Page 199 of Star Bringer
Shock holds me immobile for several seconds. “That’s not possible,” I tell him.
“Why not? I thought your father was from Serati.” He’s watching me closely now, and that just freaks me out more.
“He was. But he didn’t have any family; he never talked about them—”
“Because he cut himself off from them when he married your mother. I get the impression they didn’t approve.”
I want to argue with that, but after what I just went through at her hands, it’s not that hard to believe. “And Merrick told you this?”
“He told us a lot of things. Including the fact that your fathers made up not long before your dad died. And that your father told his father something that…might be difficult for you to hear.”
The nerves twisting in my stomach turn to something darker, uglier. Fear crawls up my throat, and there’s a part of me that wants to scream at him to stop. Not to tell me any more. That I can’t take it—not with everything else I’m trying to deal with right now.
But it’s only been a few days since I promised myself that I would never choose ignorance again, so I don’t say any of the things running through my head. Instead, I whisper, “Just tell me. Whatever it is, just get it over with fast.”
“Your father told Merrick’s father that when you were born, all the signs pointed to you being the high priestess. But your mother refused to give her daughter—the heir to the Empire—to the Sisterhood. So she burned off your birthmark and paid another couple—and the Sisterhood—to pretend that their child was the high priestess instead.”
His words are so unexpected that for a second I don’t even comprehend them. But when I do, I start to laugh. Because: “There’s no way I’m a high priestess. That’s absurd, Ian.”
“Not just a high priestess, Kali.Thehigh priestess.”
“That’s just completely ridiculous. Rain is a much better person than I am. Plus, she has faith, and I don’t. There’s no way I’mthehigh priestess.” I start to laugh again, but then something else occurs to me—something that gives me pause. “What does this have to do with you coming to find me?”
The watchful look in his eyes only makes my heart pound faster.
“Does being the high priestess have something to do with activating the heptosphere?”
He nods. “It’s not just about the high priestess, Kali. Activating the heptosphere means you have alien DNA. You’re what the Sisterhood calls the Star Bringer.”
“So you came after me because you decided I was this…Star Bringer? And if I touched the heptosphere—” I break off as the truth slams into me, powerful and undeniable. My stomach burns, and my lungs tighten so much that it’s hard to draw a breath.
I’ve always felt an undeniable connection to this ship. It’s given me comfort in a way I’ve never been able to explain. Drawn to the heptosphere, too, so strongly sometimes that it almost consumes me.
And…when theStarlightdisappeared, they said I disappeared, too.
Not Rain. Me.
Ian pulls me into his chest then, his strong arms wrapping around me. And though I know I should pull away, know that things are so strange between us that I shouldn’t be taking comfort from him right now, I can’t help it. He feels so good, so big and strong and solid, that it’s impossible to pull away from him. Instead, I curl into him, my hands clutching at his shirt as I bury my face in his chest and breathe in the warm coffee-and-gerjgin scent of him.
The tears I haven’t been able to shed since Lara and Arik died burn in the back of my eyes, mixing with the grief over my father and the anger over my mother, until I can’t breathe. Can’t think. Until all I can do is sob, my entire body shaking against his as I cry and cry and cry.
He holds me the whole time, his hands stroking down my hair, rubbing my back, holding me tightly against him. And I know things are messed up between us, but right now, he feels like the only solid thing in my life. The only thing that’s not shifting in a world that’s suddenly gone completely topsy-turvy on me.
Eventually, I cry myself out, and Ian’s here for that, too. He sweeps me into his arms and carries me down the hall to his cabin. Gage and Max are still in the bridge, so it’s just the two of us as he pulls back the sheets on his bed and lays me gently beneath them.
I’m exhausted, physically and emotionally, and all I want to do is sleep. But I don’t want to be alone. Not yet. Not right now. “Please,” I tell him as he starts to back away. “Please don’t leave me.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Princess,” he whispers. And then he kicks off his boots and crawls into bed beside me, wrapping me back up in his arms. “Sleep. I’ll be here when you wake up.”
I nod, burrowing against him as he turns off the light. And only then, when we’re in the dark, do I finally work up the nerve to say what I’ve been thinking ever since he told me about what my mother did to Rain and me.
“She killed my father, didn’t she?” I whisper, the words burning away all the sorrow inside of me and filling my heart with rage. “She couldn’t afford for what she did to get out, so when he told Merrick’s father, she had him assassinated.”
Ian shifts in the darkness. “I don’t know about that,” he says. But I can hear in his voice that he thinks it’s possible, too.
“I do,” I tell him as the rage coalesces deep inside me into a powerful need for justice. “She killed him to keep her secret and then used it as an excuse to capture and torture hundreds of rebels. People like Beckett and her brother.”
“Maybe.” He nods.
