Page 32

Roslyn

As Savvie and I walk away from the crowd gathered at the riverbank, I feel like I’m in a dream.

Or maybe a nightmare.

Because whatever this is, it’s certainly not reality.

In reality, Savvie would be overjoyed to see me. She would have launched herself into my arms just like she did whenever I came back to Severin on leave.

She wouldn’t be so damn unreadable, and the air between us wouldn’t be charged with this awful tension, with the sense that I’ve done something wrong here.

“Savvie,” I start, unable to bear it any longer.

“Not here,” she cuts in, nodding to a villager who’s stepped out of one of the houses rising from the hilly terrain beside the river to watch us pass. “I know a spot where we can talk.”

We make our way through the village, and on any other occasion, I’m sure I’d be staring in awe at all the homes around us.

Magnificent, truly, the way they blend seamlessly into the environment, like they might have sprung right up from the Eritin soil.

But I barely have time to admire, or even register it at all around the worry that sinks deeper and deeper into me with every step.

I’m here. Savvie’s here.

She’s safe. Living and breathing and thriving in this remarkable place.

This should be the happiest day of my life.

And maybe in some distant corner of my mind, it is. Certainly, the crushing fear that I was never going to see her again has fled, but the despair that crept in to take its place is nearly as awful.

It’s been there since the moment Savvie laid eyes on me.

She looked at me like I was a ghost, like the very last person in the universe she wanted to see.

“Here,” she says, gesturing to a path leading off the main route through the village, swerving back toward the riverbank.

“Going to toss me in and let the river monsters have me?” I try for a joke, but it falls flat, even if I do see the corner of Savvie’s lip twitch.

She shakes her head. “I… let’s just sit and talk.”

A few dozen meters down the path, another dock juts out into the water. There’s a bench at the end of it, a quiet place to sit and watch the river flow.

Savvie steps onto the dock’s planks, but I hesitate, glancing back the way we came.

“Is Zandrel going to be alright with…” I trail off, realizing I’ve already forgotten the name she called the huge, imposing, emerald-scaled male who interrogated us when we got here.

“Arrik,” she says, and for the first time since I’ve been here, she smiles. “Yeah, he’s mostly bluster.”

I know that look. “And who is Arrik… to you?”

She laughs softly. “It’s part of the story I need to tell you. Come on, sit with me.”

This time, I follow. We both settle onto the bench, and again, I wish I was better able to enjoy this place. The beauty of it, the tranquility. The slow meander of the river and the birdsong above, the lush jungle filled with dense canopy and flowers.

“I’m not sure if I know where to start,” Savvie says softly as soon as we’re settled.

“Let’s start with how the hell you got off Severin,” I say, but my tone still falls just to the left of humor. Too brittle, too much like resentment.

Savvie cuts me a sidelong glance. “On a transport ship.”

“Whose transport ship?”

“Arrik’s.”

“And you, what? Just stuck your thumb out at the port and hitched a ride across half the sector?”

“It wasn’t like that,” she shoots back, then her expression falls, grows guarded. “I… didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t stay there. On Severin.”

Dread growing heavier in my stomach, ears ringing with the story Savvie’s friend told me about the bad male she was mixed up with—the one with the blaster hole in his corpse—I ask the question that needs to be asked.

“What happened?”

For a few long moments, she doesn’t answer me. She looks out over the river, eyes unfocused and far away, like she’s no longer here on Eritin.

In those moments, I hardly recognize the woman sitting beside me. In the tense, weary set of her features, I struggle to find any similarities at all to the girl who slept next to me every night on the Bravo, the tear-stained face that came to the port to see me off for my enlistment, the sister in the photo I’ve stared at for hours and hours.

But maybe that shouldn’t be a surprise. She was so young when I left for training, and I only got a few weeks of leave every other year during my enlistment. Sure, we exchanged messages all the time while I was gone, but that’s not really the same, is it?

Maybe it shouldn’t be a surprise that I barely know her anymore.

“Do you remember Xelan?” Savvie asks, interrupting those thoughts.

The bottom of my stomach twists again. “Yeah, I remember him.”

Savvie huffs a soft, humorless laugh at the venom in my voice. “Well, he and I were… kind of a thing. During your last deployment.”

“Savvie,” I breathe, entirely unable to keep the older-sister admonishment out of my voice. “What the hell were you thinking? He’s such a piece of—”

“You think I don’t know that?”

