The Stars We Steal

by Alexa Donne

  “I won. Go get married, Leo. Try to be happy.”

  “You didn’t win,” I spat. “Elliot’s breaking up with Klara right now. He loves me, and I love him.”

  The captain rolled her eyes at me. “As long as that boy has a hand in the black market, he’ll do what I say, including marrying my daughter.” She grinned like a cat that had trapped a mouse, shaking the wrist tab teasingly in my direction.

  “And now his precious secret is recorded for all to hear. Your entrapment is useless. So even if I fully admit to screwing you over, taking your blueprints from your very own ship and passing them off as my own, it doesn’t matter. Because you love your Elliot and couldn’t bear to have any harm befall him. So he’ll be fine, as long as you don’t cross me.”

  I was trapped. The stupidity of this plan crystallized into a low-grade panic, like acid radiating slowly from my core and into my extremities. I’d come up here by myself, where my aunt unequivocally had the upper hand, to try to get her to admit to a crime that was inextricably tied to Elliot’s. And now I’d tipped my hand to someone ruthless enough to steal from her own niece.

  My hands felt their way into my pockets as I steeled my expression. I wouldn’t give my aunt the satisfaction of my fear. I just needed a moment to collect myself and think. Then my fingers grazed that folded piece of paper I’d stowed away earlier. I remembered the note, written in my aunt’s hand, that she’d given to my mother some night many years ago.

  Celine,

  I’ve given you unlimited, all-hours bio-scan access to the pool on board.

  Happy swimming.

  Freja

  Unease bubbled up within me. The woman standing across from me was ruthless enough to threaten her family in order to remain in power. Why did the note to my mother feel so oddly specific, and significant?

  “You gave my mom special all-hours access to the pool,” I said slowly.

  “What?”

  “That’s how she got in here at night to swim,” I continued, swishing the facts around like a fine wine, reaching for every note and nuance. “You arranged it. So you knew she’d be here.”

  “Uh, yes, your mother preferred to swim away from a crowd. What’s the point, Leonie?”

  I wasn’t sure of my point, but it was niggling at me. The happenstance of it all. The only gravity failure in the Scandinavian’s history happening only in the pool area, at night, after my aunt had given my mother special permission to swim. It was a terrible accident.

  Right?

  “She told me things were about to change for us, that we might have to leave the Sofi. Was she going to challenge you for captain?”

  “Who?” My aunt played dumb. I indulged her.

  “My mother. There was a power vacuum after Granddad died. Two daughters eligible to run. One an idealist, the other ruthlessly pragmatic.” I let it hang, hoping I was wrong, that I was spinning an elaborate fiction. Because anything else was too horrific. Champagne and vodka burned up my throat, and I tasted bile on my tongue.

  We watched each other. My aunt’s brow was furrowed, her face creased with worry.

  “I’m afraid you’re not well, my dear Leonie,” she said, sickly sweet. False. Everything about my aunt was just a bit off, I realized. I was more comfortable calling her Captain Lind than Aunt Freja, always had been. There was a lingering coldness in every interaction, buried beneath a veneer of charm. Most people didn’t see it, but I always had.

  “You killed her.”

  I’d barely whispered it, but it was as if I had shouted. My aunt flinched, and her mask melted away.

  “Don’t be so dramatic. It was an unfortunate accident.” She chewed on the word “unfortunate,” like it was funny.

  “What did you do?”

  She narrowed her eyes to slits. “You really want to know?”

  “Yes.” My voice was hoarse, throat tight as I choked back tears.

  “I simply pushed a button. Let fate decide. If my sister was swimming when the gravity failed . . . I hadn’t really done anything. Just pushed a button.”

  “You’re a monster.”

  The shrug she gave was infuriatingly nonchalant. “I’m a survivor. I take care of myself, and my ship.”

  “I’m going to tell everyone,” I said, barely restrained fury vibrating through me.

  “Will you?” She held my gaze as she flicked her wrist, sending Elliot’s wrist tab flying into the pool. “Technology is so fragile.”

  “I still have the note.”

