The Girl Who Fell From The Sky - Rebecca Royce Page 0,22

no ability to read. And he could decipher a map from afar to hopefully find his missing brother. And yet he was insecure. I might think he wasn’t a good soldier. He was kind to me, said I was beautiful, and made me warm in places that were unusual for me.

I looked back at the book, flipping through it to the end. I might need there to be some kind of index that explained some words. Plants were not something I understood particularly well. I’d killed any ever given to me, and if Astor wanted explanation I wouldn’t…

I stopped flipping. Right at the back of the book was a sticker affixed to the very back page. Property of Longergan Prison.

I stared at the words for a long moment. Longergan. I knew that name. I wasn’t a historian, and most of what we knew altered anyway, depending on who was in charge and their version of the past. When my brother was supreme leader, the great holy ones will probably have walked among us to anoint him. That was neither here nor there. Longergan was a famous story. The prison ships that went missing…

“Bianca?” Astor drew me back to the here and now. “What is it?”

I held up the book. “Nothing. Sorry. I’m easily distracted.”

I could have told him right then what I thought, but something stilled my mouth. What did these people know of their ancestors’ pasts, and was it possible? Was it even something that could be considered, that the vanished prison ships had somehow crashed here and these people were the descendants of the prisoners? Did they know that they came from people who had been designated enemies of the state and were bound to spend their lives on prison ships? And if they didn’t, did I want to tell them? No, absolutely not.

“I am, too.” He rubbed a hand down my back. “Please tell me about plants. As they told you the other day, plants are a bit of a study of mine. That is how I made the cream that helps with burns.”

I opened my mouth and read. It was easy to do, and it took my mind off everything else. I’d made it three chapters when he stopped me.

“I could listen to you read all day. But I’m hungry, and you must be, too.”

I hadn’t thought about food in a while, but almost as if it heard his words, my belly rumbled. Honestly, my lack of hunger these last few hours said something about Astor’s ability to distract me. The food here was amazing. I mean, generally it was tubers, long yellow grasses, and something called zelbeast that was savory and salty and made my mouth water. But out of those three staples, the people of the City-State—women, chiefly, because they were the cooks—could make a seemingly infinite array of delicacies. A lifetime of monitoring everything that went into my mouth, out of fear that it could negatively affect my health, had made eating a source of anxiety. This arid, dusty planet seemed likely to change that. It was giving me an appetite for lots of things I hadn’t considered much before.

“I didn’t bring any food from the bar,” I said. “Sorry, but I bet we can find a comisaria. It must be about time for them to start making the midday rounds.”

Comisarias were the women who brought food around in baskets. Because I’d been living with Mattis so far, I’d never seen actual food preparation. The comisarias who came by were friendly enough, but they didn’t really want to talk. Maybe they were intimidated by my brand, my… What was Torrin to me? Not a husband, not an owner. Protector?

Astor peered at me keenly, cocked his head to one side, and said mildly, “I think I can handle this.” He stood and proffered a hand, helping me up from the soft pile of blankets I’d been sitting on. “Come.”

I took his hand, internally mocking my instant and electric response to the touch. Seriously, I could not keep lighting up every time one of these men touched me. It was ridiculous.

We went back out through the grotesque throne room—someday, I was going to have to ask what was with all the skulls—and I didn’t even notice the noise until we opened the metal door to the corridor beyond.

The tunnel was alive with people—people pulling carts, carrying baskets, holding babies, leading domestic animals. The scuffling of dozens, maybe hundreds of feet on the hard-packed dirt floor