Secrets of the Starcrossed

by Clara O'Connor

  Devyn exhaled. “I have new orders – or at least, I’ve been ordered to stay a bit longer. I was already inside the walls anyway, so they asked me to take a closer look at the illness. It isn’t just here, it’s travelled beyond the borderlands. They believe it’s something the Empire is doing, but they don’t know what. It seems to attack those who have magic in their bloodline whether there’s any manifestation of it or not. There were cases like this years ago in other parts of the Empire, places where magic has now been almost entirely eradicated. They hunted down the sick – no more magic, no more illness.” He shook his head. “Marcus Courtenay is the only known person of a magical bloodline in Londinium. He’s not ill, but he works in a hospital that’s had some success in treating it and you have access to him. We want to find out what he knows.”

  “You want me to spy on him?” I shook my head. “No, Marcus is my future partner, my match.”

  “You won’t do this because you think he is your match? Didn’t you just say you know he can’t be?”

  “He was chosen for me by the system,” I insisted helplessly. This had been my truth for half my life. I didn’t know what to do with what I felt – or didn’t feel – for him.

  “No, Cass, you were chosen for him by them. My guess is it’s because of your blood; they want to pair you both. Marcus is fifth generation. His great-great-grandmother, the one who married into the Courtenay family as collateral in the 1772 Treaty, was a Plantagenet. Her line was incredibly powerful. The city’s council never knew how powerful. You are just a foundling child to them, but genetically, if you are from outside Londinium, your blood is likely to be at least a carrier, if not a latent or something more. Princess Margaret was married to one of their own, and their child married a citizen, and so on. That line is running thin which is why they’ve now matched him to you. It’s probably the only reason they didn’t kill you when they found you, or let you rot in the slums of the outer walls.”

  I shook my head, not sure which piece of information I was having more trouble processing.

  They knew I was a Shadower. Marcus was not my true match. Rather, we were being put together to give the next generation of House Courtenay a bloodline that was more likely to carry magic.

  “They want to breed us, is that what you’re telling me?” My voice was on the high side.

  “Yes, we think so.”

  “For what purpose?” I asked.

  “We’re not sure. It’s got to be connected to the illness. It can’t be a coincidence – a sickness attacking latents at the same time as they make moves to strengthen the only major latent bloodline in the city. We need to figure out what they’re up to. The council must have been planning this for years: your adoption by your parents, their subsequent rise in society, being matched to Marcus, whose father is actually a member of the council. They’re all in on it. It’s clearly important to them, but why? Beyond eradicating magic, the Empire has never shown that much interest in it before.”

  He was talking about geopolitical machinations, but all I really heard was that my promise of a happy, blessed future with someone who would be my real family was all a lie.

  “No.” I stumbled as I stood. “No, I’ve done everything, everything the Code asks and now I don’t even get to have my true match?”

  I felt like someone had punched me in the gut. The future I had been working towards was no more.

  And now what? What was Devyn asking of me?

  My eyes stung and watered as I stared at him, at those dark, dark eyes – almost black as the shutters came down trying to veil the confirmation of what I now knew to be true. The city might be using me but he was no better. He wanted to make me his creature, a puppet he pulled on a string.

  It served him now that I stay close to Marcus. Because I danced where he led, I couldn’t help myself. I would do anything he asked me to. Just to be able to spend more time with him. Just to be near him.

  My stomach seemed to fold in on itself as emotion slammed into me. No. No.

  I stared at him, anger tearing through me.

  “You, you are my real match, right?”

  He stood immobile, staring down at me, a slight tick in his jaw the only sign he had heard me.

  “Right?” I repeated, my tone demanding an answer.

  His eyes closed briefly as he shook his head tersely.

  “Outside the walls, we don’t believe in matching using the codified system,” he demurred.

  Liar. What I had felt when Marcus kissed me was platonic compared to the quicksilver that whipped through me at Devyn’s touch. I was drawn to him. He made me feel… more.

  He wasn’t saying he felt nothing for me. I knew he felt something. Maybe they didn’t believe in matches in the Wilds, but there was something between us. How dare he. How dare he tell me more half-truths while my entire future was crashing down about my ears. I launched myself at him blindly, my fists raining down on his chest, violence surging through me looking for an outlet, for relief that could only be achieved by denting that impermeable surface.

  Devyn took a step back in surprise as he found himself under attack, his arms coming up to capture mine as he lost his footing and we were falling, back onto the low, plain bed that sat behind the table.

  I landed squarely on top of him, my wrists caught in his hands, our bodies in total contact. His midnight eyes opened wide in awe as he looked up at me. Then a flicker took his gaze lower, to my lips. Then lower still to the cleavage that pushed up where my chest met his, and I felt him change, felt him shift lower down. His hips moved to assuage his newfound discomfort, seeking an angle at the joining of our two bodies that would give him more space… or perhaps less.

  My breathing quickened, became shallow, the anger fading from my melting bones.

  I lowered my head until our lips were a sliver away from each other, his tilted slightly to one side, and then we were locked, our tongues dancing as the flames licked along my bones.

