Chapter 7
STAR
The house feels wrong, like someone tuned it to a key I can’t sing in. Voices blur behind doors; silver clinks in rooms I don’t enter; every corridor smells faintly of lemons and lies. I float through it, useless and pretty, dodging questions like holograms.
“Sweetheart, a word?” Dad calls from his study.
“I can’t, Father—schedule,” I say, walking backward with a smile that’s mostly enamel.
Kaspian intercepts me outside the gallery, hands in pockets, eyes kind. “A stroll? Ten minutes. No entourage. We’ll insult the statuary.”
“Rain check,” I murmur, stepping aside. “The statues are sensitive.”
Sneed materializes near the stair like a regret. “My Lady, a few adjustments to your itinerary—”
“No,” I tell him, and the word tastes like copper. “I don’t need guiding tonight.”
He blinks once, slowly, like I’ve introduced a grammatical error into the house. “As you wish.”
By dusk I’ve outmaneuvered everyone and landed in my room with the door locked and the lights low.
My reflection looks like I owe it money.
My palms are flat on the cool glass of the window, breath fogging the pane as the last bands of color drain out of Akura’s sky.
Everything in me wants to climb out of my skin and go somewhere loud enough to drown.
Somewhere I can talk without the walls adding footnotes.
The door clicks. CynJyn slides in sideways with a bottle the color of hazard signage. “Emergency,” she announces, kicking it closed. “You’re spiraling.”
“I am not spiraling,” I say, sitting on the edge of the bed like a dignitary at a crime scene.
“You’re spiraling elegantly,” she amends, crossing the room in three big strides and thrusting the bottle into my hand. “Drink. It tastes like a glow stick and a bad decision had a baby.”
I take a swig. It tastes worse. “This is a war crime.”
“You love war crimes,” she says, flopping onto the rug and patting the floor beside her. “Down here. We’re doing Balcony Therapy in T-minus sixty seconds.”
“I don’t need therapy,” I tell her, even as I slide down and let my back hit the side of the bed.
“You need air and zero witnesses,” she says, hauling me up by the wrist. “Balcony. Now.”
We crawl out the window and onto the stone ledge like teenagers in a ballad, the wind lifting my hair and carrying away the last of the day’s perfume.
The gardens below are a smear of blue shadow and silver paths.
The city beyond throws its quiet little lights against the dark.
CynJyn sits cross-legged and pushes the bottle into my hand again.
“Talk,” she says. “If you don’t, I’ll freestyle a poem about your feelings and you know I will rhyme ‘duty’ with ‘booty.’”
I snort and then my throat closes. “I can’t get a full breath in this place.”
“Start there,” she says softly. “Use words. Cheaper than arson.”
“I asked him a question,” I blurt, the night catching and amplifying the confession.
“In the gardens. I asked what I did. And he—” I press my fingers to my eyes until I see bright shapes.
“He looked at me like I was gravity and a cliff, and then Kaspian came around the corner like the universe obeyed Sneed’s clock. ”
“Okay,” she says, voice low. “But the question isn’t what he did. What do you feel?”
“I don’t want to.” The wind is cool and my skin is hot; the contrast makes me dizzy. “It’s messy.”
“Messy is real,” she counters. “Real or bust, Star. Go.”
“I…” The word claws out of me. “I want him. I want him in the stupid, impossible way where just being in the same room is a whole-body ache. I want him when he says nothing. I want him when he yells. I want him when he’s counting exits and pretending he doesn’t notice my mouth.
I want to be the thing he stops holding his breath for. ”
CynJyn nods, eyes bright and kind. “And?”
“And I’m supposed to marry a man who built a tiny ocean in his hand for a tree and I still wanted—” I break, ugly, a laugh that’s not a laugh. “I wanted Rayek to be the one who thought of it. That’s unfair. That’s cruel.”
“It’s human,” she says. “More drink.”
I take another swallow and cough. “We almost—” The word is a hot coal. “We almost kissed. We did, once. In the hall. Not kissed. Almost. And then he—he moved like I was a weapon aimed at him. Like touching me would get him court-martialed and set the house on fire.”
“Would it?” CynJyn asks, tilting her head.
“Yes,” I say, and the yes tastes like wanting anyway. “And he filed for reassignment.”
Her brows launch toward her hairline. “He told you?”
“No. I read it in the way he didn’t look at me.” I wrap my arms around my knees. “Sneed looked at me like I was a liability and I wanted to break his perfect teeth.”
“Get in line,” she says mildly. “Okay. Dread about the marriage. Quantify it for me.”