This is new, too. The sharp resentment. The jagged edges I’ve never heard in my baby sister’s voice.

“And this is my story to tell,” she continues. “So let me tell it.”

I shut up, and she does.

She tells me things I don’t want to hear about how lonely she was, how reckless it made her. She tells me about the bad choices that led her to a male who seemed to have the answers she was looking for. Or at least the ones she thought would be enough to numb everything else. She tells me about how quickly she fell into his orbit, how she saw the red flags from the beginning but couldn’t quite find it in herself to care.

But she also tells me about the kind, handsome, emerald-scaled male whose ship malfunction brought him to the Severin port. She tells me about a whirlwind romance, about falling hard and fast and learning that the life she was leading might not be the only one out there for her.

“Xelan found out about Arrik,” Savvie says softly. “Xe and I weren’t a thing anymore at that point, but he took it as a personal insult that I would even look at another male after him.”

Her laugh is short, bitter.

“He would have killed me.”

Savvie meets my eye, then, and even if I didn’t already trust my sister implicitly, I’d see the truth of it on her face.

“We fought over the blaster. I shot him.”

The way she says it—like that’s all it was, like it was so simple and straightforward—is a knife to my heart.

And even though I’m still not sure where things between us stand, what she’s thinking, what she’s feeling, I reach over and put my arm around her.

Savvie goes stiff for a few seconds, but then she melts into me. When she speaks again, that cool matter-of-factness is gone from her voice. In its place is stark, shaking honesty that chips a few more pieces off my already shattered heart, but I’d take these truths a hundred times over if it means she still trusts me enough to give them to me.

“Xe’s crew would have killed me,” she whispers. “They wouldn’t have stopped until they got their revenge.”

“But Arrik was there?”

She sniffles and nods. “Arrik was there. And he didn’t need to take such a risk smuggling me here. But he did. He did that for me.”

Something about the idea of that makes me uneasy. The idea of some male she barely knew sweeping her away to a planet where she had nobody, knew nobody, would be under his thumb. And, like she can immediately sense that unease, Savvie laughs.

“It’s not like that. You should have seen him when we first got here. It’s like he couldn’t give me enough space.”

You should have seen him.

The reminder brings me crashing right out of Savvie’s story and into the cold, stark truth of it all.

I wasn’t there to see him. I wasn’t there to help her. I wasn’t there to keep her away from Xelan. I didn’t know how bad things were and I wasn’t there to pull her off that ledge before they got bad enough that she had to kill someone in self-defense and flee the planet.

God.

My head spins, and for a moment I’m not certain I’m going to be able to keep down the pastry I ate for breakfast.

Savvie went through all of that. Alone.

And where was I?

Off on some stupid outpost moon, stuck in a building that was trying its damnedest to come down on my head. Nearly dying while she was back home fighting her own battle.

But I’m here now, aren’t I? We can still fix this. We can figure it out.

We can leave here and start over. Together.

The thoughts are still tumbling over faster in my mind than I can fully make sense of them, faster than I can come up with any kind of plan for how we’ll make it happen, when Savvie puts an end to my short-lived dream.

“Ros,” she says—quiet, but firm, slipping out from under my arm and putting some distance between us. “You can’t be here.”

As gentle as the words are coming out of her mouth, they feel like a slap.

“It’s like, so illegal for me to be on this planet,” she continues. “If anyone ever found me here, I’d be arrested. Or worse, sent back. And you coming here, finding me, for us to be in contact at all makes that so much more likely.”

Guilt climbs the back of my throat. “Let’s find a way to get you off world, then. I’m out of the military now. I was… well, it doesn’t matter. I’m out. That’s all that matters.”

She shakes her head. “I can’t go back to Severin. I’d be a dead woman walking.”

“So we’ll go somewhere else,” I say, not ready to concede. “We’ll find a new place, somewhere to start over. Arrik can even come, if he wants.”

“This is his home, Ros.”

“But it’s not yours,” I point out.

“Neither was Severin.”

“I know that!” Somewhere in the back of my mind, I already know this is an argument I’m not going to win, but it’s not enough to make me stop. “That’s the point. We can choose, Savvie. We can start over anywhere we want. We can figure this out together.”

When I end my little speech and look at her again, I know I’ve lost.

I know that look in her eyes, that resolve.

“I have… other reasons for staying here.”

Savvie drops a hand to her abdomen. With the way she’s sitting and the billowing fabric of her dress settling over her, it outlines the small, round bump there.

