Page 116 of Shadows of Stardust

More guilt swarms up my throat as I watch the words land with a slight flinch, as I watch her realize for the first time how much I’ve gone through to be here, how much further I would have been willing to go to find her.

And maybe it’s small of me, maybe it’s mean of me, but I want her to realize. My mind is a tangle of desperation and grief and no small measure of frustration over the fact that all of this was useless. I came all this way, risked my freedom and future, and look where it got me.

So yeah, the righteous older sister in me wants her to know.

“Why didn’t you tell me where you were going? Why didn’t you send a message? Anything?”

The questions slip out before I can stop them, and Savvie flinches again.

“There… wasn’t time. And then, once there was, I thought it would be better if I was just… gone. Mom was gone. You were gone. I figured it was my turn.”

Anger sparks hot and heavy and drenched in regret, all of it pooling together in the bottom of my gut.

“I was never gone, Sav. I was trying to get back to you. Always. From the day I left for training, all I ever wanted was to get back to you. To make sure you were okay until I could.”

She’s got nothing to say to that.

I don’t blame her.

I don’t have any more words, either.

I’ve got nothing but the sick, sinking certainty that all of this was a mistake, and not a mistake. That it was the biggest regret I’ll ever have, and the most necessary thing I’ve ever done. I’m numb with it, far too numb to do anything but stand when Savvie does and follow her off the dock, up the path, back through the village where a handful of faces peer out at us from windows and doors as we pass. All the friends and neighbors Savvie will have by her side for the rest of her life. The friends and neighbors who’ll meet her child, who’ll watch them grow, who’ll be the community we never had on Earth or Severin or anywhere else.

We reach the spot where Zan and I docked on the riverbank, and he’s there, lounging in the hover. Arrik is nearby, too, no doubt keeping an eye on the interloper in their midst.

They both stand as we approach, and Zan walks back down the dock in a few long strides, stopping just at the end of it when Arrik gives him a hard look.

Savvie and I stop at the foot of the dock, the air between us as crackling and heavy as the storm-clouds above, the ones that still haven’t broken despite all their bluster.

“I guess this is it.”

The words seem to come from somewhere outside of me, somewhere warped and sideways and not of this world.

They can’t be of this world. They can’t be real.

This is it.

“Yeah, I guess it is.”

Savvie steps closer and wraps her arms around me.

The hug is wrong. Light, awkward, stilted. Filled to the brim with resentment and hurt and grief.

When we part, it’s even worse, like a piece of my heart’s been wrenched from my chest and I’m slowly bleeding out.

“Goodbye, Ros.”

“Bye, Savvie.”

Then I’m walking, and my feet are somewhere outside my body, too. I’m a hundred different pieces heading a hundred different directions. Broken. Scattered. I can’t make myself stop. Can’t make myself think. Can’t make sense of any of it.

When I reach him on the dock, Zan puts a hand between my shoulder blades, drawing me closer to him. “Are you alright?”

I nod. “Yeah, I’m… let’s just go.”

He looks at me a beat longer before he nods, too, and steps toward the hover.

I can’t make my out-of-body feet follow.

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