“Imagine walking into a lovely room,” I say, words tumbling now that the dam’s cracked. “There’s music and the chairs are comfortable and everyone is nice and they all believe you belong there. Now imagine the door shuts behind you and the handle disappears.”
“That’s terrible,” she says.
“It’s accurate.” I stare down at the garden and try to count the lanterns. “I don’t hate Kaspian. It would be easier if I did. He’s decent in ways that matter. But every time he smiles at me, something in me goes rigid and it takes an hour to breathe again. I don’t want to be a treaty in a dress.”
“Then don’t,” she says in a voice that makes it sound like skipping rope.
“How?” The word shreds at the edges. “How do I not, when every hallway in this house is a funnel and every plan has my name stamped on it? How do I look at my mother and tell her I won’t be the hinge that keeps the door from swinging shut on Chamberland?
How do I write to the west farms and say sorry, no tariffs, I followed my heart into poverty? ”
“Or,” she says, and the grin she gives me is wicked enough to be a crime, “hear me out: we bounce.”
I laugh because laughter is a reflex and I am built of reflexes. “We what?”
“Bounce. Exit. Peel out. We say ‘no thanks’ to our regularly scheduled martyrdom and go. A night. Two. A week. Long enough to remember where your body ends and the crest begins.”
“Cyn,” I whisper, even as something bright and terrible starts to lift inside my ribs. “We can’t.”
“We always could,” she says, and she takes the bottle back and swigs like it’s a handshake.
“We’re clever. I’m immoral. The gang is bored.
Sneed is allergic to improvisation. The blind spot at Gate Seven cycles every thirty-two minutes.
Your personal skimmer is prettier and faster than sin.
You know a starbase off the beaten path that makes a mean breakfast and doesn’t ask questions. ”
“I’m supposed to—” I start, and she cuts me a look that is a dare and a prayer.
“You’re supposed to do what you’re told,” she says, sing-song and poisonous.
“But you also get to be a person. A person who wants something and goes toward it. We don’t have to carve it into the moon, babe.
We can just… go breathe. You’ll come back if you want to.
If you don’t, we’ll send a postcard that says, ‘We regret everything and we had a great time.’”
“I can’t ask you to—”
“You’re not,” she says. “I’m volunteering to be your worst idea.” She leans in. “Say yes.”
“I can’t,” I say again, and it’s weaker. “Mother will—”
“Be mad and then forgive you,” CynJyn says.
“Your dad will pretend to be mad and then sneak you a sandwich. Sneed will write a sonnet about risk management and sleep with his slate like a teddy bear. Kaspian will survive. Rayek will—” She stops, and the air goes delicate. “He’ll do what he always does.”
“Which is?” I ask, because I’m a masochist.
“Stand,” she says. “And breathe like it hurts.”
We’re quiet for a minute. Wind combs the cypress, soft hushes stacked on each other. Somewhere below, a guard shifts his weight and pretends he doesn’t see us because he likes his job. The bottle sits between us like a little lighthouse for sinners.
“What if this is stupid?” I ask. “What if we bounce and it doesn’t fix anything? What if I still have to marry him and I just come back with more mud on my name and less breath in my lungs?”
“Then you did something that belonged to you,” she says. “Even if it fixes nothing, it’s yours. That matters.”
“I hate when you’re wise,” I tell her.
“I hate when you need me to be,” she says, tapping the bottle’s rim against my knee. “Well? Do I acquire overnight bags? Do I text the gang that the saints require mischief?”
I stare at the stars just waking up over Chamberland, pricks of cold light that don’t care about my surname. The thought lands fully, becomes a shape I can step into. My pulse steadies like a decision is an organ that needed blood.
“I’m scared,” I say.
“Good,” she says. “Means you’re not boring.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I,” she says, and she takes my hands, squeezes them hard. “Let’s go make one choice that’s ours.”
I drop my forehead to her shoulder and laugh into her jacket until it’s a sound I can use. “Okay.”
“Okay?” she echoes, eyes on fire.
“Okay,” I say, and the word is a door.
We move without hurry and without noise.
In the room, I shove a change of clothes into a small pack, two nutrient bars, a battered bishop chess piece I don’t look at, and an old boarding pass I keep for luck.
CynJyn raids my vanity for hair ties and a tiny med kit.
We leave our shoes by the window so the floors won’t squeal about us, then ghost the corridor.
“Gate Seven,” she whispers, and I nod. We know the timing like we know the map of our childhood mistakes.
Down a service stair that smells like soap and brass; across the laundry hall where dryers purr like big, warm beasts; past a guard who keeps examining a scuff on his boot because he’s kind.
My heartbeat syncs with the house’s canned night-breath. My skin hums.