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

pain. Just when she thought she’d gotten a handle on herself, some other memory roared up inside her mind, threatening to ruin her.

When she found her voice again, Dorothy said, as carefully as she could, “We went to the future, Mac, Roman, and I. We’d planned to kill Mac, but Ash showed up before we could take him out. There was a fight and . . . and Mac shot Roman.”

Dorothy wasn’t sure what sort of reaction she’d been expecting, but it wasn’t this one. Chandra released a sharp “Oh!” and threw a hand over her mouth. Zora’s face fell, and something in her eyes went complicated and distant. Willis lowered his massive head to his hands.

Dorothy shifted uncomfortably in her seat, a shot of irritation moving through her. Who were these people to mourn Roman? They’d turned their backs on him, just as they were turning their backs on her now. She’d been his only real friend in the end.

More tears pooled in her eyes, but she blinked, hard, refusing to let them fall.

“I never got the feeling you all were close,” she said, voice flat.

“He was one of us before everything happened,” Willis reminded her, wiping a tear from his eye.

Dorothy was unmoved. “He was my friend, too. My best friend.” She didn’t say my only friend, but that’s what she’d meant. Clearing her throat, she continued. “After Roman’s death, Mac told the Cirkus that Ash was the one who’d killed him, and he offered a reward for anyone who brought him in. They’re probably out looking for me, too. By now, they’ll have seen that I’m not in my room.”

“Is that why you killed Ash?” Zora asked. “To regain favor with the Cirkus by taking out the man they think murdered their leader?”

“I didn’t kill Ash,” Dorothy insisted, but she was having a hard time mustering up the same indignation she had before. They didn’t believe her. Perhaps they never would believe her. What was the use of trying to convince them?

Tired now, she added, “I’m telling you, before he showed up in the future, I hadn’t even seen Ash, not since that night at the ball!”

There was a beat of silence, all of them staring at her. Dorothy narrowed her eyes. There was something they weren’t telling her.

“You’re lying,” Zora said, voice flat. But, behind her, Chandra was frowning. She opened her mouth, looking like she wanted to add something, but Zora shot her a look, and she shut it again.

Dorothy kept her eyes trained on Chandra, nerves creeping up her skin. What had she been about to say?

“You should go,” Zora said.

Dorothy could’ve laughed. “Go? I can’t go anywhere. If the Cirkus finds that I’ve escaped, they’ll kill me.”

Zora seemed unmoved. “You can’t stay here.”

Dorothy scrubbed a hand over her face, standing. She tried to convince herself that none of this mattered, that she didn’t need these people, that she was better off without them.

But when she met Zora’s eyes, she felt a thrill of pain move through her. She couldn’t lie to herself anymore.

It mattered. They mattered. Without them, she was lost.

“You trusted me once,” Dorothy said, working hard to keep her voice steady. “You might not remember that, but I do. I wish you could trust me now.”

Zora gave her a strange look. “Trust you? I don’t even know who you are. Are you Quinn? Or are you Dorothy?”

Dorothy, quiet, realized that she didn’t know the answer to that question, either.

3

Back at the Fairmont. Dorothy was careful to keep to the shadows, peering carefully around corners and walking close to the walls so that the creaking floorboards wouldn’t give her up.

It was dangerous for her to be here. She couldn’t think of a single Cirkus Freak who wouldn’t give up her location on sight. But it looked like she was about to be on the run and, if that were the case, there were things she needed from the Fairmont. Supplies, money, food if she could scrounge up any. She would just have to be quick about it.

The hotel had the look of a place that had once been extraordinarily lovely but had long ago fallen into ruin. Ornately beautiful rugs covered the floors, but foot traffic had left them worn, the edges frayed where they met the walls. Dorothy touched one of the hotel’s mahogany doors and the once glossy wood was now dull and soft beneath her fingers. The scent of rot hanging in the air like a fog. Dorothy pressed her sleeve to her nose to block the smell as she turned a corner, the hallway opening into a cavernous room.

Her heart stilled as her eyes searched the shadows for movement. There was no one. Everyone would all be out searching for Ash.

Or for me, she realized, with a rush that left her head spinning. She walked a little faster.

Columns rose from the floor, and long-decayed chandeliers hung from above, cobwebs stretched between the bulbs. Murky water filled the courtyard below. If she squinted down into it, Dorothy knew, she could see a grand staircase, an old piano, and marble countertops.

She crept up to her room using the back staircase, ears peeled for the creak of footsteps or the distant roar of laughter. Her room was on the fifth floor of the Fairmont, but it looked exactly like the one she’d been kept in when she was kidnapped the year before. Two beds, each covered in a white quilt. Wooden furniture. White curtains. Blue chair. The only item that actually belonged to her was the small silver locket hanging from her mirror. Her grandmother’s locket. Her mother had given it to her on her wedding day, and it was the only object she still had from her own time period.

Dorothy slipped the locket off the wooden frame and looped it around her neck. And then she started to pack. Two pairs of extra clothes, her cloak and mask, the precious little money she had left—all of this she shoved