Page 146 of Shadows of Stardust

But I can’t know that for certain, can I? I can’t know a damn thing about what he’s thinking or why he did what he did because I’m here and he’s… on one of the billions upon billions of planets out there, so far away I can’t even fathom it.

So maybe I should just call him.

Evening falls over Thervor, and with each passing minute the heat from the tiles leaches away, bringing sweet relief from the sweltering afternoon, but I can’t make myself get up, move, do a damn thing. Over and over, the questions circle. The frustration. The joy. The possibility of what this might all mean.

I’m still sitting there, paralyzed with indecision, when I hear it. A door opening and closing, a few heavy footsteps on the tiled roof. I scramble to my feet and turn to see who’s there, even while my whole body prickles with awareness and some part of me already knows who I’m going to find.

“Zan.” His name is barely audible in the low hum of evening noise from the city below, but he takes a step forward, then another, and another, until we’re nearly touching and he’s staring down at me with silver galaxies swirling in his eyes.

“Ros.”

I could sink into that voice. I could lean in just a few inches and press my cheek to his chest, right where it belongs.

But I don’t. Not yet.

“What are you doing here?” He recoils a little at the question, shifts like he’s going to move away from me, and I grab his hand. “Don’t—I mean—I’m glad to see you. I just…”

“You spoke with Savannah?”

Silently, I nod, and my chest tightens at the small smile that lifts the corners of his lips.

I drink him in, greedy and shameless, eyes roving over his face, his broad frame, his… hair. I have to stifle a small noise of protest when I realize how short it’s cut. Not surprising, given that he’s gone back into full Aux service, but I’m still a little sad to see all the soft, messy length of it cut away.

The haircut throws the rest of his face into even starker, more dramatic angles, and I take that in, too. I try to square all the hard-edges of him with the softness in his eyes and in his smile, the wonderful contradiction of him, so achingly familiar.

“I’m glad,” he says, squeezing my hand where I’m still holding onto him before letting it drop.

Another noise of protest rises in my throat, but I swallow it back.

I’m still not sure… what this is.

Maybe he just came back to see if everything with Savvie went alright. To make sure whatever hoops he had to jump through to get her name cleared weren’t all in vain.

Maybe nothing has changed for him, for us, for what comes next.

But… maybe not.

What am I doing? What am Ithinking?

He’s here.

God.

He’shere.

And I’m… what? Questioning it? Wasn’t I ready to throw it all away and chase him across galaxies just a few minutes ago?

“It’s incredible, what you did for her,” I say softly, not about to let the moment pass without acknowledging the magnitude of the gift he’s given her.

His brow furrows. “It was the right thing to do. But… but I knew…”

He trails off, something a bit abashed in his tone.

“You knew what?”

He lets out a short, self-deprecating laugh.

“Don’t think I’m entirely altruistic. I thought of you every moment, Roslyn. I thought of your heart breaking the last time you spoke with her, and I thought of the smile that would be on your face when you saw her again. I thought of you, first and foremost. Always, I thought of you.”