Page 44

Roslyn

I might be dreaming.

Here, with my sister standing in front of me, in this doorway she’s haunted a thousand times, I might actually be dreaming.

I step aside to let her through, and she strides right in like this is any other day. Like she might be on her way back from the store around the corner. Like time has warped and compressed and reversed itself into some impossible, wonderful reality.

“Savvie,” I breathe. “Savvie, what are you… how are you… what the hell?”

She stops in the middle of the kitchen, turns, and grins. “Miss me?”

Crossing the room to sweep her into a hug is never a conscious thought in my mind. One moment I’m standing next to the open door and the next she’s in my arms. Warm and familiar, smelling faintly of jungle breezes and Severin dust, I crush her to me.

Her belly is even more dramatically rounded now, creating a barrier between us we both laugh awkwardly around.

I pull back and take her by the shoulders, still searching for some sign this isn’t real, that she’s just a hallucination my brain created to keep me from slipping into total despondency.

The longer I look, though, the initial rush of seeing her fades away.

“You can’t be here.”

I glance around Savvie, back to the front door, which is still open wide. Quickly crossing the room to close it, I secure the locks before turning to face her with my heart in my throat.

“How did you get on-world? And did anyone follow you here? You know the landlord doesn’t give two shits about keeping this building secured against—”

“Whoa.” Savvie rests her hands on my shoulders. “I wouldn’t have come here if I thought I was going to be offed, or if I thought it was going to put you in any danger.”

“Then what—”

“I’ve been cleared of any wrongdoing in Xelan’s death. And what’s left of his crew’s been busted.”

“What?”

I can’t have heard her right. There’s never any justice on Severin. At least not unless it’s secured at the business end of a blaster.

“All of them. Every single one. And I’m off free and clear. They even threw in a residency permit for Eritin.”

“Savvie, I… there’s no way this can be… how ?”

Savvie smiles. “You’ll have to ask Zandrel about that.”

Beneath my feet, the world tilts. Constellations rearrange themselves in the sky, and something shifts in the fabric of my universe. “What?”

“Zandrel,” Savvie repeats. “The Aux guy you were with on Eritin. He must have pulled some strings or something, because the message I got said the case was cleared after an Aux investigation. They’re cleaning house here on Severin, breaking up some of the criminal rings and cracking down on illegal trade. You haven’t heard about it?”

I’ve heard rumblings of raids happening in the seedier corners of the port colony over the past couple months, arrests being made, but between preparing for the move and being lost in my own personal cavern of grief, I hadn’t paid it much mind.

I shake my head slowly. “No. I… I’ve been a little distracted.”

Savvie’s face softens in understanding. “Yeah, I bet. But Zandrel, he had something to do with it. I’m not exactly sure what, and I’m honestly not all that interested in questioning a good thing, but the notice I got had a post-script from him with port clearance documentation to come here and see you.”

That topsy-turvy, world-bending lurch still hasn’t gone away, and I wobble a couple of steps to sit in one of the rickety chairs at the table.

Zan.

Zan did this.

Somehow, he brought Savvie back to me.

Unable to fully comprehend it, I collapse into myself. Elbows on the table, head resting in my hands, I drag in a deep breath.

“Ros,” Savvie breathes. “What the hell is that?”

I glance over my shoulder to find her eyes wide as she stares at the scars and ink on full display in the tanktop I’m wearing.

For a moment, the old instinct to hide claws its way to the surface.

Hide where exactly, I don’t know, but I angle my body away from her and run a hand over my shoulder.

But beneath my fingers, the familiar topography of my injury reminds me there’s nothing to hide from.

There’s never been anything to hide from.

What happened happened, and pretending it didn’t won’t fix a damn thing for me or Savvie.

“It’s the reason I left service.” Steeling myself, I uncurl my useless defenses and tug the strap of my shirt aside. “A nasty little attack in the Merixir system. No fatalities, but I didn’t exactly make it out unscathed.”

“When?”

I’ve charted the timeline a hundred times in my mind, trying to figure out how it all went so badly wrong, so the answer is immediate.

“Just about the time things went to shit here for you. Give or take a few days.”

She inhales, quick and jerky, eyes still making a study of the scars and flowers and constellations that mark my shoulder and upper arm.

“I like the tattoos. What do they mean?”

In quiet, halting tones, I tell her. At least a little. It’d take days, maybe weeks, to recount all the stories that went in to choosing the designs, but I can at least give her this. A look at where I’ve been, a look at the time I spent away just trying to do my best for her, whether or not it amounted to anything at all.

