Page 74 of Beautiful Prey

He says he came here for me.

Why me?

I was given away before I was old enough to remember. Since then, I’ve been the one who stays. The one who works, pays, carries, and fixes. I know what it feels like to be needed. I understand that.

I don’t know what to do with being wanted, especially by a man who already has everything. If I let myself believe Asher Clement crossed half the Reach because he chose me, then I have to believe there’s something here worth choosing.

And I don’t know what will happen when he changes his mind.

Down on the gantry, Dregg catches me at the rail. He looks at me, then up at the office, then back, lifting two fingers off his gauge. Good luck, pal.

I should hate Asher Clement the Third. And Light, I do.

But he came. He crossed half the Reach to find me. Ever since I left Tempest, I’ve told myself the cave was where it stopped, that the hunting ended when the shuttle doors sealed.

It didn’t.

Because he was never going to let it.

And now it seems the Hunt has followed me home.

13

JADE

The Calder Historical Museum closes at six, but nobody’s ever once made me leave.

I’ve been coming here since I was nine. It’s free. It’s quiet. The woman at the desk knows me well enough to let me disappear into the back rooms, the ones nobody visits, where the light panels flicker and the displays are older than the exhibits. This is where they keep what Calder used to be.

Stopping in front of the biggest display, I study the scratched glass. The diorama has faded with age, the painted hills washed the colour of weak tea. Green once. Someone built this a long time ago to show schoolchildren what their planet looked like before, and the before is almost impossible to believe now. Rivers. Blue threads winding across the model. Orchards in neat rows. A world that grew things instead of coughing them up.

I know the plaque by heart. Calder: Agricultural Settlement, First Charter. And then, in smaller letters underneath, the dates when it stopped being that, when the survey ships came and found what was under the topsoil and decided the topsoil was in the way.

They took the green and left us the hole.

I come here when I can’t be anywhere else. Nobody talks to me. I don’t have to be anything for anyone. Here, I can stand in front of a dead world and grieve it in peace, which is more than the living one allows.

My slate buzzes against my wrist again.

I’ve ignored it for the last hour.

Onyx texted first. Three times. That almost got me. I know I’ve worried him. If I’d gone home, I’d have spent the last two hours staring at my bedroom wall, thinking about my new boss instead of anything useful.

Then came a number I don’t recognise, even though I know exactly who it belongs to.

Who else could it be?

I told Asher Clement no. He smiled, named a time for dinner anyway, and let me leave as though the decision had already been made. I clocked out at four, didn’t go home, answered no one, and hid here instead, like the coward I apparently am. Because if I walked through my own front door, I had the sickening feeling he’d already be there.

The slate buzzes again, dragging me back out of my own head. I stare at it for a second before finally answering.

“Onyx.”

“Jade.” He sounds strange. Too bright. Like he’s trying very hard not to cry. “Where are you? I’ve been trying to call you for an hour.”

“I’m fine, I’m just⁠—”

“I’m not asking if you’re fine. I’m asking where you are.” He lets out a rough breath. “There are men here, JaJa. At the door. They came for me. And I didn’t know where you were, and I got scared, and then—” His voice catches. “Then they brought me here. And Jade. Jade, you have to see this.”