  “That note doesn’t prove anything. You’re grasping at straws. You have nothing. And I have everything.”

  “Aunt Freja—”

  “Call me Captain,” she snapped coldly. The force of it set me off-balance; I fell back a step, then two. She came closer a step, then two. Her gray-blue eyes were flat and uncaring. “Tell me, are you still afraid of the pool?”

  “Wh-why?” I stammered, inching back. She inched forward.

  “You should never have come here. You could have just let me have what I wanted.” She sighed heavily, as if the weight of the world rested on her shoulders. “Leo, I’m sorry.”

  “About wh—”

  And then she pushed me into the pool.

  Thirty-Two

  My voluminous ball gown weighed me down like an anchor. I sank down, down, down into the deep, dark water, terror thumping through every inch of my body. I screamed, choking against the chlorinated water. My legs kicked fruitlessly against the twisting, heavy folds of my gown as I furiously pumped my arms up and out, trying to synchronize between arms, legs, everything to pull myself back up. I knew how to swim, God dammit, but my dress was a vise. I couldn’t get up. I couldn’t breathe. I opened my eyes, blinking against the burn of the chlorine, desperate to orient myself, but I couldn’t see the walls or a ladder. Just watery blue dimpled with the yellowed haze of the pool lights.

  I kicked harder, tried holding half my skirt up and away from my legs while I used the other arm to paddle up. I managed only to spin in place, tipping forward like an upset top. I was useless in this dress and running out of oxygen.

  I was going to die.

  My lungs burned, and then I gasped, inhaling more water. I couldn’t help it; my body desperately wished to breathe. Pain radiated through me. My vision went black.

  . . . And then, suddenly, white. I was coughing up water, retching onto my side, and someone was speaking a litany of “Leo”s into my ear, telling me he loved me and I wasn’t allowed to die. Elliot. I pawed weakly at his chest.

  “Aunt—” I croaked, trying to get up but barely making it an inch off the ground. I felt as if concrete had been poured throughout my body. I was one with the ground now.

  “Klara got her. She’s impressively strong, and has a mean right hook.”

  I rolled over, squinting to focus on the near distance. Ten feet away, my cousin had her mom pinned, arms behind her back. It looked like she’d tied her up with towels?

  “Klara, honey, this is ridiculous. Your cousin tripped and fell in. Let me go,” Captain Lind pleaded with her daughter, squirming against her restraints. As the shock of near drowning faded, my brain clicked back to something vital.

  “The wrist tab, El. She threw it in the pool. The recording’s gone.”

  “Shhh, it’s fine. I was recording a live backup. Ben should be here any moment with Miranda Fairfax. It’s all going to be okay.”

  I heard the captain curse under her breath at the mention of “live backup.” But then she laughed. “Mutually assured destruction,” she singsonged in my direction.

  “Help me up,” I ordered, using his arms to leverage myself to sitting. Elliot slung a towel over my shoulders and another around my torso, then hugged me close, surely soaking himself in the process. He rubbed warm circles on my back, and I exhaled into his embrace. Elliot had a copy of the recording, so my aunt’s dual-pronged confession was immortalized. Every part of it.

  “Elliot, did you listen to it? She talked about you and the blac
k market. We can’t turn in that recording without compromising you.”

  He blanched but remained resolute. “We’ll cross that bridge then. You got her on stealing your invention, though?”

  I nodded. “And confessing to killing my mother. She triggered the gravity failure in the pool. It wasn’t an accident.” Elliot reeled back as if struck. Klara gasped, then cursed.

  “Ow!” Captain Lind cried out.

  “I’ll hit you again if you don’t shut up. Your sister, Mom? Really? And you blackmailed Elliot into marrying me? You’re disgusting.”

  I had never liked my cousin so much as I did in this moment. But then a sob broke through me, the enormity of it crashing down all over. I was wrung out. There was so much to do, but all I wanted to do was sleep. Or cry. Or both. Right now, being held was enough. Elliot pressed me tighter to him, and I gripped his now-damp suit jacket.

