For Darkness Shows the Stars

time at all.
    She had no leisure for second thoughts. Her father had backed her into a corner and forced her to make a sudden decision. And what good were second thoughts? Once, she’d listened to them, and then spent four years regretting it.
    She had no time to seek out advice, either from friends like Horatio Grove or impartial but well-meaning strangers like Baroness Channel. Or from Kai, who was neither friend nor stranger, but something more than both. And yet what would any of them have told her that she didn’t already know? Baroness Channel was her grandfather’s executor—naturally she agreed with the bequest. And Horatio would support her as well.
    As for Kai . . . Yesterday, he’d admitted he’d hoped she approved of his sun-carts, and told her he was proud of her for defying her father over the wheat. If she knew him at all, she was already well aware of what he’d say.
    For four years she’d contented herself with scraps of a life, convinced herself not to fight, not to even want to fight. For four years she’d resigned herself to a reality in which she could not decide her own fate, let alone the destiny of those she loved.
    Kai had been right. It was no life at all. And though she’d never have him, by God she would take whatever else she could get.
    Within twenty minutes she’d packed her clothes, the few books she knew were hers, and the portion of her mother’s jewelry that Tatiana hadn’t claimed. On the way out of the house, she stopped Mags and asked her to send Jef to her in the barn. She didn’t tell her why. Mags and Gill would be fine for the time being, and she wanted to make this as smooth a transition as possible.
    Jef, Dee, and Ro. The rest would come in time.
    It was insane. It was radical. The very idea would have seemed ludicrous to her a few days ago. But Luddites were luring skilled Posts to other estates all the time now, and no one was preventing them. She would make the Boatwright estate the most attractive one on the island, and there was enough precedent that she was certain there was no way for her father to stop her.
    Elliot made short work of packing up her materials and the bundles of notes she’d taken on the wheat. The gliders, however, gave her pause. If she were smart, she’d burn them. She couldn’t leave them here, in the barn. But the only place she had to go was the Boatwright house. Her house.
    Where Kai lived.
    She should burn them. They were nothing but old letters, and besides, she’d memorized their contents ages ago. She should burn them, lest they fall into the wrong hands—which could be her father’s or Kai’s, as far as she was concerned. She should burn them, because she knew they were a part of something long gone. She should burn them, and be brave.
    But she’d already used up all her reserves of bravery. She stuffed the gliders into the bottom of her bag, crushing their papery wings beneath her sweater. They’d likely never fly again, just like Elliot. But that didn’t matter. The memories remained intact.
    There was a knock at the door. At last, Jef. She shot across the room to pull it open.
    “Hello, cousin,” said Benedict. “So this is where you hide.”

Thirty-eight
     
    BENEDICT’S GAZE ROVED THE room—from the hooks in the ceilings that once held the gliders to the beakers and shears on the desk. “I always wondered where you went all the time.” He stepped into the room and continued his survey, hands in his pockets. Elliot backed up until she stood before her bag, shielding it from his prying eyes with the edge of her black mourning skirt. “Your sister thinks you’re working whenever you’re gone from the house—either that or in the cottage of that Reduced girl. But I knew that wasn’t the case.”
    “How?” Elliot couldn’t help but ask.
    “I looked for you there, of course.” He circled back around to face her. “So.”
    “So?”
    “This changes things significantly. Your inheritance, I mean.”
    “Yes,” she said. “It does.”
    He whistled through his teeth. “I don’t think I understood the reality of the arrangement that the Boatwright had with your father. I thought the land was his already.”
    “And therefore yours,” Elliot volunteered.
    “Exactly.” Benedict gave a sheepish shrug. “Though of course, this makes more sense. Why would the Boatwright let Uncle Zachariah have it, knowing that it wouldn’t stay in his family?”
    Benedict tapped his foot on the floor. Elliot