Read Red Sky at Night (Home in the stars, #0.5) for Free Online

to be his son's. It wasn't unlikely that the son took after the father, nor was it a stretch that he could steal a child from a mother or kill for an heir. The man was obsessed and unstable.
    Brinn pleaded with him. "We have to do something, Arden. If we could come up with money for a colony position...?"
    He nodded, wondering just what he was letting himself in for at this point. Before it was done, Ari had made her case that there would never be enough money to run far enough or fast enough, so he and Brinn would have to prepare to live with the biggest lie he’d ever told.
    *
    A rden watched his sister dancing at his wedding with a bemused expression. Now that they had a plan in place, she was getting better, a little less withdrawn. It seemed to have been worry on her mind that caused the most of her anxiety. Worry and memories.
    He'd grown a light beard over the last few weeks because Brinn said she liked it. He smiled as he tugged again at his facial hair, freshly trimmed for his wedding. He'd even put on a dark blue suit with one of the bow ties on it he detested. He felt like someone's pet wearing a collar and leash in show. There were about thirty people at the rooftop party they were having for their wedding. They'd fixed up the roof with strings of lights and canopies over a buffet. There was even a small raised dance floor of banyan wood and a string band made up of his old friends. He smiled at the twinkling lights as the sky dimmed to a beautiful rose red in the distance.
    Her soft voice went straight to his gut as she approached from behind him, laying her hand on his shoulder. "Red sky at night, Sailor's delight."
    The Old Earth saying had survived thousands of years to be quoted here this night, somewhere in a desert on a planet in another galaxy. He supposed it might be a truism. He'd never thought about it, and Taarken only had one ocean. It was very far from here, and far from his own experience. Brinn had a book on sailing and Old Earth. The kind with paper pages and the musty smell of age.
    Brinn loved to read to him, curled up at night on the day bed on their roof till dawn sometimes. He sighed contentedly with his mind full of her, what she liked, what she hated. He didn't even know it all, and he couldn't wait to find out.
    He reached behind and took her hand, and pulled her around to stand with her back to his front, arms captured by his over hers. Her flowing white dress splayed around them like tissue paper dancing in the breeze or butterfly wings.
    "That's my favorite dress so far."
    "We'll see if you like it later. It was the very devil to get on. I'm betting it's as hard to get off."
    Using his body to shield them, he bunched a hand in her skirt at her hip, and whispered, "I can manage to get in there, I promise you."
    She leaned back into him. "Have I told you that I love when you make promises like that because you always keep them.
    Are you sure you're up for what we're about to do, Arden?"
    She raised her worried face to his. He looked over at his sister where she gave the barest smile to one of the band.
    "We have to get started sometime. Might as well be now. I worry about her though."
    He felt Brinn's nod against his chest. "I do, too. She's in so much pain it makes me feel like a criminal to feel this happy."
    He touched her face in the dimming light of the sunset and the growing lights on the roof as they were turned on to meet the darkness.
    "It will pass, Mrs. Badu. She'll be happy again, and so will we." He nodded toward the sunset that now blazed in shades of red where the darkness was falling fast. "Red sky at night, remember?"
    He kissed her again, until he heard the hoots of the party guests calling them back from their own little world. As they rejoined the celebration, he took another look at the vivid night sky, and realized he didn't even feel its call like he used to. He'd lost that need to fly, to be among the stars. He was content right here on the ground with