The Stargazer's War - Chapter 20

Chapter 20: Trading Truths

“A skiff?” Charlotte’s voice echoed through the cavernous hangar. “The soulship’s a skiff?”

“Her name is Lucy,” I said pointedly, “be polite.”

Charlotte froze. “Wait. She can hear us?”

“Of course she can. She’s right there.” I nonetheless raised my voice as I added, “Hi, Lucy!”

“Cal!” Lucy’s response resounded from across the room. “What happened to you?”

“The learning process.” I stroked my chin in mock thoughtfulness. “At least that’s what people keep calling it. I couldn’t tell you what I’ve learned for the life of me.”

Charlotte snapped to attention, her right hand leaping to her brow and holding there like her life depended on it. “My apologies, venerable ancient. I meant no disrespect.”

Without turning his head, moving his mouth as little as possible, Nick asked under his breath, “Wait, should we be saluting?”

Xavier mirrored Charlotte’s gesture without hesitation.

I raised a hand to my mouth to hide my laughter.

“None taken,” Lucy said. “You must be Charlotte. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Likewise, ma’am.”

“Xavier, Nick,” I introduced them, gesturing unnecessarily to each. From our nightly calls, Lucy already knew Nick was the teen and Xavier the giant.

“It’s an honor, venerable one,” Xavier echoed Charlotte’s formality as Nick struggled through a sloppy left-handed salute.

“It’s good to finally meet,” Lucy replied. “I’ve heard so much about you all.”

“Only the worst of it,” I said, taking off across the hangar towards the open ramp. I’d never actually seen Lucy in g-dock before, departing roofie and arriving on Fyrion through a zero-g gangway. It made for the best view I’d ever seen of her as a whole.

She stretched some forty feet long from tail to tip, with a familiar long window running along each sides. It was tinted dark enough that I couldn’t see in.

Four cylindrical qi drives made up the bulk of her propulsion, each some five feet in diameter and twelve long. They sloped sleekly inward to join seamlessly with her hull, the fifteen feet of interior width scarcely enough to support more than one or two passengers for any trip longer than a few hours. Two triangular wings tripled her width, not remotely a large enough span to support atmospheric flight, but she had vertical boosters for additional lift.

Her nose came to a rounded point, a further aerodynamic edge for her original purpose ferrying passengers from a ship or station in orbit down planetside.

The pulse cannons on the underside of each wing stood out like a sore thumb, a weapon of war grafted onto a ship that’d never been built for combat. I wish I’d had a chance to see her use them against the void horde. I knew she’d killed far more void beasts than anyone else that day. Someone—either her or some local ground crew—had washed the black blood off her.

The loading ramp led us directly into the viewing deck at her front, where the meeting table had arising from the floor to hold a set of flutes and a bottle of champagne in an ice bucket.

Charlotte kept her eyes respectfully forward as she boarded. Xavier failed at such, keeping his neck straight but allowing his eyes to dart back and forth to take in every little detail of the constrained space. Nick outright gaped.

“Welcome aboard,” Lucy’s voice greeted us warmly. A strand of qi wrapped around the champagne bottle and lifted it from the ice. “I understand congratulations are in order.”

“Thank you.” Charlotte bowed her head politely.

“Ooh, ooh, let me,” I said, stepping up to the table and wrapping my hand around the champagne. With my other, I reached up over my right shoulder. “I’ve always wanted to try this.”

Nick blinked. “Cal, is that a good ide—”

I drew my sword.

“No, no, hold it like this,” Lucy interrupted, qi tilting the nose of the bottle up and away from my friends. “It’s a single motion. Let the contours of the bottle guide you. Okay, now back slowly, then forward quick. Ready?”

With an audible shing I slid my blade down the bottle’s neck and into the lip, snapping its tip clean off. Glass clattered down against the metal floor as I hurriedly righted the bottle before any more foam could spill out. I looked back at the others with a big stupid grin on my face. “That was awesome.”

Charlotte scowled. “There are less messy ways to open a bottle of champagne.”

Xavier matched my grin. “Also less fun ones.” He slapped me on the back, causing yet more champagne to slosh out of the bottle in my hand and onto the floor.

I poured him the first glass.

“So what happened to losing gracefully?” Lucy asked as I doled out beverages.

“You know grace has never been my strong suit,” I replied, handing Charlotte her glass. I pointed an empty flute towards Nick in a wordless offer, but he silently held up a hand to decline. Through it all I kept talking. “I may have goaded him on a bit, but I swear it was for a good reason. Besides, what kind of person just decides beat the shit out of someone like that?”

