9 Upcoming Novels to Read This Winter Season – February 2022

The myths of my people say only a true bride of the Sea God can bring an end to his insatiable wrath. When the otherworldly storms rise from the East Sea, lightning breaking the sky and waters ripping up the shore, a bride is chosen and given to the Sea God.

Or sacrificed, depending on the measure of your faith.

Every year the storms begin, and every year a girl is brought to the sea. I can’t help wondering if Shim Cheong believes in the myth of the Sea God’s bride. If she’ll find comfort in it before the end.

Or perhaps she sees it as a beginning. There are many pathways destiny can take.

For instance, there’s my own path—the literal path before me, stretching narrowly through the waterlogged rice fields. If I follow this path, it’ll eventually lead me to the beach. If I turn around, the path will take me back to the village.

Which destiny belongs to me? Which destiny will I grasp on to with both hands?

Even if it were up to choice, it wouldn’t really be mine to make. For though a large part of me longs for the safety of home, the pull of my heart is infinitely stronger. It tugs me toward the open sea and to the one person I love beyond destiny.

My brother Joon.

Lightning streaks through the storm clouds, splintering across a blackened sky. A half second later, a clap of thunder rumbles over the rice fields.

The path ends where the dirt meets the sand. I take off my soggy sandals and fling them over my shoulder. Through the torrent of rain, I catch sight of the boat, tossing and turning upon the waves. It’s a small, hollowed-out vessel with a single mast, meant to carry eight or so men—and one Sea God’s bride. Already it’s a distance from the shore, and moving farther still.

Lifting my rain-soaked skirt, I sprint toward the raging sea.

I hear a shout from the boat the same moment I crash into the first wave. Immediately I’m pulled under. The freezing water steals my breath. I tumble beneath the water, spinning violently to the left, then the right. I fight to get my mouth above the surface, but the waves pour into and over me.

I’m not a weak swimmer, but I’m also not a strong one, and although I fight to swim, to reach the boat and live, it’s so very hard. It might not be enough. I wish it didn’t hurt so much—the waves, the salt, the sea.

“Mina!” Strong hands wrap around my arms, pulling me out of the water. I’m placed firmly on the boat’s undulating deck. My brother stands before me, familiar features twisted in a scowl.

“What were you thinking?” Joon shouts over the howling wind. “You could have drowned!”

A massive wave crashes against the boat, and I lose my balance. Joon grabs my wrist to keep me from tumbling overboard.

“I followed you!” I shout, just as loudly. “You shouldn’t be here. Warriors aren’t supposed to accompany the Sea God’s bride.” Looking at my brother now, his rain-lashed face and defiant expression, I want to collapse into tears. I want to drag him to the shore and never look back. How could he risk his life like this? “If the god should know of your presence, you’ll be killed!”

Joon flinches, his eyes flicking to the prow of the boat, where a slender figure stands, hair whipping sharply in the wind.

Shim Cheong.

“You don’t understand,” Joon says. “I couldn’t … I couldn’t let her face this alone.”

The breaking of his voice confirms what I’ve suspected all along, what I’d hoped wasn’t true. I curse under my breath, but Joon doesn’t notice. His entire being is focused on her.

The elders say Shim Cheong was fashioned by the Goddess of Creation to be the Sea God’s final bride, the one to ease all his sorrows and usher in a new era of peace in the kingdom. She has skin forged from the purest of pearls. She has hair stitched from the deepest night. She has lips colored by the blood of men.

Maybe this last detail is more bitterness than truth.

I remember the first time I saw Shim Cheong. I was standing with Joon beside the river. It was the night of the paper boat festival four summers ago, when I was twelve and Joon was fourteen.

It is tradition in the seaside villages to write wishes onto pieces of paper before folding them carefully into boats to set upon the river. The belief is that our paper boats will carry our wishes to our dead ancestors in the Spirit Realm, where they can bargain with the lesser gods to fulfill our dreams and desires.

“Shim Cheong might be the most beautiful girl in the village, but her face is a curse.”

I looked up at the sound of Joon’s voice, following his gaze to the bridge spanning the river, where a girl stood at its center.

With her face lit by moonlight, Shim Cheong seemed more goddess than girl. She held a paper boat of her own. It fell from her open palm onto the water. As I watched it drift down the river, I wondered what someone so beautiful could possibly wish for.

I didn’t know then that Shim Cheong was already destined to be the Sea God’s bride.

Now, standing on the boat in the pouring rain with thunder rattling my bones, I notice the way the men keep away from her. It’s as if she’s already been sacrificed, her otherworldly beauty separating her from the rest of us. She belongs to the Sea God. It’s what the village has always known, ever since she came of age.

I wonder if it happens in a day, for your fate to change. Or if it takes longer for your life to be stolen from you.

I wonder if Joon sensed this loneliness in her. Because ever since Shim Cheong was twelve, she belonged to the Sea God, and while everyone might have seen her as someone who would one day leave, he was the only one who wanted her to stay.

“Mina.” Joon tugs my arm. “You need to hide.”

I watch as Joon anxiously searches the uncovered deck for a place for me to conceal myself. He might not care that he’s broken one of the Sea God’s three rules, but he worries for me.

The rules are simple: No warriors. No women, besides the Sea God’s bride. No weapons. Joon broke the first rule by coming tonight. I broke the second.

And the third. My hand curls around the knife hidden beneath my short jacket, the blade that once belonged to my great-great-grandmother.

The boat must have reached the center of the storm, because the winds stop howling, the waves cease their crashing over the deck, and even the rain lessens its relentless battering.

