"What could I tell them?" I say lightly, trying to ignore how badly I want to reach out, close the gap between us. "I'm just a big, dumb soldier. What do I know?"

Her lips curve a little, amused, and for the first time my heart flickers with hope. There are her dimples again. I scan her face, looking for traces of the black eye she used to have, for her fading freckles, for anything to make her mine, not theirs. "What about you, Miss LaRoux?"

"Me?" She takes a deep breath, and with a jolt I realize she's as fearful as I am. "I'm just a spoiled heiress, too traumatized to remember anything."

And then she smiles, for real, and just like on the Icarus the first night we met, it's all over. It's nothing like a smile she would have given then; it's lopsided and true, and full of anxious hope. I reach for her, on fire. For a moment I feel the curve of her mouth against mine, smiling before the hunger takes over. Then I move forward into her, and she grabs handfuls of my shirt, pulling me with her as we crash into the wall of the hallway. She's holding me in close and my hands are at her hips, her sides, framing her face as her lips part and I kiss her, my mind spinning with all the moments I thought she was gone.

But she's here, she's mine. I'm hers.

My heart's thumping when we break apart, and I lean in to rest my forehead against hers. "You want to get out of here?"

She wraps her arms around my neck, lips tugging up in a smile once more. "Think we can outrun the cameras?"

"I do have extensive training in the art of stealth and camouflage." I find I'm smiling in return, helpless.

She opens her mouth to speak, but a blinding flash from beyond the windows interrupts her and sends her reeling backward with a cry. I turn, half blinded myself despite having my back to the windows. The light sweeps on past the ship, rippling outward from the planet in a wave. Blinking away afterimages, I'm left staring at the planet itself, struggling to understand what I'm seeing.

Lines of fire are spreading over the surface of the planet like cracks in an eggsh.e.l.l, as if some ma.s.sive creature is hatching from the planet's depths. Lilac makes a low sound in her throat and grabs for my hand. The chasms widen, whole chunks of landma.s.s vanishing into fire.

There's no sound across the vacuum of s.p.a.ce, and for a long moment we stand there in eerie, utter silence, witnessing the destruction of the planet before us.

Lilac is the first to move, the first to speak. "Now no one will ever know what happened here." She swallows, gaze still fixed on the window as a series of soundless explosions eject streams of molten rock out toward the mirror-moon.

In the darkened corridor, the red-gold fire consuming the planet is reflected in Lilac's eyes, transforming them. In her face I can see the echo of the planet's destruction, the loss of the last shred of proof of everything she went through.

I wrap my arms around her, as much to rea.s.sure myself as anything. Ducking my head until her hair tickles my face, I take a long, steadying breath. "We'll know," I whisper.

We don't move from that spot, not even when the ship's engines kick in. We keep watching as the shattered planet and the remnants of its moon recede into the distance, back and back into the infinite dark. Until our eyes have to strain to see them, until they're only jagged pinp.r.i.c.ks of reflected light.

The hypers.p.a.ce drive gives its telltale whine, and Lilac leans back into me, bracing as we prepare to jump, to fold s.p.a.ce to get home faster. Home to cameras and reporters, and questions from people who'd never understand what happened to us. I haven't given up on finding answers, not yet, even if we only whisper those answers to each other.

But just now, as we wait for the engines to kick in, all of that is far away. For a moment the image before us is frozen: our world, our lives, reduced to a handful of broken stars half lost in uncharted s.p.a.ce. Then it's gone, the view swallowed by the hypers.p.a.ce winds streaming past, blue-green auroras wiping the afterimages away.

Until all that's left is us.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

WE WOULD LIKE TO THANK OUR AMAZING AGENTS, Josh and Tracey Adams, for support, sanity, and SCBs at all the right moments-we're so grateful we have you on our side! Thank you also to the foreign scouts, agents, and publishers who have helped take our book places we've never been.

Thank you to our fantastic editor Abby Ranger for taking on Lilac and Tarver's story, and teaching, challenging, and supporting us. Abby, it's truly been our pleasure every step of the way (and thank you to Sylas, for sharing his mom!). Many thanks as well to the wonderful Laura Schreiber for editorial excellence and geeking out with us whenever necessary.

We also want to thank Emily Meehan for asking for us. We're excited to be with you, and can't wait to see what's in store.

Many thanks to the Disney-Hyperion family-from sales, marketing, and publicity, to our copy editors and design team, we're so grateful to be working with you. Thanks in particular to Suzanne Murphy, Stephanie Lurie, Dina Sherman, Jamie Baker, and Lizzie Mason, Lloyd Ellman, Elke Villa, Martin Karlow, Monica Mayper, and Sarah Cha.s.se. Thank you to Whitney Manger and Tom Corbett for our beautiful cover!

Sarah J. Maas and Susan Dennard-we're so lucky to have you as friends and critique partners, and we thank you so much for both! Lots of love. Kat Zhang and Olivia Davis, thank you for being right there when we needed you. Thank you to Mich.e.l.le Dennis for never being tired of reading just one more time, and for boundless (and often tasty) support. You're irreplaceable.

We're so grateful to the other amazing people in the writing community who have helped us along the way. Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman, our Story G.o.dmothers-thank you for the push we needed! Jeanne, Corry, and everyone at Odyssey, your support means the world.

Beth Revis, Marie Lu, and Jodi Meadows: thank you for championing our book and being our cheerleaders at all the right moments. You're awesome.

To our Leading Ladies: Alison Ward, Amanda Ellwood, Ben Brown (though he's no lady), Dixie McCartney, Kacey Smith, Marri Knadle, and Soraya Een Hajji, thank you for lessons in storytelling we couldn't have found anywhere else, and treasured friendships.

Thank you to ship's science officer Ben Ellis and ship's demolitions expert Nic Crowhurst for helping us crash things and blow them up (all errors are our own), and to ship's doctor Kate Irving for reading, critique, medical advice, too many bushwalks to count (mostly without survival situations attached), and so many years of extraordinary friendship.

Thank you to our brilliant support networks: the ladies of Pub(lishing) Crawl, the Lucky 13s, the team at FOS, the Roti Boti gang, Jay Kristoff, the TJ/UVA/extended NoVA group, the Plot Bunnies of Melbourne, and the awesome YA writers of Washington, DC. Thank you to our fantastic friends, who never mind when we scribble on napkins, bring our laptops everywhere, or slip out because our co-author just woke up on the other side of the world.

And finally, thank you to our families for their love, enthusiasm, and encouragement. We're so grateful to you all. In particular, thank you to our parents for unstinting encouragement and filling our lives with books, and Flic and Josie, for being our earliest partners in imagination. Thanks to our extended families-the Cousins clan, the Miskes and our own Mr. Wolf. And last, but not least, thank you, Brendan. It would've been a Ma.s.sive Crash without you.

Don't miss the next novel in the Starbound Universe:.

This Shattered World.

end.