Before I’d even put the bottle down, my holopad popped up with a request for biometrics. I swiped yes without even thinking, readily sharing the data with Lucy. As she quietly read through it all to confirm the medics hadn’t missed anything in patching me up, I took a sip of my champagne and turned to the others. “Time for the tour!”

I gestured widely to the room around us. “This is the viewing deck slash meeting room slash passenger area. It’s great for staring off into space or strapping yourself down for dockings and departures.” I turned left and strode down the narrow hall, pointing down to the compartments beneath the window. “This is storage.” I pointed in sequence to the doors to my left, specifically leaving out the one that led belowdeck. “That’s storage. That’s storage. That’s mechanicals.” We stopped where the hall turned back around the other way.

“And here’s the cultivation room.” I led them into the ten-by-ten space with its padded floor and the column containing Lucy’s fusion core. A pillow and neatly folded blanket sat conspicuously visible by the wall, implying I slept there.

Lucy really was the best.

“So,” I turned to the others, fighting to keep the smile from my face. “What do you think?”

The others froze. Xavier raised his champagne glass to his mouth to avoid the responsibility of answering. Nick actively avoided eye contact. I could practically read the words “that’s it?” on their faces, words they’d never dare utter in description of a soulship—at least not in her presence.

Charlotte actually braved a response, tactfully dodging my question. “Is the… other hallway the same?”

“Pretty much.” I shrugged. “Unless you have a thing for life support system design, there’s really not a lot over…” I trailed off in my best impression of someone having an idea. “Or… actually, it’s not that interesting, but I guess I could show you… this way.”

I stepped past them back into the hall, veering right down the side we hadn’t yet walked. I explained yet more doors. “That’s air scrubbing. That’s storage. Storage again. Mechanicals. And the soulspace.” I kept my voice as casual as possible as the door slid open to reveal the hardwood floored hallway beyond, one that stretched far longer than Lucy herself.

I strode right in. The others didn’t follow. I made it three steps before I caught Charlotte cursing under her breath.

“By the threads…”

Okay, it wasn’t much of a curse, but I still counted that. A wide grin crept across my face.

Lucy broke first. It started as a giggle, bright and soft and joyous, then grew until waves of resonant laughter seemed to roll off the walls themselves. That was about when I joined in.

“Oh, threads,” I managed through fits of laughter, “the looks on you fucking faces.”

“Language!”

“Sorry,” I said, the smile on my face somewhat belying my apology. I managed to collect myself, even as Lucy kept laughing. A moment passed. She didn’t stop. I raised an eyebrow. “It wasn’t that funny.”

“Sorry, sorry,” Lucy fought to gather herself. “It’s been some time since I’ve played a joke on someone.”

“The pillow was a nice touch.”

“I thought so.”

Through it all, Nick, Charlotte, and Xavier gaped at us—or rather, me, since they hadn’t quite figured out how to look at Lucy.

Charlotte narrowed her gaze. “Did you two plan this?”

“Oh, for weeks,” I said. “Do you have any idea how hard it was to not tell you guys all about this place?”

Xavier stepped inside. “I can’t believe it. I’m in a real pocket dimension. On a ship!”

Nick’s eyes widened. “How big is this place?”

“Big enough.” I smirked. “C’mon, time for the real tour.”

“Don’t dawdle,” Lucy warned us. “Dinner will be ready soon.”

“Got it,” I said with a snap of my fingers. “Okay, first up, we have…” I trailed off for dramatic tension as I led them through the first door on the left. “The sparring room!”

Xavier practically ran past me, weaving through the rows of exercise equipment to get a better look at the sparring ring that dominated the space. He fiddled with the control panel on its side. “Qi fielding, hit recognition… AI holo training?!”

“That’s how I learned everything I knew before I made it to Fyrion,” I explained. “The data set’s… more than a little limited, but that’s something we can fix.”

“If you’d be kind enough to demonstrate your fighting style, it would be a huge help,” Lucy said.

“Of course!” Xavier reached for one of the wooden axes on the rack beside the ring.

“Not now, big guy,” I waved him off. “Dinner soon, remember?”

“I’ll do you one better,” Charlotte said, typing away on her holopad. “I have the full manual for the sect’s style, and my own analysis of the Velereau style.” With a swipe, she sent the data over.

