Page 34 of When the Universe Sings

“You don’t need to do this,” I murmured to Kal.

He blinked, giving his head an experimental shake. “Huh. I seem to have gone momentarily deaf.”

Rolling my eyes, I tugged the plate a little closer and picked up the eating sticks he’d slid to me as well.

“Have you had a chance to take a look at the book I gave you?” Zoleka asked, programming a meal for herself on the renderer.

“I have, thank you.” I cleared my throat and took a sip of water. “It’s nice to have something of them I can hold in my hands.”

Kal stilled as he dug into his plate, looking at me out of the corner of his eye.

“I gave Juniper a text that was crafted on her home planet.” Zoleka flicked a napkin into her lap.

If I hadn’t been looking at him, I would have thought he wasn’t listening, but Kal’s mouth tensed, his eyes growing glassy as he looked down at his plate. It was odd to share this grief with someone, to know he felt something as acutely as me. And it was even stranger to lean into him, letting my elbow press against his. “I’ll show it to you.”

“Burgeron?” he asked, voice so low Zoleka wouldn’t have heard.

The name triggered something in me and I saw the face of the elder who oversaw the creation of texts in our village. His bright white hair and thick beard dappled with sunlight through the trees, a patient smile on his face as he answered question after question as to how parchment was made and showed us the ring he wore to emboss the final page with his stamp.

Somehow it was worse than the memories that had faded. Kal was a living, breathing reminder of all we had lost, and he had been sitting next to me for days, weeks, almost a quarter cycle and I hadn’t known.

And to him? To him I’d been a ghost, haunting him around every corner.

So I nodded, doing my best to let the grief show on my face and give him a sad smile before it all melted away into the nothingness that kept me safe. After a little longer, Zolekafinished her food and left with a promise to show me a few more texts tomorrow.

Kal’s eyes darted around the empty room. “I’m going to buy you out of your contract with theDaskquah.”

The earnest expression on his face strangled the disbelieving laugh from bubbling up my throat. Instead, I placed a tentative hand over his forearm, squeezing once. “You can’t.”

He turned more fully to me, covering my hand with his own. “I can. I will, June?—”

“No, Kal, you can’t. It’s?—”

“If it’s a question of credits?—”

“It’s not credits,” I said.

“—then Asher will buy you out of it.”

This time the startled laugh did slip out and I leaned forward as if seeing my eyes better would somehow help him understand. My heart squeezed at the determination set into his expression and it reminded me why I never got too close to anyone.

This hurt more than being alone.

“I doubt Captain Ruciyah would do more than send me back to Lunastra with a few extra credits in my pockets. And anyway…” I cleared my throat. “There is no contract.”

It was Kal who jerked back this time, his hands balling into fists. “What do you mean?”

My tongue clicked as I released it from the roof of my mouth, gaze darting around the room like I might find an easier way to say it nestled within the chairs and tables and renderers. From my seat I could just see a bare sliver of space, one of the galaxy’s biggest nebulas streaming through the upper corner of the window. Purples and pinks and blues danced with each other like leaves on a tree, mixing into dizzying patterns.

This universe was so vast I struggled to quantify it and yet in the time I’d been alive, I’d seen so little of it, just like most beings. Though of course I had taken this job to stop CaptainRuciyah from destroying lives with the stone, a small part of me had taken it so I could see what lay outside the walls of theDaskquah.

“I was brought to Ebyd III as barely more than a child, no name or papers, no registration within the Federation. I’m anumber,not a name. And when I smuggled myself onto Lunastra’s ship it was the same.” I placed my hand over his arm, forcing as much of an apology as I could into the words.

“Juniper…” Kal all but pleaded. “There has to be a way.”

When I forced the grief back from my eyes, crystalline tears dripped down his cheeks instead, each one a knife to my belly.

“There is no way tobuy me outbecause there is no contract. I am tagged, I am owned, and I am peddled just like the metal beneath our feet.”