Chapter 29 – The Static Between Stars #2
Nilli must have been concerned enough by how I'd behaved that evening that when I stirred the next morning, she insisted that I get dressed.
"Today, your sinnenthi will win," she assured me, laying out some clothes in approximately my size: dark blue trousers with a purple tie at the waist; a long-sleeved black shirt with a wide neckline that showed all of my collarbone; a jacket in ink-dark black that was threaded through with little glints of gold; my own boots, which seemed to have been scrubbed of any remaining blood and dirt.
"We will take the shuttle and wait in orbit off Thenat-6.
We all wish to see you happier, Sashen of Creche Thiel. "
So I scrubbed myself clean in the bath. I took some time alone to stare at myself in the narrow mirror: I was still mottled with fading bruises and flaking scabs, and if I looked, I could still see the mark Araxis had left on me with his mouth.
My finger brushed the juncture between my shoulder and neck where his teeth had found purchase, and I shivered despite the steam pluming the air.
What was I going to do now that the illusion had shattered?
Now that I had woken from my dream and found myself here?
I gripped the counter hard, glaring into the green of my own eyes and ignoring the shadows beneath them, the haunted look lurking beneath the surface like sharp rocks just below the gleam of water.
Five.
I was alive. I was alive and I had protection. What kind of dipshit would be upset about that?
Four.
Okay, yes, I'd been used. I was still being used. I'd thought I was, I don't know, in a real relationship with someone who genuinely cared about me. It turned out I had just been naive. I should have known better. No one had ever really cared for me without wanting something in exchange. Stupid.
Three.
Creche Thiel still needed me. I was a coup, Zirric said.
I had some power, now that I knew that much at least. Even if I'd given a bunch of it away with that declaration – what had I even said?
what did it mean? – if I stopped playing, Creche Thiel was on the line politically.
They'd pulled in favours based on, I don't know, getting me? I had power.
Two.
I had power. There was still going to be an investigation. We'd have to participate in some way, but I had power – with Creche Thiel and with other creches too. I needed to understand that, so I could use it. I hadn't had that before, not ever.
One.
What was I afraid of? So Araxis didn't love me like I'd thought. So what we had, what I'd dreamed of like some lovesick teenager, wasn't real. What was real was my status. And the more power Creche Thiel gained, the more power I would gain.
The real question was, what did I want?
I'd had to think about it a lot over the past few weeks, and that had given me some clarity, even if I had carved the shape out through the negative space of what I didn't want: I didn't want to hate myself and I realized, distantly, that I also didn't want to die. That was new.
What I did want was to feel valued, to be cared for.
I wanted freedom too, as much as I could have.
I wanted a life with more depth and variety than I'd ever had.
I wanted to drink deep from the well of knowledge.
I wanted to learn and see things and go places.
I wanted to make friends. I wanted to touch trees and smell fresh air and go swimming and stand in the rain.
Maybe I wanted to go to a beach. I'd never been to a beach, and Zirric seemed to think they were great.
Really, though, if I was very honest with myself, I could admit that I wanted to love someone and to be loved back.
Well, that one I might not get. Although those kids were something else, and while loving a child wasn't exactly what I wanted, not really, I thought I could probably find comfort in that anyway.
I didn't get to have a grand romantic love story, but I could have something like a little family.
And maybe what I needed and what I wanted were different things anyway.
Maybe what I needed was to cuddle some kids and to be the adult in their lives that I'd needed in mine when I was a child.
Maybe that would fix whatever the broken thing was inside of me, finally.
I could do that.
Power. Status. Freedom. And a life fully lived.
Alright. I squared my shoulders and took stock of myself. When I pulled on the clothes Nilli had laid out for me, I felt more like myself than I had in weeks. Like I was finally standing on stable ground.
The thing about being lied to is that, once the mask comes off, at least you know exactly where you stand. I didn't have to wonder or guess; I didn't have to cry about whether Araxis really liked me.
I knew. I knew what he wanted; I knew what Creche Thiel wanted; I knew what I wanted.
Maybe all those years with Alet Trident had rubbed off on me after all. We had the beginning of a negotiation there.
"I'm ready," I said after giving my hair a final tousle.
I unclasped the loaned wristband and set it on the end of the bed, strapping my swords across my back and following Nilli out of the dignitary's suite and back toward the shuttle.
Through the bright halls and past the verdant foliage of the atrium, and I saw all of it with new eyes.
I could have something like this. I could insist we buy a ship with a forest in the middle.
I paused to take it in, and I thought of Talvi showing me their dingy hiding spots all around the second deck of their tiny creche ship.
I drummed my fingers on the railing of the concourse for a moment, then exhaled a deep breath and left it all behind to go watch my sinnenthi win.