The Spindle

by J. Darlene Everly

  The Spindle

  The Grimm Star Saga: First Light Book 2

  J. Darlene Everly

  Contents

  Title

  1. Zellendine

  2. Troylus

  3. Zellendine

  4. Troylus

  5. Zellendine

  6. Troylus

  7. Zellendine

  8. Troylus

  9. Zellendine

  10. Troylus

  11. Zellendine

  12. Troylus

  13. Zellendine

  14. Troylus

  15. Zellendine

  16. Troylus

  17. Zellendine

  18. Troylus

  19. Zellendine

  20. Troylus

  21. Zellendine

  22. Troylus

  23. Zellendine

  24. Troylus

  25. Zellendine

  26. Troylus

  27. Zellendine

  28. Troylus

  29. Zellendine

  30. Troylus

  31. Zellendine

  32. Troylus

  33. Zellendine

  34. Troylus

  35. Zellendine

  36. Troylus

  37. Zellendine

  38. Troylus

  39. Zellendine

  40. Troylus

  41. Zellendine

  42. Troylus

  43. Zellendine

  44. Troylus

  45. Zellendine

  46. Troylus

  47. Zellendine

  48. Troylus

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  This is a work of fiction, any similarities to people living or dead, places, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2021 J. Darlene Everly

  All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or used in any way without the prior written consent of the copyright holder, besides brief quotations for a review.

  To request use of the copyrighted material, please contact the author at

  everly@jdarleneeverly.com

  Hardcover: ISBN 978-1-954719-11-8

  Paperback: ISBN 978-1-954719-10-1

  Ebook: ISBN 978-1-954719-09-5

  First paperback edition March 2021.

  Edited by Beth Hale, Magnolia Editing.

  Cover art by Jupiter Alley.

  Layout by Wishing Well Books.

  Created with Vellum

  This book is dedicated to the ones we’ve lost.

  1

  Zellendine

  It took only seconds for it to rush back through Zellendine’s mind. All of it. Troylus, the blue light as it poured from him, his lips on hers, the sleepers, Yanna and her baby, the horror of the Chapter computer, and Briar. Briar’s eyes.

  How much of his eyes were silver after an entire shift and almost one hundred years in stasis? Why had they started to turn? Why were Troylus’s entirely silver?

  While she probably should have been thinking about the nearness of the planet and the end of their journey, she couldn’t. The only thing running through her mind was the vision of silver eyes. And she wasn’t sure if they were Troylus’s or what she imagined Briar’s to look like.

  She took deep breaths and stretched inside her cryo tube, barely managing to actually move. The first moments after waking from stasis were always unnerving to her in the best of times, but these were the most unnerving of times and she wanted simply to be able to get out of the damn tube faster than she knew was smart. It took time, turning her hands, flexing her fingers and curling them into fists. Time to roll her ankles around and breathe deeply.

  The air tasted crisp with a tinge of stale, the cold still floated among the warmer air, and all of it had been locked away with her for one hundred years.

  Her head spun if she spent too long thinking about the passage of time while she was in stasis. Instead, she wondered if she was going to have the time to figure out her plan of action after she landed. She wondered if she and Troylus would be able to warn the other Chapters of the computers, of the hideous truth.

  She and Troylus… she stopped moving her arms for a second. They hung suspended above her while she realized she wasn’t thinking about even trying to include Briar in her plans. She was thinking about Troylus.

  While walking through the asteroid belt of the last shift, she and Troylus had become a team.

  It made her smile. The smile was still playing on her lips as her tank opened and she managed to sit up. Directly in front of her, the large window looked out on the whole of their new sun. No mere wisps of solar flares, there she was in all her glory. Her smile grew wider.

  Zellendine glanced to the left when a movement caught her eye. Her dad was levering himself up and seemed to be fine. Her smile was firmly in place as she turned to her right, looking past Rullon’s hands stretching and flexing in the air, and she made eye contact with Troylus.

  He was sitting in his tank with his knees drawn up and his arms resting atop them, looking right at her.

  Troylus’s face softened as he looked at her and his chest rose and fell on what she would have sworn was a sigh, but he didn’t smile. He looked pained as he cut his eyes and gave the slightest of head nods in the direction of the tank behind him.

  Zellendine tried to look past him, to the person sitting up in their tank and rubbing at their eyes as they flung their legs over the side far too soon.

  When they stopped rubbing their eyes, Zellendine sucked in a breath, the smile dropping from her face.

  Troylus nodded, once. He saw the silver first, the silver that had taken over one of their eyes. He was closer, but she had to wonder if his own change had alerted him in some way to the change of the person on his other side.

