Maybe there’s something I can do with the remnants of the communications array. Get some sort of signal transmitting, to tell people we’re here. If I can prove we’re signaling, maybe the major won’t drag me across this nightmare of a planet.
I’m inching toward sleep when my cousin’s face flashes in front of my eyes. My throat seizes so suddenly it’s as though invisible hands are strangling me. She was only doing what my father forced her to do; she was still my best, my only friend. I should have gone back for her, tried to find her in the crowd, brought her with us. And instead, I left her there.
My lips shape the words in the darkness. I left her there to die.
I think of Elana, her mindless devotion to chasing the trends I set. I think of Swann, the ragged edge to her voice as she tried to fight her way back through the crowd to get to me as the Icarus began to break apart. Did they find escape pods that worked? Or did Swann spend too long trying to find me in the midst of the crowds, and go down in flames with my father’s ship?
It isn’t the first time someone’s death has been my fault, but that doesn’t make it any less impossible to bear.
My father is light-years away, perhaps being told at this moment what happened to the Icarus. And he has no one there to lean on, without me. Since my mother’s death when I was little, we’ve never been apart for more than a few weeks at a time—and never without the ability to speak to each other at the touch of a button on a console.
And now I’m stranded on an alien planet with a soldier who hates me and everything I aspire to.
For the first time in my life, I’m alone.
I cover the sounds my tears make, tossing and turning in my makeshift bed, so the space blanket crinkles noisily. I expect him to chastise me for being such a princess, but he says nothing and his breathing doesn’t change. He doesn’t even hear me. I give up and just let myself cry.
“At that stage your expectation was that you would be rescued promptly?”
“I was with Miss LaRoux. I imagined she’d be their top priority.”
“What did you make of your companion?”
“It was a change of pace from a platoon.”
“That’s not a substantive response, Major Merendsen.”
“I hadn’t had long to form an opinion. The situation wasn’t ideal.”
“For you or her?”
“For either of us. Do you know anyone who’d have been pleased in our places?”
“We’ll ask the questions, Major.”
SEVEN
TARVER
I’M ABOUT TEN SECONDS AWAY from turning on the flashlight and searching the first-aid kit for a way to sedate her when she finally stops crying. Eventually, I sleep.
It’s late when I wake, sometime after midnight. For a long moment I sit perfectly still, letting my senses inform me. I feel cold metal and hard lines pressed against my skin, I smell the lingering odor of melted plastene. I hear some creature give a croak outside, and closer, inside the pod, a small sound as someone moves.
Memory bubbles to the surface and spreads out through my body, racing down my arms so my fingers tighten around the armrests. I haven’t opened my eyes yet, and as I let my mind drift and deliver information, I hear the soft scrape of movement again. Light flashes across my eyelids. She’s got the flashlight.
Dammit, doesn’t she need to sleep? I sneak open one eyelid. She’s at the electrical panel again, fussing with the wires. She’s backlit by the flashlight, nibbling her lower lip. She looks different in this light. I can’t make out the fancy hair or the remains of her makeup, and the black eye is concealed by the shadow. She looks clearer, cleaner, younger. More like somebody I could talk to.
I wonder what my parents would make of her. Their faces swim up, and my throat tightens. If the Icarus lost contact with LaRoux Industries when she fell out of hyperspace, then maybe my parents haven’t heard anything about a crash yet. Maybe they think the ship is just missing. I’m okay, I think, wishing I could beam that thought straight to them. I don’t even know which way to aim it—this planet could be anywhere in the galaxy.
As I watch, the girl expertly snaps a wire into place. I remember the way she stripped them with her fingernails before takeoff. We would have gone down still attached to the ship if she hadn’t. My mind’s eye conjures up the image of the other escape pods, streaming ribbons of fire as they split off from the Icarus during the crash.
Without a doubt, Lilac LaRoux saved our lives. That’s a little hard to swallow.
I clear my throat to give her some warning before I speak. “Miss LaRoux?”
Her head snaps up. “Yes, Major?” She’s keeping her voice polite and even, like she’s at a garden party and I’m some annoying aunt who just won’t back off.
Maybe if I shut up, she’ll electrocute herself. “Need a hand there?”
She huffs a soft, derisive breath. “Unless you know how to bypass the comms relays, I can’t see how you’re in a position to help. If I can force the enviro circuit board to take over for comms, maybe I can use the pod itself as an antenna. It’s made of metal.”
We’re silent for a moment. We both know that I couldn’t point out the environmental controls circuit board with a gun to my head.
She takes my silence as a victory, and smiles that infuriatingly superior smile at me. “If I can get us a signal, then will you admit it’s better to stay put and wait, rather than go trekking across unknown territory by ourselves?”
