“But waiting without knowing what’s coming is almost worse,” I complain to Lyre when we both find ourselves in the kitchen at the same time. She’s been avoiding me like the rest of my family, and the isolation is slowly driving me insane. I rip off a tasteless piece of algae with my teeth. “Maybe that’s the punishment. Waiting for something to happen, imagining what it could be, all that shit.”

“Or maybe she just doesn’t want to talk to you,” Lyre says, rummaging on the shelf to grab her own plastic-wrapped packet. “For good reason.”

“Oh, come on—” I start, but she’s already retreating to her room with her meal in hand.

After a couple more days, I decide I’ve had more than enough solitude. Approaching Momma still seems like a terrible idea, but surely my siblings can’t stay mad at me forever. So I start scheming.

Pol is the easiest to hook. The moment I offer to share some of my secret alcohol stash, he agrees to meet. Lyre is a little bit tougher, but she comes around when I tell her I’ll take her cleaning duty tomorrow. Drom, tired and cranky after a long shift at the wheel, demands I take her cleaning duty, give her a full bottle of vodka, and swap our next shifts, but finally we have a deal.

So, after Momma goes to bed, we gather in the kitchen to play our favorite game. The twins sit on one side of the table, Lyre and me on the other. Drom’s eyes are shadowed and her face drawn, but she’s smiling nonetheless, talking in a low murmur with her twin. It’s the first time I’ve seen them together on this trip.

“Whose shift is it?” Lyre asks, placing a heavy bag of dice on the table, right next to the bottle of whiskey I’ve brought to share.

“Mine,” I say, and scoff at her disapproving look. “What? I’m like, thirty seconds away from the cockpit. And we’re out in the middle of nowhere. Let’s play already.”

“You better hope Momma doesn’t wake up.”

I shrug, even as my stomach twists nervously at the thought, and pour a drink for each of us.

“This is my best bottle, so savor it,” I say, passing each person a glass.

Lyre rolls her eyes and mutters something, but tips out the colorful assortment of dice in the center of the table. Despite the tension still lingering in the room, we each scramble to grab five. Like every other game over the last three years, we ignore the extra set that remains untouched in the center, though this time my eyes linger on it. Twelve more days until we see Corvus again, and I still have no idea what Momma’s plans are.