“Sure.” Kane’s lips slid into an easy grin, as if nothing had happened. “But you don’t need holographic goop to make you pretty.”
“Of course she doesn’t,” Cassia agreed, and reached up for a bite of his snack. She tore off a chunk and handed it back, then pointed at her own face and clarified, “Well, except for the bruises.”
“And the birthmark,” Kane added. “It’s cute, but it’s an easy giveaway.”
Despite having not fully forgiven him, Solara felt her mouth curve up. “You think my birthmark’s cute?”
His impish grin widened, his voice dipping low and smooth. “I think every part of you is cute.”
Cassia responded by climbing the bunk ladder and smacking her roommate upside the head. When he gaped in protest, she thrust a finger at him and hissed, “I like this one. Leave her alone.”
Kane rubbed his head and scooted to the other end of his mattress, not that it afforded him any protection from the furious girl glaring at him hard enough to singe off his eyebrows. “I was just being friendly. What’s wrong with that?”
“You and I both know what you were doing,” Cassia snapped. “Now, get down here and help me.”
The argument made Solara wonder, for the hundredth time, how the ship hands knew each other. Despite their sharp looks and harsh words, they moved through the Banshee like planets in orbit, sharing everything from meals to inside jokes with a comfortable familiarity unique to siblings. But if they really were brother and sister, why the differences in their body language? With his shameless stare and flirty smile, Kane acted like someone who’d regularly seduced for his supper, not a trust fund baby.
The two of them took a break from bickering long enough to decide that Kane would style her hair while Cassia handled the makeup. Then they ushered her onto a stool facing the bottom bunk and got down to business: Kane brushing her hair from behind while Cassia sat cross-legged on the mattress sorting through a box of cosmetics.
From her new vantage point, Solara noticed an assortment of photographs taped to the wall beside Cassia’s bed. She spotted Kane in one of them, his arm slung playfully around Cassia’s neck as they toasted each other with cups of red juice. Hellberry wine, maybe. The other photographs were of landscapes—lush, rolling hills of lavender giving way to an endless indigo lake, its ripples reflecting the glow of twin moons. Solara had never seen a place so breathtaking, and she caught herself frowning when Cassia blocked the view by leaning in to dust powder on her cheeks.
“Where were those pictures taken?” she asked. “They’re beautiful.”
Cassia lost her grasp on the powder puff, and it sailed to the floor. At once, her eyes found Kane’s and softened in sadness. “Just someplace I used to live,” she said. Kane finished a brushstroke and used his thumb to skim the outside of Cassia’s wrist in a touch so brief that Solara would’ve missed it if she’d blinked. But she hadn’t missed it, and in that sliver of a moment, she watched an exchange of pure intimacy pass between them.
Definitely not brother and sister, she thought.
Neither spoke after that, so she kept silent. But Solara couldn’t stop prickles of worry from creeping over her. She and Doran had slipped into an easy trust with the Banshee crew, and yet she knew nothing about what had brought them all together.
Who were these people?
Doran battled a wave of dizziness, squinting hard to bring Solara into focus when she and the crew returned to his room. He had imagined how she might look in her dress, but nothing could’ve prepared him for the complete transformation that made her into a stranger—strikingly beautiful, to be sure, but so unfamiliar that the sight of her caused his brows to pinch together.
It was her eyes he noticed first, peering at him beneath long, iridescent lashes. Two butterfly wings fluttered out from her upper and lower lids, painted in autumn tones and treated with a holographic glaze so they appeared to blink along with her. When combined with the halo of silver ribbons woven through her braids, the effect was mesmerizing. But he couldn’t reconcile those eyes with the pair he’d grown accustomed to watching across the dinner table each night during games of Would You Rather.
He let his gaze wander and took in the ball gown, which twinkled with the brilliance of a starry night sky. The strapless design hugged her curves like a second skin, highlighting her bare shoulders and arms, and through some miracle that defied gravity, her breasts were thrust upward in a display halfway to her chin.
Doran nearly swallowed his tongue, trying very hard not to stare and batting down the selfish urge to wrap her in a blanket so that nobody else could see her like this. He forced his eyes lower, all the way to the tips of her toes, which alternately flashed pink and purple with animated lacquer. Her fingernails were polished as well, and her tattoos concealed. In all her glitz and glamour, he could easily imagine her gracing the cover of a fashion magazine.