Page 60

He looked away first. Back to the route ahead. Back to being unbothered by everything he’d done to my day, my life, my entire understanding of where I stood on this planet.

I looked away too, out the viewing panel at nothing much at all. My throat hurt suddenly, and I swallowed against it before speaking again.

“Sera’n did that yesterday,” I said quietly.

His voice came after a moment. “What?”

“He knew something.” My fingers twisted in the strap across my chest without my asking them to. “Decided I shouldn’t. Told himself it was protecting me.”

I swallowed again and made myself stop fidgeting because Veyr would notice and Veyr would file it away somewhere and Veyr already knew more about me than anyone on Zuna except Sera’n did.

“Now he’s gone,” I said.

Veyr said nothing.

For once, I didn’t want him to.

Outside the viewing panel, Bren disappeared behind us.

Ahead was nothing but open land and a destination I didn’t know.

I had spent months building a life on Zuna by convincing myself that usefulness could buy me enough control to call it freedom. One altered record had proven how fragile that really was.

Now I was sitting beside a male who had found me when I was trying to disappear, knew more about the people hunting me than he admitted, and had finally offered me exactly one piece of himself.

A name.

Veyr.

It wasn’t trust.

But it was something.

For now, something would have to do.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Talia

The safe location looked like a place someone had built for people who expected to be attacked.

That was my first thought. My second was that Veyr had lied when he said it wasn’t a home.

Not because it looked lived in, but because it looked like somewhere a person had been surviving for a very long time.

The transport descended between two jagged ridges of dark stone, then banked sharply enough that I grabbed the restraint across my chest.

“Was that necessary?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“You say that a lot.”

Veyr kept his attention on the controls. “It is often true.”

The ground rose toward us.

For one terrible second, I thought he was about to fly directly into the side of the mountain.