Stopping in the middle of the living room, I looked down to find the source of this question. A black-haired and brown-eyed child sat cross-legged on the floor, staring up at me with a quizzical expression. When he hopped to his feet, I wondered if he’d recently hit a growth spurt. He was long and gangly, stretched out like taffy. His fingers worked absently at a small wooden puzzle while his attention rovedover me from head to toe. I’d never had a child look at me quite like that before, like I was a riddle to be solved. I won’t lie; it was a little unnerving. Or maybe it was just me. Most things about children unnerved me these days.
“Hello, little one,” I said stiffly. “I’m here to visit with all of you. My name is Sunastara Ne?—”
“Nex,” he completed, blinking his long, black eyelashes. “You are theIgnisar’s hospitality specialist. My moms have been expecting you.” He flipped a wooden peg on the puzzle into place and handed it to me. The puzzle now assumed the shape of a perfect sphere. “It’s not an easy one,” he said. “But do you wanna try it?”
He wore wide-legged black pants and a pink, long-sleeved T-shirt with ahang loosesymbol on it. But my eyes, for some reason, drifted to his bare feet. As lanky as he was, he still had the short, pudgy toes of a younger child, and they grasped gently at the looping carpet. I took the puzzle.
“Hmm. I’ve never seen anything like this before.” Spinning the sphere in my hand, I tried to find a place to start.
“Of course you haven’t.” His smile was wide and toothy. “I made it myself.”
“You did?” I smiled too at first. But then a sudden, hollow nausea gripped me. This boy had been given so much time to learn so many things. Not like my boy. Not like Jonathan. His time had been stolen, ripped away. Such a senseless, ridiculous thing. Five years later, and I still couldn’t wrap my head around it. Why me? Why my child? Just…why?
Shoving the memory of blond hair and blue eyes and little feet running down the hallway in little shoes out of my mind the way I always did, I gave him his puzzle back. “How long did it take you to make it?”
Mysteriously, he popped two wooden pegs out of thesphere with his nimble fingers, twisting the top half counterclockwise while pulling on the bottom. Another peg sprang free. “This one took me two months. It’s the hardest one I’ve made so far.”
“Sai, come eat your breakfast,” Lena called from the kitchenette.
The boy wobbled away, his eyes on his puzzle, his bare feet padding across the carpet. I watched him hop up onto a barstool and spin around in one full revolution before taking a huge bite out of a pastry so fragrant it filled the suite with spice.
Striding into the kitchenette, Senator Ramesh tied her raven-black hair up into a tight bun at her nape. Wearing a simple blue dress and black heels, she was short but striking, poised, and intimidating as hells. “Sunastara Nex,” she said. “Welcome to our suite.”
I extended my hand toward her and bowed my head, as was custom on Tranquis when meeting someone of high esteem. “It’s a pleasure to meet you and your family, Senator. And please, call me Sunny.”
She shook my hand, bowing her head as well. “And you will call me Sonia.”
“Tell her about the tart, Mom,” Sai said from his stool.
When Sonia smiled at him, it kicked me in the ribs. I remembered smiling like that. The joy. The pure love.I have to get out of here.
“Sai would like to report a burnt tart from the instaWave,” Sonia said, suddenly grave. “Apparently, the oven refused to turn off no matter how many buttons he pushed. The fire-suppression system was employed.”
“Oh dear,” I replied, making myself stay, forcing myself to live in the present moment. “Was there any damage? We will remunerate you for any losses.” The thick, white foamused to snuff out fires on the ship was next to impossible to clean from clothing.
Sonia leaned in close. “We believe he asked the oven to cook the tart for thirty seconds instead of three. But he maintains this was not the case. We’re not pushing the issue. I think he’s embarrassed.”
“Of course,” I said, coming back to myself by degrees. “Such an easy mistake to make.” Then, louder, “We had another instaWave malfunction on this ship last week. Nearly burned down an entire pod.”
Sai’s head whipped my way, his eyes wide, mouth sprung open. “You did?” While he might’ve been a clever child, his poker face needed some work.
“I’m just glad no one was hurt,” I said with all the sincerity I could muster. “Dangerous thing, a malfunctioning oven. How about we only let your mothers operate it from here on out?”
He nodded vigorously, looking relieved.
“How does he know who I am?” I asked Sonia, keeping my voice low.
Walking to her son, she mussed his hair before smoothing it back out. “I receive dossiers on the staff of every ship I travel on. Sai likes to peruse them over my shoulder, and we encourage his curiosity.”
“Is that so?” Fear spiked in my chest. What had Sonia found in my dossier? How much did she know about me? About my past?
As if reading my mind, she said, “There is no personal information in the files—just where you’re from, how long you’ve worked aboard the ship, any military or political background. That sort of thing.” She planted a soft kiss on Sai’s head, then moved to stand at the end of the counter. “But I did see that we’re both from Tranquis.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Lathinaes, correct?”
“That’s where I grew up. My parents still live there, but I haven’t been back in years.”
