Amid Stars and Darkness

by Chani Lynn Feener

  “That’s not what happened,” he argued. “You asked me to betray the Basileus, knowing full well what the consequences of that betrayal would be, not just for the both of us, but for everyone else.” He shook his head. “You still don’t get it, do you? What you put everyone through? What you put Delaney through?”

  “She looks fine to me.” Olena stared at her. “You’re lucky, you know.”

  “Because you turned me into a princess?” she asked incredulously.

  “No.” She blinked back obvious tears. “Your picture’s all over the news in Maine. Has been since your disappearance. Your parents really love you.”

  Delaney stilled, feeling sick to her stomach for multiple reasons. She was immediately excited that she’d get to see them soon. At the same time, she understood what Olena was trying to tell her, after having been in the company of both of her parents.

  “Your situation isn’t ideal,” she agreed. “That doesn’t make what you did right.”

  The Lissa clucked her tongue, the sound somehow coming off malicious instead of childish, like it would on anyone else over the age of five. “It was right for me, and that’s the only thing that matters.” She turned to Ruckus suddenly, clearly dismissing Delaney. “Tell your man to let me go. I’m starting to bruise.”

  “Good,” Pettus said, and snorted, immediately clearing his throat when she set her glare on him.

  “You’re not even sorry a little bit, are you?” Delaney wasn’t exactly surprised, but it would have been nice to see some regret. There was only the bitterness and the fear.

  “Why are you even still here?” Olena took a threatening step closer, only to be yanked back. “You’ve used up your usefulness. Someone”—she addressed the room with an air of misguided authority—“get her out of here.”

  “My thoughts exactly.” Ruckus motioned toward the guy holding her. “You know what to say when you get there, Mazus?”

  “Yes.” The man nodded. “I’m more concerned with whether or not she does.” He shook Olena hard enough that her teeth clattered for emphasis.

  “What I’m going to say,” she threatened, “is that you lot kidnapped me and placed an imposter in my stead!” She waved her entire hand at Delaney.

  “Hey.” She crossed her arms over her chest, not the least bit offended. “You chose me.”

  “You’re the person I happened to run into,” Olena corrected. “That’s all.”

  So, basically, it’d been a matter of coincidence that had gotten Delaney into this mess. Great. Somehow, hearing aloud that Olena hadn’t planned this all out, hadn’t selected Delaney and watched her or followed her or any of that, helped drive home what everyone had been telling her from the very start.

  “You’re not very clever,” she asked rhetorically, “are you?”

  “No, she isn’t.” Ruckus stepped forward, ignoring the reddening of Olena’s checks. “If she were, she would already know by now that saying anything about where she’s actually been—or about your having to take her place this whole time—would be suicide.”

  “My parents would never—”

  “But Trystan would.” Delaney watched the first shimmer of panic enter Olena’s dark eyes. “If Trystan ever found out that you deliberately tricked him, he’d be furious. If he ever found out that other people knew, meaning he’d basically embarrassed himself by believing it this whole time? He’d be murderous. You and I both know it’s true.”

  “Mazus is going to take you back to Vakar, where you are going to pretend like none of this ever happened,” Ruckus said, drawing the attention back his way. “You were here the whole time. Someone will brief you on your way there so that your lies can hopefully be somewhat feasible. For once.”

  “What do you mean, Mazus is bringing me?” Olena said, and huffed.

  “I’m staying here.”

  “You’re not coming with me?!” A panic settled in her high-pitched voice. Olena was clearly frantic now. “You can’t be serious! I need you!”

  “That’s not what was implied when you sent a stranger in your place to trick me,” Ruckus responded in an almost bored tone.

  Absently, Delaney shifted closer to him, stilling when Olena’s eyes homed in on the move and darkened even more. If she wasn’t mistaken, the girl’s bottom lip was quivering. Much of the earlier bravado the Lissa had been trying to give off was slipping away.

  “You are my Ander,” Olena reminded him, poorly attempting to keep it together. “It’ll be suspicious if you’re not with me when I return to Xenith. You have to escort me back. You don’t have a choice.”

