breathing is slowing, lengthening—I envy his ability to sleep anywhere, in any position, without hesitation. Every nerve of mine is alive, tingling, feeling every shift he makes.

I’ve never been this close to someone like him before. I close my eyes with difficulty, stifling an insane urge to turn within the circle of his arm to face him. It’s such a stupid thing to think, and guilt and anger surge in to follow the thought.

It’s not difficult to see the way he looks at me, even though he tries now to hide his impatience and annoyance. How quickly one’s delusions come crashing down—the soldiers aren’t watching us society folk, wishing they could touch us. They’re
laughing
at us in our bright dresses and parasols, our immaculately re-created drawing rooms and parlors. And what was funny in the sparkling world of the
Icarus
is simply pathetically ridiculous down here, in the kind of world they live in day to day. I’m not even close to the type of girl he’d want, just as I’ve been signaling at every opportunity that he’s the last man in the galaxy I’d want to touch.

The only difference is that I was wrong.

How long I lie there, listening to the slow beat of his heart and the frenetic dance of my own, I’m not sure. One of this planet’s moons has begun to rise beyond the trees, casting a cold blue light across the plain and edging the grass with a frosty glow. The wind has died, but over the 
whisper of Tarver’s breath stirring my hair, another sound breaks the quiet.

My breath condenses in the cold air as I exhale. I squeeze my eyes more tightly, as if somehow I can block out the sound of the incomprehensible voice echoing across the night if I try hard enough.

“Go away,” I whisper into the darkness, my body tensing, starting to shake. Bad enough these voices invade my thoughts—but they seem to invade my body too, destroying my control, leaving me a shivering pile of confusion and fear. Behind me, Tarver senses it and mumbles something against my skin, the arm around me tightening.

The voice continues unabated. I know Tarver doesn’t hear it, or else he’d be awake and holding his gun in an instant. I turn my face into the pack we’re using as a pillow, try to think of the music I used to listen to back on the
Icarus
, even cover my ears with my hands, trying to make them work despite the twitching of my muscles.

On and on it whispers, into the night, each passing moment multiplying the torment. A tear squeezes out beneath my lashes, rapidly growing frigid in the cold and tracing an icy path down my temple to join the cold sweat that’s broken out all over. This time there’s a strange taste in my mouth too, a metallic tang that doesn’t go away no matter how many times I swallow.

I’m going mad.

“Tarver.” My voice is barely more than a whisper, emerging as a tight and wobbly thing I almost don’t recognize as my own. “Do you hear that?” I don’t even know why I ask. I already know he doesn’t.

If it had been one of my friends, I would have had to shake them; with Tarver, my whisper is enough. He comes awake instantly, body going from lax and peaceful to tense and alert.

“Sorry,” he whispers back, his lips not far from my ear. “I was asleep. What was it?”

The voice is still murmuring some distance away, in the direction of the mountains that lie between us and the
Icarus
, as if beckoning me on. Meaning slips away as though I’ve forgotten how to comprehend language.

“I hear them now,” I whisper. I barely register the fact that my body is shaking violently. I’m too ragged to care that he sees me so low. “Please,” I add, my heart shrinking inside me, “please just tell me that you hear 
it too.”