Page 35

Zandrel

I wake with a start, thrown off-balance by the feeling of something missing.

In the bleary haze of lingering sleep, I can’t immediately figure out what it is. All I know is that it feels important, vital, like coming back to consciousness with one of my limbs no longer attached to my body.

It only takes a few blinks to realize.

Roslyn is gone.

I’m on my feet in half a heartbeat, panic rising hot and urgent in the back of my throat.

“Ros?”

There’s no answer as I jog from the bedroom to the living space, skidding to a stop in the middle of the room, eyes darting to each empty corner.

She couldn’t have left, could she?

Was she desperate enough to steal another hover and go back to the village? To risk being seen, being caught?

Did she feel like she had nothing left to lose?

In my panic, I take longer than I reasonably should to remember I’ve got direct access into every comms and surveillance system in on the beach. All the cameras, the sensors in the bungalow, everything.

Heart pounding, I return to the bedroom and pull on my cuff, fish my comms device out of my pack. Rapidly flipping through a few screens, it takes me an even more unreasonable amount of time to make sense of what I’m seeing, and then to toss the comms screen onto the bed as I bound for the front door.

My panic doesn’t ebb until I spot Roslyn on the beach.

A couple dozen meters in front of the bungalow, she sits in the sand with her legs bent in front of her, elbows resting on her knees, eyes fixed on the horizon.

She doesn’t turn to look at me as I approach, but I know her well enough to read the slight tensing of her posture when she realizes she’s not alone.

“I can go,” I say softly. “If you’d rather me not be here. I just… I woke up, and you weren’t… I wanted to… I can go.”

Idiot. I’m an idiot.

Of course she wasn’t going to run. She was never in any danger. And here I am, disturbing her peace when she likely wants to be alone.

Slowly, she shakes her head. “No. I don’t want you to go.”

I sink to the sand behind her. Legs bent just like hers, but with room enough for her between them, I wind my arms around her waist and gently urge her back. After a moment of hesitation, she melts into me, all the rigid tension in her loosening in one long, shuddering exhale.

There’s no need for any more words.

The weight of everything that’s happened over the past day presses down on us both, though I know Ros feels it a thousand times more keenly.

The only necessary chore is keeping the fatesforsaken cameras away, and I do so with a quick flick of my fingers over my wristband. Most of them are charging at this time of day, and the ones that are still stalking up and down the beach are easy enough to redirect without rousing suspicion.

Cameras taken care of, I settle Roslyn more comfortably in my arms and follow her gaze out toward the sea.

The sky is a wash of pastels. Blues and purples, with the faint hint of pink dawn just visible over the water.

It’s magnificent.

I can’t remember the last time I saw a sunrise. Really saw it.

Stuck on a ship with nothing but the endless black of deep space to greet the morning, or too focused on the mission at hand to notice when night bled into day, I wonder idly just how many I’ve missed. How much beauty has passed me by because I never thought to slow down and savor it?

Ros and I sit and watch in silence long enough for that pink to brighten, to become gold and orange as dawn prepares to break, before she speaks again.

“I’m still in.”

I startle slightly, readjusting my hold on her. “What?”

“I’m in. For this. All of it. You helped me find Savvie. Now I’ll help you get your life back.”

The words should settle some of the turmoil inside me. They should be the reassurance I need.

Instead, all that churning uncertainty only grows more violent.

This is going to end. I know this is going to end. It’s had an expiration date on it from the beginning, so it’s no surprise that Roslyn and I will part ways in a few short days.

“We don’t have to think about that right now.”

Ros lets out a soft laugh. “Oh, believe me, I’d rather think about that than what happened yesterday.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No? Or… maybe? I don’t know. How much of what Savvie and I said to each other did you hear?”

I let out a low, thoughtful hum. “Enough. And I saw her face when we arrived. I’m guessing she wasn’t thrilled you found her?”

“No. She wasn’t.” Ros falls silent for a few heartbeats, eyes still fixed on the horizon.

I tighten my hold on her, follow her gaze. We sit and watch the sun come up, its first rays golden and blazing when they reach us, gilding us both in the new day.

“She doesn’t want to leave,” Ros says finally. “She’s… she’s staying here.”

In halting, grief-thickened words, she tells me what happened.

Savannah’s struggles on Severin, the violence which caused her to flee with the emerald-scaled male, Arrik. The way she thought she was safer without letting Roslyn know where she’d gone.

That last bit raises my hackles, and a small, disgruntled grunt slips out before I can stop it.

“I hardly even blame her,” Roslyn murmurs, cutting short the protest I was about to make. “I’m sure she was just doing what she thought she had to.”

I want to argue the point, to remind Roslyn of everything she did for her sister, everything she sacrificed, but I’m not sure it’s my place. Not now, when the wound’s so fresh.

When she finishes her story, we fall silent again.

She leans into me. I hold her closer.

“Has it ever felt worth it to you, serving with the Aux?” Roslyn asks eventually. “And feel free to tell me to fuck off if that’s not something I should ask. I know you didn’t wind up there by choice.”

I’m uncertain where the shift in conversation came from, but I stroke a reassuring hand up and down her bicep as I consider the question.

“At times, yes. It has. It might not be the best life I could have hoped for, but I certainly could have ended up with worse.”

Roslyn lets out a soft chuckle, but there’s no humor in it. “That’s… pragmatic.”

I shrug. “Pragmatism’s served me well.”

“I’m sure it has,” she says with another not-quite-laugh.

The sun has fully crested the horizon now, bathing us both in its light. Roslyn shifts in my arms, lets out a long breath.

“I can’t help but wonder what all of it was for,” she murmurs. “Serving with the Sol Alliance. Leaving home. Fighting in wars that have nothing to do with me, not even knowing whether I was on the right side or the wrong one. Being told where to go and what to do and never being allowed to question it.”

“Being able to support your family,” I remind her gently. “It allowed you to do that as well.”

“But I failed at that, too, didn’t I? Maybe if I would have stayed on Severin, things would have been different. I could have been there for Savvie. I could have made sure she didn’t—”

“Roslyn,” I softly interrupt, not liking the way her tone is quickly veering into self-loathing and blame. “You couldn’t have known. You did your best with the hand the universe dealt you.”

“It sure is pretty to think so, isn’t it?”

Her question isn’t one that needs an answer. We both fall silent, watching the sun rise over lilac and cerulean waves, the weight of her words settling between us.

It sure is pretty to think so, isn’t it?

Perhaps I could say the same for my own service, for the way I’ve also been a piece in someone else’s game, a soldier in someone else’s war. Perhaps in a somewhat different capacity than Roslyn, but the heart of the thing seems to be the same.

It opens a wide, yawning pit within me, a bolt of doubt to the very foundation of conviction I’ve always felt about my place within the Aux.

And perhaps it’s always been there, that doubt. Perhaps I’ve never bought into the myth the way some of my fellow soldiers have.

But perhaps, like Roslyn, I’ve never been free to examine it. Perhaps I’ve always been too busy trying to survive it.

A tangle, all of it.

And just like I have no good way to fix Roslyn’s problems, I’ve got no good answer for this, either.

“Anyway,” Ros says a short time later with a slight shimmy of her shoulders, like she could physically shake the hounding thoughts away. “I’m in. And we’re going to get you so far into Marva’s good graces that she’ll turn your reinstatement into a promotion somehow.”

I laugh a little at that, but the sound is off. Hollow and forced, though if Roslyn can hear it, she doesn’t say a word.

Instead, she shifts forward and stands, offering me a hand up.

“Come on,” she says with a defiant lift of her chin. A soldier, squaring up before a battle. “Let’s go make the most of it.”