““Are you drunk?” I ask with a laugh. “A little. Catch up.” She swivels her legs down and puts her feet on the ground to clear a space on the bench beside her. “I was just getting to the part where you wrestled Pax in the mud.” My mother watches me quietly, a little smile on her lips as she knows the panic that must be going through me right now. Too shocked at seeing two halves of my life collide without my supervision, I sit down uneasily and listen to Mustang finish the story. With all that’s transpired, I’d forgotten the charm of this woman. Her easy, light nature. How she draws others in by making them feel important, by saying their names and letting them feel seen. She holds my uncle and brother in a spell, one reinforced by the Telemanus’s admiration for her. I try not to blush when my mother catches me admiring Mustang. “But enough of the Institute,” Mustang says after she’s explained in detail how Pax and I dueled in front of her castle. “Deanna, you promised me a story about Darrow as a boy.” “How about the gas pocket one,” Narol says. “If only Loran was here…” “No not that one,” Kieran says. “What about…” “I have one,” mother says, cutting off the men. She begins slow, words sluggish through the lisp. “When Darrow was small, maybe three or four, his father gave him an old watch his father had given him. This brass thing, with a wheel instead of digital numbers. Do you remember it?” I nod. “It was beautiful. Your favorite possession. And years later, after his father had died, Kieran here got sick with a cough. Meds were always in short ration in the mines. So you’d have to get them from Gamma or Gray, but each has a price. I didn’t know how I was going to pay, and then Darrow comes home one day with the medicine, won’t say how he got it. But several weeks later I saw one of the Grays checking the time with that old watch.” I look at my hands, but I feel Mustang’s eyes on me.”
Why is Morning Star my favorite of the original trilogy, you ask? Little moments like this. Darrow starting to be honest with himself. Virginia and Darrow admiring each other. Deanna clearly loving her son and future daughter-in-law. Not to mention Deanna so blatantly acting as Darrow’s wingman here. It took a lot of restraint not to quote this whole chapter tbh.
snowghoul
tangentwithtanner
andulkaphoto
gummygunk
2087
ellievsbear
