Soul Forgotten (Blue Star Series Book 1)

by Laura Winter

  “That’s no way to talk to your father. Aidan said you still didn’t have your memories.” Lightning cracked in the distance, almost perfectly timed with his sentence.

  My fingers dug into the bench in anger. “I’ll say whatever I want. You and Aidan were luring me into a trap.”

  “Of course we were. You don’t deserve the Blue Star’s power, that’s why it’s eating at you. It erased half of what you were, and now I’m going to make sure it takes the rest of you so I can finally have that power for myself.”

  He flashed a crooked smile before the lightning struck closer. Holy shit, he had control over it.

  Nate tensed. “You took down the gym that night.”

  Richard laughed. “Did it really take you that long to figure it out? I was trying to push Finnley’s outburst along so she would give in to the Blue Star’s energy. If she had become the Cold Soul, she would have let everyone in there die while she walked out unscathed. You see, I have to wait until she gives into it completely before I can take the power she stole. I was really expecting that to happen tonight.”

  “I’ll die before I let you have that power,” I snarled.

  He just smiled wider. “Oh, I know. Hope you enjoy your dreams, darling daughter.” Lightning slammed into the ground in front of him, and by the time our eyes adjusted, he was gone.

  I placed my hand over my stomach where the mysterious wound continued to kill me every night in my dreams. Richard knew. How could he know?

  A soft rain started to fall as Nate and I sat on the bench in silence.

  35

  Clara

  While I had been up since the sun poked through my window, Nate was still fast asleep. After driving home soaking wet, we had been too exhausted to change and now I could smell that mistake. But every part of my body hurt so I just stayed still, focused on Nate breathing steadily next to me.

  Hope you enjoy your dreams, darling daughter.

  My dad’s voice shook around in my head now that it was empty of the Blue Star voices. That didn’t stop the soreness of the headache, though. I took an aching breath and rolled my head to watch Nate’s chest rise and fall, lulling me back into the present. I felt a little guilty to see the cut on his arm had reopened last night because of me.

  I made an attempt to roll over without waking him up, but a roar of nausea hit me as I stood. Ignoring all decency, I sprinted into the bathroom, barely shutting the door before I threw up in the toilet. The room spun around me as I crawled over to the shower, remembering that the cold water had worked before. I heaved my body over the side of the tub, dragging the skirt of my dress over the edge as I curled into the spray of water.

  “C?”

  I heard Nate tap on the door but I couldn’t make the words come out of my mouth. Instead, I groaned as loud as I could and he came stumbling in. He looked about as crappy as I felt. He stepped over the edge and helped pick me up, but after that we were out of energy. We leaned on each other, using the shower wall to hold up the rest of our weight.

  “I have a question for you,” Nate grunted, taking longer than usual to spit out the words.

  “Hmm?”

  “Do you think the bags under my eyes match my outfit?”

  We both laughed weakly, spending another few minutes trying to climb out of the shower. He guided me to the closet so I could change while he turned back to the bed, stopping every few steps to sway back and forth before continuing.

  I leaned against the closet wall after changing and watched through the crack in the door as Nate tried to put his clean shirt on. He was trying to put both of his arms through the same sleeve, getting frustrated when it wouldn’t fit. If someone had walked in on us, they would have thought we were drunk out of our minds.

  I had enough of my bearings to walk over and help him get his shirt figured out.

  He fell back onto the bed with a grunt. “Is this the headache you feel every day?”

  I shrugged and sat down with him, leaning my head onto his chest. “No, this one is actually pretty bad. It’s usually a daily dull ache, but you probably only feel that when the voices are screaming at me.”

  “Shit, no wonder you’re grumpy all the time. This sucks.”

  “Rude.”

  We probably stayed there for another hour as I played with his hand, tracing the scar on his palm. When we finally had the strength to stand, House delivered plenty of junk food and caffeine for breakfast. I finished and pulled my knees up to my chest so I could rest my chin on top, lost in thought about the events of last night. It was a miracle we were sitting here right now.

  “What’s up?” Nate asked, poking my shin with his spoon.

  “Thinking about what my dad said last night.”

  “Which part?” he groaned.

  I frowned. “Well, two parts. He said that if I had become the Cold Soul, I would have let everyone in the gym die. Could I really become so cruel? That’s the second time we’ve heard of the Cold Soul. What do you think it is?”

  House creaked and the table shook as I looked around, confused. Nate just shook his head.

  “You would never do that, but he does know more about the Blue star power source than we do right now. Those voices are evil, so maybe that’s what happens if you take in all the power.”