I faltered. “Charlotte, that’s incredible. Thank you.”

“You’re the golden goose, Cal,” she said. “Every edge.”

I sighed at the pragmatism of her gift.

Nick, meanwhile, had completely ignored our talk of data sets and AI combat training to stare slack jawed through the wall-spanning window opposite the entry. “Is… is that a swimming pool?”

“Moving on,” I said with a mind toward’s Lucy’s instruction not to dawdle, “next up we have the guest bedrooms.”

I kept us moving at a reasonable clip as I guided them through the five bedrooms, past the various life support systems, and on the next particularly impressive space.

Nick came alive the moment he laid eyes on the garden.

I stepped out of his way, the eagerness on his face absolutely adorable. “Go on,” I prompted him.

“This is amazing,” he said, gazing out at the barren dirt. His eyes darted back and forth across the space’s various features. “Are those precision-wavelength grow lights? We’ve been trying to get our hands on those for years.” He pulled up his holopad, connecting it to the room controls with a few taps. “Distributed drip watering? Do you have any idea how expensive that is to install? And qi re-circling? Threads, the things you could grow here.”

He knelt, reaching his hand into the dirt. He grabbed some, rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger, raised it to his nose, then pressed it against his tongue.

I wrinkled my nose as Nick tasted the dirt.

He didn’t seem to mind, too wrapped up in his own world. He looked up to the ceiling. “Where did this soil come from?”

“Terc-9,” Lucy answered.

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“I’d be surprised if you had. It’s a few thousand lightyears away.”

Nick blinked. “Oh. Right.”

“Alright, that’s enough gawking,” I said. “We ought to help finish up dinner. Can’t let Lucy do all the work for us.”

“Too late,” Lucy said. “The table’s already set.”

“Damnit,” I sighed, physically grabbing Nick by his uninjured arm and pulling him away from he garden. “I swear, I’ll help next time.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Lucy boasted. “And believe me, I do.”

I nonetheless led the others to the combined kitchen, dining room, and sitting room, sparking yet another round of wide-eyed shock at the luxury of the decor. The fireplace in particular earned its fair share of impressed looks, launching Lucy into a well-rehearsed explanation of the carbon-cellulose recycling system.

While she was distracted, I opened the wine.

I distributed glasses of the thirty-year Bordeaux—made from actual grapes!—to Charlotte and Xavier before again offering one to Nick, qualmless about pouring alcohol to a sixteen-year-old who could simply cycle his blood and kidney meridians for a few moments to clear up its effects.

He declined anyway. “No, thank you. It interferes with my meds.”

I blinked. “Did you go to a second clinic? You know the temp one at the gym doesn’t give out meds that conflict with alcohol.”

“Not those, it’s a… I have a neurochemical deficiency. It’s nothing, really. I’m just on a thienobenzodiazepine to deal with it.”

“You’re on a what now?”

Charlotte’s eyes sharpened with realization. “An antidepressant,” she muttered. “Nick, you could’ve told us.”

“Why? So you could’ve written it down in your little notepad?”

I gulped, taken aback by the sudden sharpness in Nick’s voice. “It’s okay. He’s telling us now.”

On his side of the table, Xavier murmured, “That explains the appetite.”

I glared at him.

“What?” he asked. “Antidepressants make you hungry.”

I took a big sip of my wine.

Lucy, absolute angel that she is, chose that moment to distract us by simultaneously delivering four bowl of soup to the table, a creamy green affair that I couldn’t begin to guess the contents of. It was goddamn delicious, though.

Joviality returned quickly to the conversation under the mood lifting effects of good food and better wine as we recounted to Lucy the events of our various duels and she in turn regaled the others with a detailed account of her fight with the void horde.

By the time we’d finished our entrees of steak, potatoes, and some kind of roasted root vegetable I’d never seen or heard of before—it tasted like cinnamon, brown sugar, and chili—I was almost entirely too full for the final course.

Almost.

Xavier reached across the table to top up our wine glasses from the second bottle of the night as Lucy served one of the few universal constants between the culinary cultures of the different star systems: chocolate cake.

“I swear by the very threads that bind the universe,” I began as I finally put down my fork, “no matter what peaks I reach, what corners of existence I explore, what bonds of mortality I may one-day slip, I will never get tried of Lucy’s cooking.”

“I’ve been at it for a very long time,” Lucy deflected my praise, “and I have the ingredient collection to match.”

