Every pigment cell in my body explodes as one, and an avalanche of pain crashes down on me.
I’m only faintly aware of Delphie’s voice in the distance, calling my name. Her hands run over me, but I’m numb, skin made of ice even though my insides are hot agony.
How is itpossibleshe wears that pendant? I haven’t seen it in decades, but it’s more familiar to me than my own face. It was my mother’s, a gift from her own mother and her mother before her. I used to gaze at it as I laid in her arms, chasing the red light it would reflect from the star when she held it up.
I haven’t seen it since I apprenticed when I was six summers old. I didn’t know, when I said goodbye to my mother, only half paying attention because I was enamored with the new set of blades strapped to my thighs, that it would be the last time I’d see her, too, or any of my brothers’ mothers.
When the six of us returned to the palace and our mothers were missing, even as greenlings we knew better than to ask where they were. Later, when I’d made relative peace with being my father’s tool, I wondered which of his other deadly puppets he’d used to murder her. I’d search the skin of every warrior and priest I met to see if guilt marred it, even briefly. When it became clear that I would never know for certain, I assumed they’d all had some part. They were allhim, as I was him, and even if they didn’t do it, they would have if he’d asked.
“Where are you, Nik? Come back to me,” Delphie says close to my ear. Her hands are working, stripping off my sveli, pressing into the muscles of my shoulder, breaking up the pigment and thawing my skin in painful rushes.
“I’m here,” I croak, barely able to get the sound out. She moves down my arm, methodically working the channels like the healers do. Her technique isn’t expert, but it’s good enough. Through the fog, I can tell it’s working. With every dig and push of her fingers, I return to myself a little more.
“Breathe,” she commands, so I breathe.
“Turn over,” she commands, so I turn.
After many minutes, too many to count, when she’s made her way down all four limbs and across my back, she pauses. “How are you doing?”
“Better,” I rasp. My throat is tight, tissues swollen with pigment crystals still. It will take time and some painful use to drive them out of the parts she hasn’t touched.
“You don’t sound better.”
“I am. I will be. I—I’m sorry you had to see that.” What must she think of me? I don’t know what to think of her, either. But at this point, I need to know. “That pendant you wear—”
Her hand goes to it, wrapping around it protectively. “This? That’s why you had a panic attack?”
“If that’s what you want to call it. I recognize it. It was my mother’s. I haven’t seen it since she...” I can’t bring myself to say it. “Disappeared.”
Her face reflects some of the horror I feel. “Oh, Nik. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. Lyro gave it to me. I thought— I don’t know what I thought, but I had no idea it was connected to you.” She slips the pendant over her head and presses it into my palm, closing my fingers around it. “Here.”
The glass is warm from her body, and I swear I can feel it pulsing in my palm, a tiny heartbeat. “Did he say why he had it?”
Delphie shakes her head. “He was in a rush. Just put it in my hand. I didn’t even see what it was until after he left.”
“Nothing about why it was in his possession?” I ask, praying for an innocent excuse.
“No, sorry. Listen.” She touches my arm, barely brushing her fingers over it. I wish she’d dig them in again, give me relief. Give me comfort. “I want to talk more about this, but I also really need to clean up. Will you be okay for a few minutes if I shower and change?”
Of course, she has had a long day tending the injured, and she has delayed for the hour or two she spent massaging my frixing skin. “Yes. Go.”
She pulls fresh clothing from her luggage and disappears into the shower. Minutes later, the steam carries her scent to me, making me fist the furs with my free hand. Even in this murky confusion of pain and regret, I need her. I want to rail against the goddess, curse her for making this my life.
Get control of yourself. You made this for yourself.
Looping the leather cord of my mother’s pendant around my neck so it rests against the place where I can still feel the imprint of Delphie’s foot, I lie back in the furs. The muscles of my abdomen are weak and sluggish, crowded with crystals, so I do my best to crush and clear them while I wait for Delphie to finish bathing.
It hurts, but I’m used to it.
Did Lyro kill my mother? I hadn’t considered that one of my brothers might have done it, but it would make sense if it were Lyro. He was closest to my father, lived with him on the Eye, the space station the priests use to live closer to the star goddess.
The youngest of the sons of Chanísh, Lyro was not gifted a planet to rule. It embittered him to the rest of us, thinking that we received gifts he did not. He did not understand that ourfather never gave rewards, only punishments. He might have called them rewards, but they never were.
“Hey.” Delphie has returned, skin gleaming. Her bare scalp has the ghost of hair now, just a shadow that marks the brief time she’s spent on Usuri. Her eyes go straight to the pendant around my neck. “Any thoughts on why Lyro gave it to me?”
I touch it reflexively. “So I’d see it. He wanted to hurt me. He wanted me to know.”
“Know what?”