“Savvie,” I breathe, unconsciously moving my hand to cover hers.

“Arrik will protect both of us,” Savvie whispers. “Me, and our baby. We’ll be okay here.”

I hear what she doesn’t say.

We’ll be okay without you .

My sister. My little niece or nephew. They’ll be safe here.

I’m not the protector who needs to take on the whole wide universe for her anymore.

In fact, I might be hurting her by being here right now. I might be the one putting her in danger.

“Okay,” I whisper. “Alright.”

Again, we both fall silent.

What’s there to say?

Nothing that will change what either of us has been through.

Nothing that will change the future.

Nothing that will change any of it.

“I should go,” I say.

“Go where?”

Does it matter? I want to ask, but make myself swallow the words back.

“Back to the Mate Match beach. Before any of the producers realize this season’s star couple has gone AWOL.”

Savvie’s eyes are saucers, and her mouth opens and closes a couple of times before she finds her words. “How… what did you… you’re competing on Mate Match?”

“Yeah.” I huff a humorless laugh. “You just had to pick the most locked-down planet in the sector to hide out on, so I had to get creative to find you.”

More guilt swarms up my throat as I watch the words land with a slight flinch, as I watch her realize for the first time how much I’ve gone through to be here, how much further I would have been willing to go to find her.

And maybe it’s small of me, maybe it’s mean of me, but I want her to realize. My mind is a tangle of desperation and grief and no small measure of frustration over the fact that all of this was useless. I came all this way, risked my freedom and future, and look where it got me.

So yeah, the righteous older sister in me wants her to know.

“Why didn’t you tell me where you were going? Why didn’t you send a message? Anything?”

The questions slip out before I can stop them, and Savvie flinches again.

“There… wasn’t time. And then, once there was, I thought it would be better if I was just… gone. Mom was gone. You were gone. I figured it was my turn.”

Anger sparks hot and heavy and drenched in regret, all of it pooling together in the bottom of my gut.

“I was never gone, Sav. I was trying to get back to you. Always. From the day I left for training, all I ever wanted was to get back to you. To make sure you were okay until I could.”

She’s got nothing to say to that.

I don’t blame her.

I don’t have any more words, either.

I’ve got nothing but the sick, sinking certainty that all of this was a mistake, and not a mistake. That it was the biggest regret I’ll ever have, and the most necessary thing I’ve ever done. I’m numb with it, far too numb to do anything but stand when Savvie does and follow her off the dock, up the path, back through the village where a handful of faces peer out at us from windows and doors as we pass. All the friends and neighbors Savvie will have by her side for the rest of her life. The friends and neighbors who’ll meet her child, who’ll watch them grow, who’ll be the community we never had on Earth or Severin or anywhere else.

We reach the spot where Zan and I docked on the riverbank, and he’s there, lounging in the hover. Arrik is nearby, too, no doubt keeping an eye on the interloper in their midst.

They both stand as we approach, and Zan walks back down the dock in a few long strides, stopping just at the end of it when Arrik gives him a hard look.

Savvie and I stop at the foot of the dock, the air between us as crackling and heavy as the storm-clouds above, the ones that still haven’t broken despite all their bluster.

“I guess this is it.”

The words seem to come from somewhere outside of me, somewhere warped and sideways and not of this world.

They can’t be of this world. They can’t be real.

This is it.

“Yeah, I guess it is.”

Savvie steps closer and wraps her arms around me.

The hug is wrong. Light, awkward, stilted. Filled to the brim with resentment and hurt and grief.

When we part, it’s even worse, like a piece of my heart’s been wrenched from my chest and I’m slowly bleeding out.

“Goodbye, Ros.”

“Bye, Savvie.”

Then I’m walking, and my feet are somewhere outside my body, too. I’m a hundred different pieces heading a hundred different directions. Broken. Scattered. I can’t make myself stop. Can’t make myself think. Can’t make sense of any of it.

When I reach him on the dock, Zan puts a hand between my shoulder blades, drawing me closer to him. “Are you alright?”

I nod. “Yeah, I’m… let’s just go.”

He looks at me a beat longer before he nods, too, and steps toward the hover.

I can’t make my out-of-body feet follow.

I’m rooted in place, shoes cemented to the dock, completely unable to move.

This is really happening.

