Free Flame by Amy Kathleen Ryan Page B

face so that her golden hair hid her profile, but he could see in her weighted posture that she felt the loss of their home, too. “Why didn’t you come back with Waverly?”
    She sighed, long and heavy. “It’s not always easy…” She stopped to laugh at herself, shaking her head.
    “What?”
    “I don’t know how this will sound…”
    “Go ahead,” he prodded.
    “It’s not always easy…” She paused and raked her hair with her fingers. “Looking the way I do. I stand out. I always have. My hair, my eyes. People comment. And for someone shy like me, who doesn’t like to be noticed…”
    Kieran remembered when Felicity was just starting to bloom into womanhood, Captain Jones had walked into their physics class to speak briefly with their teacher, and on his way out his eyes had wandered over Felicity in a way that Kieran hadn’t understood. She had drooped under his leer, hiding behind her hair, back bent to make herself small. In fact, she was sitting that same way now.
    “On the Empyrean,” she said, looking at her hands, “I couldn’t always escape the looks, or…” She swallowed as though she felt sick. “Or the hands.”
    He wanted to touch her then, a reassuring hand on her shoulder, but nothing could be more inappropriate.
    “Here,” she said, straightening up as though throwing off the memories, “people still look, and they comment. But it doesn’t feel so…” She sucked in a breath and finally brought her eyes up to his. He could see her lashes were wet. “Predatory.”
    “Felicity…”
    “I always wondered why they chose me and not Waverly.”
    “You can’t think like that,” he said to her, and this time he did touch her very briefly on the shoulder. “You’re not responsible for someone else being a pig.”
    She smiled then. “You’re right. I know it. I just don’t know it all the way yet.”
    He watched her, wishing he knew how far it had gone, how much she’d suffered, but she’d said as much as she wanted to and pushing her wouldn’t be fair. So he sat next to her, holding his cup of juice, looking out the porthole at the stars.
    “I’m also supposed to extend an invitation,” she said. “The Pastor would like you to come visit her this morning, if you’re up to it.”
    “Visit,” he said with an angry laugh.
    “She claims it’s your choice,” Felicity said. “She told me your guards would escort you to her office.”
    “Now?”
    “I think so, yes,” Felicity said. She seemed as puzzled by the invitation as he was.
    “Should I go?”
    “What’s the saying?” She set her juice down and stood up. Was she leaving already? He stood, too. “Know your enemy.”
    He nodded, confused.
    “I’d better go,” she said as she backed away from him. “I’ve got lots of stops to make.”
    “Okay,” he said, but he didn’t want her to leave. “Will you come back?”
    She smiled, gave a single nod. “Sure.”
    He walked her to the door and, as he leaned to open it for her, became aware of a light fragrance of crushed rose petals that permeated her hair. He breathed it in as she walked past him and out the door.
    The guard standing outside his door jerked his head toward the elevator. “Ready?”
    Kieran angrily followed the man to the elevator, staring with loathing at the bald spot on the back of his head. Would he always be surrounded by men with guns?
    “Thank you for coming on such short notice,” Mather said, standing up from her desk chair as he hesitated outside her office.
    With a half glance over his shoulder at the guard who brought him, Kieran stepped into the woman’s office and took the chair she offered. The guard stayed just outside the door, his hand on the butt of his gun. Mather smoothed her tunic with hands that fluttered over the fabric as though looking for a safe place to land. They finally settled, fingers woven, on the desk before her. She looks like a helpless grandmother, he thought, but that’s not what she