Page 94 of The Space Between Stars

The mute examined him carefully. He seemed to be waiting for Niklaus to speak. Niklaus couldn’t find any words.

And for the first time in many years, he just might have been. “Aye,” Niklaus managed beyond the bile still building in his throat.

“It feels…” The air was crisp, still cool from the westward sinking night as it lifted his matted hair from his brow. The sky was cloudless as a Pazirian tumbler. Unobstructed as the brilliant future ahead of him. “About the way vomit tastes.”

TWENTY-TWO

FANKALO

Year: 748 Post Cataclysm: Present Day

Location: Rollard Isles

The first rays of sunlight through the porthole were the color of blood.

A storm was coming.

Fankalo had slept poorly through the growing choppiness beneath the docked Rogue’s Rapture. The anesthetic had worn off. Though the bones in her leg had been reset and braced, every movement provoked pain. She had never been injured before. A scraped knee or a splinter when she wasn’t paying attention, maybe. Her Luck had always steered her from any real danger.

Luck was no match for what they were up against.

In the three days since the assault in Solutium, she had insisted on sleeping in her own hammock rather than the medical ward cot on the island. The last thing she needed was to be surrounded by those who were compromised—or treated her like she was. They were to host a meeting with Thyatira’s emissary this morning. To appear anything other than invincible would be unacceptable.

She glanced at the floor in front of the door, where Mitek had slept again. He had slipped out only minutes ago, thinking her asleep. Despite her protests, he hadn’t left her side until now. It reminded her of Calver, who’d refused a hammock or bunk in favor of that same spot for years.

Her pain was a welcome distraction from those memories. Maybe this time Calver really had abandoned her. She only deserved it. But she’d been wrong about him before. Maybe she would be again.

Fankalo’s magic pooled around her, then, commanding her attention to the door. Her eyes narrowed on it. It felt like it was staring back.

When magic acted like this without prompt—like it was a conscious thing, tugging at her with something to say—it meant she was missing something critical.

That something had everything to do with Calver.

She closed her eyes and meditated on the sensation. Her blood brother was all she could see—bright as a shooting star. He had been for a month now, ever since she’d sent him to Thacklore. She’d be dead before believing that was a coincidence.

The Fate lines grew dark as a moonless night. Destruction. Death. Loss. She sank deeper beneath those impressions without fixating on them. If she did, they would slip away from her without giving her more to pull from. Submerging into the eddies of her Luck had to be done like swimming to the ocean floor: slowly. At the surface everything was vague, but the deeper she descended, the more specific the impressions became.

Deeper and deeper she went, until the possibilities stretched for fathoms around her. Rooted below an endless sea of futures, she posed her Luck a question.

What concerning Calver have I missed?

In her mind’s eye, she received the impression of a writing pad.

Her eyes snapped open. The Fate lines slid away from her like beads of water. That writing pad was on her private bookshelf, long untouched, but too valuable to be discarded. It sat just feet away from her, stuffed between scrolls and tomes.

The medic had told her to wait two weeks before any unaided movement. She had still asked for a crutch, set against the wall beside her. Fankalo bit her cheek and shimmied against the hammock to set her good foot on the planks. The opposite spiked with a splitting pain. She bit down harder. Her fingers gripped the crutch, and she hoisted herself to stand.

Thunk. Step. Thunk. Step.

Propelled by the nag of her magic, she was nearly hyperventilating by the time she retrieved the writing pad from the shelf.

She pressed her back to the wall and sank to the floor. Her fingers fumbled as she flipped back its pages, rereading Calver’s crudely scrawled account from the beginning.

Roskaad Thyatira had mutilated and abducted him.