It’s dark in every direction, the clouds obscuring the moonlight. I move closer to the boat’s edge and look over the side. The lightning flashes, and in the brightness, I see it. The fishermen see it, too, their screams swallowed by the night.

Beneath the boat moves a massive silver-blue dragon.

Its snakelike body circles the boat, the ridges of its scaled back breaking the surface of the water.

The flash of lightning dissipates. Darkness falls once more, and all that can be heard is the endless roll of the waves. I shiver, imagining all the awful fates that might await us, either through drowning or being devoured by the Sea God’s servant.

The boat groans as the dragon slides right up against the hull.

What is the purpose of this? What was the Sea God thinking, sending his terrifying servant? Is he testing the courage of his bride?

I blink, realizing my anger has dispelled most of my fear. My gaze sweeps the boat. Shim Cheong still stands at the prow, but she’s no longer alone.

“Joon!” I shout, my heart dropping.

Joon whips his head in my direction, abruptly releasing Shim Cheong’s hand.

Behind them, the dragon rises silently out of the water, its long neck extending into the sky. Seawater falls off its dark blue scales, dropping like coins onto the boat’s deck.

Its black, fathomless eyes are riveted on Shim Cheong.

This is the moment.

I don’t know what’s supposed to happen, but this is the moment we’ve all been waiting for, what Shim Cheong has been waiting for since the day she learned she was too beautiful to live. This is the moment when she loses everything. Most devastatingly, the boy she loves.

And in this moment, Shim Cheong hesitates.

She turns from the dragon, her eyes finding Joon’s. She gives him a look I’ve never seen before—one of agony, fear, and such desperate longing it breaks my heart. Joon lets out a choked sound, takes one step toward her, and then another, until he’s standing in front of her, his empty hands spread wide in protection.

And with just this, he’s sealed his fate. The dragon will never let him go, not after this act of defiance. As if to prove my fears, the great beast lets out a deafening roar, bringing all the men left standing to their knees.

Except for Joon. My fierce, stubborn fool of a brother, who stands as if he can single-handedly protect his love from the Sea God’s wrath.

An unbearable anger rises up within me, starting in my stomach and clawing up to choke me. The gods have chosen not to grant our wishes—our wishes from the paper boat festival, but also the small wishes we make every day. For peace, for fertility, for love. The gods have abandoned us. The god of gods, the Sea God, wants to take from the people who love him—take and take and never give.

The gods might not grant our wishes. But I could. For Joon. I could grant his wish.

I rush to the prow of the boat and leap onto the edge. “Take me instead!” I whip out my knife and make a deep slash across my palm, raising it up high above my head. “I will be the Sea God’s bride. I pledge my life to him!”

My words are met with utter stillness from the dragon. And right away, I doubt everything. Why would the Sea God take me instead of Shim Cheong? I haven’t her beauty or her elegance. I just have my own stubborn will, the one my grandmother always said would be the curse of me.

But then the dragon lowers its head, turning to the side so I can look straight into one of its black eyes. It’s as deep and endless as the sea.

“Please,” I whisper.

In this moment, I don’t feel beautiful. Nor do I feel very brave, my hands trembling. But there’s a warmth in my chest that nothing and no one can take from me. This is the strength I call upon now, because even if I am afraid, I know I’ve chosen this.

I am the maker of my own destiny.

“Mina!” my brother shouts. “No!”

The dragon lifts its body out of the water, dropping a length of its massive bulk between my brother and me, separating us. In the silence, surrounded completely by the dragon, I hesitate, wondering how much it can understand.

I grasp for the right words. The truth.

I take a breath, lifting my chin. “I am the Sea God’s bride.”

The dragon drags its body away from the boat, revealing an opening in the churning water.

Without looking back, I jump into the sea.

Fear arrived at five o’clock.

It was October. A gray Friday.

If I had known? I would have run. Tried to hide.

But I didn’t know.

Through the dim half-­light of the school corridor I spotted my best friend, Luca. He walked toward me, passing the tedious sign shouting from the concrete wall.

New Men of Romania:

Long live Communism—­the bright future of mankind!

At the time, my mind churned on something far from communism. Something more immediate.

School dismissed at 7:00 p.m. If I left at the right moment, I’d fall into step with her—­the quiet girl with the hair hiding her eyes. It would feel coincidental, not forced.

Luca’s tall, thin frame edged in beside me. “It’s official. My stomach’s eating itself.”

“Here.” I handed him my small pouch of sunflower seeds.

“Thanks. Did you hear? The librarian says you’re a bad influence.”

I laughed. Maybe it was true. Teachers referred to Luca as “sweet” but said I was sarcastic. If I was the type to throw a punch, Luca was the type to break up a fight. He had an eagerness about him, while I preferred to evaluate and watch from afar.

We paused so Luca could talk to a group of loud girls. I waited, impatient.

“Hei, Cristian,” smiled one of the girls. “Nice hair, do you cut it with a kitchen knife?”

“Yeah,” I said softly. “Blindfolded.” I gave Luca a nod and continued down the hall alone.

“Pupil Florescu!”

The voice belonged to the school director. He lingered in the hallway, speaking with a colleague. Comrade Director shifted his weight, trying to appear casual.

Nothing was ever casual.

In class, we sat erect. Comrade Instructor lectured, bellowing at our group of forty students. We listened, stock still and squinting beneath the sickly light. We were marked “present” in attendance but were often absent from ourselves.

Luca and me, we wore navy suits and ties to liceu. All boys did. Girls, navy pinafores and white hair bands. Embroidered badges sewn onto our uniforms identified which school we attended. But in the fall and winter, our school uniforms weren’t visible. They were covered by coats, knitted mufflers, and gloves to combat the bitter cold of the unheated cement building.

