The Stars We Steal

by Alexa Donne

  But then Elliot grabbed me by the hand and pulled me almost flush against his chest, only to push me back out again. Right, we were dancing, I reminded myself. He wasn’t trying to cop a feel or initiate an intimate encounter. I forced myself to loosen up enough to be spun under his arm, let him lead. It was just like the space walk, only without the comforting barrier of full-body spacesuits.

  The song changed. Still up-tempo. I smiled in relief, but Elliot must have thought it was for him. He grinned back, shuffled closer. Suddenly my head was spinning as Elliot’s hand found the small of my back. I had forgotten that one could easily dance very close—too close—to up-tempo music, too. I never danced like this. I loathed the intimacy with strangers, the way boys in the club and at parties felt entitled to my body, used dancing as an excuse for a cheap thrill. Usually, at this point I would wrench violently away, barbs springing from my lips; I’d dress them down and put them in their place.

  But I didn’t pull away from Elliot. He wasn’t a stranger. I could feel the heat of his body against mine, but not the hard edges. Elliot was respectful to a goddamn fault. It made me want to inch closer, close the gap, take the plunge.

  “Your sister is practically asleep on my shoulder,” a voice broke through the haze. I jumped back from Elliot and turned toward the voice. There was Ben, expression sheepish, with a sleepy—or perhaps just drunk—Carina lolling against his side. “I’m going to help her get to bed.” I must have made a face, incredulous, I was sure, because he quickly continued. “No funny business, I promise. I will be a perfect gentleman.”

  “And I’m a lady!” Carina giggled, then hiccupped.

  “We’re bunking below decks. Stairs are behind the kitchen,” I instructed Ben, and then they stumbled off, leaving Elliot and me conspicuously alone.

  The music changed. Slow this time, the beat languid. Elliot smiled sheepishly, offering his hand once more. “Shall we? For old times’ sake?”

  I looked to his proffered hand, then the door. I could leave right now, escape before I did something I would regret, like spill out all my pent-up feelings that he surely couldn’t return. We were caught up in the artificial mood of the room—the fireplace, the music. That was it. This wasn’t alarmingly close to being romantic, no.

  “You think too much.” Elliot’s voice was soft, bemused . . . close. My head snapped up, and there he was, having closed the distance between us quietly and with purpose. He settled one hand on my hip and joined the fingers of his right hand with mine. Instinctively I placed my hand on his side, lightly gripping the fabric of his shirt. There it was. We were dancing—swaying, really—everything simultaneously terrifyingly intimate and frustratingly chaste.

  “You invited Nora to dinner,” he said.

  “I did.”

  “Klara’s going to give you hell for it later.”

  I shrugged, my arm moving his arm. “Let her try.”

  He led me into a little spin, then cleared his throat nervously.

  “I have to tell you something. It’s hard for me to say, and I just hope you’ll be happy for me . . .”

  My heart sank into my shoes. His prelude was prompted by asking about Nora. The song we were swaying to crystallized in my ears.

  Must have been love. But it’s over now.

  “Do you have to tell me now?” I wanted him to wait. Break my heart any other time. Let today be perfect.

  “I guess not. We can just dance.”

  So we danced. There was just enough space between our torsos to avoid impropriety, but his face was so close to mine that I could count the individual eyelashes framing his at-last-unguarded gray-blue eyes. He was staring at my lips, and I wondered if they were stained purple from the wine. The hand that held mine gripped a fraction tighter, making me suddenly painfully aware of his body, and of mine.

  “Leo . . .” he started, like he’d changed his mind about talking, but then he trailed off. He licked his lips, and I was mesmerized, pulled back in time, to when this was my normal. To when Elliot was my world. When kissing him was everything. I leaned forward a fraction of an inch.

  I could feel the heat of his breath on my face, smell the sweet, earthy musk from the whiskey. Wait, how drunk was he? My eyes darted up to his eyes—there was a wink to them, but they were clear enough. This wasn’t a mistake. Or I prayed it wasn’t. I needed this. A perfect day. I parted my lips, went to close the gap, and—Elliot’s head whipped back like he’d been shot through with electricity.

