Page 48 of Tempting Fate

“We’ll get a secure message to your friends there, and you can contact us from those details.”

The image bobbed as he walked, heading along the corridor to engineering. “Don’t worry about the cap. She’ll be fine. And I’ll die before I let that bitch get her hands on either of you again, I swear it.”

That bitch. Mother.

It was easier to believe bounty hunters were after me than to believe our own mother had taken out the contract. But Shohari had snatched me from under her nose with the help of forbidden off-worlders. And not only that, she’d humiliated Mother—in front of her arch-rival, no less. No, it was naive to think Mother would let us go that easily.

I swallowed, my energy draining faster by the minute. “Thank you, Paiata. I’m glad she has you.”

He snorted. “I’ll send details to Tokki. Now I need to go help Garrison calm her down. Try not to worry.”

The comm went dark.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Spectre

Imani

Imani

You around??

Fenn

In town. Dreadbird’s Rest.

Well, damn. Good for them, I guess, but I could have done with the company, and at this point in the afternoon they’d likely be out for a while.

I stomped back to my room, needing the deep pressure under my feet and the feedback through my muscles to help ground me. What was I supposed to have done? Told Airida when he was already overwhelmed? Ruined some of the good conversations we’d had? Told him during kalidi? Or made a special visit to him to tell him, when it was in fact none of my business?

This right here was why I’d promised myself I’d stay single. No matter how hard I tried, I could never get it right, was never good enough. Airida may be sweet, he may be on my wavelength, but his spoiled outbursts could easily turn into something worse. It wasn’t worth the risk.

I grabbed my bag and trudged to the gardens. Maybe his reaction was a good thing, a timely reminder that nobody was perfect, no matter how good they seemed at first.

My cosy nook in the ruins beckoned, and I sunk onto the moss. The waving branches above me cast dappled shade across my sketchbook, a calm, muted contrast to my turbulent thoughts.

I copied some hasty drawings, making them neater, and expanded on my scribbled notes. Sure, I could have downloaded all the plant data to my comm tablet, but there was something about doing it by hand that calmed me and scratched an itch.

Not today, though. Nothing was good enough.

I tore another page out of my sketchbook and scrunched it up, leaving me staring at a blank sheet of paper.

Oh, fuck this. I stuffed everything away and slung my bag over my shoulder.

The path downhill led to a small lake, and I wound my way past the old buildings, half of which were so reclaimed by nature, nobody had bothered to landscape around them.

A strange cluster of rocks broke free from the ground, not matching the weathered bricks of the ruins. Veins of orange crystal ran through the greenish-grey, and I settled down to get a closer look. As I pulled aside clumps of grasses and weeds, a rock shifted and sunk lower in the ground.

I scrabbled backwards. There were a few reasons that could have happened, none of them good. I grabbed a sturdy stick and poked the rock from a safe distance. Sure enough, it dislodged and fell, echoing as it tumbled into the planet’s depths.

“Well, this isn’t fucking safe,” I said to no-one in particular. I kept poking, mapping out the fissure’s edges until I’d revealed a clear hole, maybe wide enough for a person if I carried on working at it—which I wouldn’t. Anyone could stumble on this and fall, and goodness only knew how far down it went.

I stabbed my stick in the ground near the path. It would have to do as a marker until I could tell people, and we could section it off.

As I headed back towards the village, the sounds of raised voices carried over the still, warm air, and I hurried along the path. A handful of people stood around the fire, engaged in a heated discussion, gesticulating as they spoke. The conversation ended as I approached, and half of them dispersed.

I caught Daiytak’s arm. “What’s going on?”