For Darkness Shows the Stars

is that any better?”
    Elliot swallowed thickly as tears of shame burned her eyes. He was right, there, too. Ro would make an excellent mother. She was kind and playful and full of joy. She could teach her children—Reduced or maybe even Post—to laugh and dance and grow flowers.
    “I suppose,” she said ruefully, still looking away, “that’s all I’m good for. A Luddite imposing limits on the people under my care.”
    “That’s not true,” he replied. “And it’s not what I think, either.”
    She turned and gazed into his superhuman eyes.
    “I want you to know . . . ,” he said, his words halting, careful. “I probably should have told you this some time ago, but . . . I understand now. I understand why you stayed.”
    Her breath caught in her throat.
    “For a long time, I tried to tell myself otherwise. That when you said . . .” He hesitated again. “When you said you were a Luddite and I was not, it was that you—” He bit his lip.
    Her letter. The letter she’d sent because she hadn’t the courage to tell him to his face that she wouldn’t be going with him. She hadn’t the strength to try, because she was too fearful that she’d never be able to see it through.
    “I tried to believe you thought you were better than me.”
    She opened her mouth to speak, but he held up his hand.
    “It was easier, I guess.”
    Easier. Like writing him a letter instead of risking going near him when she knew she’d never let him walk away alone. How much had they both suffered doing things they thought were easier?
    “But I do understand. I see you doing it again now, doing whatever you can to protect the people on your lands. And . . . I’m proud of you, Elliot.”
    She choked back a sob, though she wasn’t sure she could hide it from his enhanced ears. She didn’t want his pride. She wanted something much greater and far more elemental. Something foolish to even think of right now, when her friends were suffering on the North estate and she had no idea how to get them back. When Kai was building a ship so he could leave these islands for good. When Olivia Grove lay injured at the estate next door, waiting for a visit from the captain she loved.
    She’d been wrong. Maybe talking four years ago would have made Kai understand—but it wouldn’t have made it easier .
    There was the sound of wheels crunching on the gravel outside, and Elliot turned her head to see Horatio and Olivia pulling up in a new sun-cart. It gleamed red and gold against the bare winter browns, and Elliot drew away from Kai in surprise. So he’d made Olivia a sun-cart in her favorite colors.
    Perhaps he hadn’t been spending all his time in the shipyard.
    She turned her back on Kai and brushed tears from her eyes as Horatio helped his sister down from the cart and up the front steps of the porch.
    “Here for your music lesson?” Elliot called to them as brightly as she could manage. Olivia came every day like clockwork to sing with Donovan. Felicia called it music therapy, and it was true that the girl’s diction was much clearer when she sang. Horatio believed the benefits were more emotional than physical. “There’s something magical about Donovan’s playing,” he’d told Elliot a few days earlier, and Elliot hadn’t had the heart to tell him that he was very nearly right.
    “Yes,” said Olivia. She lowered her chin and sneaked a glance at Kai that was probably meant to be coy, but came across as shy and even reluctant. “Will you come to listen, Mal’kai?”
    “No,” he said curtly. “I have work on the ship. Perhaps some other time.”
    The girl nodded and Horatio scowled his disappointment in Kai’s direction. Kai shook Horatio’s hand, kissed Olivia’s, sent one last, perplexing look in Elliot’s direction and departed.
    “I don’t know what we’ll do when they leave, Elliot,” said Horatio. “Olivia will be bereft. Her daily visits are the only thing that keeps her happy.”
    Elliot knew just how she felt.
    “Where’s Donovan?” Olivia asked. “It’s time for the music.”

Forty-one
     
    TATIANA WAS LIGHTING THE sconces in the star cavern when Elliot arrived, more than a week later. She’d thought it prudent to wait until her father had grown tired of spending his days patrolling the border between their estates. In the past week, Benedict had left for the Channel, and Felicia had received word from the baroness that things were proceeding according to plan. Elliot had