For Darkness Shows the Stars

whirled around and his face was shadowed by the angle of the sun. Still, she knew his tone. Anger. “What’s so funny? That our project has been set back several days? That we’re stuck here longer? That you take a little spill from a horse and everyone wants to rearrange the world so you don’t suffer a moment of inconvenience?”
    “No,” she said, and her voice was even. “That I would wait a month in agony just to hear you insult me. I’m a miserable girl indeed, don’t you think?”
    He glared at her in stony silence, which only spurred her on. No more of this waiting and worrying. She might not deserve much from Kai, despite all the time she’d spent loving him, but she deserved this.
    “I have gathered that you don’t want to reveal your origins to the Groves, or even to most of your friends, and that’s your choice, but I have a question for you. Andromeda knows, doesn’t she? She knows what happened?”
    He said nothing.
    “Please. I will tell you, and you will tell me, and then we can just go on ignoring each other afterward. Tatiana doesn’t know who you are, which is ridiculous to me. She’s as stupid as she’s ever been. I wanted to die, that day in the barn. Our Posts, of course, talk of nothing else, but they have no occasion to tell your friends if you don’t want it known on the Boatwright estate. They haven’t even bothered correcting my sister, not that she talks to many Posts outside the house servants like Mags and her maid. And Ro . . .” Here Elliot faltered, but only for a moment. “Every time I see Ro, she wonders why we haven’t come together.”
    She thought she saw him flinch, but it was hard to tell in the light. She knew he visited Ro on his own. Did he get the same impression?
    “Just tell me, so I can stop wondering if Andromeda’s contempt is for all Luddites, or for me alone.”
    Kai was quiet, then said, “If you can stand on your own, it’s better that you walk back rather than making someone from the Fleet take you.”
    Elliot rose, then swallowed the bile she tasted in her throat. “I have stood on my own for many years.”
    He didn’t look away this time, and his eyes were like a stranger’s. “You’re not the only one.”

P ART II
     
Icarus Also Flew
     
Anne did not wish for more of such looks and speeches. His cold politeness, his ceremonious grace, were worse than anything.
—JANE AUSTEN, PERSUASION

O NE Y EAR A GO
     
    Dear Kai,
    I wish I knew where to send this letter. I wish I knew where you were, or how you’re doing. I am glad now that you’re gone, that you didn’t have to live through these past two years with me, that I didn’t have to worry about you alongside everyone else.
    So many of the Posts are gone now—gone who knows where. If they meet you, I hope they will write and tell me, but I don’t expect it. After all, you have never written me. After leaving this place, I doubt many will have the slightest interest in sending back word, and most especially not to me.
    I have failed them, Kai. I have failed them all. I cannot step into my mother’s shoes. I cannot keep the farm running. I can’t stop thinking of those first weeks after Mal died and we were trying to convince everyone you could follow in his footsteps as mechanic. I remember the all-nighters we pulled trying to keep all the machines in working order. Of course, that time we had each other.
    Now I don’t feel like I have anyone.
    And that’s why I’m sitting here, writing letters to nobody. You’ll never see these words, but I can’t keep this to myself anymore. You are the person I’ve always told these things to. You’ve been gone for three years, and you’re still the only one I can trust. I sit in this room, surrounded by your letters and by even bigger secrets than those . . .
    I made something, Kai. Something new.
    The other Luddites would kill me if they knew. My father wouldn’t be able to protect me, but I doubt he’d want to. He believes in the protocols. Why don’t I feel terrified tonight? I’ve been terrified for so long—of how I was going to make it through the bad times, of how I was going to keep the farm going now that so many of the Posts have left, if I had any way to control what happened to me and those I love—to this place I love, despite everything.
    I’ve been terrified for a year that I wouldn’t succeed. And now that I have . . . I’m not scared anymore. At least not tonight. I’m not scared that people