Phoebe North - Starbreak

“No,” I said, and forced a laugh back too. “I’m here. I’m here.”

I took her by the hand and led her inside.

We went up into the empty bedroom on Ronen’s second floor, the room where I’d stayed in the days before the riots broke out. It looked the same as it always had—like a guest room. My single box of belongings sat in the corner gathering dust. The blankets on the bed were scratchy spares that had been inherited from Hannah’s parents, pulled taut across the mattress in the time since I’d been gone. But Rachel hardly seemed to notice the sparse accommodations. She now moved with a measured serenity, her delicate jaw held high. As usual she was dressed stylishly, but her clothes were darker and more conservatively cut than they once would have been. She wore a long black skirt, one that touched the threadbare rug as she walked, and a black turtleneck too. I watched her settle on the floor, her legs tucked beneath her body. She folded the pleats under her. Then she glanced brightly up at me.

“You’ve changed!” she said. I stopped dead in the middle of the tiny bedroom, one hand clutched against my chest. It was true, of course. I had. And nothing announced those changes so well as my lover’s clothes, wrapped tight around my body with a long cloth belt.

“Have I?” I said, sitting too. I could feel the blush over my cheeks, but I ignored it. Maybe it was coy of me, but it was old hat, this patter—the secret of boys, and Rachel, prying them out of me.

“You look so grown-up. What happened to you down there?”

“Oh, not much—” I began, but before I could go on, Rachel squinted at me.

“Have you lost weight? And that robe is like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

She reached out and touched the sleeve, her hand lingering on the fabric. I smiled. Rachel could never resist talking clothes—it was almost as important to her as boys.

“It’s not silk. Or cotton. What is it?”

Recyclable synthetics. Plant based, the voice in my head intoned. I gently tugged the sleeve away, ignoring Rachel’s question.

“It doesn’t matter. Tell me, how have you been? Your parents and brother? I’ve been worried about you, Raych. Stuck up here.” The last I’d seen her, she’d been about to go marry Koen Maxwell. Dressed in gold, flowers in her hair. Beautiful. Delicate. I hadn’t just been worried—I’d been afraid for her. “I wish I could have taken you and Koen with me.”

Her expression went dark, pinched. “We didn’t marry,” she said quickly. “I haven’t seen him since the day of the riots. One moment we’re about to be wed, the next he’s running down the clock tower stairs with Van Hofstadter and his wife. Don’t look at me like that, Terra. It was a blessing, really. We never should have gotten engaged.”

I chased away the frown that had begun to tighten the corners of my mouth. “I didn’t want you to get hurt.”

“I know. You warned me. But everything’s worked out now.”

It was Rachel’s turn to let her lips coyly lift. I sat back, examining her. The long, dark clothing—good for moving unnoticed through the hostile space of our ship’s dome—was punctuated by a single flash of color. It was so expected on our ship that at first I hadn’t noticed it. A knot of thread on her shoulder, merchant red, declaring her rank.

And a gold cord woven into it, declaring her loyalty to the Council.

“You’ve been staying up in the ship’s bow,” I said, speaking carefully. A realization dawned on me, crystal clear and as bright as morning. Rachel had been loved once, more fiercely and firmly than I ever had been before Vadix. By Silvan Rafferty—the boy who let her down, then turned his attentions to me. What had transpired in the week that I’d been gone?

Her dark skin grew darker. She lowered her gaze, picking up the hem of her skirt and tugging at a loose thread.

“After the riots I heard that Silvan’s dad was sick, and that you were gone. I went to see Silvan. I thought I might offer him a prayer. I wanted to comfort him. And—and it was like no time had passed at all.”

Staring at her, I found that hard to believe. Back when she and Silvan had tossed and tumbled in the back pathways in the atrium, she’d been soft and giggly.  A girl, really.  And now she was grown; she sat tall, with her shoulders squared and her spine straight. Though that old, familiar smile still played on her painted lips, some dark flame danced behind them. Secrets. No, wisdom .

Maybe that meant Silvan had changed too. Maybe he had grown up, transforming from the sullen, proud boy he’d once been into someone with the empathy to lead. I hoped so, at least. I took Rachel’s hands in mine.

“I’m so, so happy for you, Raych,” I said. Her fingers were stiff in mine, unmoving.

“Are you?” she asked. “I thought you might be mad. I know that Silvan cared for you. I know the two of you—”

Her words choked off. She was unable to complete her sentence, but she didn’t have to. I knew where her mind went, to that night when Silvan and I had kissed in the street, our bodies so close that not a single gasp of air could slip between us. Hip to hip, chest to chest. His breath. My breasts.

“It wasn’t like that,” I said quickly, drawing my hands away. Then I clutched my arms against my body, unsure of what else there was left to say. Because it had been like that, hadn’t it? I felt a pressure in my mind, a flood of warmth. Vadix. Letting out a slow stream of breath, I added: “It’s over, anyway. You don’t have anything to worry about.”

The frown between her eyebrows was deep as she considered me. Finally she saw the truth—the love that glowed over my sunburned flesh. “Terra, did you . . . have you met someone?”

Inside my mind there was that same familiar sensation of flowers bursting to life, scattering their pollen on the wind. I didn’t answer Rachel. But I didn’t have to. It was as plain as day on my face. I’d fallen in love.

“Who was it? I know a few men slipped away on that shuttle with you. One of Aleksandra’s guards? Not—not Rebbe Davison?”

I wrinkled my nose. “No. You know he’s married!”

“Then . . .”

My smile wavered as I tried to find the words. Maybe I’d spend the rest of my life trying to explain it—how I’d gone to Zehava and met my bashert in Raza Ait. How my heart’s twin was an alien boy who slept the winters away and whose skin changed color in response to my touch. In the dim light of my brother’s guest room, my friend lifted an eyebrow, and waited for my answer.

“His name is Vadix,” I began. “I—I don’t know if he has a last name. He’s a Xollu. They’re— It’s difficult to explain. They’ve lived on Zehava for thousands of years. He’s a translator for the Grand Senate. He’s important to them.” I paused. Waited a beat. “He’s important to me .”

The smile hadn’t returned to her lips, not yet. In the room’s canned air she felt very far away.

“An alien. You’ve fallen in love with an alien.”

Once her words would have shamed me, but they didn’t, not now. No matter how much shock dripped from each one, I wouldn’t let it poison what I knew was pure and right and good. Vadix, his arms around me. Vadix, promising to keep me safe.

“Yes,” I said softly.

In a flash Rachel lifted herself to her feet. She walked over to the dresser, staring at the painting that hung on the wall there. A covered bridge—the one on the dome’s lowest level. Once I’d sat on that bridge with Koen and talked about my dreams. Dreams of Vadix, months and months before I’d ever known his name, before I’d ever even been sure he was real. She stared at those brushstrokes as if she could will them to change.