Page 43 of Edge of Stars

“Wow and a half,” I murmur, stretching out to see it all a little better.

“Po spoke his game true,” Maximus says with similar reverence. “This whole place runs on hydro engineering. Beauty and functionality.”

“Right? But everything?” I lean farther over, absorbed by curiosity. “There’s a lot of space here. The upper levels—”

“Can be accessed in the usual ways.” My husband’s bark is just as obdurate as his arm around my middle, swooping from behind as my toes sneak out from the rail-free landing. “When actual wings spring from your back, or you’re running on something more than three lattes and inhaled mud bits, you can try flying up yourself.”

I nod, humbled by his vigilance for me even when this whole place is a tenable excuse for distraction.

“Thank you,” I tell him. “Smart thinking. I don’t want to be taking Sprout for an unwanted swim just by zigging instead of zagging.”

“You’re welcome.” He leans around to softly buss my temple. “And you weren’t zigging. Not yet, at least.”

“But I was rushing. And all that speedway stuff is Jaden’s department, not m—”

I cut in on myself yet again, enduring another skirmish between my heart and head. My practicality, calm and cold, orders me to remember the putrid plane that the church became before we left. The muck so dreary, I’d compared it to a battlefield. Decimated ground, strewn with the fallen.

But my heart knows what it believes. What hope it can still hang on to.

Jaden’s not one of those muck crawlers. Nor worse.

Neither are Kell and Mother and Gramps.

I resolve it. I know it.

If Hecate did turn those swampy tides, sending them to eternity with grit in their nails and slime on their Verocity originals, I’d have heard it. No matter where I was or what I was doing, miles under the sea or even skirting the constellations in space, I’d have heard it. Felt it. They’re my family. I only know one person’s emotional frequency better than all of theirs. It’s been that way since we were kids. Just as Jaden can hear me and Kell can smell me, I can feel them.

But what if things have changed?

I shake my head, already winding up thoughts for return fire—except that it’d be a mental civil war. My mind turning on itself. A shit storm of my own making.

What if nothing’s the same now?

“Damn it,” I utter. “That’s not—”

What if you’ve changed, Kara Valari? Only a Valari you’re not; no more and never again.

“No,” I seethe beneath my breath, though pivot from Maximus as a precaution. “No! This is ridiculous. Self-sabotage because of your survivor’s guilt. Which probably isn’t that at all. You need to cut it loose, Kara. Cut it loose right n—”

Cut what loose? The ring you accepted until death do you part? The child that’s a part of your being for much longer than that? The elements that have transformed you into an entirely new creature? A woman now. A magical new being, different than the girl you were two months ago.

“But they’re still my family.” I drop it to even lower decibels than before—though every syllable vibrates with my ticked-off ferocity. “I still know them. They still know me!”

They’d never shut me off.

Not even after what I did back at the sanctuary.

What I had to do.

Surely they know that. They have to know it.

“Kara?”

Only when Maximus’s prompt comes, startling me with his proximity, do I realize that I’ve rasped the protest out loud.

“Who are you talking about?” he asks, sounding sincere but frowning with concern. “They have to know what?”

I circle around, fully pressing to him again. It’s a sly move, banking on the effect it’ll probably have on his bloodstream, but I’m not immune from the effects either. His bulk, so formidable and sheltering, is a well-timed soothe for my hammering pulse. The embrace he returns to mine, like bands of steel in a storm, are my new lifeline back to sanity. I wrap my own arms up and around his neck, tucking my head against his shoulder with a heavy but happy sigh.