  “All the more reason we must turn over the recording, so she’s punished,” he husked in my ear. “I don’t care what happens to me, as long as you’re safe.” He planted a kiss on my temple. My chest swelled with warmth, and my stomach did a queasy flip. I couldn’t lose Elliot again, not after all this. The best-case scenario was jail. The worst . . . I didn’t want to think about it. My mind was skittering a million miles an hour, grasping for a solution, willing me to spring into action, but my body was spent.

  “Can we deal with it in the morning?” I asked. “I need to sleep. After I get dry and warm.”

  “I can’t get her down to the brig by myself,” Klara said, mostly to Elliot. “But I do have bio-lock access, since I’m her apprentice. We can lock her up until tomorrow. Let her stew.”

  “When I get out of this, I will throw you out of a goddamn airlock,” Captain Lind hissed. “All of you.”

  “What by the moon is going on here?”

  Miranda Fairfax stormed in, my sister, Ben, Daniel, and Evgenia filing in behind her. My sister broke away toward me, click-clacking across the tile, her red gown billowing behind her like an old-fashioned movie star’s.

  “Leo, oh, my God, what happened? Are you all right?” Carina collapsed breathlessly beside me, pulling me into a crushing hug.

  “It’s a party, and everyone is here,” I joked limply as Elliot retreated. I groaned into her shoulder as I realized I would have to tell her the truth about our mother and aunt. I couldn’t bear to do it tonight, not now. “I’m fine,” I said. “I’ll be fine.”

  “I hope you have a good reason for having the captain tied up?” Miranda grilled Klara and Elliot, who had joined them. She seemed more perplexed than upset. Ben took over from Klara the task of holding Lind in place. I wanted to listen to their conversation, actively participate, but then I was swamped by Evgenia and Daniel, who joined Carina in her fussing. Evgenia instructed Daniel to pick me up off the ground and get me into a chair, stat. And she sent Carina flying to the back of the room to grab more towels.

  “We have to get you dry,” Evgenia said, attempting futilely to use the two soaked towels to dry me further. “You’ll get sick. Should we take you to the med bay?”

  I shook my head. “I’m shaken, but not ill.”

  Carina returned with more towels, which Evgenia swapped out. She had to use more than one, as Elliot had. The stock towels at the pool didn’t even wrap around me.

  “What happened?” Daniel asked, sitting down on the lounge chair across from me. Evgenia and Carina perked up at the question. They wanted to know too. The mere thought sent a wave of exhaustion through me. I gestured loosely in the direction of the crowd where Miranda was currently holding court.

  “—​stole Leo’s invention. We have the patent, and her confession on audio,” Elliot was just finishing saying. “She tried to drown Leo too.” He darted a glance in our direction, eyes landing on my sister. “And there’s more, but it’s complicated. We can talk about it in full detail in the morning, if that’s all right with you.”

  Miranda pinched the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger, giving an exasperated sigh. “Fine, we can reconvene in the morning to discuss business. Mr. Carmichael, Miss Lind, I will put you in charge of seeing Freja to and from the brig. Just have her on the bridge at nine a.m. sharp.”

  “Miranda, this is ridiculous, you can’t possibly—” Captain Lind started, but Miranda cut her off with a sharp glare.

  “You’ll address me as Commander Fairfax and show me due respect. In fact, you know what? I am stripping you of your captain title, pending an investigation. Your daughter will serve as captain in the interim.”

  “But there’s an election tomorrow—”

  “You mean your play at fascism disguised as democracy?” Miranda snapped. “Postpone it. Klara can run for your seat; I don’t care.” With one last nod at Ben, Miranda left.

  “Uh, wow, okay, I was not expecting that,” Daniel said. I couldn’t help but laugh, which turned to a cough as pain shot through my center. My lungs had not yet recovered enough to handle spontaneous spirited reactions.

  “Come on, Mother, let’s go.” Klara tugged on her mother’s still-tied arms. “And because I love you, we’re going to leave you in that ball gown alllll night. I know how much you value appearances.”