  I chewed my cheek in thought. “Hold up. He thinks I’m the only one who has the power. That brings me to number two with the last thing he said. He knows I have the nightmares, so he knows I die.”

  Nate sighed. “You’re not going to die, C. It’s a nightmare, but that’s all it is.”

  I shrugged. “I’m just saying, we have one advantage over him now. He doesn’t know you have some of the power too, which means he can’t take all of it from me while you still have some of it.”

  “So, he won’t kill you. He said he was waiting for you to give in to the Blue Star before he made his move, but you can’t fully do that if I have some of the power,” Nate said, lifting his right palm up.

  I pressed my forehead into my knees and groaned. “Then why does it still give me headaches? Why does it still call to me?”

  Nate reached his fingers under my chin and lifted my head. “I don’t have that answer, but maybe if we find out how he plans to take the power, we can be ready for him.”

  “If we want to be ready for him, we need to be ready to fight,” I replied.

  Nate looked at me nervously. “What does that mean?”

  “It means we start training tomorrow morning.”

  36

  Nate

  It was official. I hated the training phase of our plan. I slammed into the wall for maybe the fifteenth time, and they were starting to not feel padded anymore. I can’t believe I missed the library.

  “Dude, you’re getting your ass kicked,” Glitch laughed as he sat on a wooden box in the corner.

  “Says the guy who gave up after three tries,” I groaned, pushing off the ground.

  The name of the game was stealing the tennis ball in Clara’s hand. It seemed like an easy task when she stood in the middle of the empty room, but I was proven wrong time and time again.

  Clara flicked the air toward Glitch as she tipped his seat, tossing him to the ground.

  “Ow,” he huffed.

  Clara shook her head as she glared at him. “Take this seriously, Glitch.”

  I tried to use her distraction to my advantage, running up behind her. I was about five feet away when my face smacked into an invisible wall.

  She rolled her eyes as she glanced back at me. “I can hear your thoughts.”

  I just groaned, still sprawled on the ground.

  Glitch folded his arms. “Why do we always have to steal the ball from you?”

  “Because she can kick our asses before we even know what’s happening,” I answered, staring at the ceiling.

  I don’t know what happened next, but Glitch hit my side after sliding across the floor.

  “You two aren’t even trying,” Clara groaned. I could see s
he was a bit annoyed at us, which was fair because we were terrible at this, but we were out of our league here.

  Clara began throwing the ball against the wall, catching it as it bounced back. That gave me an idea. I concentrated on the ball’s trajectory, creating a shadow on the wall just as she threw it. The ball disappeared into the hole and popped out of the next shadow I created on the ceiling above me, kind of like a portal. I caught it as it dropped into my lap.

  “Yeah! I win!” I cheered, holding it over my head.

  Glitch poked the ball to see if it was real as Clara cocked her head. “How did you do that?”

  I shrugged. “No idea. It just happened.”

  She shook her head. “Seriously, that could be useful. Going into one shadow and hopping out of another adds an element of surprise. Do it again.”

  I tossed her the ball and she continued to throw it against the wall. I focused again and made a shadow to swallow the ball on her next toss. But as I opened another hole on the wall behind Clara, nothing came out.

  Clara sank her shoulders. “Bummer. I’ll be sure never to jump in one of those.”

  “Yeah, I’d hate to be floating around in nothingness for all eternity,” Glitch said as he hopped up, glitching to the other side of the room.

  Clara’s eyes widened. “Hold up, do that again.”

  Glitch obeyed, popping up behind her. “Boo!”

  She jumped, but seemed more excited than startled. “How quickly can you do that?”

  “Instantly, why?” he asked.

  “Do it again, but keep doing it all around the room.”

  Glitch shrugged but complied. I think I knew where Clara was going with the idea, because the more Glitch used his power, the more of him popped up around the room. It looked like a bunch of glitches around us.

  “This is awesome,” he said, his voice echoing around the room.

  Slowly, they all started to disappear. I followed the one I thought was him, but it disappeared after a few seconds.

  “Gotcha!” he said in my ear, popping away right before I could punch him. Clara had caught on to his pattern because she pushed him over with her powers just as he landed next to the wooden box. She laughed and walked over to help him up.

  “Alright, now it’s my turn,” she said, fake punching the air toward me.

  “You’ve already been showing off with the tossing me against a wall thing,” I grumbled.

  “Those are only brief surges. I want to try to hold it.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “You sure you’re up for that? How’s your head?”

  “I’m fine,” she said a little too quickly, throwing up a wall around her head before I could read her thoughts. She shifted to stand next to me and turned to face Glitch, holding her hands up. “Okay, bring it.”

  Glitch reached his hands out carefully, waving through the air so he wouldn’t go crashing into another wall. When he found her shield, the air rippled around him.