Cold and dark. Knuckles aching. It’s hard to take notes when you can’t feel your fingers. It’s difficult to concentrate when the electricity snaps off.

The director cleared his throat. “Pupil Florescu,” he repeated. “Proceed to the office. Your father has left a message for you.”

My father? My father never came to school. I rarely saw him. He worked twelve-­hour shifts, six days a week at a furniture factory.

A slithering knot coiled inside my stomach. “Yes, Comrade Director.”

I proceeded to the office as I was told.

Could outsiders understand? In Romania, we did as we were told.

We were told a lot of things.

We were told that we were all brothers and sisters in communism. Addressing each other with the term “comrade” reinforced that we were all equal, with no social classes to divide us. Good brothers and sisters in communism followed rules.

I pretended to follow rules. I kept things to myself, like my interest in poetry and philosophy. I pretended other things too. I pretended to lose my comb, but really just preferred my hair spiky. I pretended not to notice when girls were looking at me. And this one—­I pretended that studying English was a commitment to my country.

“Words are weapons. I’ll be able to fight our American and British enemies with words, not only guns.”

That’s what I said.

Our weapons course was called Preparing Youth for Defending the Country. We began training with guns at age fourteen in school. Is that old or young compared to other countries? I remember jotting that question in my secret notebook.

In reality, my desire to speak English had nothing to do with fighting our enemies. How many enemies did we have, anyway? I honestly didn’t know. The truth was, English class was full of smart, quiet girls. Girls I pretended not to notice. And if I spoke English, I could better understand song lyrics that I heard illegally on Voice of America broadcasts.

Illegal, yes. Many things were illegal in Romania—­including my thoughts and my notebook. But I was convinced I could keep everything hidden. After all, blankets of gloom are thick and heavy. Good for covering things, right?

I proceeded down the dark hallway to the office.

I was an idiot.

I just didn’t know it yet.

Alizeh stitched in the kitchen by the light of star and fire, sitting, as she often did, curled up inside the hearth. Soot stained her skin and skirts in haphazard streaks: smudges along the crest of a cheek, a dusting of yet more darkness above one eye. She didn’t seem to notice.

Alizeh was cold. No, she was freezing.

She often wished she were a body with hinges, that she might throw open a door in her chest and fill its cavity with coal, then kerosene. Strike a match.

Alas.

She tugged up her skirts and shifted nearer the fire, careful lest she destroy the garment she still owed the illegitimate daughter of the Lojjan ambassador. The intricate, glittering piece was her only order this month, but Alizeh nursed a secret hope that the gown would conjure clients on its own, for such fashionable commissions were, after all, the direct result of an envy born only in a ballroom, around a dinner table. So long as the kingdom remained at peace, the royal elite—legitimate and illegitimate alike—would continue to host parties and incur debt, which meant Alizeh might yet find ways to extract coin from their embroidered pockets.

She shivered violently then, nearly missing a stitch, nearly toppling into the fire. As a toddling child Alizeh had once been so   desperately cold she’d crawled directly into the hearth and curled up against the flames. Of course it had never occurred to her that she might die; she’d been but a babe following an instinct to seek warmth. Alizeh couldn’t have known then the singularity of her affliction, for so rare was the frost that grew inside her body that she stood in stark relief even amongst her own people, who were thought to be strange indeed.

A miracle, then, that the fire had only disintegrated her clothes and clogged the small house with a smoke that singed her eyes. A subsequent scream, however, signaled to the snug tot that her scheme was at an end. Frustrated by a body that would not warm, she’d wept frigid tears as she was collected from the flames, her mother sustaining terrible burns in the process, the scars of which Alizeh would study for years to come.

“Her eyes,” the trembling woman had cried to her husband, who’d come running at the sounds of distress. “See what’s happened to her eyes— They will kill her for this—”

Alizeh rubbed her eyes now and coughed.

Surely she’d been too young to remember the precise words her parent had spoken; no doubt Alizeh’s was a memory merely of a story oft-repeated, one so thoroughly worn into her mind she only imagined she could recall her mother’s voice.

She swallowed.

Soot had stuck in her throat. Her fingers had gone numb. Exhausted, she exhaled her worries into the hearth, the action disturbing to life another flurry of soot.

Alizeh coughed for the second time then, this time so hard she stabbed the stitching needle into her small finger. She absorbed the shock of pain with preternatural calm, carefully dislodging the bit before inspecting the injury.

The puncture was deep.

Slowly, almost one at a time, her fingers closed around the gown still clutched in her hand, the finest silk stanching the trickle of her blood. After a few moments—during which she stared blankly up, into the chimney, for the sixteenth time that night—she released the gown, cut the thread with her teeth, and tossed the diamond-encrusted novelty onto a nearby chair.

Never fear; Alizeh knew her blood would not stain. Still, it was a good excuse to cede defeat, to set aside the gown. She appraised it now, sprawled as it was across the seat. The bodice had collapsed, bowing over the skirt much like a child might slump in a chair. Silk pooled around the wooden legs, beadwork catching the light. A weak breeze rattled a poorly-latched window and a single candle blew out, taking with it the remaining composure of the commission. The gown slid further down the chair, one heavy sleeve releasing itself with a hush, its glittering cuff grazing the sooty floor.

Alizeh sighed.

This gown, like all the others, was far from beautiful. She thought the design trite, the construction only passably good. She dreamed of unleashing her mind, of freeing her hands to create without hesitation—but the roar of Alizeh’s imagination was quieted, always, by an unfortunate need for self-preservation.