  She wasn’t even paying attention to who the person was because it didn’t matter. The color of their eyes only mattered in that it confirmed for her what she suspected as she was going to sleep. Whatever had happened to Troylus was spreading.

  But what was it? And what did it mean?

  None of her questions had answers. At least none that she could think of.

  Zellendine swung her legs over the side of her tank, she wanted to get to Briar in his cryo bay, she wanted to know how developed his change was.

  “It’s too early yet, Zellendine,” Stephen said from his own tank.

  “Don’t worry, I’m still just stretching,” she said, although she wanted to argue even though she knew he was right.

  She bent over her legs and wiggled her toes, relishing in the tingling feeling that ran through her body as it came fully awake and back to the moment. She checked the display on the side of her tank, scrolling through the schedule for her check up in the clinic after waking. She was on the first day like medics usually were. And she checked what her assignment would be for her quarters. It was the same as she usually had.

  Hmmm, she thought that every shift someone was assigned her quarters. If that were the case, what were the odds she would get the assignment of the same place she always had? Maybe they had a different system. At least the Chapters got something right. She was happy to be assigned her own space.

  Feet appeared below her, in the soft form slippers that they only wore for stasis.

  Zellendine raised her head and found silver eyes no longer blocked by the slightly too long hair she missed, and a soft smile.

  “You should sit,” she said, placing a hand next to her on her tank. “No one wants you to fall down because you got up too soon.”

  He bit his bottom lip and perched next to her on the edge of the tank, gripping it with both hands and staring down at the floor.

  She chewed on the inside of her cheek, hoping he knew that what she actually meant was that she didn’t want him to fa
ll down. For the few seconds he was in front of her she didn’t care about anyone else or what they thought. But having him next to her instead, those silver eyes focused away from her, brought her mind reeling back to Briar and the other silver eyes that might be popping up around them.

  “We’ll be landing soon.” Troylus kept his voice low and his expression smooth, but she thought she heard the worry in it.

  “Yes, there will be a lot to plan and prepare for.” There, that should be true enough generally that no one listening would think they were doing anything other than making small talk.

  “As soon as I can, I want to spend some time with my sister. The orchard always helps me think a little more clearly about the planet and what I’ll need to do once we land.” Troylus inched his hand closer to hers along the edge of the tank and touched one knuckle against hers.

  It was the tiniest amount of contact, but it still managed to make her heart pick up and her eyes dart around to check and see that no one noticed.

  He was her friend, but he had also used their supposed estrangement to keep her out of trouble last shift. Would them having contact in front of people, against protocol unless they were partners or about to be partners, be enough to draw suspicion to her again?

  Zellendine knew she couldn’t afford the scrutiny, especially not if she was going to manage to implement her plan. But she couldn’t force herself to move her hand away from his. No matter that it was the smart thing to do, Troylus managed to make her do all kinds of things that she would have said were objectively stupid. And she found herself appreciating it.

  “Okay, that’s a good idea, to think in the orchard. I wouldn’t have thought of that.” So, they were going to meet up in the orchard. She would haunt the place and be some kind of Zellendine-shaped fungus if she had to. If it meant stealing some time to talk to him and work through what their next move was, it would be worth it.

  “The best time is usually when the night crew is on and everyone else is about to go to sleep. It’s quiet then, the birds even settle down as the lights are dimmed,” he said, his eyes meeting hers with a small smile on his face.

  Well, it seemed she didn’t have to turn into a fungus in the orchard after all.

  Before she could think of another coded thing to say to him, a commotion at the end of the stacks of tanks drew her attention.

  A couple stasis crew members ran by the end of the stacks toward the noise of grunting and incoherent yelling.

  The last time there was something out of the ordinary while people were coming out of stasis, Upton and the other sleepers were trapped in REM sleep.

  “Not again,” Zellendine said, her voice a gush of air as her head spun with the possibilities and a chill ran up her spine. It was why she had looked back. The fear of it happening again, she wasn’t sure what she was going to do if the sleeping was a problem again. Would everyone expect her to be able to wake them in an instant? How would she cover for the fact that it was Troylus, his blue light, that freed them?

  She looked over at Troylus, meeting his eyes and seeing some of the same questions playing there in his gaze. What she didn’t expect was the way his eyes snuck a peek at her lips, it made heat rise in her cheeks and she dropped her eyes from his.

  If they needed to wake more people, would it mean she needed to kiss Troylus again? She wasn’t sure why that thought made her smile. She tried to hide her grin in a grimace as she pushed herself up to stand on legs that wanted to buckle under her.

  Troylus slipped one hand around her waist and held her elbow with the other, seeming to be unbothered by the stasis drag. As glad as she was to have him there to help her walk, his nearness after thinking about their kiss didn’t help steady her legs.

