Page 39 of Only Hard Problems
“That sounds rather sketchy, even for space magic.”
Vesper slapped her hands on her hips and glared at me.
“It sounds like you can’t fully control your seer magic. That’s a serious problem,” I said in a thoughtful voice. “Especially since Holloway has sicced the Arrows on you, along with every bounty hunter in the Archipelago Galaxy. You and Kyrion are going to need all your truebonded power to stay alive. If I were you, I’d start figuring it out.”
Vesper harrumphed. “Why would you want us to do that? I’ve seen the gossipcasts where you have vowed to bring Kyrion and me to justice for daring to escape Holloway.”
I shrugged. “Just following orders. Ask Kyrion. He’s done just as many horrific things as I have on Holloway’s command.”
“You’re really going to hunt me down? Your own sister?” Vesper huffed. “I should have known you would be just as awful as Nerezza.”
I remembered what she had said during the midnight ball. “Did Nerezza really call you a useless child because you didn’t have enough psion power for her liking?”
A shadow passed over Vesper’s face, and her pain twinged my telempathy, as sharp as a stormsword stabbing into my chest.
She spun away from me and continued her exploration of the library. Eventually, she wound up at the opposite end of the table where the Quill Corp brewmaker was. She stabbed her finger at the appliance. “Why do you have one of these?”
“Because it’s a marvelous device. So is the beverage chiller. You truly are a mechanical genius. I suppose you get that from our father.”
Vesper stared at the brewmaker, a muscle ticking in her clenched jaw.
I pushed away from the table and straightened up. “We didn’t get off to a very good start, did we? Perhaps things would be different now if we had.”
She spun around to me. “Good start?You insulted me, and I burned your clothes. Not to mention us mutually threatening each other at one of the Regal balls.”
I winced, thinking back to all the insults I’d hurled her way over the past few months. “I’m sorry I called you a conquest.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Would you be sorry if you didn’t know I was your sister?”
“I would be less sorry.”
Her eyebrow arched a little higher.
“Okay, fine, I wouldn’t be sorry at all.”
She huffed. “Somehow I doubt Zane Zimmer is ever sorry about anything.”
“Someone recently told me that referring to myself in the third person is exceedingly arrogant.” I grinned. “But I rather like it when you do it, sis.”
“Do notcall me that.” Vesper growled out the words.
She took a step forward, and her fingers twitched, as though she wanted to lunge forward and strangle me. Could she do that in this astral form? Could she touch, move, or affect anything in the physical world? I made a mental note to start researching seer magic. It would be handy to know exactly what tricks my little sister was capable of.
“You might not like our familial connection, but it changes things.”
It changes everything.The words rippled through my mind, but I held my tongue. I doubted Vesper was ready to hear my thoughts on the matter, especially since I was still sorting them out for myself.
Vesper shook her head. “Now you sound like Kyrion.”
Perhaps I should give Kyrion more credit, if he’d tried to talk to Vesper about what being a Zimmer—my sister—truly meant.
“ButIknow thetruth,” Vesper continued, her eyes glittering with anger. “Our so-called connection changesnothing. The Zimmer family has spent the last thirty-seven years pretending I don’t exist, and I am quite happy to keep that tradition going by pretending you all don’t exist.”
I thought of my father’s distress when he believed that I was going to hurt Vesper. He might not know his daughter, but he already cared about her. And so did I, as strange as that seemed.
“That was my grandmother’s doing. Beatrice never told Wendell anything about you. Me neither.”
“What would you have done if she had?”