Between Burning Worlds (System Divine #2) - Jessica Brody Page 0,196

there’s no hope.”

“But if it’s a craft,” Alouette said, craning her neck, “why can’t we see it? Is it concealed by the clouds?”

“I don’t know,” Marcellus said again, this time with a shudder.

A second later, the air around them started to whip and thrash, battering against Marcellus’s ears until he couldn’t decipher the sound from the mysterious rumble of what he knew to be engines. Their chute flapped violently, locked in place only by the tethers that were still secured to the abandoned pod.

It’s landing, Marcellus thought, desperately scanning the horizon.

And then he saw it. The faintest shadow on the ground. Something blocking the afternoon light from the three Sols hidden behind the clouds.

“How is it … ,” Alouette began to ask, but her question drifted into the wind when suddenly, as if carved right into the air, a door emerged and hissed open.

Cerise gasped. Alouette sucked in a sharp breath. Gabriel let out another groan. And Marcellus could only stare. Speechlessly. Incredulously. Breathlessly.

A figure stepped out of the invisible ship, dressed in strange clothing flecked with white and gray that was almost camouflage against the backdrop of the Terrain Perdu.

Without warning, Marcellus’s heart swelled to the size of a Sol. His skin prickled. His legs felt like they might surrender beneath him and bring him thudding helplessly to the ground.

And strangely, his eyes were the last to recognize her.

He let out a breath so shocked and sudden, he wondered for a moment if it might be his last.

Then, somehow, through the battering wind and the roaring engine and the kilomètres and kilomètres of lost land that surrounded them, Marcellus managed to find his voice.

“Chatine?”

- CHAPTER 58 - CHATINE

MARCELLUS.

Sitting across from her in a cruiseur, his hazel eyes twinkling, his lips quirked into a small smile.

Marcellus.

Crouched down in front of her chair in the interrogation room, gazing up at her, pleading with her to help him.

Marcellus.

Kissing her on the rooftop of the garment fabrique. Deeply. Intensely. Endlessly.

And finally, Marcellus.

Turning away from her. Calling her a traitor. Walking out of her life forever.

That was what she had always believed. Those were the thoughts and visions and memories that had cycled through her mind during all those lonely days and nights on Bastille.

But now …

Marcellus.

Standing in front of her in the middle of the Terrain Perdu, surrounded by a dying fire and the crashed wreckage of an escape pod. Staring at her like she was a ghost. A phantom. A vision.

Just as she was staring at him.

Because he was a ghost to her. He had been just as dead to her as little baby Henri. He had been just as impossible to bring back as her brother. And yet somehow, at some point, they had both come back to her.

Chatine rubbed her finger against the silver ring that encircled her thumb. The one that she swore had saved her from Bastille. And the one that she was now certain had guided her right here. Right now. To this very spot. Like a tiny Sol, lighting a path through the darkness.

Marcellus was the first to speak, shattering the silence that seemed to have encapsulated them like a dome. “Chatine?”

But as desperately as Chatine wanted to reply, wanted to tell him all the things she’d ever dreamt of telling him while she’d lain awake at night, locked in that dingy tower on the moon—how she was sorry, how she didn’t mean to betray him, how she was selfish and stupide and blind—when she opened her mouth, nothing came out.

Marcellus also seemed to be struggling. “How did you … ? I thought you were … ? What happened … ?” He huffed, frustrated with his own babbling, before finally sputtering out, “Who is that?”

Chatine turned around to see Etienne standing behind her, his eyes dark and narrowed, his mouth pressed into a tight line. She nearly startled at the sight of him. As though she didn’t even recognize him. As though she’d been transported a month into the past, before she had ever been sent to Bastille, before she had ever been rescued by a strange and alluring pilote, before she had been welcomed into his home. It seemed to be the only way this situation made sense. It’s as if she were somehow living two different timelines at the same moment. Existing in two different worlds at once.

How long had he been standing there?

Chatine glanced back and forth between Etienne and Marcellus before finally managing to utter her first syllable. “Uh …” It wasn’t