This spoiled woman had everything, and she’d walked away from the whole damn galaxy. What made her run? She wondered if Eris had told the truth about losing someone. That question had kept Clo up at night, those first days in the Novantae hospital, numb below the waist as they fixed the remnants of her leg.

She’d decided it was a lie.

“Nothing.” Clo turned her head. She slid the ship into a perfect place in the asteroid belt and unbuckled the chair’s straps. “You didn’t see much of the slums, did you?”

Eris flattened her lips. “If this is another dig—”

“Assumption.” Clo stood. “And I’m guessing a correct one. The Snarl was only something that ruined the pretty view from your floating palace when there was a break in the clouds.”

“Floating palace,” Eris murmured with a bitter laugh. “Yes, I suppose it must have looked like paradise to you.”

Clo’s expression hardened. “There was so much gold on that building that it heated the ground below. Sometimes, it melted the pavement, if the light went through glass.” She glanced again out the window as they flew closer and closer to her former home. “Don’t try to make this mission into a bonding thing. We may have both spent time on Myndalia, but you don’t know a fluming thing about where I lived.”

“I’d watch your assumptions,” Eris said, coolly. “I may not have stayed there, but I did go down to the Snarl. I killed one of my brothers there.”

Uncertain of how to respond, Clo focused on their landing point.

Most of Myndalia wasn’t solid enough to build upon, and what little land there was wasn’t exactly habitable. Arable land was used for farming food Clo had barely been able to afford on her mother’s meager benefits. Most of the planet was nothing but swamp and bogs parents warned their children about. Monsters lived down beneath the water, they whispered in the night, and loved to snatch tender morsels. Clo had never seen anything bigger than the fishes, but the tales had worked. She’d always kept to dry land.

The planet looked beautiful from above, all green, blue, and purple swirls, like a marble Clo had stolen from the market half her lifetime earlier. The parts of the planet not covered in swamps were rich in natural resources. The Empire grew crops and exotic fruits, enough food to feed dozens of other planets.