Page 141 of The Space Between Stars

He shook his head.

“You seem fairly calm yourself.”

“You still think you can stop it, don’t you?”

He nodded, chest tight, fists balling.

Her eyes never left his. “I know that’s how you’re used to doing things, but the way my second sight sees it, we both have a better shot at making it to Seraphinden alive if we stick together.”

Calver’s blood cooled. How did she do this? How did she kindle sparks of hope where there wasn’t any air?

He sat slowly on the cot beside her. She didn’t shift to make space for him. Rather, she pressed in closer. Then again. There was fabric between them. It was enough to hold back his curse. Her warmth spread into him. Calver pulled his mind from what was, by all accounts, an impossible outcome.

He stank to Chira’na and back, he was certain. She had to be desperately cold to do such a thing.

Sure enough, there were bumps against her skin. Desperate.

Sticking together wouldn’t work. If he brought her with him, he would lose any amount of reticence he might have had. This was more than likely to be the last time he saw her, given what lay ahead. He punched the moment into his psyche, mentally tracing the lines of her body and the way they gave against him so it might linger in his memory. He’d faced too many farewells before he was properly ready for them, and he didn’t want to forget this. Truth be told, he didn’t want it to ever end.

But the well of time had run dry. He needed to leave tonight—now—to get away from the encampment before anyone noticed him gone. To chart a course that would allow him to reach Steila before the rest of the encampment.

Raimee squirmed. “No. The farther I go, the more difficult it is for me. And the way I travel… It doesn’t work by focusing on a place. More like a feeling. I don’t know anything about Steila. I don’t know the way.”

Raimee hesitated. “Admittedly, I don’t see you or anything like that. I just get this sort of directional hunch. You’re like a light.”

“No.”

There were no happy coincidences.

Raimee was very still. “What does that mean?”

Cul’Mon must know Calver was moving in on Steila. Prone to achieving two goals with one tactic, he may have even planned this entire ordeal with the plates as a lure for Calver first, and an ambush of the Red Wing second. Now that Calver better understood his worth, he knew why. He looked at Raimee. They shared the same risk.

“Right.” Raimee bit at her thumb, blinking rapidly. “Listen, I’ve wanted to ask you about that.”

Calver didn’t want to even think about the Survivor, for worry of what might happen as a result.

“Yes.”

“I lost you. For the first time in a while.”

The inklings of an idea began to set into his mind, mortared by the faith that, for the first time in a long time, he might not fail—because for the first time in a long time, he was not alone.

He considered the way she’d popped up from nowhere months ago, when the journey through the desert had only just begun.