  I pulled my hands out of his, freeing them to roam through his thick tousled hair, across his back, tracing the line of his spine, needing to learn him as his hands too danced from my hair to my breasts, moving restlessly, possessively, as our mouths met and merged.

  His large body pushed me down into the mattress, his hardness driven against the junction of my thighs, pressing in to close any air between us, despising the trappings of our clothes.

  And then his big hands came up and cupped my face, pushing me away from him.

  His head was already shaking in denial, a denial his lower body was eagerly and assuredly in conflict with. My skirt had ridden up around my hips as I dazedly struggled for breath beneath him.

  Sanity slowly returned to his eyes as a broken sound left my swollen lips. Yet it still took him another moment to gather his reserves of determination, his eyes steeling as he peeled himself off me, fixing my skirt as he went.

  He sat on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands. “Cass, I’m sorry. That shouldn’t have happened. We…” He paused, his head lifting as he ran his hand through his hair before half turning to look at me, still spread out on the bed. “That can’t happen again.”

  My heart caught in my throat. I was reeling, my body still readjusting to the lack of him. A lack, it seemed, I was destined to feel from here on out.

  Gritting my teeth, I sat up, looking anywhere but at Devyn as I adjusted my clothing. Finally, I got up and went over to the window; I watched the flow of people on the street below, which gave me something to focus on. Anything not to look directly at the man who had just rejected me.

  I felt as though I had just run a race, a race where everything had been up for grabs, adrenaline and hormones whirling and surging, now with the anguish of defeat sucking me down.

  My mind felt strangely calm, detached, and logical, assessing the next moves in the chess game. His kind might not believe in matches and my tech-oriented civilisation might scoff at soulmates but he was mine. I knew it. He knew it. But it seemed that reality
wasn’t something he was willing to admit to… because it was at cross purposes with his new mission or because it went against his commitment to this girl he sought, I didn’t know. Devyn held all the major pieces and I could walk away from the board with no further harm done but I didn’t want to give up. Too little experience of not getting what I wanted left me unwilling to concede the life I’d thought I would have with Marcus as well as the feelings I had whenever I was near Devyn. To play the game as it stood would be to suffer a drawn-out inevitable defeat and that didn’t appeal either.

  Which left me with only one option: pick up my queen and leave his game.

  “You want me to ignore what’s between us to continue to help you and betray the city I live in, is that it?” I asked, turning back to face him in the dirty, dark little room.

  Devyn looked back at me, his expression intent.

  “Yes.”

  I shook my head in disbelief.

  “I don’t think so. I helped you get Oban and Marina out of the city. That’s it. That’s all I signed up for. You tell me I’m a Shadower and expect me to believe you just because I’m adopted. You can’t prove it and I wouldn’t care anyway. I like my life, I like my home and my clothes and my friends. I love the city.” I took a step towards him. “The only thing missing is a future partner because I certainly don’t want the one that they, whoever ‘they’ are, selected for me. I don’t know why they want to reintroduce more Briton blood into House Courtenay. And I don’t want to know. I don’t want anything to do with any of it.” I glared down at him. “As for you and your friends… why would I help them? What is it they’re trying to do? Take down my city? You think I’m going to help the Britons overthrow us and haul us all back to the dark ages? Just because you asked nicely? To Hades with you.”

  Devyn pushed himself up off the bed.

  “Don’t be so naïve, Cass,” he scoffed. “People are dying. This isn’t about what you believe or what you want. Or what I believe or what I want. I’ve been asked to put those things aside and help. Because I can. You talk like it has nothing to do with you, like the pampered life you lead is yours by right and that you have no obligation to those less well off, whether those people live inside or outside the walls. You’d rather think about whether or not your shoes show off the latest fashion.”

  I shook my head in denial. I was pretty, popular, smart enough. I was not someone who was going to change anything more significant than myself. I didn’t want to. Sure, it would be nice if people weren’t getting struck down by this illness, but that was the concern of the council. It was up to them to make the world better. As for outside the walls, I had only the vaguest idea of how Shadowers lived and knew almost nothing about how the Britons lived in some feudal state where people didn’t even have… well, I didn’t have the least idea of how they lived with no technology.

  I’d never really been all that interested. Britons existed; their visit to Londinium at Treaty time was an opportunity to ogle the pageantry of their entry into the city and attend the social events that surrounded the week, my primary interest lying in the strange fashions of the visitors to our city. It was also an excellent excuse to have parties. And that was a pretty satisfactory arrangement as far as I was concerned.

  It had little to do with me and I was happy for it to continue that way. If the Britons wanted to know more about Marcus and his work, that was their business. Not mine.

  “You’re right,” I directed at him, my hands balling into fists at my sides, “and right now, these delectable little shoes are getting me out of here. Away from you. Away from whatever it is you and your kind want from me. You want Marcus, you can have him, but it turns out he’s not mine to give. You… you are…”

  Devyn’s whole body stilled, his face completely blank, his eyes black.

  “You are nothing to me either.” I had to brace myself in order to get the words out. It was the worst lie I had ever told in my mounting pile of them. But damn it, I had to scrape whatever pride I had left off the floor on my way out.

