Page 194 of Star Bringer
“Well, time is just going to have to wait a little longer,” Ian growls. “Your mom and Doc V and their fucked-up plan are why Milla is where she is. So pardon me if I don’t give a shit about doing things on their fucking timeline.”
I sigh, because I really do understand what he’s saying—more, what he’s feeling. But that doesn’t negate the fact that if the sun implodes, Milla won’t be alive anyway. None of us will.
“Do you even know how to work the heptosphere?” Merrick asks suddenly. “Everyone—including you—seems to have bought into the fact that you can fix everything with it. But do you even know what to do?”
“I guess I thought it’d be kind of self-explanatory,” I answer.
He raises a brow. “Like it was in the lab on theCaelestis?”
I pause. He’s not wrong.
“All of this is superfluous,” Ian says, “because we’re going after Milla right now.”
An idea starts to formulate in my mind. Merrick is right when he says I have no idea how to control the heptosphere. But if I have any hope of actually using it to save the sun, then I need to learn. The only problem is, I have to assume the learning curve is really steep—that thing is dangerous, and who knows what will happen if I just start trying to figure it out near the most populated planets.
No, much better to rescue Milla and then test out the heptosphere at the edges of the system, where there’s nothing but a few asteroids and two dead planets around. Talk about killing two varmaks with one rock.
“Okay,” I say, meeting Ian’s very annoyed eyes. “Let’s go to the Wilds. And while we’re out there, I’ll see just what this hunk of metal and I can do together.”
Beckett looks impressed. “You’re getting more diabolical in your old age, Kali. I think I like it.”
Now I know the universe has turned upside down. My mother is a stone-cold killer. A rebel says she likes something about me. And I’ve just turned my back on everything I’ve ever known to hop on a sentient ship headed straight for the Wilds.
There’s no turning back now.
Chapter 84
Beckett
I feel like shit, but I drag myself back to the bridge anyway. The only other option is going to bed, and the last thing I want to do is pretend everything’s okay when Rain comes to check on me.
With me. With her. With us.
I want to help her, but she’s still too hurt by everything Merrick said to be able to accept that help. Even if I knew how to offer it. Which I don’t.
She wants to help me just as much, but the truth is, I’m beyond help. I’m nothing but darkness, and I just can’t ruin her light any more.
Rain thinks time will cure everything, but that’s a pipe dream. Time isn’t curing me. It’s making me worse. Yes, the blankness and missing pieces have gotten a little better since I’ve been on theStarlight, but the pain has gotten so much worse. It feels like a drill digging into my brain all the time, a chisel chipping away at everything that is me until all that’s left is a mound of screaming, desperate rage.
I don’t want that for her, and I definitely don’t want that for us.
I reach under my chair and pull out the bottle of painkillers I nabbed from the sick bay. I dry swallow a handful, then look up to find Ian watching me.
When our eyes meet, he raises a brow. I shrug in return. Then I lean back against the pilot’s chair and wait for the pain to get better. It never goes away, but the painkillers make it so I can at least think. For a while, anyway.
I wonder for the millionth time what they did to my head on theCaelestis.Whatever it is, it’s broken something inside of me. I can feel myself changing, becoming…something. I don’t know what it is, and I don’t know that I want to know. But something tells me that the end is going to be a race between insanity and death, and I have to get away from here before either happens. Rain doesn’t deserve to see that. Better she thinks I’m just gone because I want to go.
I don’t want to go, but I can’t stay here.
I’ve never really felt like I belonged anywhere before. Even with the Rebellion, I was on the outside looking in. Trying to get my mother’s approval. Trying to be what she and the rebels needed me to be. Sometimes, late at night—like now—I acknowledge that our relationship isn’t all that different from Kali’s and her mom’s. Before theStarlight, I never would have seen it or believed it, but now…it’s hard to miss the parallels in our lives.
Both our fathers died in tragic circumstances.
We both have controlling mothers—though I don’t think it’s a stretch to say hers is worse than mine.
We both think our way is the right way.
And, most pathetic of all, we both had the lack of foresight to join a ship full of misfits. Even worse, we both fell in love with one of them.
