Dark Stars by Danielle Rollins (best affordable ebook reader txt) 📕

been hidden under her hood, and now he felt stupid for not putting two and two together.

White. Quinn Fox’s hair was white.

On the screen, a black-and-white Quinn Fox tugged long fingers through her hair, pulling the last few strands loose of her coat. She wasn’t looking at the camera anymore, so Ash stared at her hand, studying every detail he could make out on the grainy screen. Her short fingernails. The creases of her knuckles. A small black smudge that looked like a tattoo.

He raised a hand to his cheek, premembering the brush of her fingers on his skin, seconds before she slid a blade between his ribs.

“Quinn,” he muttered in his sleep.

25Dorothy

Dorothy sat up a little straighter, ears pricked. Ash had spoken. He’d said her name—or, well, he’d said her other name. He’d said Quinn.

She frowned as she leaned over his sleeping body, brushing a strand of sweaty, blond hair away from his brow. He didn’t seem to be getting any better, as far as she could tell. He’d hardly moved, and his breathing seemed just as shallow and labored as it had been when they’d first brought him here. There was still that horrible green cast to his skin that made her think of an outbreak of yellow fever she’d seen in New Orleans ages ago, when she and her mother were passing through the city.

“Shh . . . ,” she murmured, pressing the palm of her hand to his forehead. Despite the sweat, he was cool to the touch, alarmingly so. “You need to sleep, Ash. You need your strength.”

Ash twitched, shaking her hand away. “Where’d you go, Quinn?” he murmured.

Dorothy frowned. She felt like she was overhearing bits and pieces of a much longer conversation. It was frustrating, like starting a story halfway through. But she and Ash had never had this conversation. So, what was going on? Was it a dream? A fantasy?

“You stay here,” Ash murmured, the skin on his brow creasing. “I’ll . . . go . . . I’m . . . I can probably convince them I was alone up here. Then you . . . get somewhere safe.”

Dorothy leaned closed. These words felt familiar. She’d heard Ash say them to her before.

She said, automatically, her brain supplying the words before she could remember where they’d come from, “You think I’m going to stay behind?”

With that, the memory came flooding back to her: she and Ash were standing in the Dark Star, armed soldiers surrounding them. They’d just kissed for the first time, and now Ash was telling her to stay with the time machine so that she wouldn’t get captured.

Why had he mentioned Quinn?

Her frown deepened. This wasn’t the first time he’d mentioned seeing her at Fort Hunter. When she first went back in time to see him, he’d mentioned spotting Quinn Fox running through the halls with the Professor. At the time, she’d been so overwhelmed by everything else that was going on to give it much thought. Now, it bothered her.

Roman had gone back to Fort Hunter on his own. They’d agreed that it would be much too confusing if she were there, too, and neither wanted to risk her past and current selves accidentally discovering one another. Quinn Fox had never stepped foot inside of Fort Hunter.

And, yet, Ash said that he’d seen her there.

And . . . hadn’t she premembered something like this? Something about chasing the Professor through the halls of Fort Hunter? She frowned deeply. It certainly felt familiar.

“What did the Professor want with a weapon?” Ash was murmuring, thrashing a little in his sleep. Dorothy chewed on her lip. He didn’t look good. She looked over her shoulder, wondering if she should call Avery.

But if she called Avery, Ash might stop talking. And then she’d never know what he’d seen at Fort Hunter.

Making up her mind, Dorothy turned back around and touched Ash’s shoulder, rocking him gently. “Ash?” she said. “Where did you see me? What was I doing?”

Ash’s brow cleared, his breathing steadied. Dorothy suspected that whatever memory he’d been reliving had passed, that he was somewhere else now, somewhere new. She sat back in her seat, exhaling hard.

How had she gotten back to Fort Hunter? And when?

Any why?

None of it made any sense.

Dorothy slipped out of Ash’s room and made her way down the hall. Electric lights flickered from sconces on the walls, making the shadows twitch. Her boots echoed off the tile floors and, somewhere deeper in the house, she heard voices that might have belonged to Avery, or might have belonged to her mother. They were too far away for her to know, for sure, whether they were male or female, all she could hear for certain was the cadence of speech, that familiar rise and fall.

Heart hammering, she slipped into her own room and pushed the door closed with a soft click.

This had been the room where she’d stayed in the weeks leading up to her wedding, when it would have been unseemly for her to stay with Avery. She hadn’t been here since she’d gotten back, preferring, instead, to curl up in the chair beside Ash’s bed, but now she could see that it was exactly as she’d left it. Plush, four-post bed and fussy furniture, expensive dresses left to wilt on the backs of chairs or else kicked into the corners where they would be out of the way.

Dorothy closed her eyes and leaned her head back against her heavy, oak door. She forced herself to focus on her breathing, trying to match her inhale to her exhale. She needed to focus. What did she know? What did it mean?

According to Ash, she’d gone back in time, to Fort Hunter, in 1980, the same day the rest of them had broken into the base to . . . what, exactly? Follow the Professor? Talk to him, perhaps? But why?

“Blast, this is giving me a headache,” she muttered out loud, lowering her face to her hands. Think you silly nit, think. What possible reason could she have for talking to the Professor?

It was true, now