  She and Ben frogmarched the captain toward the exit, onward to the brig. I didn’t even know we had a jail on board, but Klara seemed confident in her direction as they went off. Then they paused at the entranceway, and my cousin threw one last, contemplative look over her shoulder at me. Sadness, apology, pity—any one of those could have described it, but I wasn’t sure. In the end, she just nodded at me and moved on.

  Elliot came over to the lounge chairs, and I budged over so he could sit next to me. He tucked a damp strand of loose hair behind my ear and threaded his fingers through mine.

  “Can you walk down to the Sofi?”

  “You definitely can’t carry me,” I quipped.

  “Shush, I totally could. But I don’t think you’d want me to.”

  “Oh,” Daniel said softly from across the way. “Right. Okay.”

  Panic, then guilt sluiced through me. I hadn’t wanted him to find out like this.

  “Daniel, I—”

  “No, no, it’s okay. I understand.” He moved to get up. “We’ll talk tomorrow. Get some rest.” Daniel didn’t linger to deliver or receive any more platitudes. My stomach twisted with guilt.

  “I’ll go see that he’s all right,” Evgenia said, standing. “Even though I’m still not entirely sure what happened here. But I’ll take the rescuing and the handholding as good news?”

  Elliot put his arm around me, and I leaned my head against his shoulder. It was like coming home.

  “Oh, yay!” Carina exclaimed with a clap. “You two stopped being stubborn idiots!”

  “Hey, I had very good reasons to be a stubborn idiot,” I defended lightly. Evgenia snorted a laugh before excusing herself again to catch up with Daniel.

  I looked at my sister and sighed resignedly. She was going to learn some harsh truths in the next twenty-four hours, about Ben’s business and our mom’s death. “I will tell you all about it later,” I said. “But right now, I really do need sleep.”

  Elliot on one side and Carina on the other kept me steady as we made our way slowly but surely down to the Sofi. At the bedrooms, I hesitated. Where was I going to sleep?

  “Come on,” Elliot said, taking me over from Carina and steering us toward my bedroom. Also now his bedroom. Our bedroom?

  “I’ll be downstairs if you need me,” Carina said, stealing me away for one last hug. “Love you, Leo.”

  “Love you, too.” I squeezed her tight. “Don’t forget to hang up your dress so it doesn’t wrinkle.” I left her with one last bit of levity, a balm for the news to come.

  The door to my bedroom closed behind Elliot and me, and the final snick of it closing popped something inside me, like a pin pricking a balloon. I deflated against the wall, sliding down until I was sitting, engulfed by damp fabric and the crushing w
eight of the last half-hour. Elliot moved in next to me, taking my hand again.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “I don’t know.” I filled my aching lungs to the brim with air, then exhaled slowly. Just breathing, being alive, nearly made me cry.

  “Elliot, I’m scared for you. Miranda’s going to find out about your business when she listens to that recording tomorrow.”

  “She already knows,” he said. “Ben told me. He explained it all to her. He knew about Lind’s blackmail and thought if he was straight with Miranda, something could be worked out.”

  I groaned. “How could he be so stupid? Elliot, what are we going to do?”

  “Miranda wants in, the same deal Lind wanted,” he said quietly. “She wants the black-market operation running through the Lady Liberty. Ben said we’d talk about it tomorrow.” Elliot focused intently on his fingers, which he was meticulously kneading together. “You were right,” he said after a minute. “I can’t control this. If someone as big as Miranda Fairfax wants a piece, after Lind was willing to blackmail me . . . I’m no Robin Hood. I should have listened to you sooner. I have to give up the business.”

  My heart thudded in my ears as I processed this new information. Elliot was safe. He wouldn’t be arrested or killed. All because I was right about the inherent corruption in the thing he loved. It was a Catch-22. He was heartbroken, though he would be free. But could I really be happy with him, with myself, if he was miserable?

  “Miranda seems all right to me,” I said, turning it over in my mind as I spoke. “My mother adored her family. The Lady Liberty is a good ship, right? She spearheaded the usefulness measure, even though it worked against her own ship’s interests. She has to be good. Maybe she’s the best and only way to make the black market work?”

  “Leo . . .”

  “No, hear me out. I don’t want you to have to give up what you love.”