The Girl Who Fell From The Sky - Rebecca Royce Page 0,26

with what I have are euthanized. Put to death at birth, to spare them a life of being improperly made. But that didn’t happen to me because my family is rich. I suppose they thought I could be fixed. Everyone tried for a long time. I’m not fixable. I was on my way to meet my brother, where doctors were finally going to replace my heart with a mechanical one.”

He stared at me, not saying a word. Part of me wished I’d said nothing at all. Astor was bound to lose interest in me. I would forever be the woman with the malformed heart now. I knew this because I’d faced it forever.

With a swift move, he cupped the side of my cheek. “Are you okay right now?”

“I’m never entirely okay. But yes, I’m fine. I think…I think I’m a little panicked telling you. It makes it worse. I have to work on controlling how I react to things, and that sometimes helps, sometimes doesn’t.”

He kissed my lips, which couldn’t have surprised me more than if he’d sprouted wings and taken off. “I’m sorry you’ve had to go through all of this. They can take out your heart and replace it?”

I nodded, but stupid tears leaked from my eyes. “I hate the idea so much. I…I don’t want to die, obviously, but they’re going to have to periodically go back in and straighten it out. Or it could break, and then I’m dead anyway. I feel like if it’s going to malfunction, they should just leave me with my bad one and call it a day.”

He wiped the tears with his broad thumb. “You’re frightened. I understand. The good news…maybe bad news…is that we can’t do anything like that here. You will keep your heart.”

I laughed, the sound surprising me as much as the emotion that brought it on. “That is true.”

“May I?” He motioned toward my heart, and I nodded. Gently, he brought his ear to my chest and listened. “It beats fast but sounds strong to me. I am not an expert. We have no way of being. Why didn’t you want to tell me?”

Astor lifted his head, and I chewed on my lip as I regarded him. He reached out with his thumb and stopped me, smoothing the places I’d been chewing on.

“I hate being locked up and watched every second like I’m about to expire.”

He gave me a quick nod. “I won’t do that to you. If there is nothing we can do…and I fear there is nothing…then we will continue as if all is well. I am not a person who likes to lock people away in preparation for the worst-case scenario. To a certain extent, we can only control such small matters in our lives that constantly being upset in worry makes no sense. As illustrated by the fact that we are not currently hiding in tunnels.”

“My life has been a series of tunnels I’ve been hidden in.”

He brought my hand to his mouth before he kissed my palm. “Bianca, you fell from the sky and lived. I think you are strong. We don’t need to hide you away. What we do need is to eat a full meal and go to bed for the night. Tomorrow will bring all sorts of new problems. That seems almost guaranteed.”

Chapter Seven

So we ate. And we talked. And we…I don’t know, bonded? Became friends? I was used to people keeping their distance, seeing me either as a medical curiosity or Brent’s sister and, for either reason, unapproachable. And I guess my interactions with people overall here weren’t very different. But these particular men, my protectors? I felt like they saw me, and that they liked me anyway. It was all so new and weird.

The culinary concoction Astor had been chopping and spicing required about an hour to cook through—tubers, apparently, were tough little things and took their time releasing the starches—but Astor had a stash of some “medicinal” beverage that smelled like the stuff surgeons cleansed my skin with before an operation. In terms of taste, it wasn’t as good as some of the drinks Mattis had mixed, but I liked it.

Astor cracked open a jar of it, and we consumed it along with the stew. Amazingly, despite the fact that people just outside this room were preparing for imminent military defeat and invasion, I had never been less anxious.

After a very satisfying meal, much better than the dishes the comisarias brought around, we lounged on cushions