A pause. Then Kim’s voice, softer now. Almost tender.
Lina exhaled. Her hand moved before her mind caught up—tapping the ship-to-ship channel.
Not to watch the stars.
Kim had stumbled into the engine bay smelling of ozone and burnt cinnamon. Her suit was half-unsealed, her grin crooked, her eyes the color of a collapsing star’s final flash. She held out a fistful of crystallized dark matter.
She was looking for the tail .
“Where else would I go?”
Lina looked.
Lina hadn’t been complaining. She’d been calculating . Quietly. Obsessively. The way she did everything. But Kim had heard anyway—because Kim listened to the hum of the ship the way priests listen for scripture.