  “Actually,” Delaney said, “he has to escort me back. To Earth, that is.” She turned to Ruckus. “You do have a choice, though. I mean, if you’d rather—”

  “I told you I would get you home,” he interrupted. “That was always the plan.” Then to Mazus: “That’s definitely Olena. You can take her now.”

  “You have got to be kidding me!” Olena yelled. The Tellers began dragging her back toward the doors, and her expression turned more frantic. “You can’t do this! Ruckus! Ruckus, I can’t go back there! Ru—”

  “Lucky travels, Ander Ruckus,” Mazus said respectfully, though his voice was barely heard. The whooshing of the metal door opening mingled with Olena’s loud and vocal struggles as they headed back to the other spaceship.

  Once the sounds finally stopped, Delaney let out a breath she hadn’t noticed she’d been holding. Beneath her, the floor vibrated, and she assumed that was a sign the other ship was detaching from theirs.

  “We’ll be on our way in a moment,” Pettus told them. Then he asked her, “Do you need anything?”

  She shook her head, still trying to sort through her feelings.

  “I’ll be in the cockpit,” he informed Ruckus, waiting for the Ander to nod his agreement before moving off.

  Once they were alone again, Ruckus took her hand and squeezed. “How are you doing?”

  “I guess I just feel a little bad for her,” she said softly.

  He quirked a dark brow. “Even after meeting her?”

  She thought about it, then said, “Yes. She’s awful, don’t get me wrong, but I did spend some time with Trystan and Magnus, and they aren’t great, either. And now she won’t even have you there with her as a buffer.”

  He frowned down at her. “Did you want me to go with her?”

  “Absolutely not.” Her fingers tightened around his. Just the suggestion made her stomach twist painfully.

  “Good.” He let out a relived sigh but seemed unsure all of a sudden. “As soon as we’re close to Earth, we’ll use the device to change you back. Then Fawna will drop us off. Pettus and Gibus will return to Xenith, and hopefully once they get there, it’ll be to find that Olena has successfully reintegrated.”

  Delaney paused, thinking she must have misheard him. When he only stared back at her, waiting, she blinked.

  “I don’t…?” She let her words trail off, not wanting to jump to conclusions. “Drop us off?”

  “Unless, of course, you object?”

  “I…” She shook her head, stopped, and inhaled before trying again. “You want to come with me, to Earth?”

  “Yes.”

  “Like, to make sure I make it home?” That sounded strange, even to her own ears. That couldn’t be it, not unless he was interested in wasting his time. The other option, however …

  “No,” he said, and licked his lips, “to stay with you. Hopefully at your home, but I could always rent an apartment, if you’d rather.”

  “You want to stay with me? On Earth?” The corner of his mouth twitched and she realized how ridiculous she sounded, practically repeating herself. “How? Don’t you need to go back to Xenith? Won’t you get in trouble?”

  “Actually, no,” he said. “I never took my right of passage.”

  A moment later it clicked, and her eyes widened. “You want to go on your denzeration.”

  “I do,” he said, holding her gaze, “but only if you
want me to. If you don’t, I’ll go back with Pettus and Gibus. And I’ll understand, Delaney. After everything you’ve been through, if you never want to see another alien again, including me, I’ll under—”

  Her mouth smacked against his, cutting him off. He was so tall, she’d had to leap a little just to be able to kiss him, her arms locked around his neck to hold them close even as his circled her thin waist. She felt him smiling against her a second before he moaned as she deepened the kiss.

  “You probably should have waited,” she said then, but she couldn’t get the right amount of seriousness in her tone. He was coming with her. She didn’t have to say good-bye.

  “For what?”

  “You know what.” She pulled back and gave him a blank look. “Is this a bad time to tell you I’m horribly disfigured?”

  He chuckled. “You’re making jokes about it now. That’s good. Does this mean you finally believe I’m interested in the you you?”

  With a huge wave of relief, she realized it did.

  * * *

  “READY?”

