“We weren’t—fine,” I mumbled, begrudgingly grabbing a glow rod from my belt and shining a light into the dark building. “I hope something’s in here.”
He let me go first and then followed me inside. “You and me both, Starlight.”
Inside, the air smelled stale but still somehow sweet. My glow rod caught the motes of dust, and they glittered strangely. Vines grew between the cracks in the walls, letting in strokes of golden light where small pink flowers sat, basking in it. A thin line of dust coated everything—the desks, the consoles, the strange research contraptions in the center of the room. The technology was all clearly dated by at least fifty years, but amid all the obsolete junk were other things much more recent—
Two cots, a spent cooktop, wrappers from ready-meals.
“My mentor and I came here once in search of anartifact,” Sian said by way of excusing the wrappers. “We found this place and set up camp for a few nights. We didn’t want to stay longer, though.”
I turned my glow rod to him. “Why?”
His eyes were caught in the light, black sclera glimmering with pinpricks of quickly shrinking white irises. “It’s nothing dangerous.”
“I’d still like to know.”
He shrugged and slipped up beside me, between the beams of sunlight. I shuffled back, my heart jumping into my throat, until I bumped up against one of the dead consoles. The droids hadn’t followed us in here, I realized. We were alone. The vines tickled the back of my neck.
He raised his hand toward me, and my heart quickened—
He plucked a pink flower from the vine by my head and twirled it between his fingers. “The pollen from these flowers was used as a truth-telling drug once.”
It took a moment for the words to sink in. Then with a gasp, I covered my mouth with my free hand. “That’s notnotdangerous!”
“We’ll be fine,” he went on, stepping away from me with a shrug. “Maybe a little too blunt for each other’s comfort, but I’m sure we don’t have any deep dark secrets, do we?”
“Depends on what you count as deep and dark.”
He shrugged. “We’ll find out. The bad part about the pollen is not the truth-telling. It’s the fact that it corrodes most metals very quickly, so your droids can’t stay planetside long. Neither can the ship, honestly.”
“And that’s why this place is deserted,” I realized.
“Exactly. See? Not dangerous.”
Except truth was very dangerous in certain situations—and so were lies. And lies weren’t tools we had at our disposal at the moment.
“But if the pollen corrodes metal,” I said, following him deeper into the building, “how are we supposed to find fuel here?”
“Fuel isn’t metal, as far as I know.” He shrugged, and instead of getting rid of that awful flower, he tucked it behind his ear. Like a madman. “My mentor and I almost didn’t make it off this planet. We realized a little too late that it almost ate through our entire fuselage. This way.” He motioned through another doorway, following thick tubes on the ground.
I stepped carefully after him. “You were after an artifact here?”
“The opposite, actually.”
“But aren’t you studying to be an archeologist?” I asked, confused.
“Iaman archeologist,” he stated.
“Well, then—ah!” My foot caught on a vine. With a yelp, I stumbled, but Sian planted a hand on my shoulder to steady me. Blushing, I righted myself. “Sorry. I’m usually not this clumsy.”
“It’s because of me, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said before I could stop myself, and gasped, slapping my hand over my mouth. “I mean—because you brought us down here! To this planet! Not because—because…”
“Mm-hmm,” he purred, letting his hand fall slowly from my shoulder, his calloused fingers trailing down my arm as he snaked deeper into the building, his touch begging me to follow. “I know what you meant.”
And if he had to tell the truth, like me, then what did he think I meant? That I was distracted by him or that it was because of the planet or—
Stop thinking about it, I scolded myself, glad that the building was dark so he couldn’t see the blush raging across my cheeks.
