Page 202 of Star Bringer
“I’ll see you soon, baby,” my mother says as she signs off. “And don’t worry. We’ll figure out how to get the princess, and we’ll see if your brother’s alive. No matter what it takes.”
The screen goes dark, and I lay my head down on the dash in front of me and try not to cry. Normally, it’s not that hard, but right now, finally beating the tears back feels like a miracle.
Chapter 87
Rain
I wake up to find the bed next to me empty. Again. A quick glance at the clock above the door tells me it’s the middle of the night. Beckett promised she would come to bed tonight, just like she promised she would come to bed every one of the last few nights. It hasn’t happened yet.
Most nights I just lay here and wait for her, heart breaking a little bit more with each hour that goes by. But tonight I don’t have it in me to just wait around for a woman who’s never going to come. Maybe that’s because I don’t have any more heart left to break.
Merrick’s announcement about the Sisterhood certainly broke a big chunk of it, and Beckett has been taking care of the rest every night for the last week. What’s the point of having a girlfriend you love if that girlfriend won’t even talk to you? Or worse, if she lies straight to your face and tells you she’s fine when it’s obvious that she’s barely holding on?
When it’s almost as obvious thatyou’rebarely holding on.
Every day since Merrick’s life-shattering announcement—thanks for that, by the way—I spend hours wondering what to do. Wondering who I am. Wondering how either of us are ever supposed to go back to our lives on Serati.
And the answer is, I’m not. How can I when everything about my life, from infancy, has been a carefully cultivated lie? I was trapped in a monastery and told I could do nothing, be nothing, except the object of salvation for millions of people. Told that I needed to try harder, be better, live up to what it means to be a high priestess.
And it turns out I never had a chance.
No matter how hard I tried, no matter what I did, the task in front of me was always an impossible one. I couldn’t be a good high priestess, because I was never meant to be a high priestess at all.
I’ve spent a lot of hours over the last few days thinking about this—and thinking about the fact that a lot of people had to be in on this lie for it to work.
Kali’s parents.
My parents—whoever they are.
The Sisterhood elders.
The sisters who cared for me as a baby and beyond. Maybe most of them didn’t know, but surely there was some gossip, some speculation.
They all knew about the lie being perpetuated, and they didn’t care. They just kept telling it, until it got bigger and bigger and harder and harder to control. Until it stole my life, Merrick’s life, Kali’s life—maybe even Kali’s father’s life.
Because I’ve been thinking about that, too. And I realized that an organization that would do all this—that would lie and betray and steal—wouldn’t draw the line at murder. To keep their secret, they would do whatever it took. They would have to, because if the secret got out, they would lose everything.
No wonder Merrick was having such a crisis of faith.
If they can just fake things, if they can just substitute a fake high priestess for the real one, how can anything about the Sisterhood be real? In which case, we’re just as screwed as everyone else when it comes to the Dying Sun. Even though no one on Serati wants to admit it.
If the Sisterhood isn’t real, maybe the Light itself isn’t real.
Unable to lay in the dark for one more second—not when these thoughts are roiling around in my head from all directions—I throw back my covers and pull on my blue-and-pink jumpsuit, then prepare to spend the night roaming the ship.
But tonight, my feet don’t roam. Instead, they carry me to the bridge—to Beckett.
I want a hug from her. More, I want her to wrap her arms around me and tell me everything is going to be all right—with my life, with her life, with our lives together. I don’t believe it’s true, but it would be nice to hear it just this once.
Except, once I get to the bridge, it’s to find that Beckett isn’t draped over her pilot’s chair, contemplating the universe outside of theStarlight, like she usually is at this hour. Instead, she’s sitting at the comms unit, her head in her hands and her entire body shaking.
My own discontent abandons me the second I lay eyes on her. Because it’s obvious, especially to someone who’s spent as much time studying her as I have, that something is very, very wrong.
I don’t call her name as I race across the distance between us—I think it’s better if she has no time to compose herself. No time to pretend that I’m seeing things and that she’s just fine. Not because she wants to lie, I don’t think, but because she’s never had anyone to worry about her before and she doesn’t know what to do about it.
“Beckett.” I put a soft hand on her shoulder, and she jumps up so fast that I’m a little surprised she didn’t knock me over—or land on her butt.
“How long have you been there?” she asks.
