Page 118 of Shadows of Stardust

I square my shoulders, swallow my fear, put on a brave face, and study my sister’s beautiful, beloved face one last time.

“This isn’t how I wanted things to go,” I admit. Savvie opens her mouth and lets out a small, distressed noise, but I gently shake my head. “This isn’t how I wanted things to go, but I am so, so happy you found your way here, Sav. You’ve got a life. You’ve got a chance for some real, honest-to-god happiness, and that’s so much better than either of us would have ever found on Severin. And I want you to have that. I want you to have that and not have to look over your shoulder for the rest of your life. I love you, and if the two of us saying goodbye means you get to live that life, I can be okay with that.”

Her tears have started flowing in earnest again while I’ve been talking, but she takes her cue from me and pulls herself up to her full height and smiles through the grief.

“I love you, too, and I’ll think of you every day, Ros. I’ll never stop being grateful for all of it. Everything. There’s nothing I can do to ever make it up to you.”

“Yes there is,” I tell her, and even through the waves of pain, a sliver of joy works its way to the fore. Bittersweet and tenuous, but enough. It has to be enough. “You can be happy, Sav. That’s enough for me.”

I expect the words to taste like a lie, but they don’t.

If Savvie is happy—if she’s here, if she’s safe, if she’salive—that’s all that matters.

I can hold on to that. I can be alright with that. I can let it sustain me, let it hold me steady when I leave here and have to confront the question of what exactly I’m going to make of the rest of my life without her.

“And you’ll do the same? You’ll be happy, too?”

The question lands like a physical blow, but I’m braced and fortified enough that I don’t think my flinch shows on my face. Savvie’s eyes dart momentarily to something behind me—something I very much suspect is Zan—but I don’t have the heart to correct her. I don’t have the heart to tell her that happiness and contentment and peace are the impossible dream I was more than willing to put on the back-burner while I came here, while I made a deal with a Revexoran mercenary so I could find her, so I only offer a small, restrained smile instead.

“Yeah. Yeah, I think I’ll be happy, too.”

I don’t know if she believes me, but as she pulls me into one more fierce hug, maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe the only thing that matters is this, us, saying goodbye for the last time.

33

Zandrel

Midway through our journey back to the production zone, the sky opens up.

Rain falls in heavy sheets, soaking us both, but Roslyn barely reacts. She keeps her hands fixed securely on the steering column, her spine straight, her expression impassive, even as lash after lash of rain breaks over her.

My dread grows all the way back to the craftyard.

It grows as we find the hidden door in the fence and as we hurry back through the underbrush toward the beach.

Curdling sour in my stomach, climbing up the back of my throat, I don’t know what to say, what to do, how to help her.

She still hasn’t said a word by the time we make it back to the bungalow.

I let us inside, then turn to make sure the locks and sensors are set, when a motion at the corner of my vision sends my heart leaping into my throat.

Roslyn has walked a couple of steps ahead, pausing in the middle of the room.

She stays there for a few suspended seconds, body frozen, before her knees buckle and her legs crumple beneath her.

I move without thinking, lunging for her and catching her around the waist before she slams into the floor. I sink with her, falling to my knees and shifting to sit on the cold tile while I cradle her against me.

And then Roslyn breaks.

Her breath comes in great, heaving gasps, and she grasps handfuls of my shirt like she’s trying to anchor herself in the storm that’s raging from within and without. Her tears bleed into my already-soaked shirt, her body jerks with the force of her sobs, and just like it has been with so much else these last few days, there’s nothing I can do to help.

There’s nothing I can do to fix it or make it stop.

There’s nothing I can do but be here.

Roslyn got her answers. She found her sister. And while I don’t know what they talked about during the time they disappeared together, the goodbye they shared told me everything I need to know.

I cradle a hand around the back of her head, pull her closer. Shifting a little on the floor with Roslyn held firmly against me, I sit on the tiles with my back pressed to the side of the kitchen island. She curls into my lap, sobs still coming hard and fast, body trembling with the force of them.

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