Page 14 of Last of Her Name

When I come to, I find myself strapped into a rickety seat with an array of buttons, levers, and holos in front of me. Numbers tick and needles sway over gauges. For the first few moments of consciousness, all the lights seem to wobble, like they’re underwater. The seat harness digs into my shoulders.

Pol must have put me in the caravel.

I fumble for the harness, dimly hearing him say my name. He’s to my left, also seated, hands on the controls.

“Hey!” he says, glancing at me. “Easy. You passed out.”

I groan and reach for my pants, pulling one side up to reveal the wound. Pol stuck a pain patch on my ankle, so everything up to my knee is completely numb. He also managed to wrap a bandage around my calf, neat and tight enough to make my mom proud.

“I gave you a hemo supplement,” he says. “You lost a lot of blood, but you should be feeling better soon.”

“Don’t launch,” I groan. “I have to get out of here. Have to—”

I cut short as my eyes rise to the front window, and the view outside.

Pol pauses on the controls to murmur, “Beautiful, isn’t it?”

I’m too late.

Amethyne is a violet pearl hovering above us, visible through the caravel’s glass roof. We’ve dropped away from the planet, a shining tear falling through space. From here, I can see the contours of its continents, the lines achingly familiar to me despite the fact I’ve only ever seen them on maps. Now, with my own eyes tracing the curves, it doesn’t seem real. Raising my hand, I pinch my home world between my thumb and forefinger, as if it were a jewel I could pluck from the sky.

“No,” I whisper. “No no no no—”

“We’re still not safe,” Pol says gruffly. “Union ships are already setting up a blockade, and three minutes ago someone took a scan of our ship. They’ve got a tag on us now. We’ll have to detour, try to lose them in the noise of the central system, or they’ll follow us straight to the rendezvous point. How do you feel about seeing Sapphine?”

He’s talking fast, trying to distract me from the fact that he’s prepping for warp.

“Pol.” I feel tears in my eyes, sharp as acid. I’m still fighting through the fog of unconsciousness, still coming to grips with the fact I’m in a starship, floating in space. The curves of the caravel’s interior swim around me, surreal and undefined. “We have to go back. My parents and—and Clio. My best friend.”

His hand tightens on the lever until his knuckles whiten. He draws a few breaths, and I stare at him intently, both to get his attention and to steady the nauseated tossing of my stomach.

“You know this is wrong,” I say. “What about your father?”

Pol shuts his eyes. He’s a wreck, with dirt and soot streaked across his face. His skin is mottled with purple bruises. There’s blood on his tunic—not his own, as far as I can tell. His dark curls are bound into an aeyla warrior’s knot at the back of his head, parting around his ivory horns, but several strands have pulled loose and are glued to the sweat on his brow. I notice then that he’s wearing a red scarf—his father’s. I’ve never seen Spiros without it. He must have given it to Pol during the chaos in Afka.

Pol looks unraveled, inside and out. If I could just find the right words, I know I could sway him.

“If the vityazes truly believe that I am some Leonov princess,” I say slowly, “theywillkill them, Pol, for no reason other than their connection to me. Or worse, they’ll torture them, trying to find out where I am. But if I go back, if I justexplainthat this is all a mistake—”

“It’s not.”

“What?”

He opens his eyes, sighing heavily. “It’s not a mistake, Stacia.”

My stomach twists. “Of course it is.”

Holo numbers over the control board tick down—11, 10, 9… I blink at them, finally realizing, with a sickening jolt, what they are.

It’s theLaika’s core temperature gauge, indicating when the engine will be cool enough to engage the Takhimir drive, putting us into warp speed. Once the Takhdrive kicks in, there’ll be no turning back, not in time to save the people I love.

“No!” I lunge across the controls, through the blinking holos, trying to pry Pol’s hand from the lever.

“Stacia!” He peels my fingers away with his other hand. “Stop it!”

“I’m not leaving them!”

3.