Page 218 of The Space Between Stars

He was an idiot.

His hand touched hers. It was cool and dry and soft. Nothing happened. He left it there for several seconds before pulling away. Then he sank to his knees beside her.

“About as difficult as counting. So long as I focus, I don’t see why I can’t maintain it.”

Calver rolled his bloody lips to moisten them. He wrapped his arms around his midsection, wanting and wanting some more.

“Calver?”

He’d been still for a full minute. She looked at him, face full of more scrutiny and hope than had ever dared to share a single expression.

Calver raised his hands and willed them not to shake. Don’t act desperate.

Raimee’s cheeks seemed to regain half their color in that moment, and her still-weak body released a powerful snort. “Just like that?”

Her giggle warmed the wind off the sea.

“I could eat.”

Calver thought his chest might just explode for all the joy that filled it. It wasn’t used to joy. There might not be enough space. He fought down the corners of his mouth, a battle valiantly lost until he was stuck with lips stretched wide like a blubbering frog. He turned away, heels of his hands to his eyes.

Slender arms wrapped around him from behind. “Don’t hold it in,” she murmured into the back of his shirt.

For the first time in fourteen years, he didn’t have to.

Calver didn’t know how long they spent there, tucked against the knee wall of the roof, watching the stars blink into the twilight. Somehow, Raimee wound up nestled against his chest. His chest.

It was still an unbelievable thing: that anyone, let alone her, could want such nearness to him. But it seemed each moment he’d convinced himself she was waiting for someone to come rescue her from him, she gripped him tighter.

He wasn’t sure what to do. Mass murderers didn’t usually pair well with benevolent rulers. Whatever this was, it was unsustainable. It had no chance at progression. And yet it made him happier than he could ever remember being. He had wanted this for months. He didn’t need to do anything but absorb it before it was gone. But as the minutes passed, her unchanged condition began to itch at him. He may have brought her back, but only just.

“I’ve…I’ve been trying. It’s not working.”

"Maybe."

The silence that followed seemed hollow, and he was glad when Raimee rushed to fill it.

“How long have you known you were like me?”

“A part of me knew it from the start. It was like you ignited something inside of me, all those weeks ago. You trained my senses on how to distort. Only, I learned the wrong way—pulling energy the way you do. I couldn’t do it. Every time I clung to a future I wanted, I gave up my present to get there. A sort of magical bloodletting.”

Raimee went off on an explanation of her months in the Jiradesh, quietly exploring her power, skills growing sharper while her body grew weaker. It was like the days outside of Chira’na, listening to her rattle off a half-dozen different things she’d discovered before breakfast, voice filled with unmatchable enthusiasm. What he would give to keep that enthusiasm in his life. It pushed everything else away. Every failure. Every grief. He leaned in until her speech faltered.

“I’m… talking too much.”

He brought his hands around in front of her.