“Shhh.” I held a finger to my mouth. “Take the compliment.”

“Thank you, Cal.”

“Thank you,” Charlotte countered. “That was amazing.”

“Thank you, Lucy!” Xavier echoed.

“Oh, don’t thank me. What kind of hostess would I be if I didn’t feed you?”

“May I have some more hot water, please?” Nick asked, gesturing at the empty teacup from which he’d been drinking some kind tea he’d made himself. The dried root he’d put in it had left him looking a bit out of it, leaving me to question exactly why he’d opted for herbal painkillers instead of chemical ones.

I leapt to my feet, but Lucy was already on it. Instead, I moved for the ingredient terminal and requested a bottle of brandy from storage. Grasping my prize in one hand and three glasses in the other, I signaled the others to abandon the dining table and join me in the plush sitting area around the fire. Xavier and Charlotte took the couch, sitting startlingly close to each other, while Nick and I each got a chair.

We sat back, five of us in total, three sipping brandy and one a cup of potentially psychoactive herbal tea, and let out a collective sigh of contentment. For a moment, the conversation lulled as we quietly enjoyed our drinks, the soft leather upholstery, and the crackle of fire. Just as the quiet began to linger a little too long, I broke it.

“On nights like this, Brady and I used to play a game with the other crew members, kind of a way of getting to know someone beyond the surface-level, smalltalk stuff. It works best intoxicated and late in the evening. The rules are simple. On your turn, you pick someone and ask them a question they have to answer completely truthfully. Then it’s their turn, and they ask a question.”

Xavier lowered his glass. “I don’t get it.”

Charlotte giggled, a gesture which struck me as particularly disturbing given how unfunny that’d been. “That’s ‘cause some of us don’t share our hopes and dreams at the drop of a hat.”

“Okay, so other than Xavier who always tells the whole truth anyway, does everyone understand?”

I got a chorus of nods all around.

“Perfect.” I rubbed my palms together. “I’ll start. Charlotte, why are you on Fyrion?”

Charlotte blinked and rubbed at the bridge of her nose, displacing her glasses in the process. “Right for the throat, huh?” She sighed. “My father has a deep-seated disdain for the cultivators born on the Right Eye, says they’re all softies who’ve had everything handed to them. Up until about two years ago, that included me.”

I blinked. “He called you that?”

“No, but he implied it. He started out on Grune, not quite as qi-starved as Fyrion, but nothing like the Right Eye. To this day he believes that’s why he was the one to save the sect all those cycles back—none of the pampered idiots that got the most resources had any real fight in them. He’s not entirely wrong.”

“So he wants you to earn your place like he did? Why are you all the way out here instead of Grune, then?”

“I lived in orbit of the Right Eye for nineteen years,” Charlotte said. “I formed my core there. If I wanted any hope of proving anything to my father, Grune wasn’t going to cut it.”

Nick raised an eyebrow. “What happened to ‘every edge?’ Leaving the Right Eye for a place like this is a hell of a disadvantage.”

“Like I said, my father wasn’t entirely wrong. Overcoming adversity is essential to growing as a cultivator. If I spent my entire life on the Right Eye, knocking back pills and studying under private tutors, I wouldn’t be chasing anything. Out here, it’s me versus the world. I have to fight for every scrap of advantage I can get, watch my back because I don’t have powerful family members around to make my problems go away. It may take me longer to gather the qi I need for each bit of progression, but I’m a better cultivator for it.”

Charlotte took a sip of her brandy.

I stared at her for a moment, words eluding me. I wasn’t sure what answer I’d expected—anything from being disowned to exiled as some punishment—but I hadn’t fathomed she’d come here by choice. It just seemed so… not Charlotte.

I guess sometimes, people surprise you.

“Okay.” Charlotte tried to straighten her glasses but only ended pushing them crooked in the other direction. She leaned in very close to Xavier, who seemed to neither mind nor notice her proximity. “Xavier,” she started, slurring the consonants and elongating the vowels of his name, “how is it that from the depths of housing D, all the way on Fyrion, with no real backers, no special techniques, no advantages of any kind, you honestly believe you're going to champion the sect one day?”

Xavier shrugged. “I just know. I’ve always known. I used to watch all the holos of old tournaments with my dad when I was little, and from the moment I saw them I knew I was going to be up there one day. I know I’ve a long way to go, and I’m gonna have to work harder than anyone else to make it happen, but it’s going to happen.”