When I’m done, she sinks into the chair across from me.

“Alright,” I say with a shaky exhale. “Enough about me. Did you come here by yourself?”

She snorts. “I know you only met Arrik once, but believe me when I say there’s no way in hell he was going to let his pregnant wife travel through multiple jumpgates and galaxies alone. He’s waiting downstairs, doing a pretty convincing impression of all the meatheads that used to swagger around this neighborhood, I might add. He thought I might want to talk to you alone.”

“Thoughtful of him,” I say with a laugh. “How pissed was he that you made him come all the way here?”

She laughs, too. “Pissed isn’t the word I would use. Out of his mind with worry, maybe, but also more than aware I wouldn’t lift my foot once I’d put it down. Sending all of this in a comm didn’t feel right, and seeing you on my vidcomm screen every week doesn’t cut it, either.”

I groan. “Don’t tell me you’re watching.”

“Oh, I’m one hundred percent watching. You were… really something, weren’t you?”

“Don’t remind me. Most days it feels like I’ve got a billion angry viewers doing enough of that in the tabloids and comms networks.”

“They aren’t your biggest fans, are they?”

I drop my head to the tabletop and groan again. “They absolutely fucking hate me.”

The reaction to the latest season of Mate Match has been swift and definitive. The final episode aired this week, and though I couldn’t stomach watching myself say goodbye to Zan, I’ve seen some of the discourse that’s followed.

Safe to say, I’m no one’s favorite contestant.

And while I’ve already spent my fair share of time angsting about it, there’s something delightfully absurd about being here, with Savvie, discussing something as entirely mundane as a vidcomm program.

I tilt my head to peer up at her. “How much you wanna bet that hate follows me all the way to Terra Spei?”

“That’s where you’re going?”

There’s a smile on Savvie’s face, but it trembles a little at the corners.

“Yeah, that’s where I’m going.”

A few silent seconds pass. From the alley below, the engine-fire whoosh of some reckless joyrider echoes between the buildings, followed by a few irritated shouts.

“What’s it like?”

I fish my comms screen from my pocket. “Here. See it for yourself.”

The faint reflection of vast green forests and rocky coasts shines in her eyes as she flips through the images, filled with humans making a new life for themselves in this little haven.

“It looks wonderful.” She hands the tablet back.

In another life, I’d beg her to come with me.

I wouldn’t take no for an answer. I’d plead and cajole and bribe, whatever I had to do to make her agree.

But today, I simply take the device and tuck it away. I smile at her—a real smile—and accept she’s got her own peace waiting for her, even if it’ll look different from mine.

“I hope it will be,” I tell her. “And you’ll know where to find me, if you ever want to come visit.”

“I’ll have to take you up on that sometime. Will be better than coming back to this place, at any rate.”

We both fall silent.

Seconds tick by, heavy with the understanding that we’re both about to leave this place for the last time.

Off to uncertain futures on worlds far away, apart from one another in a way that might not be permanent, but will also be different from anything we’ve known. The two halves of our lives, cleaved clean through, with no way to put them back together even if we wanted to.

My throat tightens, but it’s not all grief this time.

There won’t be much love lost for this place, that’s for certain, but in spite of all its faults, it’s seen us through. We survived it long enough to leave it.

Even with all the work the Aux has done to clean up the criminal element in the city, Savvie’s still not entirely comfortable spending more time here than she needs to, and I can’t blame her. Nor do I want to give Arrik any kind of aneurysm from the stress he must be feeling over having Savvie back here in the city she was nearly killed in.

So even though I’ll never, ever have enough time with her, I can also accept it’s time for another goodbye.

I walk down with her, and take the opportunity to thank my new brother-in-law for everything he’s done for her. We say our goodbyes with a few tears, but also with promises we’ll stay in touch, promises we’ll both do our best with these lives we’ve earned.

What our best means, I don’t know, and I don’t imagine it will be anywhere near what I might have wished for Savvie and me.

Back inside, I climb the stairs and keep climbing, past our seventh floor walk-up and all the way to the roof. I let myself out and cross to the edge. It’s not much of a view—I doubt anywhere on Thervor’s got any kind of worthwhile view—but it’s as good a place as any to wait for the suns to set.

It’s as good a place as any to think, to dream, to grieve, to hold vigil on this last night on Severin before whatever my life will become tomorrow.