Academy 7 (24 page)

The words burst from Dane before he could restrain them. “Then why did she marry my father?”

The principal blinked. “Your mother knew her own mind. She understood Gregory and smoothed over all his rough edges. Her parents didn’t approve . . . so of course she married him, right out of school.”

“I don’t understand,” Aerin broke in. “If she could have convinced him to forgive my father, why didn’t she? What happened?”

A cold feeling developed in the pit of Dane’s stomach.

The gray eyes flew to his face. He did not like those eyes. They saw too much.

“Emma died,” the principal said. “She grew sick during her second pregnancy. The doctors treated her fever, but it left her very weak; and they suggested she abort the baby.”

A shiver crept through Dane’s skull. He had never heard the details.

“Gregory was away at the time,” continued the principal. “He had been promoted only a few months before. When he learned she was sick, he tried to return home, but by then, Emma was over the fever. She contacted him on board ship, told him not to worry, and let him think she had scheduled an abortion.”
Let him think
: the phrase had a haunting ring.

“But she hadn’t?” Aerin asked.

Dr. Livinski answered her question but spoke directly to Dane. “Your mother never considered giving you up. She knew by the time your father returned to Chivalry, it would be too late to end the pregnancy, and she assumed she would have time to win him over to her way of thinking. But on his way home, your father’s ship was detoured to Mindowan to remove Allied diplomats during the rebellion. When he arrived, Gregory tracked down Tony and tried to convince him to turn himself in. By that time, your parents and I had gained a certain amount of respect among the government. We would have testified on his behalf, but Tony refused.”

“So it was my father’s fault they never reconciled?” Aerin questioned.

The principal squared her shoulders. “Tony was a mess. He blamed himself for his wife’s death, and Gregory knew that. He might have forgiven the argument. Except then Emma died.”

“How?” Aerin whispered.

“I killed her.” The words rushed from Dane’s mouth before he could stop them. They slammed through the room, shattering like frozen fire.

The gray eyes were back on him as Dr. Livinski shook her head, something else joining the firm note in her voice. “She may have died giving birth to you, but it was her decision, her choice. The grief almost destroyed Gregory. He loved her so much he couldn’t find it in himself to blame her, and he couldn’t handle all the guilt himself so he spread it around. He blamed Tony and had him permanently exiled from the Alliance, charging him as a traitor and making him the scapegoat for the violence on Mindowan.”

So Aerin’s father also had been a victim of the General’s anger.

“Why did we never learn this in school?” Aerin whispered. “Why is it classified?”

Dane knew the answer, but it was the principal who explained. She did not mince words. “Because the loss of Mindowan as a trade partner is the greatest setback the Alliance has faced in the past millennium. It empowered the Trade Union’s sudden expansion, and at the time of the takeover, no one on the Council cared to publicly admit that the instigator behind the loss was a traitor.”

“He wasn’t a traitor!” Aerin’s voice took on the fury it had held in her first debate.

“Perhaps not.” Dr. Livinski buffeted the storm. “But he was an Allied citizen trained in our highest facility of learning. The Council had no desire to share that fact, and the current members, especially Gregory, have never been
compelled
to correct the story.” The way she said the last sentence, leaning slightly forward, her gaze locked on Aerin’s, made Dade shudder. It was a dare.

“My father did the right thing.” Aerin stepped into the trap. “The citizens of the Alliance should know the truth.”

She was correct, of course. Her father had not deserved to be targeted as the sole cause of the problems between the Alliance and the Trade Union. He had lived up to the ideals in the Manifest. And he could not have known his actions would end in disaster.

But neither should his daughter have to face the accusations that would come with the public release of what her father
had
done on Mindowan. “It’s your secret, Aerin,” Dane said. “You’re the only one who needs to know.”

“I’m not ashamed of my father.” She met Dane’s gaze. “Secrets have never done me”—
or you,
her eyes seemed to say—“any good.”

Dr. Livinski leaned back, her hands resting on the stiff arms of her chair. “You insist on telling the public then.”

Aerin straightened her spine. “I will if no one else will.”

Thinly veiled satisfaction emanated through the principal’s voice. “I will inform the rest of the Council of your decision, Miss Renning. I have no doubt the majority would prefer to release the classified files themselves, rather than wait to respond to a press conference. Gregory, of course, will be displeased.”

Her attention turned to Dane. “Though your father was not always so fond of secrets. Tony wasn’t the only target of his anger after your mother’s death. Gregory blamed me because I kept Emma’s secret about choosing to have the baby.” The gray eyes were direct. “And I’m afraid, Dane, that he blamed you.”

She knew his father hated him.
The knowledge made Dane almost physically ill.

“I should have realized there was something wrong when he tried to remove you from the school at the beginning of the year,” the principal said, “but I just thought he was testing my authority. I turned him down”—she gave a wry smile—“and the next morning I woke up to a networking crisis.” Her smile faded. “I assigned the two of you to work together, hoping you might form a connection and convince Gregory to finally forgive Tony. Of course, that was before I knew he was dead. I suppose I should have expelled you, but what would it have achieved except to unleash my most gifted students on an unsuspecting universe?”

Gifted?
No one had ever called Dane that.

“Not every student has a plane in the hangar of the Spindle.”

And there was the bitter crux of this conversation. In one brief comment, she had reminded him why he was here. He had broken the law, and she had the evidence she needed to convict him. Nothing else mattered.

“This school is the Alliance’s future,” Dr. Livinski continued, her hands curling tight. “It is about training leaders: leaders who see past the problems and conflicts of today to find long-term solutions, leaders who take risks and set goals beyond current expectations, and leaders who defy what is safe or popular”—she eyed both Dane and Aerin—“to defend what is morally right.”

The principal’s next words demanded an answer. “Why did you come to this school, Dane?”

