Page 291 of Every Almost

Kess had known. The whole time.

“Go.”

Reyna sweptthrough the Emberkind at a speed she didn't even know she could possess.

She went past the corridor on Six where she'd come around a bend and found a human woman standing with her palm flat against the bulkhead.

She went past the corner on Twelve where Charlie had come around it too fast and Reyna had put a hand out, catching her by the arm.

She went past Engineering, the home of her Chief Engineer.

She went past the galley, where there were seats at a counter where two insomniacs laughed.

She went past the library, where Charlie had sat on the floor and told her about a wall that tried to stop love.

And then she went past the Observation Room, where Charlie Wickett had been sitting hours ago, waiting for Reyna.

Every single room on this ship.

Reyna Solas ran through her own ship, realizing there was nowhere on it that woman hadn't gotten to. She hadn't allowed it. Nobody had asked her. And frankly, she couldn't remember ever being this glad.

As she ran down a corridor on Deck Four with her chest burning and her hair in her face, she realized there was one place Charlie had not yet made her mark.

Reyna camearound the last corner and, at the end of a corridor she'd walked her entire adult life, were her quarters.

The door was closed, the way it always was, light slipping out underneath it.

Reyna stopped.

Charlie had made her way into every room and every heart on this vessel without anybody having to do a thing about it. She just happened, and Reyna had watched, never once wanting to stop it.

But not this room. This room was the one place that was never going to happen on its own.

Somebody was going to have to open the door.

Reyna looked at a strip of light on the deck plating, and it was the best thing she'd ever seen in her life.

She walked to her own door and put her hand flat against it, pushing it open and walking in.

THIRTY-EIGHT

EVERY ALMOST LEADS TO YOU

CHARLIE

Charlie had never beenin Reyna's quarters. She'd pictured it wrong.

It was smaller than she'd thought, and warmer. There was even a bookshelf in the corner, with actual paper books, worn at the spines, in scripts Charlie could read but not understand. Her desk along a wall with just a set of data sheets on it. There was a viewport on the back wall framing the same stars from a slightly different angle.

Charlie looked at everything. It was all Reyna. Even the parts she hadn't known. It felt like her just standing in this room.

Okay, Charlie, stop gawking and think.

There were options. There were always options. That was the whole thing about being an engineer. You found the options, laid them out and weighed them, and then you picked the one that failed the least catastrophically. Charlie had been doing this her whole life.

"Oh, who am I kidding?" Charlie said to no one.

She'dneveronce done it about something like this.