It was only during her grandmother’s lifetime that the Fire Accords had been established, unprecedented peace agreements that allowed Jinn and humans to mix freely for the first time in nearly a millennia. Though superficially identical, Jinn bodies had been forged from the essence of fire, imbuing in them certain physical advantages; while humans, whose beginnings were established in dirt and water, had long been labeled Clay. Jinn had conceded to the establishment of the Accords with a variegated relief, for the two races had been locked in bloodshed for eons, and though the enmity between them remained unresolved, all had tired of death.

The streets had been gilded with liquid sun to usher in the era of this tenuous peacetime, the empire’s flag and coin reimagined in triumph. Every royal article was stamped with the maxim of a new age:

MERAS

May Equality Reign Always Supreme

Equality, as it turned out, had meant Jinn were to lower themselves to the weakness of humans, denying at all times the inherent powers of their race, the speed and strength and elective evanescence born unto their bodies. They were to cease at once what the king had declared ‘such supernatural operations’ or face certain death, and Clay, which had exposed itself as an insecure sort of creature, was only too willing to cry cheat no matter the context. Alizeh could still hear the screams, the riots in the streets—

She stared now at the mediocre gown.

Always she struggled not to design an article too exquisite, for extraordinary work came under harsher scrutiny, and was only too quickly denounced as the result of a preternatural trick.

Only once, having grown increasingly desperate to earn a decent living, had Alizeh thought to impress a customer not with style, but with craftsmanship. Not only was the quality of her work many orders of magnitude higher than that of the local modiste, but Alizeh could fashion an elegant morning gown in a quarter of the time, and had been willing to charge half as much.

The oversight had sent her to the gallows.

It had not been the happy customer, but the rival dressmaker who’d reported Alizeh to the magistrates. Miracle of miracles, she’d managed to evade their attempt to drag her away in the night, and fled the familiar countryside of her childhood for the anonymity of the city, hoping to be lost among the masses.

Would that she might slough off the burdens she carried with her always, but Alizeh knew an abundance of reasons to keep to the shadows, chief among them the reminder that her parents had forfeited their lives in the interest of her quiet survival, and to comport herself carelessly now would be to dishonor their efforts.

No, Alizeh had learned the hard way to relinquish her commissions long before she grew to love them.

She stood and a cloud of soot stood with her, billowing around her skirts. She’d need to clean the kitchen hearth before Mrs. Amina came down in the morning or she’d likely be out on the street again. Despite her best efforts, Alizeh had been turned out onto the street more times than she could count. She’d always supposed it took little encouragement to dispose of that which was already seen as disposable, but these thoughts had done little to calm her.

Alizeh collected a broom, flinching a little as the fire died. It was late; very late. The steady tick tick of the clock wound something in her heart, made her anxious. Alizeh had a natural aversion to the dark, a rooted fear she could not fully articulate. She’d have rather worked a needle and thread by the light of the sun, but she spent her days doing the work that really mattered: scrubbing the rooms and latrines of Baz House, the grand estate of Her Grace, the Duchess Jamilah of Fetrous.

Alizeh had never met the duchess, only seen the glittering older woman from afar. Alizeh’s meetings were with Mrs. Amina, the housekeeper, who’d hired Alizeh on a trial basis only, as she’d arrived with no references. As a result, Alizeh was not yet permitted to interact with the other servants, nor was she allotted a proper room in the servants’ wing. Instead, she’d been given a rotting closet in the attic, wherein she’d discovered a cot, its moth-eaten mattress, and half a candle.

Alizeh had lain awake in her narrow bed that first night, so overcome she could hardly breathe. She minded neither the rotting attic nor its moth-eaten mattress, for Alizeh knew herself to be in possession of great fortune. That any grand house was willing to employ a Jinn was shocking enough, but that she’d been given a room—a respite from the winter streets—

True, Alizeh had found stretches of work since her parents’ death, and often she’d been granted leave to sleep indoors, or in the hayloft; but never had she been given a space of her own. This was the first time in years she had privacy, a door she might close; and Alizeh had felt so thoroughly saturated with happiness she feared she might sink through the floor. Her body shook as she stared up at the wooden beams that night, at the thicket of cobwebs that crowded her head. A large spider had unspooled a length of thread, lowering itself to look her in the eye, and Alizeh had only smiled, clutching a skin of water to her chest.

The water had been her single request.

“A skin of water?” Mrs. Amina had frowned at her, frowned as if she’d asked to eat the woman’s child. “You can fetch your own water, girl.”

“Forgive me, I would,” Alizeh had said, eyes on her shoes, on the torn leather around the toe she’d not yet mended. “But I’m still new to the city, and I’ve found it difficult to access fresh water so far from home. There’s no reliable cistern nearby, and I cannot yet afford the glass water in the market—”

Mrs. Amina roared with laughter.

Alizeh went silent, heat rising up her neck. She did not know why the woman laughed at her.

“Can you read, child?”

Alizeh looked up without meaning to, registering the familiar, fearful gasp before she’d even locked eyes with the woman. Mrs. Amina stepped back, lost her smile.

“Yes,” said Alizeh. “I can read.”

“Then you must try to forget.”

Alizeh started. “I beg your pardon?”

“Don’t be daft.” Mrs. Amina’s eyes narrowed. “No one wants a servant who can read. You ruin your own prospects with that tongue. Where did you say you were from?”

Alizeh had frozen solid.

She couldn’t tell whether this woman was being cruel or kind. It was the first time anyone had suggested her intelligence might present a problem to the position, and Alizeh wondered then whether it wasn’t true: perhaps it had been her head, too full as it was, that kept landing her in the street. Perhaps, if she was careful, she might finally manage to keep a position for longer than a few weeks. No doubt she could feign stupidity in exchange for safety.