  “Are you ready?” She took a deep breath. They were back in Ruckus’s room, the one she’d woken up in, just the two of them.

  Gibus had handed over the device and gone back to working on some invention in his lab. He’d clearly wanted to stay and see his handiwork in action, but one pointed look from Ruckus had changed his mind.

  Ruckus was currently aiming the silver contraption at her. He’d been shown how to get it to work, and seemed pretty confident in his abilities. Yet as badly as she wanted to be herself again, that old nervousness had returned tenfold. She believed that he meant it when he said he wanted her, but …

  “Last chance,” she warned.

  “To do what?” he countered. “Not know what my girlfriend actually looks like? Delaney, if you can’t trust me enough to really see you, we don’t need five years to figure us out.”

  He was right, which made her stick her tongue out at him like a child. Sometimes a little humor went a long way, and when he rolled his eyes with a smile, she felt some of the tension ease.

  “All right.” She took another deep breath and squeezed her eyes shut. “Do it.”

  It wasn’t supposed to hurt—hell, she wouldn’t feel a thing, seeing as how, physically, nothing had really changed about her. She felt a slight breeze burst her way, and then nothing. After a moment she began shifting her feet impatiently. When nothing else happened, she popped open an eye, then both when she realized he was staring at her.

  “What?” She gulped. “Did it not work?”

  “No,” he croaked, clearing his throat immediately and rushing on before she could get the wrong idea. “I mean, yes, it worked. It’s just … wow.” He slowly made his way to her, as if afraid to spook her, and lifted a hand to her head. He took a strand of her hair and ran it between his fingers.

  When she glanced down and saw that the locks he held were red, she almost wept with joy. Fortunately, she’d done enough crying, and not so much as a single happy tear slipped by.

  “I know you’re not used to redheads where you come from,” she said nervously. “Hell, even where I come from we tend to fall into a taste category.” She tugged her hair loose when he didn’t respond, and took a deliberate step back.

  He looked at her, and the breath whooshed out of him all over again. “Your eyes.”

  “Nothing like Olena’s. I know.” She made a face. “Also there’s the whole single-color thing.”

  “They’re beautiful,” he said breathlessly. “You’re beautiful. I know I told you that didn’t matter to me, and it didn’t, but … wow.”

  “You said that already.”

  “I’ll probably end up saying it another couple hundred times,” he confessed. He ran both of his hands through her hair, cupping the sides of her head and urging her closer. Just as their lips were about to meet, he paused, staring into her eyes intently.

  She held her breath and waited, not sure what she expected him to say. It certainly wasn’t what he did.

  “I want to go bowling,” he said.

  She blinked. “That’s … random.”

  He shook his head. “I want to try it, with you. I want to experience all the things you love to do. I want to understand firsthand why you love what you love.” He paused. “But maybe not the bungee-jumping thing.”

  “Wait.” She pulled her head back and gave him an incredulous look. “You can’t honestly be afraid of heights, can you?”

  The concept just seemed a bit ridiculous to her, considering all the dangerous things he did as an Ander. Like searching for bombers when bombs were going off, and being shot at with weapons that blast holes through people. Or Olena. Just Olena. No other description necessary.

  “Of course not,” he countered. “I don’t have any problem with being up high. It’s the falling I take issue with.”

  She laughed and then laughed even harder when she saw how serious he was.

  “I don’t know,” she said, and clucked her tongue, once she’d calmed down, “you never did take me to that 3-D movie.”

  He pressed a kiss to the curve of her jaw. “I’ll make it up to you.”

  “Impossible,” she joked. “The 3-D movies on Earth are still played on a flat-screen. Now I’ll never see one in actual 3-D, and it’s all because you never bothered to take me to one.”

  She met his gaze, only to find he wasn’t smiling anymore. Instead he was staring at her intently, yellow-green eyes roaming across her face as if trying to commit every line and contour to memory.

  “I see you, Delaney,” he whispered. “I see all of you.”

  The fact that he was looking at her like that made her breath catch. It wasn’t Olena that he was staring at like he never wanted to stop. In a few hours they’d be on Earth, both of them, and neither of them would have to pretend to be someone else there. For the first time, there was nothing between them, no reason she had to hold back.

