Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 77692 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 311(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77692 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 388(@200wpm)___ 311(@250wpm)___ 259(@300wpm)
There, I find my own empty.
Again, I am alone.
So, is this freewill I now have to make my own choices just a game that Halun intends to use to manipulate me in a new way? Or does he truly mean it?
Only time will tell. Which is, apparently, exactly what he intends to give me. Time, that is. I heard once, long ago, how time tends to make the heart grow fonder.
We’ll see.
*
It isn’t until our travel to a faraway planet has nearly come to an end that I start to believe Halun was serious about keeping his distance unless I stated otherwise. And, that he had no ulterior motives when he did so. The handful of times he and I did end up in the same room together were typically circumstances that couldn’t be helped, or, because I actively sought him out.
Not that I ever admitted as much.
I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that he was serious as I gaze upon the ship’s information panel listing the day’s events and showing the remaining path we have left to travel at the very top. At least two rests, by the looks of it.
“Do you want to paint today?” I ask Zarah, referring to one of the options for entertainment that she and I can find in the common rooms.
“Maybe,” she says. “If we could take the supplies back, do you think?”
I smile over my shoulder at her. “I’m sure we can figure it out.”
Personally, given how uncomfortable Zarah is in large crowds and closed quarters, I think she’s done exceptionally well on the ship. We’ve only had a couple of incidents that left her in an anxious fit, but nothing that we couldn’t handle together. I don’t think her unease stems from the many males around us now, like it did at first, and instead, their very presence. The size of them often looms behind or above her and Zarah panics before she’s even realized she’s done it. Which often leaves her, and whatever Hallan unlucky enough to have stepped in her path, feeling guilty for a situation neither of them is at fault for.
She just needs time.
It took a lot of it to teach her to be afraid, and it will take more of it to help her understand that she no longer needs to be.
So, if painting in her room is what she wants …
“Let’s go see what we can find for food first,” I say, finally turning away from the screen.
Zarah waits for me with a smile. “Looks like we’re almost there, huh?”
Having stared enough at the screen for one morning, I don’t look back at it again at her mention. “I guess so.”
“Are you excited?”
“I should be asking you that,” I reply.
Zarah shrugs. “I’m a given. All I think about is my daughter’s face. You, on the other hand … Well, that’s a whole other story. I think you talk too much about Earth to be spending much time thinking about Hallalah.”
Fair enough.
I’m just not sure what I am, now.
I do know one thing I’m not, and that’s happy. But whose fault is that?
“Come on,” I say to Zarah, not wanting to wallow in my thoughts or the reasons why, “let’s go get something to eat.”
She follows alongside me as we make our way from High Deck to the dining hall a level below. On the elevator ride down that we share with the Hallan guard who keeps us company, Zarah hums and rocks back and forth on the spot before stopping altogether, and glancing at me.
“What?” I ask.
“How long has it been since Halun visited you?”
“I just saw him yesterday, actually.”
“In the High Royal Suites?”
The question makes me clench my teeth. “Well, no.”
He rarely, if ever, makes his presence known to me there. Only in passing in the hallway if he’s coming back to the bunk he now uses and I am coming out or returning to the one we used to share. If I speak first, then he’ll return the conversation as much as I’ll indulge, but otherwise, he’s fine to let me pass him by in the hallway with nothing more than a nod and a quiet hello.
“Where, then?”
Her sudden questioning makes me suspicious, especially as I didn’t share the impasse at which Halun and I found ourselves, but it could just be that Zarah senses something isn’t right with me. I’d be lying if I said it was—that nothing weighs me down, not even in my thoughts.
But that’s a bold lie.
I think about Halun a lot. More than I should. Most definitely when I am alone, but even in a room full of people, I find myself lonely and looking for a face that isn’t there. The very face I proclaimed I didn’t want.
Hell, I even miss fighting with him.