Closing my eyes was like shutting out the entire world and waking up in a different place. I could no longer hear Basra, Telu, or Eton, who’d all been speaking to me—or shouting at me, in Eton’s case. I couldn’t feel my body in the darkness, or see anything other than distant specks of light. Even though I seemed to be floating, I knew I was in a precarious place, perched on an edge, about to fall.
Had I finally gone mad? Was I dead? Or just on the brink of one of those things?
The lights moved closer, tentatively. With them, I felt a choice coming on. Did I push them away, try to maintain control of myself with an unbendable grip, and force this out of my life? Or did I seize those sparks, unleash the power, and try to control it?
And yet reaching toward either option felt like leaning out over that drop. There was only the illusion of choice. Both paths would bring me to the same edge:
Insanity. Death. But maybe there was a third option.
Peace. The word moved through me like a whisper, a trickle, an ocean. Peace, not oblivion. Oblivion was an end. A fall. Peace was a path. Maybe another path I could take.
Peace. Open.
The thoughts occurred to me as the lights gathered around me again. They outlined my toes, my fingers, my feet, my hands. I felt my body coming back to me. This time, I didn’t shy away, or lash out, both of which were my first impulses—the two paths I’d been following my entire life.
Embrace.
Yes, I thought. That.
My arms reached out, but not to shove or to seize. I opened them and enfolded the light.
The flash was blinding, but not jagged and jarring. It was a warm flood, and I realized my eyes had opened. I also realized I was holding something a lot more solid than the imaginary, insubstantial lights. Someone.
I blinked and pulled away to find bright, silver-gray eyes staring back at me. We were on our feet, our faces a finger-width apart. He must have dragged me up, and I’d apparently thrown my arms around him.
“You’re awake,” Nev said. He cleared his throat. “We need to go.”
The rest of the world came crashing back down around me with far less gentleness. The hangar looked like the bottom of a dark pit into which we’d all fallen. Bodies were strewn everywhere, melted gouges and blast holes were splattered with blood, and the dying daylight dripped more red from the mangled bones of the roof and the shattered ceiling of the Atrium above.
We were no longer surrounded. At the far end of the hangar, several guards remained, holding rifles and swords at the ready. But they weren’t coming after us. Nev’s own blades were sheathed on his back, and the rest of the crew had already made it up the ramp into the Kaitan. Basra and Telu were carrying Arjan between them on a blanket, making their way up the stairs from the hold, toward the bridge. The makeshift medi-kit was still looped over Basra’s shoulder, though the rifle wasn’t. Eton followed, dragging himself slowly up after them, his leg stained red even through the fresh bandages. He clearly needed to be stitched, and was probably making his way to the bridge’s medi-kit behind the others. He only had one pistol in his hand, which, for him, barely counted as being armed.
“But…how?” I said, too stunned to let go of Nev. I didn’t understand why we weren’t being shot at, or at the very least stopped.
“Basra. He convinced my father to let us leave.”
“How?” I repeated.
“I’ll explain later. Like I said, we need to go.”
He reached up to take one of my hands, repositioning it around his shoulder to support me. But we took only three steps toward the ship before I realized I could walk, and that Nev was the one who needed help. I looped his arm around my shoulder to support him. His jacket was tattered and wet. He wasn’t soaked with quite as much blood as Eton, so I hoped that meant none of his cuts were serious. We had too many injuries to deal with already.
But it wasn’t only a practical concern. Imagining him seriously hurt made my breathing quicken, my chest constrict. It was like thinking of Arjan being as injured as he was—someone who mattered so much he felt like a piece of myself.
Arjan…
I couldn’t think about my brother yet. I had to focus on getting us out of here, so I could think about him later.
As Nev and I hit the ramp and started stumbling our way up, it finally caught up to me, what he’d said: We. We need to go.
“You…,” I said, both my feet and my words stuttering once we reached the top of the ramp and stepped into the hold. “You’re coming with us?”
Nev gave me a crooked smile, one that looked nearly broken, but not quite. “This is where I belong now…if you’ll have me.”
As if to punctuate the impossible thing he’d just said, he hit the button to raise the hatch. It ground closed behind us, sounding worse for wear, but at least it sealed with a hiss. He slipped away from me, managing to stand on his own, even if he looked unstable. Purpose had come into his eyes, his face, and his body responded to it, if slowly. He moved for the stairs to the bridge.
“I’ll check the ship’s systems to make sure we’re airtight, and I think between the solar sail and diverting power to the one thruster—the one that’s nearly offline, but not quite—you can lift us…”
He glanced back at me and stopped, trailing off. I hadn’t moved. Something was bright and warm in my chest, so bright it was almost hot, stinging my eyes.
“Sorry,” he said, misreading my face. Or maybe he just didn’t understand my expression, whatever it was. “I don’t mean to usurp your authority…Captain. If you have another idea—”
I shook my head. “No, that’s exactly what I was thinking.”
“Then…” He looked unsure. Afraid, almost. “What’s wrong? Is it all right that I’m here? I can—”
I shook my head again. Swallowing, I tried to find my voice. “I’m glad you’re here. And please…call me Qole.”
Relief washed over his face, dragging a smile with it. He looked lost and then found. The expression didn’t stick around; it was there and gone before he nodded. “Qole…I’m going to check our status and make sure you’re ready for takeoff.”
“I’ll be right there.”
He bounded up the stairs, tapping into some hidden reserve of energy that I certainly didn’t have. Once he’d gone, I dragged my hands over my face, feeling wetness on my palms. I ran them back through my hair, squeezing my eyes closed, trying to banish the rest of my tears. I had to captain, to pilot a ship that would probably try to fall out of the sky at the first available opportunity, and I couldn’t very well do that while crying.
Other than tears and tiredness, though, I was okay, for the moment. I seemed to have struck some sort of deal with the power that possessed me, even if it was all in my own head. For now, it seemed to be holding. I wasn’t insane, or dead.