“I’m from the north, ma’am,” she’d said quietly.

“Your accent isn’t northern.”

Alizeh nearly admitted aloud that she’d been raised in relative isolation, that she’d learned to speak as her tutors had taught her; but then she remembered herself, remembered her station, and said nothing.

“As I suspected,” Mrs. Amina had said into the silence. “Rid yourself of that ridiculous accent. You sound like an idiot, pretending to be some kind of toff. Better yet, say nothing at all. If you can manage that, you may prove useful to me. I’ve heard your kind doesn’t tire out so easily, and I expect your work to satisfy such rumors, else I’ll not scruple to toss you back into the street. Have I made myself clear?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You may have your skin of water.”

“Thank you, ma’am.” Alizeh curtsied, turned to go.

“Oh—and one more thing—”

Alizeh turned back. “Yes, ma’am?”

“Get yourself a snoda as soon as possible. I never want to see your face again.”

Verux Peace and Rehabilitation Tower, Earth, 2149

My head is throbbing again, a white-hot line of pain from the back of my skull down to the right side of my jaw, and a dead man is signaling me from across the common room. His hand waves frantically in a “come here” gesture, his eyes wild with panic.

Resolutely, I turn my gaze away from the hallucination and attempt to refocus my attention on the living visitors across the scarred and battered plastic table from me.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?” My tongue feels thick, unwieldy. That’s the drugs. Both too many and not enough.

“I said, you lied to us.” Reed Darrow leans forward impatiently. An older, executive-type in a black suit and a vintage watch paces just behind him, supervising our conversation, with a thoughtful—and yet still disapproving—scowl.

“About what?” I’m confused. It’s not difficult to do these days, but with Reed, a junior investigator from Verux’s QA Department, I’m almost always clear. He’s been in here every few days since the Raleigh search and rescue team dropped me off into Verux’s care three weeks ago.

Max Donovan, my other visitor, clears his throat loudly. “Verux wants to help you. But we need you to help us help you.” He nods at me in encouragement, his familiar face wreathed in wrinkles I’m not yet used to. He was just an investigator for my employer the last time I saw him, but now he is apparently the head of the whole QA Department.

“I’ve told you everything I remember.” My skull fracture is, according to the Tower doctors, healed. And during the month-long return trip to Earth, the Raleigh’s MedBay staff tested me for every virus, bacteria, and parasite under this sun. Not to mention all the “exploratory” diagnostics and procedures over the last three weeks in the Tower. The results are always the same: the visions, pain, and memory loss are likely psychological, not physical in origin.

Reed ignores me. “You know, some people think you murdered your crew for a larger share of the find before taking that escape pod.”

I stiffen, hands clenching against the urge to hit him.

“Then you hitched a ride back here with the Raleigh team, gambling that we’d buy this whole amnesia and psychotic break story and you could hide in the Tower.” He waves his hand around, as though conjuring an image from thin air.

The Verux Peace and Rehabilitation Tower is a dumping ground for all the broken and damaged. Including me. Verux has more ships, more crews working in space than any other corporation. And sometimes docking clamps don’t disengage. Sometimes people can’t handle the isolation of years in space. Sometimes a coolant leak contaminates the oxygen, killing off brain cells before it can be corrected. Shit happens. Sometimes even to you. Sometimes even if you can’t remember it.

I swallow hard against my dry-as-dust throat. “My crew … they’re dead, but I didn’t kill them.”

“You sure you want to stick with that story?” Reed asks with a terse smile. He holds up a folded piece of paper—real paper, which means it came from the highest levels of Verux. “We’ve been monitoring K147,” he says.

Just the sector name makes me flinch. I lost everything there.

“So?” I ask.

“We’ve got movement, Claire,” Max says gently.

Not possible. My lips go numb, and a loud hum starts up in my ears. “The Aurora?” I whisper.

Max nods.

“Your ghost ship is on the move, Kovalik,” Reed injects with smug satisfaction.

Max leans forward in his chair to meet my eyes. “Maybe it’s time you tell us everything again. From the beginning.”

Droplets of blood pat the blue carpet, turning from red to black as they soak into the fibers. The drops come slow at first, before turning to a trickle as the bones of my skull squeeze like a hand around my brain. My body yearns to release the tension in my shoulders, to let the pressure off my knees, to lay down and go to sleep.

Except it won’t be sleep.

It won’t really be death either. Something more in-between.

A permanent vacancy.

This moment has been chasing me for years. The third stage, when the strands of my perception unravel and my ability to grasp the concept of linear time is lost.

More pats on the carpet. But the blood from my nose has stopped flowing.

Heavier, from the other end of the hallway, getting closer. Footsteps.

Maybe I can fight this. A handful of Retronim. A cherry lollipop. What if I scream? I open my mouth. Nothing comes out but blood.

The footsteps get closer.

This is the moment when my brain will short-circuit. That’s the third stage of being Unstuck. No one really knows why it happens. The prevailing theory is your mind finds itself in a quantum state and can’t handle the load. Others think you witness the moment of your death. I don’t give a shit about the “why” of it. I just know the result doesn’t look pleasant: a glassy-eyed coma that’ll last as long as my body holds out.

The pressure increases. More blood. Maybe I’ll bleed to death first. Small victories.

In a moment I’ll be gone. Probably reality too. The timestream is broken and I’m the only one who can fix it, but instead I’m dying on the floor. Sorry, universe.

I slip again, memories rattling around my brain like rocks in a tin can. Sitting in my bed, the smell of garlic and chili paste frying in the kitchen, wafting upstairs. Graduating the academy, walking across the gymnasium stage, new heels tearing at the skin of my feet while I scan the sea of folding chairs.

