“Is she okay?” I ask, wiping my mouth with the back of my wrist.
“She had a headache last night, so she didn’t sleep much. Going to see if she liked the Ariean food.”
When he leaves, Pandora strides in. “Mathias has just taken over the controls, so Hysan returned to his cabin,” she says, like it’s a normal way to greet people.
“Great,” I say, shrugging and ripping off another bite.
“Hysan is alone,” Pandora goes on, sitting across from me and picking up a sheet for herself. “Maybe you want to talk to him and clear the air?”
Nishi frowns at her. “Hey, lavender eyes—if I thought being direct would work, don’t you think I would have tried it?”
“Sorry,” says Pandora, daintily covering her mouth with a hand as she chews.
“I’ve known her for a third of our lives, so take it from me,” Nishi goes on, still talking about me like I’m not here. “She has to choose to leave her shell on her own—if you try to reach inside to pull her out, she’ll only burrow deeper.”
“Since you clearly don’t need me here for this conversation, I’m going to wash up,” I say, stuffing what’s left of my meal into my mouth and heading out into the hall. But rather than tunneling to the back of the ship, where I could run into Hysan, I visit the nose.
Mathias must hear my footsteps when I cross into the front of the ship, because he looks back from the control helm and catches my eye.
“Rho.” His voice is musical, and since he seems pleased to see me, my stomach relaxes. “How are you?”
“Finally slept,” I say, sitting next to him at the helm and trying not to think of all the previous pilots I’ve sat beside in this chair.
“I’m glad,” he says warmly, but his kindness only makes my guilt feel more pronounced.
“Mathias . . . aren’t you mad at me? I betrayed you and everyone else who believed in me. I broke out Ochus, I didn’t trust you guys with my plans, I even changed allegiances—”
“But look at where you’re sitting now,” he says, his baritone voice as soothing as ever. “Whatever happened, whatever you did—you never gave up on us. Even when you thought you’d changed sides, you still came back for us.”
“But I—I gave up an ancient Ariean secret, I traded Gamba for Nishi, I—”
“You made sacrifices for us, ones that only you could make,” he says, his tone still lacking judgment. “No one in Zodiac history has ever been put in a position remotely similar to yours, so none of us can know what it’s like to be you. It wouldn’t be right to judge.”
Something shifts in my chest, and I have to open my mouth to pull in air. “How is it you can always forgive me?” I breathe.
For shutting the airlock door. For choosing Hysan. For keeping secrets.
“Because by now I’ve accepted that I’m just stuck with you in my life,” he says, and when I meet his gaze again, I see that he’s smiling.
“I think that’s the second joke I’ve ever heard you make.”
His brow wings up. “You’re keeping count?” he teases.
I give him a small grin, and I notice the line that cuts down his neck and disappears beneath his collar is less striking. It seems to have faded a little. The sight of his scar sends me plummeting back to the Sumber, and my grin starts to feel forced as I remember the Mathias I met in my nightmares. “So when did you and Hysan start getting along so well?”
“It was something your brother told us on the way to Pisces,” he says, his expression dampening. “He told me and Hysan that if we really cared about you, we’d put the petty stuff aside and get along.”
I don’t tell him I overheard that conversation because the wall of ice in my chest seems to be shifting further, but I still manage to say, “I’m sorry about your sister. I didn’t understand before, but I get it now.”
“I’m sorry, too,” he says, his voice low. He looks down, and I realize I’ve just made him relive those awful emotions. Sadness makes him seem younger, and I can’t help but think of the Cancrian boy with turquoise eyes and sandy hair who helped me through my heartache once.
“You know . . . we could be substitute siblings,” I say, channeling Deke’s spirit.
Mathias’s midnight eyes meet mine again. “You’re already my family, Rho.”
He pulls me into his chest for a hug, and even as my frozen heart welcomes his warmth, part of me wants to push him away for fear of my glacier melting. Mathias lets go suddenly, and I worry he feels the chill in my chest, but he’s staring past me. I twist around and see Hysan watching us.
He turns back the way he came, and I chase after him.
“Hysan, wait,” I call out, but he doesn’t slow down until he gets to his cabin, and I hurry in after him before he shuts the door on me.
“I didn’t mean to come between you two,” he says, jaw clenched. He turns his back to me as he leans over a small desk and starts tinkering with one of his devices. There’s barely enough space for one person in this tiny cabin, and my lungs feel like they’re working extra hard to pull in oxygen.
“I want to apologize,” I say, clearing my throat. “I know what I did on Phaet, how I betrayed you, it was—”
“The worst thing anyone’s ever done to me,” he finishes, twisting to meet my stare. “But at least now you can understand why I find it so hard to trust people.”
His lips curve into a colder version of his centaur smile, and it seems more like the cruel smirk of the Hysan from my nightmares.
The powerlessness I felt in his presence then fuels my outrage now, and I snap, “Maybe if you’d been honest with me from the start instead of lying about the master’s location, I could have trusted you with my plan! Did you think I wanted to do this alone? To go against my friends? If I’d thought any of you would have trusted my idea, I would have confided in you!”
“You’re right, Rho.” Hysan straightens and fully faces me, and I have to tilt my head up to look at him. “We’ve made hard choices, and maybe some of them were mistakes. But we can’t judge that right now.”
His leaf-green eyes pierce into mine. “Some decisions can’t be evaluated on their own because they form part of a larger design. On Libra we have a saying about people who can’t get past a single bad choice in their lives: They can’t see the constellation for its stars.”
“But—aren’t you mad at me?”
“Of course I’m mad!” He’s so close that his breath tickles my face, and his gaze locks on to mine with an intensity that makes it impossible to pull away. “I’m mad because this isn’t you. I don’t think you ever woke up from that Sumber, and every day I feel you slipping further away. And the worst part is you’re not even trying to come back to us.”
With half a step, he bridges the small space between us, his voice dropping with every word. “I know this feels easier for you, but we need you here.” I can almost sense the glow of his golden skin and smell the cedary scent of his hair when he says, “I need you here.”