“He’s ambitious,” Nick mumbled, “I’ll give him that.”

“All the great legends started somewhere. Mine starts here.”

“That’s sweet,” Lucy said. “It can be good to have your head in the clouds as long as you don’t lose track of the ground on which you stand.”

“Lucy!” Xavier exclaimed. “I almost forgot you were here. Your turn. How did you and Cal meet?”

We both answered at the same time.

“She saved my life.”

“I left him to die.”

Xavier blinked. “What?”

Lucy sighed. “In order to save my own life, I abandoned Cal on RF-31 with a victim of void-induced psychosis. By all rights he should’ve died. He did die for about four and a half minutes.”

“By some definitions I’m still dead,” I added.

“Your jokes sure are,” Nick mumbled.

“I came back to find him miraculously still alive, albeit punched full of shrapnel and without a qi signature. I nursed him back to health, guided him through the process of cleansing his punctured meridian, and watched in awe as he went on to open two more right there on the operating table.”

I nodded along. “Made a damn mess of that bed.”

Lucy continued, “I swore I’d repay him for all the suffering he’d endured, both at my abandonment and at the hands of the cultivator I’d brought into his home.”

“And then we came here,” I said. “Shortly after I almost killed myself opening my lung meridian without any real idea what I was doing. You all know the rest.”

Charlotte squinted. “But why were you at RF-31?”

“Oh no,” Lucy said. “You already had your turn. It’s mine now. Nick, forgive me if this is too personal, but I’m curious why you seem to show so little interest in growing as a cultivator. You clearly have a lot of talent to form a core so young.”

“I always hated class,” Nick answered without a thought. “Meditation is boring, and combat just felt so pointless. The higher-tier cultivators were always gonna do most of the fighting anyway. I pushed myself to progress because I thought the sooner I formed my core, the sooner I could stop going to those stupid classes. I just wanted to work in the gardens, you know? Not everyone needs super ambitious. Some people can just… be happy.”

Nick didn’t seem particularly happy to me, but I knew exactly whose fault that was. I really felt for the kid, especially since practicing herbalism on Fyrion would’ve meant going to work for his father. I hoped, once he came of age, he could join us on Lucy.

The conversation lulled for a moment as everyone sipped their drink and mulled over the discussion so far. Nick in particular seemed to zone out, his eyes glazing over as he stared into the fire.

“Nick,” I gently prodded him, “it’s your turn.”

“Cal,” he said, his voice trailing off. “Cal,” he said again. “Caliban. That’s a weird name. Why is your name Caliban?”

“It wasn’t always,” I explained. “My dad considered himself a history buff, used to watch documentaries and read articles about it in his spare time. After my parents separated, whenever Brady or I were acting out, he’d shout at us, call us Grendel and Caliban, two ancient monsters from the Mausoleum era. He thought he was being clever. See, Grendel’s mother was famously a monster, and Caliban’s was a witch. It was his way of insulting our mom.”

Xavier blinked. “That’s awful.”

I shrugged. “I never minded it. Kept the name, didn’t I? Brady didn’t, for obvious reasons. I mean, seriously, Grendel’s a shit name.”

“Language,” Lucy softly chided.

“Yeah, sorry.” I raised my glass to my mouth. “My father was a lot of things. Pretentious, spiteful, self-important, but what he wasn’t, was wrong.” I downed the last of my brandy. “My mother was a monstrous witch.”

Nick, of all people, broke the tense silence, his voice little more than a whisper over the crackling fire. “It’s okay. My dad’s an asshole too.”

Lucy didn’t comment on his language.

A moment passed. I gazed across the coffee table at Nick, struggling to read the pensive expression on his face.

He pushed himself to his feet, a bit wobbly but stable enough, and declared for all to here, “I gotta piss.”

My eyes lingered on the open doorway after he disappeared down the hall, my intoxicated mind absently musing over the evening’s revelations.

Xavier’s voice pulled me from my thoughts. “Um… Cal? A little help?”

I turned to find Charlotte fast asleep and snoring, her face smushed against Xavier’s chest in a way that pushed her glasses up at a comically askew angle. A strand of Lucy’s qi freed the unnecessary lenses from her face with immaculate tenderness as Xavier tried to maneuver himself out from under her.

I stopped him. “No, no, she’s your problem now. Either wake her up or get her back to D-block.”

