3

My body hasn’t had time to learn this planet’s schedule yet, but somehow I know it’s early in the morning when my eyes slide open. 

The blankets are pulled up to my chin. My body is relaxed and comfortable. It’s actually…nice. 

And I realize it’s because I have some degree of peace of mind. 

Right now, I’m not pretending to be someone or something I’m not. After weeks of hiding everything on Isroth, here, I don’t have to be anything. 

I’m just Nova. 

Across the space, just five feet away, I see Valen. He’s still asleep. He’s sprawled on his back but his head is angled toward me, giving me a full view of his face. 

He looks younger when he sleeps. I’ve done the math and figure he’s roughly five solars older than me. But he looks incredibly young in sleep. He could nearly pass for a teenager. 

His black eyelashes fan out over his cheeks. His lips are pink and soft. There aren’t any creases in his forehead, furrowed with concern. 

He just looks peaceful. 

And I have to wonder, what a different person he would have been if someone besides Cyrillius had saved him from Starvis. What kind of person would he be if it had been Zara who had found him? 

How much of what makes us us is in our nature, and how much comes from our circumstances? 

What kind of person would I be if it had been Cyrillius who had found me floating in space, instead of Torin? 

I roll out of bed knowing this thought could drive me mad, but in the end, the past doesn’t matter. It’s over. 

All that matters is that we are both trying to change our futures. 

I leave Valen to keep sleeping and head out into the mass of the ship. 

I go through the wiring beneath the Command Deck and I count it as a small victory when I find where some of them had been knocked loose, but then I’m quickly disappointed when I find those wires didn’t do anything to get the ship started again. 

Determined, I follow them, going from one end to the other. 

I find an electrical panel that has a crack in it. 

It’s something. If I can fix this, it should do something. But I know it isn’t our biggest problem. I have yet to find what that is. 

For over an hour, I’ve been up in the transformers that convert the energy of Neron into what powers the ship, looking for a glitch, when I see Valen appear in the door below me. 

“Any luck?” he asks. 

I shrug, aiming the light along the lines. Everything looks fine. “I found one issue, but I know it’s not the main issue. I’ll keep looking.” 

“Why don’t we find something to eat, first?” Valen suggests. 

As if it was pre-predicted, my stomach gives a massive growl just then. 

I clamp my hands over it in embarrassment, but Valen just laughs and extends a hand up to me, helping me climb down out of the ceiling. 

Through the ship we walk and then down the ramp. 

“It’s a lot colder this morning,” I observe. There’s dew clinging to everything, making the world glitter as the sun begins to rise to the top of the mountain to our right. 

Valen nods. “We’re at a high elevation. The temperatures dip their coldest right before the sun comes up.” 

My eyes rise up and up that mountain peak. There is white at the top of it. “What season do you think it is here?” 

There has to be seasons. There’s evidence of it all around. Leaves on the ground, snow up in the mountains, but the grasses at our feet are still green. 

“Either spring or fall,” Valen says, observing our surroundings. “It’s hard to tell right now. We should try to gauge the temperatures over the next few days.” 

“Let’s keep our fingers crossed that we’re entering spring,” I say. I’ve only ever experienced winter conditions once, on a planet during our run aboard The Corsair, and it was brutal. I’m not eager to test my survival skills while stranded on a planet plunging into winter lunars. 

Valen nods. “There’s water this way.” 

We crash landed in a valley. The mountains are closest to our right, where the sun is just breaking. But out across the valley, there are more mountains. We’re entirely surrounded. 

All around us are towering trees, both the kind that keep their leaves and needles all winter, and the kind that are barren. 

Valen cuts through the meadow of grass and aims for the tree line. I follow behind him, taking in my surroundings with wonder. 

“How similar is Kaelea to this planet?” I ask as I follow him down the narrow path between trees. 

“There’s a lot of vegetation there, so that’s similar,” Valen says as he summons a Neron spear and slices his way through the underbrush. “But Kaelea is always warm. More tropical. Three quarters of the planet is ocean.” 

Walking through all this dewy underbrush is getting me wet and it’s still quite cool this morning. It’s soaking me through. 

“I’d do just about anything for some heat right now,” I say, wrapping my arms around myself. 

And I realize that I’m still wearing a Dominion uniform. I was still pretending to work for Cyrillius when we made our break. I don’t have my own regular fingerless gloves. I’m not wearing my own heavy-duty boots. 

I certainly don’t have a coat. 

“We will go there sometime,” Valen says, looking over his shoulder at me. “Soon.” 

I smile and my heart breaks out into a skipping race. “Not if I can’t get this ship fixed.” 

“You will,” he says, and he sounds absolutely confident. 

We break through the trees and I stop at Valen’s side in absolute wonder. 

A small sandy beach stretches out before us before giving way to the pristine surface of a lake. It stretches longer than it is wide, hugging the side of the mountain. 

There, directly across from us, is a massive waterfall. It splashes as it hits ledges and rocks on its way down, creating a massive spray of mist. As the sun’s rays hit it, it forms a huge rainbow that arcs over the entire lake.