  “I . . .” He frowned. “I, um, need to go find Ben.” And then he left.

  I blinked at the space where he had just been, stunned. I waited a minute, then two. Elliot didn’t come back, nor did anyone else. I deflated down onto the bottle-green couch, spread my arms and legs out like a drunk starfish.

  Elliot had been going in for a kiss, right? Or was it all me? If he’d been about to confess his love for Nora to me, did that make me a horrible person? That I still loved him and wanted him for myself? I wasn’t sure of anything anymore.

  My wrist tab chirped a notification. I swiped into the Valg app and checked to find a mysterious message.

  You are over ninety percent compatible with someone!

  Say yes to more participants to find out who.

  Oh, that was just evil—forcing us to randomly accept people until we found out who had also picked us? I picked up a nearby tablet and signed into my account, opened the Valg app, and scrolled to the participant master list. The already-yeses were on the first screen, sorted by percentage. I swiped over to everyone else. The noes from speed dating were on top—I guess any engagement, even negative engagement, was weighted heavily in the app. My finger lingered on Elliot’s line, drifted over to the no button. All it would take was a quick swipe to reverse my earlier decision. See if he was the one who had matched with me over ninety percent. Had he run off to check? Say yes to me and see if I’d reversed my decision?

  Yes, no, yes, no, yes.

  Yes.

  Elliot was a yes, and I bloody knew it.

  I shut my eyes, slashed my finger across the screen. There, it was done. Carefully, I opened one eye and looked down at the screen, ready to accept my fate.

  We had a percentage score, which meant he’d said yes to me, too. It was ninety-six percent.

  Nineteen

  Ninety-six freaking percent. Elliot and I were nearly a perfect match.

  And this meant I was a yes. We were a yes. Is that what he’d been trying to tell me? Had I shut down a romantic confession? Of course, I was precisely that stubborn, wasn’t I?

  I had to find him.

  I flew from the study, through the dining room and kitchen and to the back stairs. Ben had been putting Carina to bed, so Elliot must have come down here to find him. A sound from the opposite end of the corridor stopped me short. Raised voices. Urgent, but not angry, and definitely male. Ben and Elliot. I didn’t even have to think about it before my body was heading toward the sound.

  My heart fluttered in my chest at the sound of Elliot’s voice echoing out from the open cargo-bay door, but then Ben said something that stopped it cold.

  “You can’t keep this from her anymore. This is her ship. And you brought her here. Now she’s involved.”

  “She gave me no choice.”

  “Did she, now?” Ben’s tone was wry, like he clearly didn’t believe him. “This is a good start, but you know it’s not enough,” he continued. “She might help you, if you ask her.”

  “I’m concerned that our position on board the Scandinavian has been compromised,” Elliot said. “This is all I have right now. And I want to ask her; I do. I’m just not sure.”

  I inched closer to the door, aware that now I was in the awkward position of basically eavesdropping—I’d lost my chance to barge in naturally and honestly. Now I’d have to listen and wait, even though I was desperate to shout out questions. What was Elliot keeping from me, wanting to tell me, wanting me to help with?

  “Max and Ewan going missi
ng is a huge problem,” Ben said darkly.

  “I’ll find them,” Elliot said. “I have to.”

  “Do it quickly. I’ll need more coffee, dehydrated dairy, and grains if we’re going to make a real run of it here. Find them, or work her.”

  “You’re not in a position to give me orders, Ben. You’re like a brother to me, but this is my operation.”

  Operation. My blood froze, and I turned Ben’s list over in my head again: coffee, dry milk, and grains. Supplies. I thought about the Linds’ coffee stores running low. The missing crate of champagne. The locked pantry. I closed my eyes and inhaled a deep breath through my nose.

  Gingerly I turned myself around, hugging the door frame and angling my head back and around to peer inside.