The first time I let Mena kiss me, the two of us alone on the balcony overlooking the lobby.

That taste of cherries, and everything I ever needed.

The footsteps stop.

I feel it, the displacement of air, the gravity of another person, standing there, watching me writhe on this dumb blue carpet. Nothing I can do now. It’s over. But I’m not going to die on my hands and knees.

With the last of my strength I push up . . .

Tap-tap-tap.

Doctor Tamworth is holding his pen an inch above the flat expanse of his desk, looking at me like I might bite him. Which, the day is young.

I take a second to situate myself. The fluorescent light is so white it’s almost blue, to match the sky-blue walls and dark blue linoleum tile. So much of this place is blue, which is calming, or so I’ve been told. The room is otherwise bare, save a small tablet on the desk, a diploma on the wall from a university in his home country of Bangladesh, and a half-eaten deli sandwich in a cardboard clamshell container. I can smell the sting of the vinegar, the funk of the cheese. My stomach growls at it. Ruby is hovering in its usual spot over my shoulder, too close by half.

“Where were you just now, January?” Tamworth asks.

“Right here, Doc,” I tell him, which is only mostly a lie, because the place I slipped to is gone. Something about carpet? I reach for it, but it disappears between my fingers like smoke. Probably not important.

“It didn’t look like you were here,” Tamworth says, his voice an airy, nasal pitch that seems determined to match the creak of his desk chair. “It looked like you were somewhere else.”

“Your word against mine.”

Tamworth sighs. “No behavioral changes. That’s a start.”

He heaves his blocky frame to a standing position and turns to the
cabinet. The rattle of the pill bottle lifts my soul. He places the orange tube of Retronim on the desk, just next to the sandwich.

“I’m increasing your dose,” he says. “Ten milligrams. One pill in the morning, one at night. If you’re slipping a lot you can take a third, but no more than that in a twenty-four-hour period. Your weight.” He raises his hand, spreads his fingers, waves them back and forth. “Figure by the time we get to twenty milligrams in a day, there might be a problem.”

“What kind of problem?”

Tamworth slumps in his chair. “Aggression, irritability . . .”

“I must be OD’ing right now.”

He frowns. “Heart palpitations, confusion, hallucinations. Not to mention your kidneys won’t be too happy.”

“Got it,” I tell him, nearly snatching the sandwich, but instead palming the bottle and stuffing it in my pocket. “Take as needed. Like candy.”

His face goes dark. “Do you ever get tired of this?”

I offer him a shrug in response.

“Your latest round of scans came in. Let me show you something.”

He reaches for the tablet, opens it, and tilts it toward me. The mushy oval on the screen is lit up in greens and blues and reds. “This is the brain of a woman your age who has never stepped foot in the timestream.” Then he swipes, showing another scan with slightly less color around the center of the mass. “This is your brain. Do you see the difference?”

“I’m not a doctor,” I tell him.

“There’s clear degradation in the hypothalamus. We’re still not sure exactly how this works, but we believe the problem is related to the suprachiasmatic nucleus, which regulates the body’s circadian rhythms . . .”

I put up my hand. “Doc, don’t tell me you don’t know how this works, and then tell me you know what’s wrong. I told you. I’m still on the first stage.”

He taps the screen of the tablet with his pen. “Nobody with this much loss of function . . .”

“Except you don’t know how this works, so how do you even form a benchmark?”

He stops and stutters. “January, I’m doing this for your own good.”

“I’ve got my pills, Doc,” I tell him. “And if I hit the second stage you’ll be the first one to know.”

He slaps the tablet on the desk. “Retronim isn’t a cure. All it does is forestall the inevitable. I have serious concerns about you being here. I know it’s supposed to be safe, but look at the clocks. There’s clearly radiation leakage. You ought to be somewhere far away. Why not retire? You hit your tier. Find a beach community. Read books. Meet someone.”

I put my hands flat on the desk and lean forward, taking time to enunciate each word: “Don’t tell me what I need.”

“If you’re on to the second stage of this, you know what that means,” he says, pleading.

“First.”

“January, I’m not an idiot.”

“You may well be. And I like it here.”

“Really? Because it doesn’t seem that way.” Tamworth peers over my shoulder. “What’s your take on this?”

Ruby whirs a little closer. I consider whacking it against the wall. Not for any particular reason, just because I consider that a lot. It gives a soft beep and, in its genteel New Zealand accent, says, “Nothing worth reporting, Doctor Tamworth.”

Tamworth rolls his eyes. I don’t have a good insult, nor do I care to formulate one, so I stand and pat the pill bottle in my pocket. It gives another optimistic shake. “Thanks for the lift, Doc. I’ll see you around.” I wave to the drone hovering at my shoulder. “Let’s blow, Ruby.”

“January . . .” Tamworth starts.

“What?”

He looks at me again, ready to say something deeply caring and meaningful, probably. Then he thinks better of it.

As I leave, I realize I could have handled that better.

Could have taken the sandwich.

I should feel bad. It’s not like he’s not wrong. I shouldn’t be here. But how could I be anywhere else?

Jessica Davis used to think it was an honest-to-God tragedy that only twenty-six percent of women believed in true love. Of course, that was nearly a decade ago, when she couldn’t imagine what it felt like to be anything but deeply and passionately obsessed with the man who would one day be her ex. Tonight, though, on her third first date in seven years, she was astounded the number was even that high.

