Page 52 of The Space Between Stars

“Brat?” Mitek asked, stepping after her. “The arithmetist—”

“There’s something—” She paused, moistening her lips. “Out there.”

His face pinched. “Bad Luck?”

“I…” She faltered. “I don’t know. It’s just—” She’d never felt more compelled by anything in all her life. What if this was the breakthrough she’d been looking for? The one that would take her from reading Luck to wielding it like a true distortionist? “It’s significant.”

And it was only a half day’s journey toward Solutium. Toward Cul’Mon. Her teeth clenched together as she meditated on her Luck—only to find it absent, overwhelmed by whatever this was.

“I have to go.” The words surprised her as they left her lips.

“Where?”

“Solutium.”

“Solutium?” Mitek’s eyes widened. “So you’ve decided to play cat and mouse with a starving fucking lion, then? Great. I’ll go prepare both of our funerals.”

“I’m not trying to stand toe to toe with Cul’Mon,” she argued.

Mitek forced a laugh that sounded more like a bark. “Then don’t go to Solutium. It’s bad enough that his fleet is at our Chaos-cursed threshold as it is.”

“Well, I’m not strictly going to Solutium, just closer to it. Trust me on this. It’s important. I’ll be back before anyone realizes I’ve left.” That, and she wanted to be alone when she finally distorted for the first time. “You help Drogus get a ship and crew together to retrieve those distortion cores. Or, better yet, run a review of the sex worker report to be sure we’re adequately staffed.” She flashed a grin. “I know you love knowing everyone’s business.”

Mitek shook his head. “No, no, no. Brat, listen to yourself. You’ve waited for this meeting for weeks.” He gestured toward the arithmetist, standing awkwardly in the center of the warehouse like he might still be longing for a chair. “You’ve been unraveling since Calver stopped responding. I knew this was going to happen. You’re distracted. You’re impatient. You’re acting like me. Those are fated warning signs. I need you to refocus because whatever’s cracked you between the ears, I have a bad, bad, bad feeling about it.”

“What, you have Luck too, now?”

“You’re telling me there’s good Luck around this idea?”

The truth was so frightening she didn’t dare speak it: there was no Luck around it at all. It was like Luck, but not. She listened again, tuning into the flow of fortune around her. The beckoning blocked all other sensation except a rough impression of Calver, so far away. She was blind to all the probabilities that usually vied for her attention.

Like every other mortal.

That hollowed her, but did nothing to quell the allure of the beckoning. And she was not any other mortal. She was the Queen of the Raiders. The Hand of the Shadewalker. The White Flower. Her Ghost army would topple the Tera’thians. She would take up her birthright on the Nelfinden throne. She was invincible: a legend. She had to believe that first or no one else would.

A legend would not ignore her destiny.

“What do you call it when you have an idea you aren’t sure about?” she asked.

Mitek scowled. “A hunch.”

“That.” She started to leave toward the skiffs docked on the far side of the isle, opposite the Rogue’s Rapture.

Mitek inserted himself between her and the door. “I’m going with you. And we’re taking a squad.”

“A squad”—she pressed a hand to Mitek’s bicep to push him aside—“is superfluous. If I just go now, we won’t need to waste the personnel.”

Cosaile cleared his throat from behind them. “Ah… I’ll just be off, then,” he said. “We can talk more another time. Tomorrow, perhaps?”

They watched as he made his uncomfortable exit. Fankalo might have stopped him if she could think sensibly. But there was nothing more important to her in the moment than the overwhelming need to answer this summons and—

She shivered. Mitek had every right to be concerned. This was not like her.

“You aren’t going anywhere near the Tera’thian amassment on a hunch, which, for all you know, could be some kind of trap,” Mitek argued.

“The Tera’thians can’t read minds.”

His lip curled. “And yet Cul’Mon finds his little prodigy every single time he catches a fucking whiff of him.”