They stopped at the base of a large white hallway, and she recognized the massive doors that she’d been led through upon first entering the castle weeks ago.
“She’ll have the ship ready to go, so as soon as you and Olena switch off, we can leave. Gibus and Pettus will be coming with us as well,” he continued, turning toward her once he was finished. He frowned. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah,” she said, and cleared her throat. It was just hitting her how real this all was. There was a plan and a time frame and everything. “This is really going to happen, right? Because I don’t think I’ll survive another assassination attempt, and I’m not just being facetious when I say that.”
“Delaney—” Ruckus cocked his head, holding out a hand to keep her back as he stepped forward to glance down both ends of the adjacent halls. “I think I heard footsteps.”
“We should go.” She wanted to reach for his hand, but if he really had heard someone, they couldn’t risk it. Instead she settled for keeping as close to him as possible as they began the walk back toward his room.
They’d only taken a few turns when they came upon Brightan briskly walking in the opposite direction. It was impossible to tell where he’d come from, whether or not it was the hallway they had just been in or the opposite one. Brightan’s harried pace didn’t help any, either. If the Kint was aware of their presence, he didn’t let on, instead moving on his way until he’d disappeared around another corner.
“Do you think he was following us?” Delaney asked, nervous all over again. What other reason could Brightan have for being this far from Trystan’s bedside? And if he had been stalking them, how much had he overheard?
“He could just be checking on the Zane’s ship,” Ruckus posed. “I’ve heard that Trystan doesn’t trust many people with it. I guess the mechanics are complicated, and Brightan is one of the few who’ve learned how to operate and handle them.”
The walk to his room was only about ten minutes, and it wasn’t until they were safely inside that she pressed.
“You honestly believe that he was there to check on a ship, not us?”
“We don’t know for certain he was even near the hangar.” Ruckus ran a hand through his dark hair and eased down to the edge of the bed. “But no, I doubt it was a coincidence that he left Trystan at the same time we did. Could be he was attempting to follow us and got lost. Either way, he wasn’t close enough to overhear anything, not if I was able to pick up on his approach.”
Frustrated over the whole thing, Delaney dropped down next to him, sprawling out on her back so she could stare up at the ceiling. When he shifted so that he was lying as well, she rested her forehead against his shoulder.
“What was it like,” she asked, “growing up here?”
“I’m not sure how to answer that,” he admitted, then thought it over. “We’re encouraged to pick a path at a young age. And position, as you’ve discovered, still holds a lot of weight in our society. How many life options you have is closely related to your social standing, unfortunately.”
“So…” She moved onto her side so that she could wrap an arm around his chest, trying to ignore the increasing tempo of her heart. “The same as on Earth, is what you’re saying.”
“Am I?” He lifted a hand to her hair and began running strands of it absently through his fingers. “What was it like growing up there?”
“I’m not sure how to answer that,” she joked, laughing when he poked her in the side. “I come from a small town and a well-known family, so I was always expected to be on my best behavior. It was important for me to correctly represent the Grace name.”
“Let me guess,” he said, and chuckled, “you were purposefully awful at it. That explains your issues with authority.”
“You mean why I’m always snapping back at the Basileus?”
“I mean why you’re always putting your life on the line with the Basileus,” he corrected, though not nearly as seriously as he might have even a week ago.
Delaney didn’t want to think too much about what that meant, or how she would feel once she was back on Earth for good and he was here, lying in his bed, alone.
“Tell me something else,” she insisted.
“What else do you want to know?” The corner of his mouth curved up, and it took her a moment to figure out why.
“Whatever you want to tell me,” she told him. After the Tandem game and her fitting, he’d attempted to distract her with questions about her life. They’d been interrupted by Trystan before they could get too far into it, however.
“I’ll tell you mine if you tell me yours,” he parroted, and her own words said back to her sounded odd coming from his lips.
She sort of liked it, though.
“All right,” she agreed, settling more comfortably against him.
Amazingly enough, this time they managed the entire conversation without a single interruption.
*
DELANEY WOKE UP on her final day on Xenith, nervous. There were seemingly a million and one things that could go wrong, and suddenly they were all playing through her head like a horror movie she couldn’t shut off.
Because he was going to be escorting her all the way back to Earth, Ruckus had a lot of loose ends to tie up before their departure. After he’d told her as much, it’d been her decision to come to the science wing. Hanging out with Pettus and Gibus had worked in calming her emotions before, and she’d hoped that it would again.
They’d quickly fallen into the same camaraderie they’d developed while playing cards, which made it easy to forget that this was her last day. Every time one of those thoughts slipped past her defenses—like when Pettus said something particularly funny, or Gibus told her something scientific and crazy—she’d immediately suggest they show her something else.
The idea of leaving them, of never seeing them again, was starting to make her chest ache and she didn’t like it. It was to the point that, as the day waned, growing closer and closer to the end, she started missing them. Even though they were still standing right in front of her.
Gibus was in the process of showing her how to use one of his inventions when Ruckus finally came back almost eight hours later.
“Hold it here”—the Sutter adjusted her grip on the maroon metallic device shaped sort of like a banana—“and then squeeze.”
Delaney did as told and sucked in a breath when a burst of neon-yellow goo shot out of the top of the device and flung straight across the room. Pettus had set up a row of thin glass jars on one of the workbenches, which she was supposed to be aiming at. The goo smacked into one of them, effectively shattering it and bursting bits of yellow all over the nearby ones.
“What exactly was the point of this thing?” she asked, still laughing, as she lined up her sight and let loose another goo ball. “It reminds me of this game back home, paintball. Is that what this is?”