Page 164 of The Space Between Stars

At least he wasn’t dead.

Shoving the shock aside, she focused on her brother again. The prior thread had gone, thankfully. In its place were others. All ended in death. In some, he made it as far as the coronation before his line cut out. Her stomach pinched. Her throat swelled. That was enough of that for one day.

Fankalo was almost glad when Mitek surfaced to the command deck to distract her: Mitek, who had basically crawled up her asshole until they’d put half a day between them and the Tera’thians. Almost.

He slid a poison pill into her hand. “Time for our dose.”

“Thanks.” She washed it down with a sip from the canteen at her belt.

His shoulder brushed hers. “Doing alright?”

She nodded, but the closer he came to her, the more she wanted to be anywhere else.

“Want me to get the navigator to give you reprieve?”

“Not necessary. It’s my shift.”

She couldn’t let him get any closer. Not with his sudden forwardness. They’d weathered the worst things imaginable together; he could weather her rejection too. He’d give up on her soon enough—realize why they wouldn’t ever work. He might be an idiot, but he wasn’t that big an idiot.

“Are you doing alright?”

“Yeah.” But the veins in his neck bulged. “But I can’t wait to rid that guy from the face of the earth.”

This aggression wasn’t like him either. It was for the best that she didn’t tell him about Calver’s last correspondence. In fact… she remembered the illusory vision of Calver suffocating under the effects of veilstrike. Best to keep all things Calver to herself, for now.

In fact…

Her gut turned in on itself. Mitek could be the one feeding information to Thyatira. Since the loss of Zeb, only four knew the full scope of the Shadewalker’s operation. If she was taking her blood brother and Drogus under observation, she would need to suspect Mitek too.

Mitek.

She’d spent a decade learning the art of deception alongside him. And he had all the telltale signs: he’d been acting differently for months. Always needing to know where she was and who she was with and…

He’d been the one to suggest Calver was working against her. Putting her attention elsewhere. He’d been the one to suggest a collaboration with Thyatira since the beginning. He’d run every meeting with his envoys. Some privately.

Fankalo bit her cheek to stop herself from questioning Mitek on the spot. With the number of times she’d gone against the codex, the possibility that he’d lost alignment with her values wasn’t out of the question. And he’d held a grudge since the moment she let Calver go free after Pazir.

Even Gelhard had once been her father’s closest friend.

Mitek mistook the sounds of the sea and whatever expression she wore in place of their usual banter for worry. His brown eyes brightened and he smiled at her. “It’s a setback, Bratty, but we were bound to have a few. It will all land as it should, just you wait.”

Fankalo let the corners of her mouth rise in false confidence, despite her heart having dropped into her stomach. “The way I see it, we’re ahead of schedule.”

“There are only two options, eah? We take down the fucking Tera’thians…” He raised his eyebrows at her.

“Or we take down the fucking Tera’thians.”

A legend would not show weakness.

CALVEROUS

Three nights passed in companionable misery. The flame in Calver’s muscles, unaccustomed to so long on horseback, grew so severe that he questioned whether walking might be superior. Then the moon traced its way across the sky and Dex stayed vertical on his mount, so Calver did the same. Neither made mention of their chafing or fresh blisters as they nursed them when they settled to rest. They rode at dusk, and when the day broke they stretched and hobbled, sparred and slept.

When a tenday remained before the Red Wing’s expected arrival in Steila, they dipped into an arroyo that faded into a stretch of grasslands. For days they had pressed the horses at a canter, moving them twice the distance they’d been accustomed to walking over the weeks with the Red Wing. With the change of scenery, the horses’ stubbornness won out: they refused to move.

Calver dismounted to coax his animal forward. He led the way on foot with only the moon to light the hissing, waist-high grasses. When the fear passed, they mounted again and rode slowly through the remainder of the night.

As the first rays of sun reddened the horizon, Calver looked to Dex, who was holding his body sideways in an attempt to find comfort. The exhaustion in his stony expression vanished when he saw Calver looking at him. Calver could remember having that sort of pride, once.