Page 100 of Star Bringer
“I’ve read that it can be lots of different textures. Sometimes light and fluffy, other times heavy and super wet. But always the most pristine shade of white.” She’s talking faster now. “Oh! And! Did you know it’s made up of all these tiny flakes, and I read each one of them is completely unique? No two flakes are alike. What mustthatlook like?”
Her enthusiasm is infectious. I try to imagine it. “I once read a story about catching them on your tongue. How amazing would it be if it wassnowingwhen we get there, like actually falling from the sky, and we could give that a try?”
She sighs. “A real-life run-in with snow. How divine.”
Our eyes meet, and we both giggle at the sacrilege.
“You know what I mean,” she adds, then sighs again before meeting my eyes. “You know, in some ways, we’ve got the same problem,” she says. “We’ve both been brought up with strict views on who and what we are. Our place in the world. I’d never questioned it before—it’s just the way things are. But these few days have made me realize that things don’t have to be that way.”
“You’d turn your back on the Sisterhood?” From everything I learned about the high priestess’s role, just the idea is unthinkable. Her eternal lives awaiting the Dying Sun is the spiritual center of the Sisterhood.
“No. I believe as high priestess, I have an important role to play and a chance to do good in the world. But I hope that doesn’t mean I have to have a closed mind and live my life how others believe I should. I hope I can find a way to balance what they want me to be with who I’m discovering I really am.”
“That’d be nice, wouldn’t it?” I don’t even try to keep the wistfulness out of my tone.
“Very nice.” She smiles. “Though Merrick doesn’t see it that way. He’s finding this very hard. I’m really not supposed to have a mind of my own. It makes his job far more difficult.”
I glance across to where Merrick is seated, long legs stretched out, a brooding expression on his face. He’s developing an impressive black eye, and his nose is completely swollen. “Maybe you should lay off a little. Just until he can see out of both eyes again.”
“Right?” She makes a face, scrunching up her nose. “To be fair, I don’t think it’s all my fault. I suspect Merrick is going through a crisis of faith.”
“Aren’t we all?” I add.
“Of course. It happens to most everyone at some point. His father died recently—he never talked about his family, but I think they were close—and it’s hit him hard. Made him confront his mortality and question his role in life, even before we ended up on theCaelestis.”
Her words have me looking at Merrick again, maybe even seeing him in a different light. “It’s funny, isn’t it? We see people and we make judgments and believe we know who they really are, but mostly, we’re wrong. We can never truly understand what someone else is going through. I mean, it’s hard enough working out whatI’mgoing through, never mind anyone else.”
Rain smiles. “Remember that when you think of Beckett. She’s had a hard life. She seems tough, but it’s a mask she wears to hide the pain.”
“Tough” seems like an understatement, but she’s not wrong. And after everything Beckett said earlier, it’s not hard to understand why she is the way she is. Who wouldn’t be hard after everything she’s gone through?
But thinking on that is chasing away the high of my earlier actions, so instead, I change the subject. “What do you think snow tastes like?”
“Sugar,” Rain breathes out, and we both sigh this time. “If it’s snowing when we get to Glacea, promise me we’ll catch some snowflakes on our tongues.”
“You got it,” I say with a grin, and this has officially become my favorite day ever.
So of course it’s at that moment that Ian claps his hands. “I hate to bring more bad news, but I really think we’ve got another problem. And this one we can’t outrun.”
Chapter 38
Kali
“I’ve been thinking,” Ian starts.
“Well, that’s terrifying,” Gage comments in an acerbic voice.
Ian just flips him off in a non-heated way and continues, “The bad guys—and right now, I consider that pretty much everyone who’s not on this ship—keep finding us. And while I’m willing to believe it happened once out of shit luck, twice feels like we should be paying better attention.
“What we need to figure out is—how? How the fuck are the bastards chasing us?” He looks around at each of us in turn, his gaze pausing just a little longer on mine, and I give him my most innocent smile. Which is easy because I really have no idea.
“What’s your theory?” Merrick asks, though it comes out sounding a little funny, considering his lower lip is still swollen from Ian’s fist.
“While I’m willing to believe the first ship picked up our trajectory from Askkandia and tracked us that way, with the second, we were way too far off-planet for that to have worked. So, I’m thinking that maybe we’ve got a bug.”
“What sort of bug are you talking about?” Rain asks, looking totally disgusted.
At least until I lean over and whisper, “Electronic. So they can trace us—and maybe listen to us.”