Xavier looked up at me, then down at her, then up at me again, before shrugging with one should so as to avoid rousing the slumbering Charlotte. In a single, gentle motion, he pulled her up and over his shoulder, putting her into a fireman’s carry. He promptly moved for the exit, turn his back—and thus Charlotte’s face—towards me.

I stood up. “Isn’t there a more comfortable way to…”

I trailed off as Charlotte—clearly awake—silently raised a finger her lips to shut me up.

Xavier whirled around to face me. “What was that?”

“Oh-um… nothing,” I managed, still working out what exactly I’d just seen.

“Okay,” Xavier chimed, turning back to the door. “This way, right?”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

Xavier walked off. I followed all the way to the upper deck, only stopping at ramp down into the hangar.

“Thank you both,” Xavier whispered. “I had a lot of fun tonight. It was nice to meet you, Lucy!”

“It was nice to meet you too, Xavier,” Lucy replied. “You get home safe, alright?”

“Goodnight, Xave,” I bid him.

He echoed my sentiment and turned to go. Charlotte winked at me as he carried her off.

“Be careful with that one,” Lucy muttered.

“I don’t know,” I said as I watched Xavier ever-so-carefully bring her into a transport pod. “I don’t think I’m the one who needs that warning right now.”

“I think they’re sweet.”

I shook my head. “It’s not going to end well. He’s too earnest for her. Anything happens between the two of them tonight, she’ll have him wrapped around her little finger by the next dueling day.”

“Then he’ll learn an important lesson,” Lucy said plainly, “the kind that has to be learned the hard way.”

“Yeah. I suppose you’re right.” I paused as a thought struck. “Where did Nick end up?”

“Good question. Let me just…” Lucy’s presence vanished for a moment as she retreated into her soulspace, only to return a moment later. “Cal, there’s something you should see.”

I found him in the garden.

He lay in the dirt, flat on his back, his left arm sprawled out to the side, his right crossed over his chest, still in its sling. He stared up at the grow lights with unfocused eyes.

“Hey, Nick,” I greeted him, “you doing okay?”

“I’m… good,” he said in that slow and deliberate way high people talk.

“Why are you in the garden?”

“I like it here.”

“Okay,” I said, withholding judgment. “I think it might be time to get to bed, huh? It’s been a long day, and the workers are going to want this hangar back.”

Without budging, without blinking, with but a hint of moisture in his eye and a quiet solemnity to his voice, Nick spoke a set of words that I knew, more than any story told or question answered that night, to be the truth.

“Do I have to go back?”

My heart broke a little in that moment, looking down on the most promising cadet Fyrion had ever seen, happier here, lying in the dirt, than among the cultivators who so lauded his potential. I ached at the words I had to speak, for all I wished to take him away from it all, to save him from the pressures of his family and the loneliness of his success, I knew I couldn’t.

Uncouth mortal I may’ve been, I hadn’t yet stooped to stealing minors away from their parents. At least in student housing he wouldn’t be around his father, for better or for worse.

I knelt at his side. “I’m sorry, buddy, but yeah, you do. I’ll come with you, okay? Can you walk?”

“Yeah,” he said, suddenly curt. “I’m fine.” He pushed himself to his feet and dusted himself off, leaving most of the soil behind.

I walked with him back across the hardwood floors and out to the upper deck, hovering a hand behind his back just in case he stumbled. Uneven as he steps were, he kept upright without difficulty.

“Goodnight, Lucy,” I bid as we reached the exit ramp. “Thanks for coming down to see us. And for dinner.”

“Of course,” she replied. “Any time. It was good to talk to you in person again, and I’m glad I got to meet your friends.”

“Yeah.” I smiled. “They’re a lot, but they’re mine.”

“You’re a lot,” Nick retorted.

I patted him on the back. “That I am, Nick. That I am.”

“Goodnight, Lucy,” Nick echoed.

“Goodnight, boys. Get home safe.”

For the second time in as many months, I disembarked Lucy for the dreary reality of sect life. This time, rather than a derisive elder and a head full of optimism, I stepped into the transport pod with a broken nose, a black eye, and a depressed teenager high on herbal tea.

I took some comfort in the knowledge that even after what felt like the longest day of my life, for all the duels and the discoveries, tomorrow the routine, the training, the progress, would all start up again. Even injured, drunk, and worried both about the teen at my side and whatever the fuck Xavier and Charlotte were up to, I wore a smile on my face for the entire ride back to housing D, because unlike Nick, I didn’t have to go back.

I wanted to.