Afterwards, Kirov would need to attend to his duties as Ambassador and Lainey would usually call up Crystal and Erin or Kate. She’d learned that Erin had finally convinced Bianca to move into the house on the terrace and while Bianca still refused to speak with Lainey, it relieved her that they were out of that windowless room. And with still no news of the stolen Luxirian crystal, it was the best decision for their sanity and mental health.
Lainey had also connected with Cecelia and Taylor, who were enjoying mated life with their Luxirian males. It made Lainey happy, knowing that her friends weren’t that far away, that she could talk with and see them every day.
Kirov returned home shortly after. He would still go over to his father’s house, would still come back distant and frustrated, which took him a while to shake. He still never told her or offered up any information, despite her trying to ask questions.
Then he would take her to the lake after dinner and they would walk the shores for a bit before going to the labs, to resume working on her piano.
Their project steadily came to life. They worked together on the design of the keyboard, debating over different materials and structure. When Lainey had identified all the notes and chords she could by ear from the collection of songs from the Golden Record, they filled in the gaps with synthesized notes. Lainey assigned them their place on her instrument and Kirov logged the information into his Coms.
Then they’d tweaked. With all the notes inside the Coms, Kirov recreated Bach and it sounded perfect. For the other songs, Lainey heard when a synthesized note was slightly off key and Kirov changed it until she was satisfied.
“You remember all this from memory?” he asked her, late on their fifth night, while they were still in the labs.
He wore that same expression she’d often looked athimwith. Awe. It pleased her, considering he’d been a little quiet that day, a little distant.
Lainey flushed and told him, “I’ve been playing the piano since I was four. I was classically trained. I played piano more than I did anything else, even sleep. These notes, this music…they are a part of me. So yes, I remember them.”
Lainey was sitting, perched on the table, next to Kirov, who was tinkering with the kind of metal he would create the keys from, weighing them, testing them.
Kirov hesitated but then said softly, “When you saw your Golden Record…you were happy.”
“Music makes me happy,” she said simply in reply.
He went quiet. He’d been doing that throughout the day, even throughout the week, going quiet. Sometimes, she’d catch him just…thinking, the wheels turning in his mind so hard. It was difficult to get his attention when he was like that, but Lainey was patient.
But lately, that silence had started to feel different. It felt…loaded.
“Do I?” Kirov asked suddenly, cocking his head to the side, his fingers stilling over the metal in his hands. “Do I make you happy?”
Lainey froze, blinking, the question catching her off guard. She should be used to it by now. Kirov was always direct. And with the exception of the situation with his father, he was always honest with her…which was perhaps why that situation hurt her as much as it did.
She must’ve hesitated too long because Kirov’s eyes slid away, his shoulders stiffening. The metal key in his hand dropped to the table with a loudclangand he blew out a sharp, frustrated breath.
“Where is this coming from?” she asked softly.
“The selfish part of me,” Kirov started, looking back at her, “worried that if I showed you the Golden Record, you would pull away from me.”
Lainey’s lips parted, her brow furrowing, blinking. “You were thinking ofnotshowing it to me?” she asked slowly.
“I do not know. I do not think I could do that to you,” he confessed. “It was a piece of your home planet. It contained music, something I knew you loved above all else. It had images of your home, of your people, of your world. I worried it would strengthen your resolve to leave Luxiria…to leave me.”
“Why are you telling me this?” she asked, not sure how to feel about his confession, wondering ifthiswas what he’d been thinking about this past week.
“Because I wonder if it matters at all,” he said, frustration seeping into his tone.
“Kirov—”
“I keep thinking of you, at the moment when you heard that music,” he said. “You are beautiful to me, Lani, always…but in that moment, you were…vrax, you weremore. Music gave you that happiness. It radiated from you. Here, on Luxiria, you cannot experience music like that. It is something I fear I willneverbe able to give you. That realization has haunted me since.”
“If you’re asking me if I miss my home, if I miss Earth, of course I do,” Lainey said, both softened and frustrated by his words. “Wouldn’t you?”
But she knew with certainty that if she returned to Earth, she would be changed forever. She would miss Kirov, ache for him too much to be whole again, even with music.
She kept that to herself, however, afraid to speak those words.
It was a truth, a reality for her now that she could never be that person she was on Earth again. Not with everything she’d experienced, everything she’d seen.
Not that I want to be that person again, her mind whispered.
