In the corridor on his way back to his cabin, Lucian ran across the last person he expected to see. Dirk held out his slate, which was giving automated commands to guide him back to his cabin.

  Lucian moved aside to let him pass. At first, Dirk seemed to be none the wiser to his presence until he suddenly pulled to a stop, swiveling his head around.

  “Who’s there? I heard someone sneaking up on me.”

  Lucian could keep walking without identifying himself. That was what he knew he should do. But something compelled him to speak.

  “At least the auditory implant is still working,” Lucian said.

  Dirk stiffened. “You? What are you doing here?”

  “I was speaking to Vera.”

  Dirk’s face blanched. "Vera? You mean that old witch.”

  “She’s a mage,” Lucian said. Dirk seemed to flinch at his use of the proper name. Like “psycho,” “witch” was something of a slur for a female mage, though not quite as provocative.

  “Stay right where you are,” Dirk said. “Leave me alone.”

  “I haven’t moved.” Lucian looked Dirk over. In a way, he felt bad for him. He doubted he’d learn from his mistakes, but in a few days, it wouldn’t be his problem anymore.

  Dirk’s face fell, but anger still clouded his features. “Don’t make me get Captain Miller involved.”

  The threat was empty, and Lucian knew it. “There’s something I’d like to say to you. I know it probably doesn’t matter in the end. But I’ll say it all the same.”

  Dirk let out a sigh. “Fine. I can hardly escape you, can I?”

  “You did it to yourself, Dirk. I don’t know why you hate mages so much. We’re just people, cursed with something that’s not our fault. Hate will not solve that. I sincerely hope you learn that.”

  Dirk clenched a useless fist. “If I had my eyes right now . . .”

  “But you don’t. And you never will again. Not without organ growth surgery, at least.”

  “You wouldn’t be saying this if I had my sight.”

  “And you would have never come after me without your dogs. Let’s call it even.”

  Dirk grunted. “Here I was, thinking you were the noble type. Guess not. Kicking someone while they’re down.”

  “That wasn’t my intent at all.”

  Dirk laughed bitterly. “Wonderful. Piss off, would you?”

  “Have a nice life. For what it’s worth.”

  Dirk brushed past him with a growl.

  Lucian didn’t know what he had expected. Having a rational conversation with Dirk was setting the bar too high. Whatever closure he’d been hoping for, clearly it wasn’t happening.

  All he could do was wash his hands of it and move on with his life.

  As the days passed, Lucian meditated as Vera had suggested. But all he could feel was anxiety and doubt pulsating deep within him. Emotions about Emma, worries about his mother, and uncertainty about his future all intermixed, making it impossible to think clearly. Wherever Lucian went throughout his day, an undercurrent of anxiety followed.

  Vera had said going to Volsung was balking at his destiny. There seemed to be a certain truth to what she was saying, but something was still missing. He didn’t know what that something was, as Volsung, at last, materialized in the galley viewports. It was small, yes, but with every passing hour it would grow larger. The ship was already slowing for arrival, a process that would take several days.

  Vera had warned him against training at the Academy. But Vera had also said to think for himself. But how could he make a clear decision unless he saw the Academy? It would be unfair for Lucian to follow Vera without seeing what the Transcends had to offer. Then again, if he chose that path, the opportunity to train with Vera would be gone forever.

  It was simply impossible to know what was right.

  Out of the viewports, Volsung was the brightest object in space outside its parent star. They would be arriving tomorrow morning. In a day, he could be down on that bright dot, on his way to the Volsung Academy. Or he could be training with Vera, who had already shown him so much.

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  “Have you decided?”

  Emma had come out of nowhere, breaking him from his thoughts as she sat at his table. Just having her close was enough to unbalance him.

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Well, how can I convince you?”

  Even as he smiled, it felt hollow. “I don’t know that, either. I feel like Vera is a sure thing. I know what I’m getting, at least as far as training goes. The Academy?” He shook his head. “They might reject me, for all I know.”

  She sighed. “Maybe I spoke too soon. Too . . . harshly.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “I pushed you away when you needed me most. And that caused you to consider the other option. You needed me, and I selfishly closed myself off. Because . . . I was afraid.” When she watched him, her brown eyes were watery. “But the truth is, I do want you to come. Remember when I asked if you would come if I ever needed you? Well, I need you. I can’t go down there alone. And I don’t think you going off alone would be good for you, either. We need each other still. Why else would we have met? I’ve missed you these last few days. It was stupid of me to try and create some distance. It was a decision made out of fear.”

  Lucian watched her, completely shocked to see her feelings laid so bare. He couldn’t blame her for anything she’d done.

  “I’ve missed you, too,” he admitted. “And I’m scared, too. Vera is telling me some extraordinary things, and I don’t think she’s lying about them.”

  “What did she say?”

