Page 258 of Every Almost

Then the marks along her forearms brightened, all at once, the way a banked ember comes up when you open the door.

She watched it happen and did nothing to stop it.

Vondra remained quiet.

"You can't do this to me," she whispered.

Reyna heard it about a half-second after it left her.

To me.

Every argument she had ever made in this office was on behalf of what was best for the ship or her crew, and she had made a great many of them. Not one had ever been about her.

But she didn't take it back.

"I can't," Reyna said, her voice quieter than before, and so much worse. "Admiral. Please. I just... can't."

The station's ambient light moved across the geode of Vondra's eyes, slow.

"Reyna," Vondra said, her voice changed. "How long?"

And whatever had been holding Reyna up suddenly let go. Now, she was just a woman, feeling her heart break into a million pieces in slow motion.

Because the answer was part of her before the Admiral even finished asking. It had been sitting in her the whole time, fully formed.

Waiting on nobody but her.

Reyna stood in the wreckage of her own composure.

"Admiral." She lifted her head to the screen, her voice coming out flat, small, and very far away. "There's nothing? Not a single thing can be done?"

There was silence as Reyna waited.

"I would tell you if I thought there was something, you know that," Vondra said finally. "There is nothing, Captain. Not that I can see now."

Reyna nodded.

She let her head drop and didn't say a word. The silence went on long enough that the voice came back, changed.

"Reyna, do you require?—"

Reyna cut the channel.

Despite the vidscreen being dark, the office was very bright.

The wall display was blank, having taken all that dark water with it. And now the room was just a room, lit the way it always had been, but now Reyna had to blink against the brightness.

She had hung up on a fleet admiral.

She waited to feel something about it.

Nothing came.

Suddenly, she had to move.

She pushed off her desk and went for the door because staying in that room was not survivable.

The corridor ended up being worse, but she kept going anyway.