For Darkness Shows the Stars

made by Nero. Steeling herself, she ascended the stairs.
    The passage above was similarly black, but as she shone the lantern down the hall, she saw him. He stood before the door to his old room, his back toward her, the old yellow barn cat Nero twining in figure eights round his feet.
    “Hello,” she said again.
    “The door is locked,” was his only reply. He didn’t turn around. Nero was rubbing his whiskers against Kai’s trouser leg. That cat hated every maid in the dairy. It was a wonder he’d lived as long as he had, that he hadn’t drowned years ago in a pail of milk. But he’d been Kai’s, and so he’d stayed.
    Everything of his had stayed—his old pallet and blankets—though they hadn’t smelled like him for years—a sweater she supposed was too holey for him to take, and, of course, her letters to him. He’d left them all behind, though she didn’t know if it was because he’d been angry or because he had intended to leave them.
    Thinking he’d have the real thing with him instead.
    Elliot drew closer, then hesitated. Wouldn’t he even face her? “Yes. I have . . . equipment in there.”
    “Unlock it,” said the back of Kai’s head.
    “No.”
    Now he turned, but just as before in the drawing room, he wouldn’t meet her eyes. “This is my old room.” As if she didn’t know. “I want to see it.”
    He wanted to see the room even more than he wanted to see her?
    “I don’t have the key with me.” Elliot was glad now that he wouldn’t look her in the face, or she was sure he’d see her lie. “It’s just . . . storage.”
    That, at least, was the truth. It was where she stored things she didn’t want anyone else to know about.
    He cast one more glance at the padlock, then shoved away from the door. “Fine.”
    “Kai,” she said, and he stopped. Enough of this silly, stilted conversation. They were alone now. Again, she stretched out her hand. “I can’t believe it’s you.”
    The corners of his mouth turned up, but no emotion supported the smile. Elliot realized her hand still hung there in space and snatched it back. She gripped the handle of the lantern until her fingernails bit into her palm.
    “I look so different?” he asked.
    Yes. “That’s not what I mean. I didn’t know you were Captain Wentforth. That all the things I’ve read, all the things he’s done—I thought he was older.”
    “I guess my leaving didn’t turn out to be the disaster you’d thought.” Still he stared past her, at the wall.
    “No, Kai—”
    “Don’t call me that. That isn’t my name any longer.”
    Elliot nodded and shifted a bit to the left, trying to see his face, which only made him avert his gaze even more. “I like your new name,” she said softly. “Your father would have been so proud of you.” When he failed to respond, she forged ahead. “What should I call you now? Wentforth, as the others do? Malakai?” She took a step toward him.
    He faced her full on now, and she stopped dead. In the flickering lamplight, his black eyes seemed lit with stars, as cold and inhuman as the expression on his face. “I don’t foresee that you’ll have much reason to call me anything at all.”
    He brushed past her, his touch nothing more than a rasp of fabric against fabric, and disappeared down the stairs. Elliot heard the barn door open and close. He was gone. Just like that. She leaned hard against the wall, her heart pounding, her lungs screaming to cry out his forbidden name.
    Kai . It bubbled to her lips, and she closed her mouth around it, felt it echo against her jaw and teeth and tongue. It wasn’t his name any longer, and what was more, this man was no longer Kai. Not the Kai she’d known all her life. Not the Kai she’d held in her mind these past four years, the one she’d invented in the dark of the night, when she dared to imagine that things might be different. That Kai was clearly a fantasy. The man he’d become would probably deem it a nightmare.
    Once her breath returned to normal, she straightened, reached into her pocket, and pulled out a key. She crossed to the lock and inserted it, but paused to shutter the lamp before she opened the door. She couldn’t risk anyone seeing the light through the window. Not tonight. Not Kai.
    Inside, the darkness rustled around her. She moved through the space from memory. The floorboards creaked beneath her feet, and slips of paper whispered upon her face and her hands. Her fingers reached her desk and then