“Both. It’s shit. It’s all shit. I don’t want it to be like this anymore.” Her voice quavers, and she drinks rather than continuing. I sigh as the bottle passes back into my hands.

“It doesn’t have to be.” It’s hard to say it, hard to open myself up again when all she’s done since my return is hurt me over and over again. But she’s drunk, and she probably won’t remember the details of this conversation in the morning, and I can’t stop myself from trying. “I miss the way things were. I want to fix them. But I have to know that you’re telling the truth.”

Scorpia takes a long time to respond, chewing her lip and staring at the bottle still in my hands.

“See, this is how broken we are. Here I am trying to fix shit, and you accuse me of being a liar.” She snatches the bottle from my hand. “Go to bed, Corvus. That’s an order.”

With the harshness of her tone and the dim lighting of the cargo bay, for a brief flicker in time it feels like I’m staring at Momma’s ghost.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Trust

Scorpia

My dreams bring me back to Nibiru. Vivid recollections of floating on my back in an endless ocean and watching clouds roll across a red sky; of the twins laughing and splashing each other while Corvus taught Lyre how to clean a fish; of peaceful days blurring into quiet nights, all of us stuffed together on a ratty mattress inside our little houseboat.

But inevitably, the dreams turn to screams and panicked crowds, to an alien shimmer in the air, to stillness and silence blanketing an entire planet. I wake up soaked in sweat, and bite my knuckles to hold back a sob.

What have I agreed to? Why does it have to be Nibiru? Leonis never explained, and I wasn’t in a place to question. I suppose it doesn’t matter anyway. It’s not like it would change anything. I told Leonis we were willing to do whatever she asked, and now it’s time to prove it, for the sake of my brother.

By the time I roll out of bed, I’m more exhausted than I was when I fell into it, and my head pounds with a dawning hangover. I grab the alien vial from my nightstand and place it in my pocket, unwilling to let the thing out of my sight for a single second.