  “Yes, and you’ve pulled me into it,” Ben said, the conversation skipping along. “The Orlovs, too. I’m not going to recruit operatives if you can’t guarantee their safety.”

  My eyes confirmed my worst fears. Crates and crates of supplies—more than my family could hope to have.

  Fury washed through me, cold and black and uncompromising like merciless space. I stepped into the door frame, caring not one whit that I had been spying on them, that they might be dangerous. My vision narrowed to a single line, straight from me to Elliot. I drew another deep breath, and then I unleashed my fire.

  “How could you?”

  My voice rang out, and it was foreign to my own ears. Sharp, and hard, like ice.

  Elliot and Ben snapped to attention, both sputtering excuses, which I didn’t listen to. I charged inside, taking in the full scope of the room. Our family supplies had been shunted into a dusty corner, and the rest of the space was filled with so many boxes. Boxes stamped Property of the Scandinavian. Plus a few with the Lady Liberty’s emblem. And the Versailles. The Nikkei. My stomach roiled.

  “You’re stealing from us?”

  “It’s not what you think,” Elliot stammered.

  “I think you’re smuggling goods from the Scandinavian to other ships,” I said, indicating the boxes. “You’re involved in the black market.”

  “I told you she was clever.” Ben’s tone was just one degree away from a quip.

  “And you’re hiding contraband on my ship,” I hissed. “If you’re caught, we’ll be implicated. They’ll take the Sofi, and we’ll go to prison! Or worse, they’ll kill us.”

  “I wouldn’t let that happen to you,” Elliot said.

  “That’s not something you can control! All they’ll see is my ship and your contraband.” My eyes raked over Elliot. The changes I’d observed in him took on a sinister bend. “So, what? You left me and became a criminal?”

  I shamed Elliot into silence and Ben into action.

  “I should go,” he said, slinking past me to the door. I didn’t take my eyes off Elliot. From behind me, I heard Ben’s parting words. “Nice to meet you, Leo. Bye, El. Good luck.”

  Finally Elliot and I were alone. His hands were balled into fists at his side, chest rising and falling rapidly. I could practically see the words tripping from his tongue. And then finally he burst.

  “I’m not a criminal, Leo. This is justice. People are suffering on other ships for no reason other than that people like you are too selfish to stomach a change in circumstance. You want to pretend we’re not running out of time and food up here. If other people die, fine, as long as nothing changes for you, and you can delude yourself a little longer as to our circumstances.”

  “I am not the Scandinavian, Elliot,” I said. “You know I care about more than just myself, my own comfort.”

  “Then help me.” He grabbed ahold of my hands. “I was going to tell you everything upstairs, but then you said to wait. I’ve been dying to tell you. I thought you’d understand.”

  “Did you miss the part where the fleet will kill us if we’re caught? I can’t involve my family in this.” I wrenched my hands from his. He recoiled as if I’d slapped him.

  “You’ll always choose them over me, won’t you?”

  “Oh, no, you don’t get to do that,” I hissed, taking a step forward. Elliot took a step back. Good. I hoped he was a little scared of me. “You don’t get to bring that up. Not wanting to involve my family or myself in a criminal enterprise is not something you get to make me feel guilty about.”

  “It’s not like that. It’s not shady. Come on, Leo, you’re smart. I’m no more a criminal than Freiheit are terrorists. I’m fighting the good fight, trying to help people. It’s worth the risk.”

  I wanted to believe in his Robin Hood scheme, as he clearly did, but I could only shake my head. The logic didn’t hold. “I know things are bad, but the black market isn’t the solution,” I pleaded. “It creates more problems instead of solving them. Price gouging, and the rich benefiting more than the poor.”

  “It’s not like that. I won’t let that happen. We provide fairly priced goods to the people who need them. We take from the rich, for the poor.”

  “You can’t possibly control that,” I argued. “Don’t you know anything about black markets historically? I know you do. You grew up reading the same books I did. It never works out for the little guy, not really.”

