Stormbreak (Seafire #3) - Natalie C. Parker Page 0,92

someone who felt at home.

The realization made Caledonia clench her teeth so hard they ached.

“You should keep me locked up.”

“I know,” she admitted.

His profile was so painfully familiar. Her breath caught on the way one shoulder rose slightly higher than the other, the involuntary twitch of his lips. She’d seen him make this exact gesture a thousand times or more and she’d forgotten it until this moment. How many other parts of her brother had she forgotten?

There were so many things she wanted to say to him, and now that she had the chance, she didn’t know how. She’d never been good at sharing her heart. Not even with Pisces. And she was afraid that if she shared everything in this moment, Donnally would demand to be returned to his prison cell.

“You look like her, you know?” he said, pulling her out of her own thoughts.

“Who?”

One side of his mouth squeezed in an incredulous smile. “Mom.”

“Oh.” An image of Rhona Styx flashed through her mind. Rhona at the helm, her gap-toothed smile broad and confident; Rhona sitting cross-legged in her bed as she oiled her favorite rifle; Rhona, feet dangling over the starboard bow, as she taught Caledonia to tie fishing knots. Red hair that roiled in the wind, a laugh as grizzly as the sea itself, resolve as steely as the hull of their ship.

“Oh,” she repeated, feeling breathless. “The hair.”

“Something more in the eyes. You always have this look, like you can see right through me.” Donnally’s smile wavered and vanished. “At least, that’s what I remember of her eyes; they were discerning.”

“Yes,” Caledonia agreed, a near-giddy feeling bubbling in her chest. “They were.”

This, more than anything, was enough to give Caledonia hope. If Donnally could remember their mother, then perhaps he could remember the boy he’d been before. Perhaps he could still imagine being something other than a Bullet.

He fell silent once more, retreating so far into himself that Caledonia thought maybe she’d imagined that brief feeling of connection. She and Donnally walked down the main thoroughfare, his stride a hair longer than hers and his steps twice as heavy, but they were still, somehow, completely in sync.

When they stopped before the barracks, he paused, a lopsided smile on his pale face.

“What’s funny?” she asked.

“You picked the Ready Racks.” He laughed softly. “Of course you did. The one place Lir would never have chosen for himself.”

Farther into town, they’d found the building that had clearly housed Lir and his officers. It was spacious and comfortable, with easy access to the mess hall and a pool of vehicles that could quickly transport them to the wharf.

“I like to be close to my ships,” she explained, leading him into the barracks and up the stairs to the third floor, where Pisces had left a single door ajar for them. This seemed to amuse him even more, though Caledonia couldn’t say why.

“You made a good choice.” His smile turned self-conscious, fluttering slightly before it disappeared.

“I thought you were dead, too.” Caledonia was suddenly desperate to reach him, to win that smile back. “I didn’t know you’d survived. If I had . . . Donnally, I would have come for you so much sooner. Do you know that? I used to dream that you’d survived.” She paused, tears blooming as she recalled begging her mom to let her take Pisces ashore instead of Donnally. The shame of that moment was always present when she’d dreamed of her brother. “And you did. You survived and I survived.”

He turned to face her, and suddenly his hands were in hers, squeezing tight. So tight Caledonia thought her fingers might break.

“I didn’t survive, Caledonia. I evolved.”

“You did what you had to.” Caledonia clutched at his hands. “What matters now is what you do next.”

Blinking furiously, Donnally nodded and, after a second, pulled his hands away. “And what comes next?”

The loss of his touch left her too winded to speak. She swallowed hard. “You make a choice: stay or go.”

“You’re giving me a choice?” Suspicion clouded his eyes. “Because I’m your brother?”

“No.” Caledonia steadied herself before continuing. “Because everyone should have one. Because that’s the battle I’m fighting. And because keeping you here by force makes me the same as him. You’ve come through your sweats, your mind is your own, and you should be allowed to choose what you do next.”

Uncertainty and confusion warred on Donnally’s face. He backed into his new room, reaching for the door to steady himself, watching her the whole time.

“And

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