“Maybe not,” said Keirth, “but ever since you walked into my life, it seems like things have been messed up.”
That hurt, for some reason. Keirth was being all high and mighty about her mistake, but his life wasn’t destroyed. He could go back to being whatever lowlife he’d been before he met her. She was ruined. “Well, things are not exactly perfect for me either. I wish I’d never seen your face.” She went to the door of the bridge.
“Right back at you, sweetheart,” said Keirth.
She punched the button to close the door as hard as she could.
* * *
Time passed slowly on the ship. Ariana wanted to try to get some vids on the nets to watch to pass the time, but Keirth informed her that they couldn’t afford anything to divert any fuel from traveling to power the vids. Since they were so far out, it would take a lot of power to communicate with the entertainment feeds in the sector. She had nothing to do, then, except watch old vids that were already stored on the ship. That left with her exactly four episodes of some soap opera she’d watched last year. She watched every episode over and over. By the time a day had passed, she was sick of it.
Keirth wouldn’t talk to her, which was fine with Ariana, because she didn’t want to talk to him anyway. She couldn’t believe he was such a jerk. She hadn’t meant to screw up. He didn’t have any right to carry a grudge for so long.
She tried to make dinner for herself at the end of the first day. It should have been easy. All she had to do was add water and heat up the food. However, she burned it when she left in the heating unit for too long and had to start over. She felt like an idiot. She wasn’t about to ask Keirth for help, even though he’d managed to make perfectly edible food every time he’d tried. She didn’t need his help.
Since she had nothing to do, she contemplated what she was going to do with her life. She couldn’t go back to the sector. She thought, instead, that maybe she’d go out to one of the colony planets. She remembered a story about the Viscountess of Adalon, who’d left the sector after the death of her husband for a planet out in the far reaches of space. The Viscountess hadn’t had any children, and so the viscountship was passing to her husband’s nephew. She’d known she would be in the way. Anyway, the Viscountess had erected a school on the colony planet and lived out her days doing good for the children there.
Ariana didn’t see herself as a charity worker, not really, but certainly there must be some useful activity out here for her. Of course, her one brush with a colony planet hadn’t made her feel at home there, exactly.
She wondered if Keirth was right. Perhaps her only option was to go back to her family and spend the rest of her life dealing with the aftermath of this particularly misguided attempt to save Risciter.
The truth was that she hadn’t realized until now how rigid the sector was. She’d spent her whole life thinking that if she followed all the rules, everything would end up fine. But she was beginning to see now that the sector wasn’t so cut and dry. Sure, she shouldn’t have gone out unchaperoned. But to be ruined because she was kidnapped? That wasn’t her fault. More and more, she didn’t want anything to do with a society that could treat her so poorly simply because bad things had happened to her. She thought of the sector with darker and darker thoughts. She wanted something else for herself, something better.
When the day was over, Ariana did her best to sleep, but she tossed and turned thinking about her future. When she finally did drift off, she dreamed of Risciter’s sneering face over her as he fondled her breast. Only, in the dream, she was frozen, and she couldn’t do anything to stop him. She simply had to lie there as he sneered at her, laughing in her face, and telling her how much he was going to enjoy killing her.
She woke up screaming.
Keirth appeared in the doorway to her bedroom. He was out of breath, like he’d run there. “Are you all right?”
Ariana sat up in bed, pulling her covers tight around her body. “Just a dream,” she said. “Risciter.”
“Oh,” said Keirth. He hovered in the doorway, seeming unsure if he should leave or not.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to ruin your sleep and make things even worse for you.”
Keirth hung his head. “It’s not like that.” He shifted on his feet. “Look, I’m sorry I said you were messing everything up. I know you didn’t mean to strand us here.”
He was sincere, and Ariana felt a pang of guilt for her actions. “I shouldn’t have messed with the hyperdrive.”