He struggled to speak, to say something, anything to defend himself, but the only words that came were the truth. “To get back at my father.”

“And you, Aerin?” asked Dr. Livinski.

“I had nowhere else to go.”

The principal paused.

Dane struggled against the silence. He tried to convince himself to form an argument before he ended up in prison, but all he could think was that he had already lost—his place here and, with it, his one shot at a future.

Dr. Livinski’s next words confirmed his thoughts. “Neither of those reasons is good enough.”

No, they were not. They were far from adequate. But he had been afraid to dream about staying. He had not known, when he came here, that she would stand between him and his father. Or that the teachers would encourage him to think for himself. Or that he would meet Aerin, whose problems were worse than his and whose will was stronger and who would make him wish he had a future in which he could get to know her better. Now it was too late.

“You have both done your best to throw away the opportunity of attending this school,” the principal said. “And you will not remain here as outsiders. This is not a place for hiding, or vengeance, or”—she wrinkled her nose—“snitches. If you stay, you will do so as leaders.”

Dane’s head flew up.

“There
are
two remaining slots for students at Academy 7 next year.” The principal held up a hand before either Dane or Aerin could speak. “If you accept those places and fall short of my expectations—which I assure you are astronomical—you will be out of here at the speed of light. I want you both to consider whether or not you really wish to return. This is a choice.
You
must take on the responsibility for making it.”

Reality whirled and collided within him.
His
choice. The pulsing memories of the past year came to Dane all at once: Pete’s demand that the invitation was Dane’s future and he’d better pick it up; his father’s accusation that Dane had cheated and did not deserve to be here; and the principal’s words from only a few minutes ago—the words that had changed his life.
Your mother never considered giving you up.

That was something, wasn’t it?

Aerin was watching him with riveted expectation.

“Are you staying?” he asked, not caring if she heard the fear in his voice.

Her smile turned to a grin. There was a light in her face he had never witnessed before. “Well, I can’t very well leave the future of the universe in your hands, now can I?” she teased. Her eyes were glistening.
Joking.
Despite everything tragic she had learned about her parents, she had become more confident than he had ever known her.

“And you, Dane?” asked the principal. “Are you staying?”

“Yes,” he said. And finally believed it.

Chapter Twenty-three

AERIN SNUCK OUT THAT NIGHT. IT WAS SILLY, SHE supposed, as she slipped one leg over the windowsill and wrapped her hands around the solid branches of the maple tree. With the term officially over, there was no curfew. And no monitor on duty to keep her from simply walking down the stairs and out the main door.

But she had chosen to sneak out.

The graduation ceremony had run late into the evening, and while many of the students and their families had dispersed throughout the city, there were still too many in the dorm to ensure that her escape would go unnoticed. And she needed to complete this mission alone.

She eased her way down through the tangled branches, taking the time to enjoy their embrace and their strength. By now each hand, each foothold was imprinted within her body so that she did not have to think about the mechanics of the climb. And while she took care not to evoke unnecessary sound, the threat of real danger had worn away. She was free to lose her thoughts in the night.

The crickets had tuned their calls, and the frog choir provided the melody. As she wove her way down, over one branch and under another, the song built to its vibrant climax, then timed its instant silence to match the final drop of her feet upon the ground. Aerin knew the choir would begin again within a moment; and sure enough, as she slipped into the garden’s labyrinth, a single amphibian soloist reprised the opening notes of the song.

The trees welcomed her to their stillness. Heavy humidity had lurked over the day, and while the fall of the sun had eased the oppression, not even the tiniest wisp of a breeze rustled the leafy gowns of oak and cedar. Tonight the garden was at peace. Unlike last night.

Or perhaps the garden itself was not so different. Perhaps only her eyes and her heart had changed, in some ways and not in others. For hadn’t the garden called her from the first day of her arrival? And hadn’t the fountain, from the first time she had seen its sparkling shimmer?

She had answered dozens of times.

But this night she knew why.

The memory had come after the others, long after the first wave the night before in which she had opened the chest at the back of her mind, allowing herself to see all the moments with her father that had been pushing for attention these past seven years. The screams and tears that had blown through her at the sight of her mother’s dead body had been shock, but they had also been a release. An unknown, unimaginable release.

It had been too hard, on Vizhan, to think about what she had lost. And after her escape, she had been afraid. But while the simulations had been filled with loss, anger, and death, they had also been filled with her father. And reminded her that he was none of those things. It had hurt, yes, to remember, but the pain had lessened with every memory. And by the dawn, Aerin had known she could survive.

The memory of the fountain had come later: this afternoon, once she was at peace. It had presented itself. Like a gift. She had seen her father, tall and firm, as he had looked to her when she was seven or eight. She had been angry with him because he had refused to answer her question about her mother.

He had taken her to a park on some planet whose name she could not remember and had led her up to the wide sunken basin of a fountain. Knowing he was trying to barter for her forgiveness, she had intended to sulk. But that fountain. It had felt huge, with its round rim and long sloping sides. There had been music. And color—bright green and pink and sharp blue that had danced in the streams of water.

But what she remembered most were the children: running and shrieking and screaming as they dodged the rhythmic beams of spray in the inevitable hope of capture. Her father had motioned for her to join the boys and girls with their sopping clothes and wild movements. And she had wanted to.
Oh, she had wanted to!

But she had been scared. The other children had brothers and sisters and friends, someone else with whom to play. Her father had offered to go down to the water with her, but none of the other children had fathers holding their hands.

And she had said no.

He had been hurt. The look in his eyes had shown that he believed she was rejecting him. She had not meant to, but she was too ashamed to admit her fear. Instead, she had sat with her father in silence for a long time at the top of the basin. And envied those children running and playing and laughing in the water.