Page 42 of The Last Hope

I rip one off, and the monitor behind me beeps aggressively in warning before the screen blinks to black.

“Heya.” Mykal points the tip of his hunting knife at me. “Put that back. It’s been helping you.”

I stick the clear dot back to my wrist, and the monitor flashes to life once again. This is technology that I can’t comprehend.

“And there are such things asdiseases,” Franny proclaims dramatically.

Mykal cringes. “Sounded real nasty. So we let them prick us.”

I freeze. “You let themwhat?”

Franny crosses her legs beneath her bottom. “We had a stew first.”

I would imagine Mykal quarreling about medical tests. More so, I’m in utter disbelief that they allowed Stork to test them fordiseases.“You trust Stork?” I ask, voice strict.

“He has answers, and he needs us alive,” Franny defends. “But he’s still a wart who tried to shove me into a pool.”

Mykal mumbles something about fatherhood, but then he shakes his head and expels a gruff breath. “I dunno what to think, Court.”

Every time their guards dip, mine shoot upward. The last person I trusted unconditionally, who wasn’t linked to me, had been my cell mate in Vorkter—a man who tried to cut out my heart.

The last thing I want is for Mykal or Franny to meet that callous betrayal and gut-wrenching agony. They’ve already sensed enough through me.

“Don’t open your arms too wide yet,” I caution.

“You’ll behappyto know,” Franny snaps back, “that we’re all disease-free.”

“Wondrous,” I say dryly. “Did he tell you why you have random nosebleeds then? Or is he withholding that knowledge for a time that benefits him?”

She bristles. “Maybe he knows nothing about my nosebleeds.”

That’s only one possibility, and a slim one. He said he knowseverything.And if that’s true, he’s a bastard for letting her wade in uncertainty. The kind that will plague her day and night.

I know this because I was that bastard. Before StarDust, she’d pleaded to retest her deathday, and I kept telling her towait.Sayingnow’s not the time.

And I’ll regret it for the rest of my gods-damned life.

She needs answers, and she deserves them. Sometimes the truth is more painful, and maybe that’s why I’ve been content to never discover our origins. Our history.

But I’m willing to confront these answers for Franny.

I swing my legs off the bench, facing her more. “Obviously he’s withholding a vast amount of information.”All so we’ll help him with his retrieval operation.I continue, “But if you want answers, Franny, you don’t need to wait.”

Back when we met in Bartholo, Franny never pressured me to open up about myself because she was being kind. I could barely return to my past without becoming ill. But Stork is being tight-lipped as leverage. Using his knowledge to exercise power over us.

“You can trick him,” I clarify, “or talk his ear off until he lets something slip.” She fooled many StarDust candidates with the indigo cards, and though he seems clever, his guards seem to lower around Franny. He smiles more, teases only her, and so there’s a possibility that he’ll falter.

Her brows jump. “You trust me to do that?”

“Yes.” I nod. “Just be careful.”Please be careful.I shut my eyes tightly, already partly regretting this idea.

I feel her smile before I even open my eyes.

“I will,” she says quietly. “And I’ll wait for the day where you say it’stoo dangerousand then I’ll continue on anyway.”

Mykal laughs. “Predictable.” He reaches for a carton of something.

“No more than you,” I say distantly. “What are those?”