His body tenses at my touch, his breathing growing labored. I spy his fingers twitching with the itch to take over, but I trust him not to touch me until I’ve given my consent. And now I’d like for him to trust me back just as completely.
“You’re cruel,” he groans as I inch my way even more leisurely down the smooth skin of his chest, and the ripples of his abs, and the lower I go, the more I feel his muscles submitting to me, until—
Someone pounds loudly on the cabin door.
I fall off Hysan and burrow beneath the sheets, my heart racing, and Mathias shouts, “Hysan! Why is your door locked? We need you up front now!”
Hysan curses under his breath.
“Are you listening?” demands Mathias, who’s still hammering on the door. “Why aren’t you answering on your Ring?”
“He’ll be there!” I call out.
Hysan suddenly rolls on top of me, his body stiff against mine, his green eyes ravenous as they gaze into me. He kisses me with such force that my mouth opens fully for him, and every clenched muscle loosens until I feel like I’ve dissolved to a puddle of seawater.
As he pulls away, he says huskily, “You better come back from all this and finish what you started.”
39
“WHAT IS THAT?” I ASK as soon as Hysan and I enter the nose, short of breath and with our suits disheveled. Everyone else is already gathered, and they’re staring wide-eyed at the streaks of lightning flashing through the glass—except for Mathias, who’s looking back at me.
His midnight eyes are soft, and his face is paler than usual, and I understand what he’s feeling because watching the early stages of his romance with Pandora has hurt me, too. Even if I don’t want to admit it.
We may not be able to affect the past, but the past can still affect us. Mathias and I may have made our choices weeks ago, but our hearts haven’t finished paying the price.
“It’s Dark Matter,” says Hysan, taking over the control screens from him. “We can’t see it, but according to our coordinates, we’ve just entered the Thirteenth constellation.”
“I will guide us,” says Ophiuchus, leaning forward from his spot on the floor, and I hear a new energy in his deep voice.
“Mathias, send a message to the other ships to form a line behind us,” instructs Hysan. “Tell them they’ll need to stick to our exact flight path so we don’t risk hitting anything our sensors can’t pick up.”
Hysan buries his face in the controls as Ophiuchus provides directions, and Mathias leaves to pass on Hysan’s message to the fleet. Pandora is glued to the window, same as Gyzer, Ezra, Skarlet, Gamba, and Mom, so I slip away and follow Mathias out.
He opens his Wave and transmits the data to all our ships at once, and when he turns to return to the nose, he sees me.
Neither of us says anything, but before it’s too late, I break our silence.
“What do you imagine would have happened if we’d spoken that last morning in the solarium?” I ask, repeating the question he once asked me.
His indigo blue irises swirl like whirlpools of the Cancer Sea, and he murmurs, “Maybe I would have asked you for your name.”
“And I would have said, I’m Rho.” I hold out my hand for the Cancrian greeting.
“Nice to meet you, Rho,” he says musically as we bump fists. “I’m Mathias.”
His fingers wrap around my hand, and he holds on to it. “This might sound strange,” he says, his baritone voice deepening, “but I’ve really enjoyed sharing these mornings with you. More than I ever realized.”
Warmth tickles my face as I channel the girl I was then, and it feels good to finally give her what she most wanted. “Being around you,” I whisper, “makes me feel safe. Your dedication to your routine, the peaceful aura around you, the way you’re so comfortable with silence . . . you remind me of home.”
His face softens, and he interlocks his fingers with mine. “Today is my last day of university,” he says, “but would it be too forward to ask for your information so we can keep in touch?”
“I’d love that,” I say, and though my face is still warm from the interaction, I feel tears forming in the corners of my eyes.
“I would have Waved you every day,” he breathes, his thumb drawing small circles on my hand. “And as soon as I got to know you, I would have fallen irreversibly in love, and I would have never let you go.” His midnight eyes are glassy and bright. “Hysan wouldn’t have stood a chance. By the time you met him, our bond would have been unbreakable.”
And neither of us would have fallen in love with someone from another House, I realize. We would have clung closer to Cancer, and we wouldn’t have opened our minds to the change we needed. Our hearts would have stayed strictly Cancrian, rather than expanding to encompass the whole Zodiac.
Mathias and I had to fall in love with people different from us to understand that, deep down, we’re all the same.
My eyes fill with so much water that his face blurs. “You still would have doubted Ophiuchus’s existence, while Hysan would have supported me,” I say with a small laugh, blinking to clear my view. Tears streak down my cheeks. “And I still would have shut the airlock door to try to protect you,” I say more seriously. “Pandora still would have saved you.”
His gaze grows distant, and I see the events playing out in his eyes; when he focuses on me again, I know from his defeated expression that my math was right. Whatever we do, we always end up back here.
It’s just our nature.
He drops my hand, and the warmth in my skin recedes, like the sea’s tide pulling away from the shore.
And now that it’s gone, I identify the feeling.
It’s closure.
? ? ?
The Thirteenth House is completely covered in Dark Matter, but Ophiuchus guides us through the pathway created by the Piscenes’ Psynergy. He seems to be the only one who can See through the darkness, though I’m willing to wager Aquarius’s technology can navigate it.
Our whole fleet lands in the same area because it’s where the Thirteenth Guardian directs us to go.
“The Marad may already have us in its sights,” says Hysan before we disembark. “Everyone has to be armed and ready.”
Every ship brought stores of Barers and pistols with them, in addition to their House’s signature weapon. I stick with just my Barer, and Ophiuchus is the only one who doesn’t take any weapon at all.
When I step off ’Nox, I join thousands of other Zodai who are looking up in bewilderment. The Dark Matter in the atmosphere completely blocks out the sun’s rays, so the planet is shrouded in eternal night. The small hole in the atmosphere through which we flew in is the only place where silver starlight is visible, and every now and then it sends tendrils of lightning streaking through the sky.
Scientifically, life shouldn’t even be possible here—yet the temperature is balmy, and we’re breathing fresh air. Only the oxygen tastes slightly different . . . almost like Abyssthe.
Licorice-flavored air.