  “Goodbye, Devyn.”

  Chapter Twelve

  It was a glorious day in Richmond. Coming out to the villa was something we did every summer to enjoy a break in the holiday town with family and friends away from the hustle and bustle of the city. Of course, this far out tech was more temperamental but I always relished the relative peace it offered.

  Mother coped less well, but the sight of Papa sitting out on the balcony reading physical books in a lounging chair was a sight that always gave me pleasure.

  There had been no sign of Devyn, which was good, but I felt out of place in the beautiful house in which I had spent so many summers. This summer I felt utterly drained and found myself drifting listlessly from one room to the next. Without the endless stream of music, blasts, newsfeeds, and updates that filled my time in town, I was left to my own unquiet thoughts… thoughts that circled endlessly around Devyn. Out boating on the river with my friends, I wondered what he was doing and how he was spending his days. Playing tennis on the immaculate lawn courts perfecting my serve, I guessed at whom he might be spending time with. Though it had nothing to do with me anymore.

  I was increasingly suffering from strange episodes where I ceased to be entirely myself. As I sat by the river with my friends gossiping about the latest insane fashion Miranda Decian – our summer nemesis – was wearing, watching weekenders row by in the little rented boats, sitting in the dappled sunlight under the trees a light breeze would float by and suddenly I would be mesmerised by the glimmering play of lights on the water as the river reflected the sun. Mesmerised was too light a word for it – I was less me and more there. The sunlight glimmer, the tilting breeze, called me to play and I was helpless to resist. My soul would soar out of me and dance merrily, freely, with my new playmates, returning clumsily as my friends would eventually notice that I had spaced out when I failed to answer a direct question, but then they would laugh and call me back… at least, that’s how it started. As the episodes grew more frequent, Ginevra took to sitting by my side to nudge me urgently when I failed to respond when addressed. Sometimes I had actually just tuned out, bored by the idle chatter that up until recently engaged me fully.

  I wasn’t sure how to explain what was happening to me. When I took flight, I could actually see and hear what was happening around the bend in the river. I had contemplated starting to take the pills again, but it was hard to resist the pleasure I felt when my soul soared. I also needed to know the truth for myself. I couldn’t bring myself to suppress the evidence that not only was I almost certainly a latent, it was probable I was something more. It was a link to the truth, whatever that might be. I could live my life in the city and marry Marcus, but the temptation to find out just a little bit more about who I was and where I was from was impossible to ignore.

  Since the episodes were starting to attract attention, I tried to keep as busy as possible, which seemed to help. As long as I was active and focussed, I seemed to be okay, but that was exhausting, which made me irritable and less than fun to be around… which in turn didn’t help in the keeping busy stakes.

  Ironically, I was also spending quite a bit of time with Marcus.

  We strolled along the riverbank in the glorious sunshine at weekends when he took the boat downriver to visit me. The days were filled with blue skies and music and brightly dressed people flitting about. We walked and talked, gradually getting to know each other.

  I still felt nothing more than vague warmth towards him but when I had hinted at the idea that we might not be properly matched my mother immediately latched on to the notion that the boy from my party might be responsible. To keep her from turning her attention to Devyn despite our lack of contact, I was forced to play along.

  What reason could I give for throwing over the most eligible man in the province? Better to just go along with it, for now… at least while Devyn remained in the city.

  My friends were delighted at these visits, more than happy
to be seen hanging out with the senator’s son and keen to finally ride the wave of glory by association, their reward for having been discreet about my match for years.

  To be fair, he was any girl’s dream, and in a world where you had your partner handed to you by the Code, I had little reason to be disappointed. Watching him as we poked around the ruins of the old Briton palace, I had to admit that he put any man I’d ever met to shame. He was tall and had the most perfectly broad shoulders that tapered down to lean hips which were attached to long legs with a smooth stride that proclaimed his easy confidence to the world. There was no room in which he showed anything other than his absolute belief that he belonged… which was actually sort of starting to bother me until I realised that it was entirely faked.

  As we spent more time together, I found that the master-of-all-he-surveyed, entitled senator’s son was, if not a complete sham, then certainly more of an image he worked pretty hard to project than the real him.

  It was a sham that, as far as I could tell, pretty much no one saw through, except perhaps his father. At the summer fair a few weeks earlier, we had bumped into the right honourable Matthias Dolon after we had been messing about on the river and taken a soaking when our boat tipped over. Our attempt to skirt the fair and get back to the villa as quickly as possible had been blown in the worst way possible.

  We were giggling like children as we hurried along the street in our sopping clothes. I snorted at the sight of the river weed coming out of the back of Marcus’s trousers where it had caught in his belt.

  “Well, this is a sorry sight.”

  Looking up to find his father on the path in front of us, Marcus’s laughing response to his unwanted tail died on his lips.

  “You will be more suitably attired for the dinner party this evening, one hopes.” His father raised a sardonic eyebrow at his bedraggled son, turning to flash his teeth at the elegantly attired group with him.