  Rounding the end of the stack, they met up with Stephen who was taking tiny steps by hanging onto the stack next to him and heading in the same direction they were.

  They didn’t have to go far before they discovered the origin of the sounds. It was a problem for sure, but it was about as opposite a problem from the sleepers as it could be.

  2

  Troylus

  What the hell? Troylus thought as he stared at the two people trying, and mostly failing, to pummel each other with their fists. One of them was far more coordinated than the other, but neither was anything nearing graceful and often landed blows on the floor or stack nearest them rather than their opponent.

  “That is the weirdest way to wake up I’ve ever seen,” Troylus said and Zellendine snorted before suppressing the rest of the laugh he could feel in her waist.

  “Stop it. This is messed up,” she said, but there was no anger in her voice at all. In fact, he could have sworn she leaned just a bit closer to him.

  Go ahead and fight, he wanted to say. If it got Zellendine past the stupid protocols and helped get her over the initial awkwardness after they woke up, he was fine with a couple dipshits fighting.

  It took multiple attempts for the two stasis crew members who responded to the fight to pull the combatants apart. Stephen caught up to Troylus and Zellendine and leaned against the end of the stack, shaking his head.

  “How can they have anything to be angry enough to fight about? They just woke up,” Stephen asked.

  Troylus looked back at the people on the ground, their ridiculous battle aside, he might have an idea of how they could be mad enough to risk being denied entry to the planet for a short-lived fight.

  Sure enough, when they were pulled apart one of them had silver eyes and the other had regular blue eyes.

  He looked at Zellendine, her dark eyes were wide and the fear in them made him want to hide her away from everyone and beat the crap out of himself. She understood the anger that the silver eyed person felt because he had directed the same at her. The blue eyed person was just protecting themselves from an attack, just like Zellendine would have had to do if Troylus had not been so careful not to let it get that far and to overcome the wrath he recognized as irrational.

  “It doesn’t matter how many, it won’t happen to you again,” Troylus whispered to her, hoping that Stephen didn’t hear him as he pulled himself along the end of the stacks to look over the two fighters for any injuries. Troylus kept Zellendine as far from the silver-eyed person as he could, her dad could handle it. Stephen was always a medic first, but Zellendine was more scared than medic right now, and Troylus could not blame her.

  “Maybe I should just go to quarters and wait for my dad there,” she whispered back.

  “Come on,” he said, leading her around the groups on the floor and toward the door. Stephen and Rullon would both be fine. They had been through enough shifts to take their time and find them when they could.

  But they had taken too long. Some people were already up and moving through the halls to get to their own destinations after waking. The corridor outside the cryo bay was more crowded than Troylus had ever seen it.

  “Not everyone wakes at exactly the same time?” Zellendine asked, breathless, next to him, slumping against his side.

  “I guess not, but we’ll be fine,” he said, pulling her closer and lacing her fingers with his. He didn’t do it just to support her, nothing in his life had prepared him to be so surrounded by people he didn’t know.

  But Troylus looked down at Zellendine and gave her a smile, trying for reassuring, and he must have landed somewhere near it because she smiled back before he stepped with her into the flow of humanity.

  They tried not to bump into the people around them, they tried not to step on anyone’s feet and give everyone the distance they were used to. It didn’t work.

  “Ouch,” Zellendine said and Troylus whipped his head around to the person next to her who gave a chagrined sorry before moving off down an off shoot of the main hallway.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah. He just stepped on my foot.” She squeezed his hand, and he loosened his grip on her, realizing he was holding on too tight.

  “Somehow I never thought about how sma
ll this ship would seem when we were all awake.” He wanted the landing to be the next day, waiting through this kind of crowding might make him a ball of blue rage again and no one wanted that.

  “Do you think I’ll be sharing my quarters with anyone who, um…” Zellendine trailed off and he couldn’t find a way to say what he knew she meant so instead he answered.

  “No. And if you are, I’ll talk them into switching with me and Rullon.” It might not have been the truth. He couldn’t guess what her new roommates would agree to, but it was what he hoped would happen.

  “That would be, um, interesting. Sharing quarters with you,” she said, ducking her head so he couldn’t see her face.

  “More interesting than sharing with a stranger?” he asked, genuinely curious. To him it made more sense to be comfortable with people you knew than living in the same tiny space as people you didn’t.

  “Well…” she trailed off and bit her lip, casting her eyes at the floor.

  “Zellendine?” he asked, his voice low and soft. He wasn’t sure why she fumbled over the answer, but something about her reaction sent his heart pounding in his chest.

  “Look,” she said, holding her head up and looking at him. She squared her shoulders, which made him wonder if he did something wrong.