  Lucian hesitated a moment. He knew how crazy this would sound to her, but he had to say it all the same. “She’s saying she’s never felt anyone as marked as me, whatever that means. She says if I go down to Volsung, the Manifold is going to try to push me elsewhere. That . . . bucking the will of the Manifold might even kill me.” He shook his head. “I don’t know what to believe.”

  “Want to know what I think? No mage, no matter how powerful, can tell you how things will turn out. In the end, we are the ones who decide our fate, Lucian. Not the Manifold, not Vera, not anything else. Don’t make your decision based on fear. We aren’t meant to know the future. We are meant to make the best decisions we can with the verifiable information we have in front of us, not hypotheticals.”

  That was very logical and very Emma-like to say. And he realized it made the most sense. He couldn’t choose something because he was afraid of death, or that he would miss out on his true calling, or not be accepted. In his heart, he knew the right decision was to go with Emma to Volsung, however that turned out.

  The tension melted from his shoulders, and the clouds lifted. For the first time, his path forward was clear. Maybe he was consigning himself to death, as Vera had suggested. Vera or the Manifold couldn’t decide his fate, but he could.

  If the Manifold were really as powerful as Vera had suggested, it would stop him from going to Volsung. He couldn’t let Emma do it on her own, and what was more, he knew he needed her too.

  “I’m going to Volsung. That’s final.”

  Emma smiled widely. “I’m so glad, Lucian. You had me scared for a minute there.”

  “I think the old me might have gone with Vera, to be honest. But somehow, meeting you has changed me. If I’m going to grow, not just as a mage, but as a person, I need friends. I see that now.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “It’s something that seems obvious now, but Vera could never be a friend to me. Whatever she cares about, it’s not people. If I went with her, I would learn a lot, but not . . . the things I need to learn now, I guess.” He smiled in memory. “It’s funny. My mom told me something on the way here I’m just now remembering. She said I couldn’t do this all on my own. So, you’re helping me as much as I’m helping you.”

  “So, you’re saying I can cash in that favor some other time?” Emma asked with a smile.

  Lucian laughed. “It’s only fair.”

  “I can’t believe it! I’m so happy right now. I mean, the training will be the hardest thing we’ve ever had to go through, but it’ll be worth it in the end.”

  “There is one problem, though,” Lucian said. “My account from Earth hasn’t synced with this system. It might fix itself once we’re on Volsung-O, but if not, I have no way of getting down to the surface.”

  “Do you need help?”

  Lucian nodded. Even something as simple as asking for money would have stopped him before, even if Emma was well-off. “I need some creds. I can pay you back as soon as my account syncs up.”

  Emma shook her head. “Don’t worry about it. I can get you a shuttle ticket, no problem. Looks like I can book you the same shuttle to Karendas easily. I can tell the Talent I’m meeting that you’ll be with me.”

  “And they will have no problem with that?”

  “I’ll send a message ahead. They should already know you’re coming, anyway, if your doctor already messaged the Academy. I’m just so glad you made the right choice. In a few days, we’ll be students at the Volsung Academy!”

  It was hard not to feel her excitement, too. Even if the future was uncertain, being committed to something made him feel much more at peace.

  Emma retrieved her slate and projected a holo of the cylindrical Volsung Orbital. The holo showed where the Burung would dock, as well as the route it would take to the shuttle.

  “We’ll get off here and head to the shuttle airlock,” she explained. “The shuttle will take us to Karendas.” At her explanation, the projection switched to the planet itself. It zoomed in on a small island in a vast ocean. “We’ll get off at the spaceport there, and link up with Talent Khairu. She’ll take us to the docks, where we’ll get on the Academy’s boat. The passage across the ocean should take about four or five days, standard. If you’re counting in Volsung days, it’ll be about two days.”

  “Right,” Lucian said. “A day is about fifty hours on Volsung.”

  “Fifty-four and a half, actually,” Emma said.

  “Still. Seems a fast journey to go from the equator to the north in just four standard days, considering Volsung is not too much smaller than Earth.”

  “Well, you have to remember that over a third of Volsung’s surface is locked up in ice. So we’re not going to the extreme north, maybe two-thirds of the way up at most, since the northern ice cap takes up a large portion of the planet.” She showed him on the holographic map. “See? That’s where the Academy is.”

  “That tiny island?” The display showed it being about a thousand klicks south of the ice cap, slightly north of the fiftieth parallel. Thousands of kilometers of ocean spread from the island’s east, west, and south.

  “With modern ships, it would probably be doable in half the time, even if we’re starting from Karendas on the equator,” Emma said. "It makes me think the vessel they’re using is quite primitive.”

  “I wonder how people sleep down there, with the days so long.”

  “From what I understand, they split the days in half,” Emma said. “Divide the day in two, and it’s close enough to normal for it not to affect humans too much.”

  She had done her research, for which Lucian was thankful.

  The two of them looked out at the viewports at the approaching blue orb, a shining sapphire in the void.

  A new world. A new gravity. But most of all, a new life.