Page 50 of Skinwalker's Bane
Devin nodded. “They wouldn’t have found me anyway. I hid. In the pipes.”
Adam was staring at her with frank amazement in his eyes. “Two whole years. And no one suspected.”
“There were a few who knew I was there, only they were Cavers and left me alone.”
Adam’s jaw hardened. “Even more reason to toss the bastards out the airlock. Damn, Devin…”
She shook her head a little. “Don’t start feeling sorry for me,” she said briskly. “That was a long time ago. I got another set of fill-in parents and I grew up like everyone else did.”
“Here in the Palatine,” Adam finished. He stared at her. “You’re really a Plebian, after all.”
She almost laughed. “I don’t think I’ve ever said I was truly a Patrician. Everyone just assumes that.”
“Your registered address might have something to do with that,” Adam pointed out dryly. “Devin, why don’t you tell people who you are?”
“So they can feel sorry for me, too?”
“I don’t feel sorry for you,” he said flatly.
Her heart gave another little jump. It did that a lot around Adam.
“If I feel anything at all about the girl you were, it’s admiration. You came through an ordeal that would kill others and you emerged with your mind intact.” His eyes widened a little. “That’swhy you want to be Captain, isn’t it? That’s what drives you.”
Devin gave a little laugh. “It sounds so pathetic when you put it that way. Wounded child wants to change the world so it will never happen to any other child. So very dramatic and angst-filled.”
“Only, it’s true, isn’t it?” Adam asked, the same flat note in his voice.
Devin frowned. “I don’t think I ever articulated it, even in my mind. I’ve just always known that somehow, I want to make a difference, to change things. It started off with me wanting to make a difference tomylife. To better myself. Lately, though, it has become something else.”
“Making life better for everyone else?” Adam asked gently.
“How did you know?” she asked, shocked.
He shrugged. “You’re you. Of course you want to help everyone else.”
“How could it be me, if I just figured it out myself?” she demanded.
“Because deep inside, that’s who you’ve always been.”
She stared at him, wondering if that were true. She had always thought of herself as a selfish person, made that way by the need to look out for herself, forage for food and shelter and take care of herself, in among the pipes. It had never occurred to her, in those two years, to seek out an adult and ask for help. Her parents had been Cavers at heart, even if they had not been official members of the group. When she was a child, the Cavers had still believed that theEndurancewas parked in a deep cave on Earth. They had been rabid in their disdain for the authority that had delivered them to their rocky prison.
It had taken years of counselling for Devin to understand that her parents’ attitudes had filtered into her subconscious. That was why she had not sought help. That was why she had remained hidden among the pipes, afraid of anyone in authority—which was every adult, to her child’s eyes.
Had she always been generous, the way Adam seemed to think she was? Had the Caver conditioning just masked it?
“I don’t know about that,” Devin said slowly. “If I was the person you say I am, I would never have let the situation with Lincoln go on so long unchallenged.”
“Then maybe you’re changing into that person,” Adam said. “Only, you have to have the capacity to be that person before you can change into that person, so the potential has always been there.”
Devin sighed. “I am used to thinking of myself as the woman with the unsavory past. Caver parents, running wild in the Field, then having to be rescued and dumped on people who never should have been parents. I’ve taxed the resources of the ship all my life.”
“Damn it, Devin, so does everyone else! We all breathe! We all eat! That’s…it’s just flat out ridiculous.” Adam strode over to the table, yanked his chair out and sat on it, so that he was looking directly at her. He leaned forward earnestly. “Maybe Ishouldgo to the soiree, just to make sure you don’t kill your career through some stupid, misguided belief that you don’t deserve it.”
Her heart paused. She stared at him.
He took her face in his hands. “Don’t look so alarmed! I would no more ruin your chances, than I will let you do it. You should start thinking more kindly about yourself, Devin.”
He kissed her and she let him distract her the way he intended to. She could think of no more pleasant a distraction than Adam’s hands and mouth and body against hers.