I take a deep breath through my nose and let my head fall back again. She turns back, crouching in front of the panel. I watch her covertly out of the corner of my eye, as much fascinated by her unlikely expertise as by the sight of the LaRoux heiress absently moving the flashlight to her mouth so she can hold it in her teeth as she works.
It’s another glimpse of the girl I saw in the salon, the one who stood up for a man accosting her instead of letting her lackeys deal with him. Where’s that girl the rest of the time? With a wrench of my stomach I realize that the man in the salon, the reason I talked to Lilac LaRoux in the first place, is probably dead now. Did anyone else survive? Did any of the escape pods break away before the Icarus hit the atmosphere?
At some point, between one blink and the next, I fall asleep.
“What did Miss LaRoux think of the situation?”
“I didn’t ask her.”
“What was your impression, then, of the way Miss LaRoux was coping?”
“Better than expected.”
EIGHT
LILAC
I WAKE CURLED UP AGAINST A WALL, a blanket around me, my face aching. For a moment I lie there trying to remember what I did the night before, dreading the return of memory, certain that my hangover will be the least of my concerns. Then the unmistakable smell of half-melted plastene jerks me awake, and I wish it was a hangover making my head pound—not the aftereffects of having a spaceship hit me in the face.
I glance at the broken communications array I tried to salvage last night. The wires are fused and melted beyond repair. The whole motherboard short-circuited, leaving nothing an entire team of electricians could salvage, much less me.
I should have just left well enough alone and gotten some rest.
The morning is quiet, which terrifies me. There has always been noise around me, even in our country house. The sounds of air filters and the garden shifting from roses to daffodils with the deft, mechanical click of its holographic projectors. Servants bustling here and there, Simon tossing pebbles at my window to wake me in the night. My father on the holowire at the breakfast table, delivering orders to his deputies back on Corinth while pulling faces to make me laugh.
Here, the only sounds are the faint noises of birds, and leaves whispering against each other high above.
Knowing that the major is going to insist we move out, I brace myself, trying to summon courage or strength or, at the very least, some dignity. A whole day of him marching me along, telling me every five minutes that I need to keep moving, walk faster. A whole day of slowing him down.
A sudden dread prickles in my stomach. I’m sitting up almost before it registers—I already know its source. The chair the major had been sleeping in is empty, and his bag of supplies is gone.
I’m not ready for the panic that washes over me. I want to scream his name, and only fear tightening my throat prevents me. Yes, I was alone even with him there, but he knew things—the forest, how to walk, how to live—that I could never hope to learn.
My glares and jabs have driven him away. I lurch to my feet and stumble to the door of the pod, pushing it open and clinging to the frame. It’s barely dawn, and I can see only a few meters into the dark woods. There’s no pattern to the trees—each one is slightly different, undergrowth haphazardly scattered. There are no paths, no flowers. Nothing moves but for a branch waving gently in the breeze.
Every scowl of his, every irritated twist of his mouth flashes before my eyes. Tarver, screams my mind. Come back. I’m sorry.
With a rush, the pain of my twisted ankles, the weakness of having slept so little, the fear—it all sweeps over me and I fall heavily against the wall of the pod, eyes still staring at the unreadable mess of leaves and branches.
And then the clang of my body hitting the door frame isn’t the only sound. A twig snaps, electric in the silence, and somewhere in the shadow something moves. I freeze, breath catching in my throat like a sob.
Tracks, he said. Big ones.
I’m given only a moment to imagine what creature might make even a war hero pause, before the source of the sound comes looming out of the dark wood.
Major Merendsen raises his eyebrows at me, and I know he can see my panic in the moment before I school my features. His mouth quirks in faint amusement. “Sorry to disappoint you, but it’s going to take more than a few dirty looks to drive me off.”
All my panic and helplessness and relief collapse into red-hot humiliation. This time there’s nothing to stop me from lashing out at him. “Don’t flatter yourself, Major.” I sound like Anna, instantly superior. The thought makes my throat constrict, my voice strangle. “Your whereabouts are the least of my problems. But what exactly do you think you’re doing, traipsing around out there? Anything could have come in! I could have—” My throat closes as I run out of words. I know I’m not angry with him. But screaming helps.
Major Merendsen watches me mildly, slipping his pack off his shoulder and settling it at his feet before arching his back in a stretch. I watch him as my anger ebbs, leaving me ashamed. It’s a few seconds before I look away. The shirt of his casual uniform stretches in a way I can’t ignore, and the last thing I want is for him to notice me staring. I glare at the furrow in the ground caused by our crashing pod instead.
“Breakfast, Miss LaRoux?” he asks blandly.
I could slap him. God, I could kiss him—he hasn’t abandoned me. If I were home I would stalk out of the room in deafening silence, finding a place to gather my composure in peace. But if I were home, I’d have no reason to be relieved at the presence of someone I’d so much rather never see again. If I were home…I close my eyes and try to pull myself together.