Page 171 of The Space Between Stars

He gritted his teeth. “Get out, girl.”

“No.”

“I will call the guard.”

And he would have already, if he didn’t have a scrap of decency to him. “And sacrifice your life’s work?”

Silence settled into the space between them, and for a moment nerves itched their way from her stomach and into her throat. Perhaps she had been overconfident. Perhaps he had moved on from his previous mission. Perhaps he wanted nothing to do with it, or her.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

She stepped forward, further closing the gap. She wouldn’t get another chance at this. “Yes, you do. You protect and relocate conduits in an attempt to achieve a Ruxian successor.”

Avelius’s eyes narrowed. His grip tightened on his weapon. “What do you want?”

“I want you to take me to Methu’su.”

He shook his head. “You and the rest of Nelfindar. I haven’t seen him since he worked for the Green Wing. I don’t know anything about him or his whereabouts. Thacklore put you up to this, didn’t he? Listen, I—”

“Mesu Avelius. This is not a trick. Look. At. Me.” She threw her arms wide and stepped closer still. He didn’t step back. “My mother was Androtia Curtaim. You can’t tell me there isn’t a resemblance, because I can remember that much about her.”

Kotar Avelius’s eyes widened. He padded to the far wall of his sitting room to return the dowaga to its display rack. “That… can’t be right. Unless you went undocumented. Which would only make sense if—”

“My mother didn’t find out until we were ejected from oligarchical society.”

His mouth popped open in understanding. “How old are you?”

“Fifteen.”

He nodded, his eyes scrutinizing her. “She told you what you were? Asked you to find us?”

“She told me nothing. I figured it out myself.”

“How?” The word was a command as much as it was a growl, disguising his disbelief. Or—she looked at the way his eyes turned to pits—was it grief?

He wasn’t asking how she’d figured out what she was. He was asking how she had survived. Fankalo’s nails bit into her palms. “I can see Fate. It saved me. And I’ve honed my ability for a decade. It’s given me all the answers it could. But now I need you to give me the rest. Take me to Methu’su. I need him to train me.”

Avelius’s voice steadied back to quiet contemplation. “That in itself is very rare in a conduit. Even most Ruxians lack the ability to see Fate clearly enough to act on it. A Chaos conduit, I take it?”

He did know something. “From what I can tell.”

“How far do you see?”

“Feel is the word I use. Sometimes seconds. Sometimes hours. Sometimes days, depending on how much I want something to happen… or not.”

“Days.” The apple of Avelius’s neck rose and fell. His eyes flashed to the painting on the wall. Out the window, a fluttering of wings caught Fankalo’s attention as Killari settled onto the windowsill. Fankalo chewed at the inside of her cheek. The finicky falcon usually stuck to Calver. Especially when he was struggling. “Impressive. It makes sense, now, how you’ve made it as far as you have. But I promise you, if you want to live, you must stop flaunting your gift and settle down somewhere far removed.”

As if his early presumptions hadn’t been enough of an insult. “My aim is not to simply live. It is to lead. This country has been taken hostage, and its wardens have not treated its people kindly. Learning to distort will secure me the authority to take back what’s mine.”

Avelius blinked rapidly. He seemed to consider the notion for the suggestion of a second before shaking his head. “You are confused. A conduit can’t distort.”

“That’s not what Methu’su’s journal said. In some instances, conduits have tapped into distortion to—”

“There’s nothing that can be done for you. What you’re talking about is a miracle. It’s not something a conduit can be trained in.”

Her voice was low and rumbled like a storm. “Then you’ve never met a conduit like me before.”

One corner of the old man’s mouth quirked, as if to shield him from her glare. “You make a habit of toeing the ledge of things, don’t you?