one of my people being Pulled to a human before. But … I feel it for you, Aurora.”
She opens her mouth as if to speak, but my words are a flood now.
“I did not wish the others to know. And you had troubles enough without me compounding them. I thought that because you had seen me before you met me … we might be … fated, or some such.” I shake my head, feeling a fool in every cell of my body. “And so I tried to keep you out of danger without letting you know what was happening. I did not wish to place you under some sense of obligation.”
“What … what obligation might it place? If I were Syldrathi?”
A long silence falls between us.
“The Pull is the bond between lifeloves,” I finally say. “Mates.”
She swallows. Clearly lost for words.
“I should not have let it come to this,” I sigh. “I should never have put a human in this position. It is not fair to you, nor the others. And you should not have to make this choice.”
I breathe deep again, nod to myself. Fighting off the rush of anguish. Feeling the rip widening inside my chest until it is so dark and deep I know I might never find my way out again.
But it is better this way.
“I cannot help the way I feel for you,” I say. “But I can control what I do about it. So once we discover the truth behind this Trigger, the star map, I will resign my position in the squad. I have ignored the war among my people for too long. I can stand apart from it no longer. So, once we reach the end of this road, you will not have to see me again.”
The silence between us is as wide and cold as the Void. For a moment, I cannot imagine an end to it. But my uniglass pings in the quiet, filling that edgeless gulf and breaking the spell between us.
“Kal?” comes Tyler’s voice. “Do you read?”
I touch the device at my belt. “I copy.”
“Zila says Auri’s awake?”
I look into those mismatched eyes, feel the pain cutting through my heart like a blade. “She is awake.”
“I think you two better come up and see this.”
“… We are on our way.”
I touch the uniglass again, cutting off the transmission. Staring at the girl sitting opposite me, centuries and light-years away from anywhere and anything she expected to be. Tasting blood and ashes in my mouth.
What can you say when there are no words for what you’re feeling?
What can you do when there is nothing left to be done?
“We should go,” I say.
And without a word, she slips off the bench and marches out the door.
29
Cat
I’m at work on the navcom when O’Malley and Pixieboy walk back on to the bridge. She looks like ten klicks of rough road, and he looks like someone murdered his puppy and left the head in his bed. But truth be told, we got bigger problems than Feels right now. The Bellerophon is still closing on us, and after what we’ve just discovered …
“Auri, are you okay?” Scarlett asks, obviously rating Feels a little higher than me. She’s good like that.
O’Malley glances at Pixieboy, and I can see the lie in her eyes before she speaks it. “I’m okay.”
“Cat, show them,” Ty says.
“Roger that.”
With a flick of my wrist, I throw my navcom visuals up onto the main holographic display. O’Malley stares at the revolving spiral of glittering stars.
“What am I looking at?” she asks.
“The map inside your Trigger highlighted twenty-two stars in total,” I say. “I’ve plotted those systems onto the known segments of the galaxy.”
“Took her a while,” Finian says. “She couldn’t tell just by looking at them.”
“There’s around two hundred billion stars in the Milky Way, skinny boy. I don’t have all of ’em memorized.”
He sniffs. “I thought you were supposed to be good at this.”
“Shut up, Finian.” My fingers fly over the controls, and twenty-two tiny points of red flare out among those billions of suns. “Most of the systems highlighted on the map are unexplored. And a lot are a deep trek from here, even Folding. But it turns out every one of them sits on a known weak spot in the Fold.”
“They all have naturally occurring gates?” Pixieboy asks.
“Looks like, yeah.” I tap another series of commands. “And you’re never going to guess the closest system to our current coordinates.”
Kal raises his eyebrow in question, and I throw