“Twenty-six percent,” she mumbled, leaning toward the restroom mirror to apply more lipstick. “Twenty-six women out of one hundred believe true love is real.” Popping the cap back on, Jess laughed, and her exhausted reflection laughed back. Sadly, her night was far from over. She still had to make it through the entrée course; appetizers had lasted four years. Of course, some of that was probably due to Travis’s tendency to talk with his mouth full, oversharing highly specific stories about finding his wife in bed with his business partner and the ensuing messy divorce. But as far as first dates went, Jess reasoned, it could have been worse. This date was better, for sure, than the guy last week who’d been so drunk when he showed up at the restaurant that he’d nodded off before they’d even ordered.

“Come on, Jess.” She dropped the tube back into her bag. “You don’t have to make, serve, or clean up after this meal. The dishes alone are worth at least one more bitter ex-wife story.”

A stall door clicked open, startling her, and a willowy blonde emerged. She glanced at Jess with bald pity.

“God, I know,” Jess agreed with a groan. “I’m talking to myself in a bathroom. Tells you exactly how my night is going.”

Not a laugh. Not even a smile of politeness, let alone camaraderie. Instead the woman moved as far away as possible to the end of the empty row of sinks and began washing her hands.

Well.

Jess went back to rummaging through her purse but couldn’t help glancing toward the end of the counter. She knew it wasn’t polite to stare, but the other woman’s makeup was flawless, her nails perfectly manicured. How on earth did some women manage it? Jess considered leaving the house with her zipper up a victory. Once, she’d presented an entire fiscal year’s worth of data to a client with four of Juno’s sparkly butterfly barrettes still clipped to the front of her blazer. This gorgeous stranger probably hadn’t been forced to change outfits after cleaning glitter off both a cat and a seven-year-old. She probably never had to apologize for being late. She probably didn’t even have to shave—she was just naturally smooth everywhere.

“Are you okay?”

Jess blinked back to awareness, realizing the woman was speaking to her. There was really no way to pretend she hadn’t been staring directly at this stranger’s cleavage.

Resisting the urge to cover her own less-than-impressive assets, Jess offered a small, embarrassed wave. “Sorry. I was just thinking that your kitten probably isn’t covered in glitter, too.”

“My what?”

She turned back to the mirror. Jessica Marie Davis, get your shit together. Ignoring the fact that she still had an audience, Jess channeled Nana Jo into the mirror: “You have plenty of time. Go out there, eat some guacamole, go home,” she said aloud. “There’s no ticking clock on any of this.”

“I’M JUST SAYING, the clock is ticking.” Fizzy waved vaguely toward Jess’s butt. “That booty won’t be high and tight forever, you know.”

“Maybe not,” Jess said, “but Tinder isn’t going to help me find a quality guy to hold it up, either.”

Fizzy lifted her chin defensively. “I’ve had some of the best sex of my life from Tinder. I swear you give up too quickly. We are in the era of women taking pleasure and not apologizing for getting theirs first, second, and one more time for the road. Travis might be ex-wife obsessed, but I saw his photo and he was fine as hell. Maybe he would have rocked your world for an hour or two after churros, but you’ll never know, because you left before dessert.”

Jess paused. Maybe . . . “Goddammit, Fizzy.”

Her best friend leaned back, smug. If Felicity Chen decided to start selling Amway, Jess would simply hand over her wallet. Fizzy was made of charisma, witchcraft, and bad judgment. Those qualities made her a great writer, but were also partly the reason Jess had a misspelled song lyric tattooed on the inside of her right wrist, had had disastrous not-even-close-to–Audrey Hepburn bangs for six depressing months in 2014, and had attended a costume party in LA that turned out to be a BDSM scene in a dungeon basement. Fizzy’s response to Jess’s “You brought me to a sex party in a dungeon?” was, “Yeah, everyone in LA has dungeons!”

Fizzy tucked a strand of glossy black hair behind her ear. “Okay, let’s make plans for your next date.”

“No.” Opening her laptop, Jess logged into her email. But even with her attention fixed elsewhere, it was hard to miss Fizzy’s scowl. “Fizz, it’s hard with a kid.”

“That’s always your excuse.” “Because I always have a kid.”

“You also have grandparents who live next door and are more than happy to watch her while you’re on a date, and a best friend who thinks your kid is cooler than you are. We all just want you to be happy.”

Jess knew they did. That was why she’d agreed to test the Tinder waters in the first place. “Okay, let me humor you,” she said. “Let’s say I meet someone amazing. Where am I going to hook up with him? It was different when Juno was two. Now I have a light sleeper seven-year-old with perfect hearing, and the last time I went to a guy’s place it was so messy, a pair of his boxers stuck to my back when I got up to use the bathroom.”

“Gross.”

“Agreed.”

“Still.” Fizzy rubbed a thoughtful finger beneath her lip. “Single parents make it work all the time, Jess. Look at the Brady Bunch.”

“Your best example is a fifty-year-old sitcom?” The harder Fizzy tried to convince her, the less Jess actually wanted to get back out there. “In 1969 only thirteen percent of parents were single. Carol Brady was ahead of her time. I am not.”

“Vanilla latte!” the barista, Daniel, shouted over the din of the coffee shop.

Fizzy motioned that she wasn’t done being a pain in Jess’s ass before standing and making her way to the counter.

Jess had been coming to Twiggs coffee shop every weekday for almost as long as she’d been freelancing. Her life, which essentially existed in a four-block radius, was exceedingly manageable as it was. She walked Juno to school just down the street from their apartment complex while Fizzy grabbed the best table—in the back, away from the glare of the window but near the outlet that hadn’t yet gone wobbly. Jess crunched numbers while Fizzy wrote novels, and in an effort to not be leeches, they ordered something at least every ninety minutes, which had the added benefit of incentivizing them to work more, gossip less.

Except today. She could already tell Fizzy was going to be unrelenting.

