Page 41 of Shadows of Stardust

Savvie is further away than ever.

If having a guard tailing me around the beach made leaving all but impossible, having that guard living with me is… catastrophic. Plan-ending. Game over.

I shouldn’t have agreed to this.

I should have thrown in the towel. Given up a lost cause. Accepted all of this was a doomed endeavor from the start.

I should have taken a knife to the last bit of hope still lingering in my chest that all of this was going to work out somehow. The hope that, even now, is tearing me up bit by bit and making me want to scream my frustration at the male in front of me.

But even in all that turmoil, a sliver of doubt.

Why did he do it? The lies. Manipulating the cameras. Keeping it all from the security team. Going to extra lengths even now to make sure we can keep up this deception.

He couldn’t have known where it would lead.

He couldn’t have known what Marva would offer him.

So why did he do it?

Or, maybe the better question, does it matter?

It’s probably just some kind of power trip. A game. Some way to amuse himself at my expense.

There’s no charity in the way he’s taken the situation in hand, no kindness. Nothing I can even remotely begin to understand.

Still, I can’t help but ask.

“Why?”

The single syllable isn’t anywhere near adequate to fully encompass the tangle of this mess, but Zandrel seems to understand at least partly what I mean.

“Because I know you’ve got some ulterior motive for being here on Eritin. Tonight proves that.”

I shake my head, those rusty gears knocking a bit more of my stupor loose and making room for anger and indignation to rear their heads again.

“That’s only half an answer.”

“Fine. Then maybe because I dislike the idea of the bottom-feeders on the Mate Match crew keeping too close a watch on you.”

A disbelieving, half-hysterical laugh slips out before I can stop it. “A bit of the pot calling the kettle black, isn’t it?”

His brow furrows and his eyes drift slightly away from my face, narrowed in contemplation, like his translator is trying to make sense of the idiom for him.

“Hypocrisy,” I snap, not in the mood to be mistaken. “It means you're a goddamn hypocrite.”

His eyes find mine again, and silver swirls suspiciously. “Perhaps. But that still doesn’t change the fact that you’re… what? A liar? A criminal?”

A sister.

A fool.

A failure.

A hundred different things I might be, liar and criminal among them, but hell will freeze over before I’ll admit that to him.

“Turn me in, then, if you’re so convinced I was trying to do something wrong tonight.”

He lets out a short, exasperated breath. “That’s what I’m trying to avoid. Perhaps we can help each other. If you would only—”

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