Page 137 of Commander’s Mate
“Yes.”
“So there is explicit material.”
Nora groaned. Zoe laughed.
I looked back once.
Zared still stood outside his office, watching me go. Not stopping me. Not calling me back. Not making my world smaller because he wanted to keep me inside it.
For now.
Behind his shoulder, the ship lights shifted from night-cycle to day.
A new day on a stolen ship.
A new life I had not chosen to enter.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Zared
The memorial shelf had not been intended to become a room.
It began with my father’s blade.
Then the broken ceramic from my mother’s kitchen.
Then the carved toy recovered from the foundation.
A pilot brought me a half-burned clan ribbon from Waysatu.
A medic added the metal clasp from her mate’s formal coat.
Pyrr placed a training token belonging to his younger brother.
Someone else left a child’s shoe.
By the third day, the shelf had become a wall.
By the fifth, Degatu ordered the unused navigation classroom cleared.
No ceremony.
No official designation.
People simply began bringing what remained.
Harper stood in the doorway.
“You built a memorial.”
“We built somewhere to put objects no one can bear to throw away.”
“That is a memorial.”
I did not argue.
She entered slowly.
