was thirteen when we adopted him,” he told her. “So hesitant. It took Yuri three weeks to get him to tell us what he liked to eat. We found out after he’d been with us a year that he’d been hoarding the allowance we gave him because he wasn’t sure when we’d ask for it back, or when we’d want something from him that he couldn’t give us. He didn’t trust us. He didn’t trust that we loved him. He didn’t think anyone ever had. I promised—” He broke off, and took a breath. “I promised I would never let anything hurt him. And this, Lockwood. This. All I would have had to do was verify where he was before we left Budapest. It would have taken three seconds. It’s not like I didn’t have any warning that he’d do something like this.”
“You can’t stop him from having a life, Bear,” she told him. “And you can’t stop him from getting older, or doing dumbass things while he’s figuring out what kind of a person he wants to be.”
“It’s impossible,” he told her, “living like this. How do you love someone, and watch them take risks like that? How do you just stand aside while they throw themselves into the void?”
Oh, Bear. “You do it,” she said, “because the alternative is never loving anyone. And most of us, thank every god you can think of, cannot survive like that.”
He turned toward her. “You’ve lost a lot of family.”
“I have.”
“I’m an ass.”
“You bet.”
At that he broke into a surprised grin, then sobered. “I apologize, Lockwood. I’m not at my best right now.”
Instinctively she reached out, placing her hand over his massive forearm. “Don’t apologize, Bear,” she told him. “You’re terrified. You get dispensation for pretty much anything. And all I can tell you is Hastings is the best fucking doctor in the Corps, and Arin is conscious and lucid. Both of these are good things.”
“There are days I think having a kid was the worst idea I’ve ever had,” he admitted.
“My aunts always said the same thing,” she told him.
Another flash of a grin, and then his eyes fell closed, and she did her best to embrace his bulk, the dust and filth of Elena’s env suit between them.
It’s not your fault, Elena.”
She had dropped into a chair after Bear left, exhausted and helpless, vaguely aware of the state of her appearance. She should find somewhere to wash up, clean off some of the stench, find something else to wear. There would be clothes in the gym she could borrow, maybe even something without a Corps logo on it. She should go after Bear and let him keep yelling at her; she knew him well enough to know he would need to yell until he wound down. Then she thought of Jessica with him, and decided he might wind down on his own. Bear was no match for her friend.
“You can’t know that,” she told Greg. He hadn’t been there. He hadn’t seen her with Arin for six weeks, so grateful to have found someone who saw her life in the Corps as something other than some violent, incomprehensible part of her history. She’d been flattered. She’d felt a little less lonely. And she’d come close to getting him killed.
But Greg just looked surprised. “Of course I can. Savosky’s the captain of that ship, civilian or no. It was his responsibility to make sure his people were at their posts going into this thing.” He was staring at her, his gray eyes clear, as if he believed it.
“Arin’s been following me around the whole time, Greg,” she confessed. “Wanting to hear about the Corps. Looking for stories of glory. I fed him all kinds of crap. I even started training with him, telling him he could get in if he wanted.”
“From what I saw today,” Greg told her, “he probably could. He kept a level head, which is saying something in that fucking mess.”
“But—” He was doing what she had been doing: thinking about it from the wrong direction. “He’s a civilian, Greg. There was no way I could make him understand the reality of it all. I should have kept my mouth shut. I should have shoved him away. The last thing I should have done is encourage him to see the Corps as an option.”
“Is that what Savosky told you?”
“I—don’t you think he’s right?”
Something flashed across his face: annoyance, she thought, or maybe anger. But when he spoke, his voice was soft. “I don’t think you really believe that, Elena,” he told her. “Savosky’s a civilian, too. He doesn’t understand.”
“He understands Arin better than I do.”
“Do you think so?” He was watching her, those incisive eyes studying her face. “Do you remember nineteen?”
She thought back. She had been in college, serious and single-minded, eyes on one thing and one thing only: doing well enough so she would be accepted at Central Military Academy, to fulfill the only dream she had ever had. She had been humorless, fatalistic, and invincible. “I was an idiot,” she confessed.
A smile rippled over his lips. “Me too. And if anybody had tried to tell me anything—never mind my dad—I’d have dug in my heels and done exactly the opposite. What happened on Govi, Elena?”
She rubbed her eyes. “That one was definitely my fault. We’d found this lifeboat, with seven people, and they were fucking freezing and scared as hell, and there were waves coming in. So I had Arin fly low, and I took a net cable, and I dove into the ocean to hook them so we could pick them up.”
He stared. “You dove into the ocean.”
“Yes.”
“The freezing, toxic one.”
“That’s the only one that was there, Greg,” she said irritably.
And then, to her surprise, he laughed, and sat back, and she thought she caught something resembling affection in his eyes. “No wonder Savosky’s been short with you. He must have thought you’d lost your mind.”
“I couldn’t leave them, Greg. I—”
“I know, Elena. And if he’d asked me before you guys hit Govi, I would have told him exactly what would happen.” He grew more serious and leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Here’s what I think happened today: I think Savosky fucked up. I think this kid is better at subterfuge than anybody thought. And I think you would have had to lock him in a cargo hold to keep him away from that moon. He’s lucky he was with you. I’m guessing it took some flying to keep that bird from shattering on the way down.”
She hadn’t thought about it. She had flown the way she always did. “He shouldn’t have had to see what he saw today,” she said, clinging to her guilt.
And Greg’s gray eyes grew somber, and she saw grief, deep and familiar. She always forgot how much grief he carried with him, all the time. “Nobody should have to see what he saw today.”
“You
