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Harper had never known old Farseek.

That made her dangerous to nostalgia.

Useful too.

She had no reason to rebuild our mistakes simply because we missed them.

I looked at Meya’s carving.

If she was alive, I wanted her back.

Every part of me wanted to drag her out of whatever place held her and bring her home.

But which home?

The one that burned?

The dreadnought?

A Haloran district?

Some future settlement none of us had built yet?

I had spent weeks learning that wanting Harper did not decide Harper.

I would have to learn the same lesson with my own people.

The thought irritated me.

Growth was irritating that way.

I picked up my mother’s broken ceramic.

One day, perhaps, there would be a new kitchen.

Not hers.

That hurt.

It was also the point.

We were not preserving a corpse.

We were building something that had survived it.

The shelf could remember.

The registry could search.

The future would have to become something else.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Harper

I did not know how to walk back into a room full of women who had been stolen from their lives when I had spent the night in the arms of the man who had rescued us.

Going back was harder than I expected.