  “Trippy. It’s cold,” he said, his voice muffled from the outside of the shield.

  He placed his hands against the wall and started to push against it. Only, one of him wasn’t having much luck so he started glitching around the perimeter, using ten of himself to push against the wall in different places. Clara slid back a bit in her stance before planting her feet firmly underneath herself. Glitch made a few more of himself, filling up every gap as he continued to push against the wall. Ripples shook the air around us, distorting his figures. Watching this gave me hope that we might actually have a chance in a fight.

  “Nate, what’s up with her?” all of the glitches asked, a few of them starting to disappear.

  I glanced toward her, my eyes drawn to the blue glow coming from her arm. Shit. The Blue Star had to be in the room, taking advantage of her surge of power. I patted my pockets, not finding the marble until I dug through Clara’s pocket.

  I pulled out the marble, the surface glowing the same blue as Clara’s arm. I could hear the voices now, soft in the back of my head as they begged Clara to let them in. The wall Clara was holding broke and she dropped her hands to her sides, but she just stood there with her eyes glazed over. There was no outburst, just a constant pull and ache that she probably felt ten times worse than I did.

  “Get this out of here,” I said, tossing the Blue Star to Glitch. He popped out of the room in an instant.

  As soon as he was gone, Clara dropped to her knees. I tried to catch her but ended up falling to the ground with her.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry,” she whispered, avoiding my gaze. I reached to her hand but she winced, turning her palm over to reveal the fresh blue blood dripping from her reopened scar.

  “What happened?” I asked, trying to get her attention as she avoided my eyes. “That wasn’t like the other times.”

  She shook her head. “The voices were different this time. They told me they could protect me… protect you. They were offering a trade. I didn’t have to die if I just let them in.”

  I pressed my forehead against hers. “They lied to you before. Why was this any different? Why would you believe them?”

  “They showed me what happened when I ran away.”

  I sat back on my heels. “What?”

  “I stole the Blue Star. I knew my dad and Aidan were waiting for me outside to take the power. My mom was running after me as I escaped with that man chasing close behind. He had the fire… he killed her, but the Blue Star told me it would keep me alive so I could save everyone else. So I let it in, but it didn’t feel right. I got scared and dropped it before all of the power consumed me, but I still had an outburst. Now the Blue Star is angry I didn’t take all of it, and it needs me to take in the rest so I won’t die like my dreams. It’s the only way,” she replied, her eyes watering.

  “Look at me, C,” I said, lifting her chin. “You can’t trust this thing. We can figure this out together, just don’t give up yet.”

  She sighed and closed her eyes, pressing her face into my shoulder.

  37

  Clara

  I sat on the edge of the bed, watching Nate do a better job wrapping my arm than I ever could. He hadn’t said a word since we walked out of the training room. He didn’t even say goodbye as Glitch left. He just walked me to my bedroom and got out the first aid kit like wrapping my arm had just become a normal thing to deal with.

  I could tell Nate was mad at me without reading his thoughts. I had tried to listen to the voices of the Blue Star; the same ones I had promised I wouldn’t follow. But this time they had been so much more convincing. I had a piece of my memory back with their promise. If I gave in, they’d protect everyone around me. I could hear those same promises in my memory, whispering to me as I ran away after stealing the Blue Star. That’s why I had given in the first time, and that’s why I wanted to give in now. I was so close…

  His silence finally broke me. “I’m sorry, Nate. I was weak and I didn’t listen. I didn’t let you help me,” I blurted.

  Nate closed the first aid kit and put it back under the sink, still not speaking to me as he paced back and forth.

  I shifted anxiously. “Please, Nate. I know you’re mad at me, just say something. Yell at me, I deserve it.”

  He stopped and shoved his hands in his pockets. “I lied to you.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not mad at you, I’m mad at myself. I lied to you about the Cold Soul.” House creaked but Nate just raised his voice, speaking toward the ceiling. “She deserves to know. She’s the one who left the note, and maybe it’ll help.”

  “Nate, what are you talking about?” I asked.

  He pulled out a neatly folded note from his pocket and handed it to me. I opened it to see my handwriting.

  Whispers.

  Screams.

  Fear.

  A soul.

  Replaced by the Cold Soul.

  Erased.

  Consumed.

  Existing within.

  Waiting.

  The Bl
ue Star.

  Called into Darkness.

  Called into Cold.

  Dividing.

  Nate sighed. “C, this is why the voices are lying to you. It’s your own warning. I promised House I wouldn’t show you, but I can’t keep it anymore. You have to know they are lying. They aren’t going to protect you, they want to consume you.”