  “Not all of me,” she said. A sudden burst of confidence hit her, and she reached for the hem of his shirt. “Not yet.”

  He blinked, then captured her mouth in one swift move. Together they toppled onto the bed, his heavy weight pressing her against the soft mattress. Allowing her to tug his shirt over his head, he reached for the silky material of the dress she’d thrown on, stopping with it already shoved up past her hip.

  Ripping his mouth away, it took him a moment to even his breathing enough to speak. “Are you sure?”

  Wrapping a hand around his firm neck, she eased him back down toward her. “You just gave up everything to give us a shot,” she reminded him, nipping at his bottom lip. “How could I not be sure?”

  He let her press their lips together once more before pulling back yet again. “Isn’t there a term for this back on your planet?”

  She frowned. “What?”

  “Sex on a plane?”

  “The mile-high club,” she said, and laughed. “This isn’t a plane, and we’re not in the sky. We’re in space.”

  “So…” He pressed his mouth against the bottom of her jaw, each word punctuated with another kiss as he trailed his way up toward her ear. “What you’re saying is, we’re starting our own club?”

  “We certainly have a unique situation,” she mused, moaning at the end. “Okay.” She redirected his lips to hers. “No more talking.”

  As their bodies came together, all her fears and doubts melted away. None of the negative stuff that had come along with this situation mattered; all that mattered was that it’d led her to Ruckus.

  They were somewhere in space between Xenith and Earth, and yet here she felt more at home than she ever had on any planet.

  EPILOGUE

  FIVE WEEKS LATER

  “Delaney!” the high-pitched cry reverberated through the apartment.

  Snapping instantly awake, she rolled out of bed, practically tripping down the hall. A thousand different nightmarish scenarios filtered through her mind as her name was called again.
The second she got to the living room, she came to a sudden standstill.

  And cursed.

  Her roommate stood next to the couch, still in her pink pajama pants with the tiny koalas on them. Her dark hair was a little messy from having just gotten up, and her eyes were hard and glaring.

  “Do you have to scream so loud this early?” Delaney rubbed at her temples, a headache sprouting.

  “I don’t know,” Mariana stated. “Does your boyfriend have to always forget where wet towels are supposed to go?” She lifted her right hand, the large, damp green cloth grazing the ground. “I stepped on this and nearly had a heart attack!”

  “You mean like the one you almost gave me with your screams?” she said. “I thought something seriously wrong had happened.”

  For a second she was about to argue, but then it must have hit Mariana what she meant and she deflated, guilt crossing over her face. “I’m sorry. You thought something alien had happened.” At the confirmed nod, she sighed. “Hun, it’s been over a month. It’s safe to say you’re in the clear. Olena didn’t give you up. Besides”—she wagged her brows—“if I had a hot alien boyfriend to protect me, I certainly wouldn’t worry.”

  “Um.” Ruckus cleared his throat from the doorway. “Thank you?”

  “Thank me by not leaving your disgusting used towels lying around!” Mariana shook the cloth again and then tossed it at him. Crossing her arms, she stared him down, clearly waiting for a response.

  Delaney had to hand it to her: She’d taken the whole thing really well. More so than her parents initially had.

  After two fantastic days with Ruckus—mostly spent in bed—they’d arrived to chaos on Earth. Olena hadn’t been kidding: Delaney’s face was all over the news, constantly being flashed as a missing person. Kidnapping was the main theory. Obviously, this posed a dilemma for them. All that time she’d spent wanting to get back home, and she’d never once thought about what she’d tell everyone once she had.

  Fortunately, considering Ruckus’s position, it was fairly easy to get government backing on their story. All he had to do was contact the liaison between Vakar and Earth, Trump Lorus, and explain the situation and how important it was to their people. He’d probably only been on the phone with the guy a total of five minutes before a couple of officers dressed in black and wearing badges had appeared at the Vakar embassy building, where they’d had Fawna drop them off.