Starlight (Dark Space Book 3) by Lisa Henry

Author:Lisa Henry [Henry, Lisa]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Published: 2019-11-30T18:30:00+00:00

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I didn’t want to go back to the hatchery, back into the hidden core of the ship, but I could feel that’s where Cam was. I kept my eyes closed as I passed through the wall and into the warm, viscous fluid that flowed around me. I held my breath, and my lungs burned by the time I pushed through into the hatchery and the walls oozed shut behind me.

Kai-Ren stood by the steaming pool. Cam stood in front of him, his chin tilted up. Kai-Ren held him in place with a finger under his jaw. The tension in the hatchery was thick, but I couldn’t read any anger coming off Kai-Ren, or any fear from Cam. This display of dominance though, if that’s even what it was…I wondered if this was Cam paying some price for Chris’s earlier rebelliousness.

Kai-Ren saw me and dropped his gloved hand, and Cam turned his head to watch me approach. His face was drawn, his expression grave.

I couldn’t look at the bodies on the floor. I was too afraid I’d see a face I knew. I only glanced down once, to pick a path over to the pool without stepping on them. The floor was sticky and wet underneath my bare feet, and my stomach roiled even as I tried to tell myself that this was no different than any other room in the Faceless ship. It wasn’t blood. It was just the amniotic fluid that had surrounded the hybrids in their sacs. It was probably the same stuff from the pods, or from between the walls. It wasn’t a horror movie if I didn’t look.

I kept my gaze fixed on Cam as I closed the distance between us.

“Brady,” he murmured, and held out a hand for me.

Most times when we stood together in front of Kai-Ren, I curled into Cam. Not today. Today I faced him—god, demon, savior, scourge—and stared at his black featureless mask. There was no part of me that was hidden to Kai-Ren, no corner of my brain he hadn’t seen into, and yet he was still utterly unknowable to me.

Chris thought we could understand the Faceless one day. Even Cam thought it. But here we stood in a room full of the bodies of the living things he’d killed, and Kai-Ren was as cold-blooded as always.

“You don’t have children,” Cam said, his voice quiet. “These were hive mates, not children. Do you feel anything for them?”

Kai-Ren gave a low hiss, and the word echoed in our minds: “Abominations.”

“Do you blame us for that?” Cam asked him.

Another low, disgruntled hiss.

“We didn’t know,” Cam said. “When you brought us aboard, we didn’t know this could happen. You didn’t know, so how could we?”

Cam had been humanity’s advocate before, alone in the black when those who loved him had already mourned him. He’d been fighting for humanity when we’d all thought he was a dead man. He’d been alone the first time he’d argued that we deserved to live. He wasn’t alone now.

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