I really just said goodbye to my sister for the last time. I’m never going to see her again, and this is how we’re going to leave things. Wounded, angry, short with each other and not even scratching the surface of everything that happened, everything that needs to be said.

This is really happening.

This can’t be happening.

“Ros,” Savvie cries out, and by the time I turn, she’s nearly reached me.

Her arms close around me with a force that makes me stumble a step before I catch myself and hug her back.

A lifetime, in this embrace.

Everything we couldn’t say and everything we’ll never get the chance to.

All the years of struggle and the uncertain future stretching before us.

I feel it all in the strength of my sister’s hold on me. In her iron-strong grip, the uneven rasp of her breath, the glassy shine of her eyes welling over with tears when she pulls back far enough to meet my gaze.

“I’m sorry,” Savvie whispers, and I reach up to swipe away the first of those tears with my thumb.

“It’s okay.”

It’s not. It’s so far from okay I feel like I might puke, and Savvie seems to know that, too. Her eyes well up again, a few more tears streaming down her cheeks.

I rest my hands on her shoulders. “You’re safe. I’m safe. We’re both going to be alright.”

Savvie breathes in deep, lets out a shaky exhale, and nods.

“You’re going to have a family ,” I remind her, and my heart sinks and soars at the thought.

A family. A family I won’t be a part of. A family who will love her and care for her while I’m a thousand light-years away.

“And I’ll be just fine,” I make myself say. “I know how to take care of myself.”

Savvie shakes her head. “You shouldn’t have to. Maybe… maybe I can find some way for you to come here… some way for you to—”

My eyes dart to Arrik, and as soon as I see the tense set of his expression and the worry creasing his brow, any momentary hope that swelled within my chest dies a swift death.

“No,” I say gently, but firmly. “I can’t jeopardize your safety that way. You got away, Sav. You survived. You earned this peace, and I won’t take it from you.”

“What kind of peace will it be if I never see you again?”

“Never is a long time,” I whisper, even as a terrible certainty sinks into my bones.

Never . I’ll never see Savvie again.

She’ll live her life here, grow her family here, find her peace here, and I’ll…

A cavernous pit of uncertainty opens in my chest.

I push it away.

The mystery of where I go from here is irrelevant. I’ll figure it out, and spending these last few moments I have with Savvie despairing over it won’t help either of us.

So I do what I’ve learned to do best.

I square my shoulders, swallow my fear, put on a brave face, and study my sister’s beautiful, beloved face one last time.

“This isn’t how I wanted things to go,” I admit. Savvie opens her mouth and lets out a small, distressed noise, but I gently shake my head. “This isn’t how I wanted things to go, but I am so, so happy you found your way here, Sav. You’ve got a life. You’ve got a chance for some real, honest-to-god happiness, and that’s so much better than either of us would have ever found on Severin. And I want you to have that. I want you to have that and not have to look over your shoulder for the rest of your life. I love you, and if the two of us saying goodbye means you get to live that life, I can be okay with that.”

Her tears have started flowing in earnest again while I’ve been talking, but she takes her cue from me and pulls herself up to her full height and smiles through the grief.

“I love you, too, and I’ll think of you every day, Ros. I’ll never stop being grateful for all of it. Everything. There’s nothing I can do to ever make it up to you.”

“Yes there is,” I tell her, and even through the waves of pain, a sliver of joy works its way to the fore. Bittersweet and tenuous, but enough. It has to be enough. “You can be happy, Sav. That’s enough for me.”

I expect the words to taste like a lie, but they don’t.

If Savvie is happy—if she’s here, if she’s safe, if she’s alive —that’s all that matters.

I can hold on to that. I can be alright with that. I can let it sustain me, let it hold me steady when I leave here and have to confront the question of what exactly I’m going to make of the rest of my life without her.

“And you’ll do the same? You’ll be happy, too?”

The question lands like a physical blow, but I’m braced and fortified enough that I don’t think my flinch shows on my face. Savvie’s eyes dart momentarily to something behind me—something I very much suspect is Zan—but I don’t have the heart to correct her. I don’t have the heart to tell her that happiness and contentment and peace are the impossible dream I was more than willing to put on the back-burner while I came here, while I made a deal with a Revexoran mercenary so I could find her, so I only offer a small, restrained smile instead.

“Yeah. Yeah, I think I’ll be happy, too.”

I don’t know if she believes me, but as she pulls me into one more fierce hug, maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe the only thing that matters is this, us, saying goodbye for the last time.