“Okay.” Her friend returned with her drink and a huge blueberry muffin, and took a moment to get situated. “Where was I?”

Jess kept her eyes on the email in front of her, pretending to read. “I think you were about to say that it’s my life and that I should do what I think is best.”

“We both know that’s not something I would say.” “Why am I your friend?”

“Because I immortalized you as the villain in Crimson Lace, and you became a fan favorite, so I can’t kill you off.”

“Sometimes I wonder if you’re answering my questions,” Jess grumbled, “or continuing an ongoing conversation in your head.”

Fizzy began peeling the paper off her muffin. “What I was going to say is that you can’t throw in the towel because of one bad date.” “It’s not just the one bad date,” Jess said. “It’s the exhausting and alien process of trying to be appealing to men. I’m a freelance statitician and consider my sexiest outfit to be my old Buffy shirt and a pair of cutoffs. My favorite pajamas are one of Pops’s old undershirts and some maternity yoga pants.” Fizzy whimpered out a plaintive “No.”

“Yes,” Jess said emphatically. “On top of that, I had a kid when most people our age were still lying about enjoying Jägermeister. It’s hard to make myself seem polished in a dating profile.”

Fizzy laughed.

“I hate taking time away from Juno for some guy I’m probably never going to see again.”

Fizzy let that sink in for a beat, dark eyes fixed in disbelief. “So, you’re . . . done? Jessica, you went on three dates with three hot, if dull, men.”

“I’m done until Juno is older, yeah.”

She regarded Jess with suspicion. “How much older?”

“I don’t know.” Jess picked up her coffee, but her attention was snagged when the man they referred to as “Americano” stepped into Twiggs, striding to the front precisely on cue—8:24 in the morning—all long legs and dark hair and surly, glowering vibes, not making eye contact with a single person. “Maybe when she’s in college?”

When Jess’s eyes left Americano, horror was rippling across Fizzy’s expression. “College? When she’s eighteen?” She lowered her voice when every head in the coffee shop swiveled. “You’re telling me that if I sat down to write the novel of your future love life, I’d be writing a heroine who is happily showing her body to a dude for the first time in eighteen years? Honey, no. Not even your perfectly preserved vagina can pull that off.”

“Felicity.”

“Like an Egyptian tomb in there. Practically mummified,” Fizzy mumbled into a sip.

Up front, Americano paid for his drink and then stepped to the side, absorbed in typing something on his phone. “What is his deal?” Jess asked quietly.

“You have such a crush on Americano,” Fizzy said. “Do you realize you watch him whenever he comes in here?”

“Maybe I find his demeanor fascinating.”

Fizzy let her eyes drop to his ass, currently hidden by a navy coat. “We’re calling it his ‘demeanor’ now?” She bent, writing something in the Idea Notebook she kept near her laptop.

“He comes in here and emits the vibe that if anyone tried to talk to him, he would do a murder,” Jess quipped.

“Maybe he’s a professional hit man.”

Jess, too, inspected him top to bottom. “More like a socially constipated medieval art professor.” She tried to remember when he’d started coming in here. Maybe two years ago? Almost every day, same time every morning, same drink, same sullen silence. This was a quirky neighborhood, and Twiggs was its heart. People came in to linger, to sip, to chat; Americano stood out not for being different or eccentric but for being almost entirely silent in a space full of boisterous, lovable weirdos. “Nice clothes, but inside them he’s all grouchy,” Jess mumbled.

“Well, maybe he needs to get laid, kind of like someone else I know.”

“Fizz. I’ve had sex since birthing Juno,” Jess said in exasperation. “I’m just saying I don’t have a lot left over for commitment, and I’m not willing to endure boring or outright terrible dates just for orgasms. They make battery-operated appliances for that.”

“I’m not talking just about sex,” Fizzy said. “I’m talking about not always putting yourself last.” Fizzy paused to wave to Daniel, who was wiping down a table nearby. “Daniel, did you catch all of that?”

He straightened and gave her the smile that had made Fizzy write the hero of Destiny’s Devil with Daniel in mind, and do all manner of dirty things to him in the book that she hadn’t dared do in real life.

And would never do: Daniel and Fizzy went out once last year but quickly ended things when they ran into each other at a family reunion. Their family reunion. “When can’t we hear you?” he asked.

“Good, then please tell Jess that I’m right.”

“You want me to have an opinion about whether Jess should be on Tinder just to get laid?” he asked.

“Okay, yup.” Jess groaned. “This is what rock bottom feels like.”

“Or whichever dating site she likes!” Fizzy cried, ignoring her. “This woman is sexy and young. She shouldn’t waste her remaining hot years in mom jeans and old sweatshirts.”

Jess looked down at her outfit, ready to protest, but the words shriveled in her throat.

“Maybe not,” Daniel said, “but if she’s happy, does it matter whether or not she’s frumpy?”

She beamed at Fizzy in triumph. “See? Daniel is sort of on Team Jess.”

“You know,” Daniel said to her now, balling the washrag in his hands, smug with insider knowledge, “Americano is a romantic, too.” “Let me guess,” Jess said, grinning. “He’s the host of a Dothraki-themed sex dungeon?”

Only Fizzy laughed. Daniel gave a coy shrug. “He’s about to launch a cutting-edge matchmaking company.”

Both women went silent. A what now?

“Matchmaking?” Jess asked. “The same Americano who is a regular here in this coffee shop and yet never smiles at anyone?” She pointed behind her to the door he’d exited through only a minute ago. “That guy? With his intense hotness marred by the moody, antisocial filter?”

“That’s the one,” Daniel said, nodding. “You could be right that he needs to get laid, but I’m guessing he does just fine for himself.”