Page 24 of Measure of the Stars

His family had been less than interested, of course.

“I don’t know what all that nonsense was about,” his father had said, speaking to Delauney’s mother while a young Delauney leaned outside the door, clutching a makeshift spectroscope he’d made out of scraps in the garden.“Of course glass can make colored spots sometimes.That’s just how it works.”

“Yes, but we both know he can be a bit...”his mother trailed off delicately.“Simple.Rainbows are colorful, darling, and little Laney does love colorful things.Let’s get him a new suit and let him attend the spring dance, and I’m certain that he’ll put this latest fascination behind him.”

Delauney’s brother had found him in the garden shed a few hours later, weeping bitterly next to his box.He’d already been so grown-up then, dressed in a proper, sensible suit with his hair tied back and his posture perfect.

“It’s all right to like these things,” Leo had said gently, brushing Delauney’s hair out of his eyes.“Just don’t show Mother and Father next time.To be frank with you,” he said, a thoroughly adult term he’d been using a little too liberally, “they’re too silly to understand.”

He should have confided in Leo after that, but Delauney had been too focused on pleasing the people whodidn’taccept his oddities to connect with the one person whodid.By the time he’d reached adulthood, Delauney had established himself as such a carefree social butterfly that Leo had given up, writing him off as just as silly and self-centered as their parents.

He felt a twinge of regret over it as he explained the various processes of measuring light to Wes.Maybe Leocouldhave helped Delauney with his disastrous application to the Aviary.Delauney could still remember how devastated he’d been when he’d received the rejection letter, sobbing miserably in his dark room for days.Leo hadn’t known the cause of his distress, even though he’d tried to speak to Delauney about it several times.But it was probably too late to tell him now.

Wes, however, had absolutely no rudimentary knowledge of science and still managed to seem genuinely curious.It was remarkable how little he knew.His parents were clearly wealthy, from what Delauney had heard of them, and they could have afforded proper tutors.It was no wonder that Wes seemed to resent them.He hadn’t even known about gravity, assuming that the stars were fixed in the heavens like painted spots of light.

“I believe,” Delauney said at last, after they’d been relegated to the porch for agitating Fern’s cats, “that you might havepossiblybeen done a disservice.”

“That’s practically a curse coming from you,” Wes said, with an easy smile that made Delauney feel vaguely unbalanced.“How so?”

“Your parents,” Delauney said.“They had enough money for tutors, so why didn’t they hire...well, not to insult them, but...”

“Look,” Wes said.“My sister runs a bookshop and my brother became a palace guard as soon as he could reasonably get away.We all knew that their lessons were shit.”

“I didn’t know that you had a sister at all,” Delauney said.“Captain Ferrin always seemed to act as though he’d appeared out of the pages of a guard manual, if I’m being perfectly honest.”

Wes pulled another of his expressive faces.“Her name’s Louise.She used to be more straight-laced than my brother, if you can believe it.But I guess she figured our parents out eventually.They all did.I was just the unlucky one who happened to be first.”

Delauney sat in silence for a while, watching Wes glower into the distance.“What did theydo?”

“Sent me here,” Wes said.“I was making friends with the wrong kind of people, and they couldn’t have that.They weren’t even bad kids.They were just children.We’d run around and watch the horses come out of the palace on parade days, get two-copper pastries at the bakery, that sort of thing.You’d think we were robbing the palace by the way my parents acted.When I heard that I was being shipped to the navy, I asked Ferrin to help me run away.”

“How old were you?”Delauney asked.He supposed that his own parents would have put up a fuss if he only befriended commoners.In fact, he didn’t think that he’d made a single friend whowasn’ta noble until he’d left home.

“Twelve or so,” Wes said.“Too young to live on my own, but that also made me too young for the navy.I know some kids do fine on a ship, but I knew that I couldn’t handle it.Ferrin told our parents that I was planning to run off, and I was locked in my room until some sailors came by to drag me to the harbor.”

Delauney had heard of press-gangs in the early days of the Starian Navy, when sailors would trick people into joining the service and effectively trap them on a ship, but that practice had been banned in King Emile’s reign.“I’m fairly sure that was illegal.”

“They were my parents,” Wes said.“They signed off on it.I guess they were tired of having a failure for a son.”

“But you’re not one,” Delauney said, outraged on Wes’ behalf.“You’re organized and clever, you put so much thought into everything, you’re—”

Wes interrupted him.“It’s fine.They’re basically strangers now.Even Ferrin.I know he was just doing what he thought was right, but he stopped being my brother when he helped them, and Louise stopped being my sister when she told me to stop fighting them and behave.”

“Why did you stay, then?”Delauney asked.He couldn’t imagine how miserable it had to be for Wes as a young boy far from home, feeling like everyone in his life had betrayed him.It was no wonder that he’d so thoroughly rejected his parents’ love for the aristocracy.“You could have resigned years ago.”

“I don’t know what else I’d do,” Wes said.“I was practically raised on the sea.What do you think is out there for someone with no skills on land?”

“I don’t have any, either,” Delauney said.

“What do you call that?”Wes asked, gesturing toward Fern’s house.“And you’re a nobleanda captain, so you can do whatever you please when you leave the service.”

Delauney felt more than a little uncomfortable at Wesley’s cutting words.Of course, he knew that he had a comfortable life ahead of him.He knew that the moment he came home, he would be thrown into a circuit of dinner parties and balls that would occupy him for some time.And yet, he couldn’t help but feel as though someone was marching him head-first into a cage.

“I can’t,” he said, and his voice was so strained that Wes turned to fully face him, his scowl falling away.“Ican’tdo what I like, Wes!”

“Of course you can,” Wesley said.

“No.”Delauney felt breathless and strange, as though he were about to burst at the seams with all the restless, bewildered energy building up inside him.“I can’t.Because what I want—what I’ve wanted since I was a boy—is to work alongside Professor Monroe at the Aviary, and I can’t, because I’m anidiot!”