  “I can control it,” he said. “It’s my operation. I set the rules.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The Islay is the black market. I’m the heir to the Islay. Thain’s been letting me run things for the last year. It’s mine.”

  “Yours,” I said, rolling the word around in my mouth, testing the concept in my brain. Elliot’s face was quirked with earnestness; he leaned in closer to me, reached out his hands again. Did he think this was romantic? I stepped back, and his face fell.

  “How are the Orlovs involved in this?” I finally asked. Elliot flinched, just slightly.

  “They’re my friends. And my associates,” he said. “Max’s expertise is transport, and Evgenia’s an ace at infiltrating social circles.”

  Something pinched in my throat. “How exactly does that work, then? The business.” Had Evgenia’s friendship all been a ruse? Was I just a mark to them?

  Elliot studied my face. I clenched my hands into fists to stop myself from squirming under his gaze. Then, finally, he spoke. “We operate twofold. Ally ourselves with the servant and working classes to scope out the best marks, develop a pipeline, and get supplies off-ship. It’s amazing what you can accomplish with the lowest of the low on your side.”

  So that’s what his relationship with Nora was all about—he was using her. She was his key to the Scandinavian’s servant class. I almost wished my suspicions had been true, that they’d been in a romantic relationship. It would have been less disappointing.

  Elliot went on. “We work the higher rungs of the social strata—the families and individuals who won’t miss a crate here and there. And we build connections for later. Crunch time will come, and eventually I expect some of these families, and ships, to come to me for what they need.”

  “So that line was bullshit,” I cut in. “About helping the poor. You understand exactly how the black market works. I knew it.”

  “I meant what I said. I have no problem gouging the rich, but I’ll never do that to the poor.”

  “How magnanimous of you,” I snapped. “The noble criminal.”

  “I did what I had to do to survive.” Elliot took several steps toward me. We were within spitting distance now. He lowered his voice, despite the fact that we were alone. “Don’t judge me, Leo. You’re frexing royalty.”

  “You know perfectly well how meaningless that is, and frankly I resent the implication.” I hated how my voice shook, how my whole body was beginning to shake. I was furious, but also equally on the verge of crying.

  “That’s easy for you to say. We’re born into our stations, and we die in them. I was nothing. You have everything. Your worst day was better than my best.” His words were laced with venom. The Elliot from a few weeks ago was back, any of the ground we’d gained now lost. He seemed to hate me agai
n.

  “That’s unfair,” I said, voice just above a whisper.

  “Ben wanted to be a communications officer, you know,” he continued, oblivious to my pain. “But he came from the wrong deck.”

  “That’s awful,” I acknowledged. “But do you really think I can be or do anything I want? You know that’s not true.”

  “I am playing the world’s tiniest violin right now. The princess is sad.”

  “Frex you, Elliot.” I took a step forward, jabbing at the air in front of him with my fist. Would that I could connect my hand with his shoulder. I longed to hit him, hurt him, push him back. But I was afraid.

  “I see right through you, Leo.” Elliot dropped his voice down, losing none of the menace for lack of volume. If anything, it sounded worse when he was saying things quietly. He moved close again, gaining back the ground he’d lost from my retreat. “Interested now that I’m dripping in money and you’re desperate.”

  We were only feet apart now, so I could see every emotion cross his face. None of them were good.

  I took a deep breath. “What’s the use of being wealthy if the money is dirty, El?” My voice was quiet, but surely he heard the undertone of hurt and concern radiating with every syllable.

  “Said like a rich person,” he snapped back.

  I swallowed thickly, refusing to cry. Desperate for distraction and time to come up with some moderately clever retort, I let my eyes flit around the room. They stuck fast on a pile of clothing in the corner. Draped over the boxes of contraband, the side of the room clearly denoted for Elliot’s black-market finds, were my mother’s dresses. Her heirloom ball gowns that I had been saving. Her wedding dress.

  Elliot followed my gaze, and I saw him blanch. Then he sputtered, but my rage was fast as a bullet, cutting off his excuses.