A twitch of a smirk curled at the edges of his mouth. “Is that an invitation up?”
No.It was a risk bringing him up to the main deck. There were plenty more cameras, but I could disable all of them for him to get here. He could help me not fall asleep, if nothing else. “Fine,” I caved, “I’ll disable the cameras for a minute. But tell Noola to go back to the galley.”
He pouted. “And leave heralone? Fine. It’s her bedtime, anyway. I’ll be up soon.”
“Be careful,” I reminded him, hoping I wasn’t about to regret this.
I did, in fact, regret it.
Sian whistled as he stepped onto the flight deck. “Talk about a relic.”
I glared at him as I finished my routine hourly checks to make sure the ship was still normal and nothing was out of sorts. Just the normal sort of wrong—a malfunctioning heater, a leak in the air vents, an overheating water pump. “It’s an antique.”
“I’m just surprised,” he added, sensing my annoyance. The door closed behind him, and he made himself right at home in the copilot’s chair, stretching out his long legs and crossing them. In the light of the control panel, his hair took on a multicolored hue, reflecting dull shades of green and blue and yellow. He looked out at the blue-green planet of Naboo, reflected in his black eyes. “I’d like to apologize. For yesterday.”
I studied him quietly.
He shifted in the chair. “I assumed the worst, and made an ass out of myself. I’m…good at that. Assuming. My mentor used to say that I was always too quick to judge, trying to fit something into the narrative I already had in my head. I thought I’d kicked that habit a long time ago, but…I did the same with you. I’m sorry,” he repeated, and finally turned his strange black eyes to me.
This close, his gaze was mesmerizing. Not quite black at all, but a depthless darkness that seemed to go on and on for eternity. Looking into his eyes reminded me of looking into the galaxy. Silvery-white eyelashes framed them, matching his thick eyebrows, and I distantlywondered if he grew a beard, would it be the same color, too? I resisted the urge to brush back the hair that had fallen into his eyes, just to see them better. He was so earnest right now, it made me want to inspect my earnest feelings, too.
Apologies were hard to come by, and I guessed it took a lot for him to come all the way up here just to say he was wrong. He could’ve ignored it, but…he didn’t.
That wasn’t nothing.
He tilted his head, waiting.
I quickly looked away, busying myself with checking the coordinates on the navicomputer again. “Apology accepted.” I sat back in my chair, pulling my knees to my chest. “But I’m sorry you had to come all the way up here just to say that.”
“I felt it was important to do it face to face. Besides,” he added, looking around the cockpit again, “I always wondered what the view was like up here.”
“It’s one of my favorites in the whole galaxy,” I admitted.
“I can see why. If I had the choice to do this my whole life, I probably would, too.”
My lips pursed tightly together. What did that say if Ididn’twant this? But instead I asked, “What else have you done? I mean, besides being a professional stowaway?”
He arched an eyebrow.
“If you don’t mind me asking?”
“Well, let’s see…” He counted on his fingers. “I’ve been a smuggler, fathier racer, janitor, Jedi Padawan—”
I rolled my eyes. “Oh-kay, you can leave now.”
“Sorry, sorry,” he quickly backtracked. “I knew what you meant. I’m just…shockingly bad at talking about myself.”
It was my turn to arch a cryptic eyebrow.
“I was training to be an archeologist,” he said.
That surprised me more than anything else. I thought he’d say something along the lines of pilot or courier or info broker. But anarcheologist? “What part of history?”
“My mentor specialized in lost texts and civilizations. She went to university for High Republic–era politics and discoveries, and was trying to convince me to go, as well, but…I don’t have the kind of education to get in somewhere like that. She taught me everything she knew, though, so I basically got an education anyway.”
“Where did you grow up?”
“A little bit of everywhere.”
