Page 7 of The Space Between Stars

Silence: the sickness he spread, the legacy he would leave.

Raimee broke it. “But I thought you and I…”

His hands worked before he could think.

Calver would have been perfectly happy if the ground beneath him had chosen that moment to become quicksand. The signals were so fatedly loud, he was sure the entire desert had heard them.

Bleeding fool. She could have thought anything, and he should assume nothing in relation to what he thought. What he felt.

Her silver eyes widened. Her sharp cheekbones rose to meet them.

he finished. He was more dangerous to her now than Thyatira ever had been.

Raimee’s face fell, and the burgeoning dawn seemed to grow a little darker with it. “What do you mean?”

He couldn’t signal anything else.

Raimee sucked in through her teeth. “Calver, I don’t know what you gave up back in Chira’na to stay with me. But you have to know I’m grateful. I didn’t mean for”—she motioned to the endless sky and sand around them—“this to happen. Surrendering was the only way we were going to get off that roof alive. I just wanted to protect you.”

Calver let it play out in his mind: pulling her into his arms and telling her he would get them out of this. Running with her, on his back if he must, to the coastline.

It would never work.

“But Cal—”

He cut her off with a slice of his palm.

It only provoked her. “Then why are you still here? Why are you letting the Red Wing drag you along on this caravan, if you’re not waiting for me?” Calver had slipped into Chira’na for months without the authorities catching on, yet Raimee could decipher his motives in the space between heartbeats. “I know you. You could escape and go back to that Hand you serve any time you want!”

Her voice carried too much, and she knew it. She cupped a hand to her lips. Her eyes welled. Calver knew that look: desperation. How many times had he seen it right before he’d ended a life? He nearly moved in and held her, the Fates tempting him against what he knew to be sabotage of all he had fought for. But he’d spent half a lifetime fighting the Survivor’s temptations, and he was damn good at it.

“You’re a terrible liar.”

He turned from her. Closed his eyes.

Behind him, her breath caught and turned to quiet sobs.

Wonderful.

She should have moved on. Nearly as much time had passed in the caravan as they had spent together outside Chira’na. She should have found new people to help her. Better people than him.

Why hadn’t she moved on?

The sloshing of her canteens moved away from him. Calver kept his back to the sound until it disappeared, then gripped at his elbows.

One syllable. One word. One motion. If he’d chosen a different one, then perhaps she might have believed him.

‘You thought right.’

He should have signaled, ‘You thought wrong’. What was a single word of a lie if it meant she might live out her years? If it didn’t continue an association with him that would set Thyatira, Cul’Mon, and Fankalo alike on her like wolves taking to prey?