They were green, like her plants. “And not everyone is looking to take her from you. From us.”
He quietly set down his fork and sat back in his chair when I thought what he really wanted to do was throw the utensil across the kitchen and break his plate. “You never know when they’ll strike,” Jax said so flatly it hurt my heart.
“You’re right. They could strike anytime,” Fiona agreed quickly. “That’s all the more reason to live!”
Jax flinched, and Fiona looked momentarily horrified, as though she feared she’d gone too far.
“We’re careful, Jax. We’re all careful,” I said, although I didn’t know if I should have been soothing him or helping Fiona to rile him up. I was pretty sure some smashed dishes and an explosive bellow would have done him a galaxy of good. Sometimes, I wished he would fill his lungs with his pain and fury and shake the ship with them.
“Good,” he finally answered, his face turning into a wall—flat and blank.
Fiona’s expression went in the opposite direction, bursting with emotion, and they stared at each other for a moment before Jax disconnected, shifting his gaze to the side.
Sadness crept through me, and irrepressible Fiona suddenly drooped, although she probably thought she was hiding it. Some things were only secrets here because nobody talked about them, and I wanted to scream at Jax to look right in front of him, instead of behind.
“You know who Tess is now.” Jax picked up the conversation again in a monotone that reminded me of the grieving man on the Mile, the one who might never let himself get over his dead wife. “There isn’t a single person alive who doesn’t know who she is.”
“Yeah. And they all think she’s been dead for the last eighteen years,” Fiona shot back.
“That’s a good point,” I said. Everyone in the galaxy thought I’d died from the same mysterious fever that had taken my mother, when in fact, I’d never been sick a day in my life. Not even when the other children in the orphanage had been dropping all around me, killed off by infections and diseases with cures.
“There are more people searching for our Tess than for a ghost,” Shiori said, looking across the table at Fiona but not quite hitting her mark. Her milky eyes landed somewhere between Fiona and me.
“Exactly,” Jaxon agreed, turning a pointed look my way. His expression regained only enough life to look satisfied that Shiori had helped prove his point. “People everywhere—looking for Tess.”
Well, I doubted that Shade Ganavan, Space Rogue, was one of them. And I hardly thought Tess was that important. The great rebel wheel was full of cogs, and I hardly signified. At most, I was worth a lethal injection, and the Overseer had plenty of those.
That said, I didn’t want to get caught. But I also wouldn’t stop doing what I needed to do just because I feared the possible consequences. Fear was something I could accept. Abandoning the galaxy to a group of despots was not.
“I have a plan for how to pay for the repairs.” I stood up, finishing my portion of the orange and then grabbing Fiona’s and my mugs. “Thanks, Fi.”
She nodded since she was chewing her food.
“Tess…”
I turned back to Jax from the doorway, the two mugs in my hands, and gave him my most reassuring smile. He’d lost his sister to the heat and murderous roar of the galactic military’s flamethrowers that day, too. She’d been visiting, helping out with the newborn.
Some days, I thought he forgot I wasn’t her. Most days, I was glad he thought I was.
“Don’t worry, partner. I’ll be careful. He knows this place, and I have to pick his brain about where to sell some rare books.”
Jax pressed his lips together and didn’t say anything else. It was Miko who surprised me, because I knew she’d dropped out of the conversation and crawled into herself the moment Fiona and Jax had hinted at Shade wanting anything more from me than universal currency. Miko liked to pretend that no one ever had urges, because they scared her half to death. If I were ever to take up praying again, I’d pray that someone, someday, could show Miko that intimacy could involve tenderness instead of violence.
“He used to kick his dogs.” She looked my way, but I didn’t think she was seeing me, or any of us. “Why would anyone kick a dog, Tess?”