Page 200 of Star Bringer
“There’s no maybe about it,” I tell him as the need to sleep finally creeps through me. “And I’m going to find a way to prove it.”
Chapter 86
Beckett
Everyone else is asleep, and once again I’m sitting on the bridge alone. Rain came in earlier, tried to convince me to come to bed. And I wanted to—I really wanted to. The days that I have left to hold her and kiss her and press her sweet, soft body against mine are running out.
But I put in the call to my mother’s emergency number nearly twenty-four hours ago. Which means I should be hearing back very soon. We’ve always had a twenty-four-hour rule about returning calls on that channel, and I have to believe that hasn’t changed.
Everything else certainly has.
A sharp pain rips through my skull, and for a second it takes me over so completely that I can’t do anything but endure it. Even breathing is impossible. It goes on longer than the last one, which was longer than the one before it. Just another sign that something is wrong. Just another sign that my time is running out.
I stare at the comms link, willing it to ring. I have to get this done. I have to make sure Rain and the others are safe before I go. The thought of leaving when they’re still in danger makes the pain, and everything else, so much worse.
I reach below my chair and pull out the painkillers. I’m almost out, and to be honest, I’m not sure why I take them anymore. They barely touch the agony. Hope springs eternal, I suppose, which seems ridiculous—I thought I lost my ability to hope right around the time I lost my father.
I swallow a couple of the painkillers because taking them is better than not taking them, then start fiddling with theStarlight’s commands. Every day, I learn something new about this ship, something that blows my hair back and makes me wonder what the hell kind of technology the Ancients had access to. I’ve flown a lot of ships in my life, and none of them—noneof them—come close to doing what theStarlightcan do.
She’s the strangest and most kick-ass ship I’ve ever seen. I think I’m going to miss her almost as much as I’m going to miss Rain.
I yawn as I glance at the clock on theStarlight’s dash. Seventeen more minutes until the twenty-four hours have come and gone. Seventeen more minutes until I can crawl into bed with Rain and pretend, for just a little while longer, that everything is okay.
At eight minutes to go—just when I’ve convinced myself that she isn’t going to call—the comms link starts to ring. It could be any number of people, but I know even before I pick it up that it’s my mom.
Sure enough, the moment I hit accept, her familiar face fills the screen. She looks older than she did the last time I saw her. But a lot has happened in the last ten months, so I guess that’s to be expected.
“Beckett!” Her yellow eyes light up when she realizes who she’s speaking with. “You’re alive! I thought—”
Her voice breaks. She clears her throat, tries again. “All the reports I could glean together said that you disappeared from the prison compound months ago and that the Empire was reporting you as deceased.”
“Fuck the Empire,” I answer, and she laughs merrily. No one can say I don’t know my audience.
“Tell me where you are, baby, and I’ll send someone to get you.” Now that her happiness at finding I’m still alive has leveled out, she looks me over with critical eyes. “What did they do to you?”
“Does it matter?” I ask. “I’m free now.”
For a second, I think she’s going to push on my health. While a part of me wants somebody to, that’s not what I need to talk about right now. “I have a lead, Mom. To Jarved.”
“Your brother is dead.” Her tone is final, with absolutely no room for argument. And I get it. For a long time I couldn’t bring myself to even think about Jarved, either. I missed him so much.
I still miss him that much, but I’ve gone over and over the Milla thing in my head. Gone over and over the fact that I almost ended up in the exact same place. No matter how hard I try to resist imagining that my brother might be alive, the thought has taken root. And nothing will make me let it go except knowing for sure.
I fill my mother in on what happened to me—the capture, the jailing, the experiments on theCaelestis. And then I tell her all the reasons I think Jarved is still alive.
When I’m done, her cheeks are drained of color and her eyes have lost their spark of joy. In its place is a fury I’m all too familiar with. Like mother, like daughter, after all.
“This is what they did to you?” she asks. “Experiments? Torture? To what end?”
“I don’t know,” I answer. “I have holes in my memory—I don’t remember a lot of it. Just…”
“Just what?” she asks in a voice as cold as Glacea’s moons.
“The pain.” It feels good to admit it to someone. And while a part of me worries I’m weak for saying it, I figure if I can’t tell my mother, who can I tell? Even if she is known as a butcher.
“Tell me where you are,” she urges again. “And I’ll come for you myself.”
“That’s actually why I was calling. I have a proposition for you.”
