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When she was ten, they moved to Kentir to mine rare diamonds. It was where she’d developed her love of valuable rocks. The Kentir diamonds were the largest in the entire system, but they were also very rare and hard to find.
The walls of the Kentir mines were peppered with shards that shined like the real diamond but were only fractions of its size and ultimately worthless, making the work slow and difficult. Shards were so hated on Kentir that the word had become an insult, and a part of Nova’s vocabulary.
Most people gave up on Kentir within a month, but her dad became obsessed with finding a diamond, claiming it would make them rich one day.
He would describe this perfect future where they had money and a house, and Nova could go to school with other children, and her father would have time to find someone. She would have friends and a mother. It sounded wonderful, and for a while, Nova believed that future was within their grasp.
Naive little idiot.
Eventually, she’d come to realize that her father was never going to find a diamond, and that even if he did, he would spend the money the same way that he did the money he’d had then, on searching for the next great find.
Nova used to think of herself as a Kentir diamond that her father had found.
She rolled her eyes thinking about it.
In the end, it didn’t matter if she was a diamond or a piece of coal, her father wasn’t interested in having either. He wanted the excitement of the hunt.
And she’d turned out just like him, except that she’d realized quickly that she had no interest in doing hard labor in a mine. She was going to find diamonds in places that she actually knew they existed, and unlike her father, she was going to successfully pocket them. But like her father, she didn’t care about the rocks themselves. She’d never kept an object she’d stolen. She sold it all, and eventually even started working for hire. That was the only way to get to the really good treasure.
She’d felt a strange sense of accomplishment the first time she’d held a Kentir diamond in her hand. She’d wanted to send her dad a picture of herself holding it and giving him the middle finger, but she couldn’t do that without risking getting caught for the theft. Besides, she had no idea where he was anyway.
Then the dread had settled in because holding a precious diamond hadn’t changed who she was on the inside, a scared little girl hopelessly trying to impress her dad. She’d gone into a depression for several months after that. Until one day she’d decided that she wasn’t a little girl anymore, that she wasn’t scared, and that she wasn’t going to give her dad another thought. And for the most part, she’d accomplished that.
That was when she’d started taking harder heists, where she didn’t just steal but also lied to her victims, sometimes to the point of infiltrating their lives. If she were honest with herself, that was the point where she’d become the person she didn’t want to be anymore.
Though she still hadn’t figured out who she did want to be instead.
But yeah, the idea that the Mudden people got to live their entire lives surrounded by family and friends sounded nice, but not if it cost them their freedom.
The council building appeared in front of them.
“Which window is your office?” she asked.
“Second floor. On the right.”
“Second floor? Do you have a nice view of the city?”
He shrugged. “It’s Baeddan. There’s not much to see.”
“That’s where you lived before I came here?” she asked, trying to give him the idea to take her up there on his own.
“Yeah.”
She turned to face him, stepping ever so slightly closer to him. That close to him, she could smell his aftershave. It was a nice smell.
“Was it very small?”
She watched his Adam’s apple going up and down as he swallowed. He looked at her with hooded eyes.
“It was fine for me.” He turned to face her too, bringing him even closer. She could feel the electricity coming off of him.
She was playing with fire. One wrong move and he would lean down to kiss her. Then she’d be forced to punch him in the nose, and that wouldn’t get her into his office.
She looked down then away from him, looking back at the window.
He followed her gaze. “Do you want to see it?” His voice was heavy with emotion.
Finally.
