Page 76 of Last of Her Name
He looks at me like I am air and he cannot breathe.
“I know you might not feel the same way,” he whispers. “I know you think I’m dull and stubborn. But I can’t go on like this, pretending that the sight of you doesn’t hit me like lightning. Back on the asteroid, when Zhar asked me to choose between you and my mission, I realized it was never the mission I cared about. It wasyou, Stace. It was alwaysyou. And, stars damn me, I’m in love with you.”
I stare into his stormy eyes, at a loss for words, at a loss for breath.
He is relentless, his hands gripping my arms like I’m the only thing tethering him to the ground. “I love your tenacity, how you’ll run miles across town on the hottest day of the year to save something everyone else has given up on. I love how you look at the stars, like you want to peel them from the sky and swallow them whole. I love that you can’t see the horizon without needing to discover what’s beyond it.”
I don’t know what to say.
I don’t understand the feelings that flutter in me like leaves stirred in the wind. There is something deep down, fighting to be made known, words waiting to be whispered, but I cannot catch them. They come and are gone, like falling stars.
I pull away, brushing back my hair, exhaling long and slow in an attempt to calm my pulse. Stars, this isPol. I know him better than almost anyone. So why do I suddenly feel as if he were a stranger? As if he is calling to some part of me I didn’t know existed, as if there’s another voice in my head crying out to be heard by him?
My words finally rush out, all at once. “I can’t—I can’t do this right now. Clio—”
“Clio.” His eyes are pained. He can’t look at me, and I feel my cheeks heat with warmth.
“Clio’s loved you since she was a kid,” I say. “I can’t do this to her. Neither can you.”
“I don’t … I don’t love Clio, Stacia. I can’t. She’s not …” He lets out a growl of frustration, stepping back and rubbing his face.
“Well, maybe you don’t love her,” I return, “butIdo.”
I run past him, nearly slipping on the smooth, wet surface of the pyramid. I practically leap into the lift and then punch the controls inside, letting out a relieved breath when it sinks back into the pyramid.
I’m enclosed with my own turbulent thoughts, my watery reflection looming on each of the lift’s smooth walls. I feel like I’ve betrayed my best friend. I didn’t kiss him, but oh stars, I was close to it. Iwantedto, and isn’t that just as bad? How will I tell her about this night?
My stomach rocks like I’m an out of control shuttle, burning through the atmosphere. I sink down to sit on the lift’s hard floor, arms wrapped around my knees, still breathing hard. I can feel him, his hands, his breath, his chest against mine.
The lift comes to a silent, gentle stop, and I rise and stumble out into the corridor leading to the room I share with Mara. I follow it slowly, hand trailing the polished stone wall. Candles burn along the floor, their flickering light making my shadow dance beside me.
I pause in front of our door, collecting my breath, silencing my thoughts. The past few weeks have been a mad race across the stars, from one danger to the next. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? Who can say how long any of us has?
I almost lost Pol twice, when he was shot, and during his Trying. I remember how it felt to hold him as he inched toward death, watching for his every ragged breath, fearing he’d slipped away from me. Shaken by how frightened I was. Even more frightened by how badly I needed him.
I can’t love him, but I can’t lose him again.
No matter where I go or how far I run, I will have a target on my head. And everyone around me will pay the price. My parents, Spiros, Clio … I can’t keep letting others get hurt for me. Pol might be the only one left I can save. He’s bound his fate to mine, but it’s time I set him free—him and Riyan and everyone else who’s helped me.
The longer I run, the more people get hurt.
So maybe it’s time to stop running and accept the inevitable: I can’t save both my friends and myself. The choice has been in front of me since all of this started.
It’s time I finally found the courage to make it.
Riyan’s trial is to be held in a massive room at the heart of Tyrrha, ominously named the Chamber of Judgment. Mara and I blend in with the streams of tensors heading that way. The corridors echo with shuffling footsteps and hushed voices. The solemnity in the air fills me with dread.
Stone benches, stacked at sharp angles along the sloping walls, overlook a central platform of shining diamantglass. High above, a cylindrical shaft rises all the way to the top of Tyrrha, where a circular hatch has been opened to allow a single beam of twilight to shine down on the accused.
When I arrive with Mara, the place is almost full.
“I feel sick,” I murmur, looking across the gathered people.
We find Damai already there, with six more girls lined up beside her. It’s not hard to tell by their wiry dark hair and tall, lean physiques who they are. All of Riyan’s sisters watch the central platform and whisper to one another.
Mara and I sit by them, leaving a seat open between Damai and me. I push my hand into the pocket of my coat and grip the small tabletka hidden inside. Without turning my head, I glance down at the screen.
I have no way of knowing whether the message I sent this morning reached its intended target, but I have to be ready in case it did. My stomach is in knots. What if the Tensors have jamming equipment to block messages from being transmitted offworld? Even worse—what if they don’t, and the messagedidget through, and I’ve made a terrible mistake?