Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 83946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
I want him.
“Sad?” he asks.
I open my eyes to look at him, and the concerned expression on his face. “Not anymore.”
He smiles, canines showing. They should scare me, but all I can think of is them dragging up my thighs as he gets closer to—
A door slams. Hard. The signal my father said he would give me for when my time was up. Bothaki’s eyes dart towards the sound, and then his body slouches with obvious disappointment.
“Leave?”
I nod. “But I will come back.”
My father will make sure of it. Surely, he doesn’t have all his information yet. I begin to stand, instantly regretting the loss of his hand on my face. He stands, too, his size towering over mine. I begin to gather the cards again, but his word stops me.
“Rayna?” he asks again.
My mother. Knowing I have no time left, and I really wouldn’t even know where to begin to speak of my mother and how she ended up where she is, I grab his hand. I show him the memories that are clearest of my mother. The ones of her in a dirty hospital gown, rocking back and forth in the broken chair, giving me a weak smile because it’s all she can muster now. But she’s so broken in these that she can’t even meet my eyes. I see the horror on his face and know that yes, he can see my memories as well. A door slams again, and I swear I can somehow hear my father demanding I leave this room right now, but I show Bothaki just a little more. Me as a child, being restrained by the servants, and reaching for my mother as soldiers dragged her away. Then, when I was finally allowed to see her a year later, I barely knew the woman sitting before me. Just as she barely recognized herself.
But just because I’m sure my father is watching, and I don’t want him to know I showed, or was able to show, Bothaki anything at all, I croak out, “Gone.”
I go to release his hand, but he tightens his grip. “Not gone.” He points to my head, and then at my chest where my heart thunders under his finger. “Here.”
Tears come to my eyes as I nod. “Here. Goodbye, Bothaki.”
“Good … bye, Selina.”
I walk out of the outer room of his cell, and through the library, looking over my shoulder this time to find him still watching me. The moment I reach the stairs, I see my father at the landing, waiting for me. I can see the rage in his eyes from here. I’m starting to think that is just always the look he will have when he sees me now.
“Get up here. Now,” he commands me.
It’s a heavy walk, knowing you’re heading towards danger, but not knowing exactly what’s to come. I’m not surprised, though, when I reach him and his hand wraps around my neck so he can slam me into the wall. My back collides with it painfully, and I begin to gasp, but it chokes off with my father’s hand tightening.
“Did you enjoy making a fool of me?” he spits into my face.
“I was … doing what you … told me to?” I wheeze out.
“I told you to touch that thing? To get so close to him?”
“I’m playing the part you’ve told me to.”
His eyes narrow, a muscle jumping in his cheek.
“What did he do? When he held your hands? He … he …. he showed you something. Did something.”
“He showed me his planet.”
His eyes light up now, and his greed for information makes his hand loosen. “And where is it?”
“I cannot know. He only showed me what it looked like.”
“What did it look like, Selina?”
“Barren. Cold. Lots of destruction. Like the photos we were shown in school of how Earth looked before The New Order restored it.”
As I hoped, this has him nodding, a thoughtful look in his eyes. “Yes, yes. Of course. It’s why he would have left the safety of his planet. What else did he show you?”
“His ship crashing here, in the water.”
I hope this bit of truth, something I couldn’t have known unless Bothaki really did show me, makes my father believe all the lies I tell.
“Yes, but why did he come here?”
“He didn’t mean to. He was just looking for a new home. He hoped he might be greeted with a welcome wherever he landed.”
My father scoffs. “You do not just get to land where you want. Not on our planet. We did not restore Earth to have it polluted with the likes of him. We cannot trust he doesn’t have intentions to call more of his kind here.”
“There are no more of his kind,” I lie. “I think maybe there was a war there. That’s why it looked the way it did. I think only he survived.”