Libra Ascending: An Epic Urban Fantasy Romance (Zodiac Guardians Book 1)

by Tamar Sloan

  Remembering what else came in that pod has Tristan shooting to his feet. “No, no, no.” He takes in the wreckage. Nothing has been left standing. “Please, no.”

  He ploughs through the broken furniture to the other end of the room, falling to his knees as he clears away the debris.

  Brielle kneels beside him. “What? What are you looking for?”

  “The gems,” Tristan breathes.

  There are no Zodiac Guardians without their gems.

  He uncovers the vent placed low in the wall. It looks undisturbed, but the Skins are twisted enough to take what’s behind it and put everything back so it wasn’t discovered straight away. So that someone like Tristan would think everything’s okay.

  His hands, still covered in the dark suit, tremble a little as he reaches out. With a quick swipe he pulls the vent down, revealing the safe behind it.

  It looks undisturbed.

  Punching in the code, Tristan holds his breath. Please let them be there. Please…

  The door pops open with a click, exposing the dark interior. Two black boxes sit within.

  Tristan falls back on his heels. “Thank pitch.”

  He draws them out, feeling their familiar weight. He looks at Brielle. “This is what they were trying to find.” Destroying everything in the process would’ve just been done for pleasure.

  Brielle’s face floods with relief. “That’s good.” She glances down at the slim cases, her eyes widening. “They’re the stones?”

  Tristan nods, realizing they’re getting closer to the moment that could change his destiny. And Brielle’s.

  He stands, Brielle following him. “Half of them, anyway.”

  Brielle looks at him for long moments. “Do you think you could take the suit off before we…you know? I can’t see your face.”

  “Oh, of course.” Tristan grins but then realizes Brielle can’t see it.

  He raises his hand to his chest, feeling the gem that’s embedded there in the suit. This time, he whispers the word. “Akash.”

  In a blink, the suit withdraws. Plate after tiny plate retreats, absorbing into the next. Before Tristan realizes what’s happened, it’s gone. Impossibly, undeniably, relegated back into the stone.

  “Now, that’s cool,” says Tristan in awe.

  A second before he collapses with a groan.

  “Tristan!” Brielle falls to her knees beside him. She gasps when she sees him. “Oh god.”

  It’s like all of the pain the Skins inflicted hits Tristan at once. His chest feels like it’s been excavated, his face like it’s been pulverized. He thought he was running on adrenaline, but it’s quite possible the suit was the one holding him up.

  Tristan picks up the second box, holding it out to Brielle. “Nanites.”

  Although she’s confused by the strange word, Brielle takes the box and opens it. Inside sit several glowing vials. “What are they?” she breathes.

  Tristan keeps his breaths as shallow as possible. “Alien biotechnology. They…heal.”

  Brielle slips one out, holding it up. The yellow-green liquid glows gently, seeming to move of its own volition within the glass cage. “What now?”

  “Normally…we’d inject them.” Tristan works not to grimace. Who knew talking took up so much lung capacity? “But the first aid kit…” Is in about a million pieces. He holds his hand out. “I’ll drink it.”

  Brielle’s eyes widen again at the thought of ingesting the luminous liquid. “Okay.” She draws the word out as she removes the lid and passes it to him.

  Tristan doesn’t give himself time to think. He throws the content of the vial into his mouth, his body stiffening as the liquid slips over his tongue and down the back of his throat. It’s…warm and gelatinous…and gross.

  He wipes his mouth. “They obviously don’t have berry flavor on Gemini I.”

  He drops his head back and it clunks on the floor but he doesn’t care. Right now, every inch of his body weighs a tone.

  Brielle scoots around, gently lifting his head and resting it on her lap. “Is that better?”

  “Mm.” Tristan lets his eyes flutter closed as her fingers gently push the hair back from his face. It probably looks like an eggplant right now, but Tristan gives himself over to the sensation. There’s something about Brielle’s touch that feels like it reaches right down to his soul. It soothes him in a way nothing else has before.

  “Tristan?”

  “Mm?”

  “I don’t think now’s the time for a nap.”

  He doesn’t answer. Right now, he can’t think of a better time for a nap.

  Brielle’s fingers stop. “Tell me about the nanites.”

  They don’t continue and Tristan realizes he’s being blackmailed. “Nanotechnology,” he mumbles, realizing he’s willing to do far more to have her hands touching him like that. “Teeny, tiny robots that run around mending and fixing. Zarius told us every other day that the technology on Earth is the most primitive he’s ever seen.”

  “Will it take long?”

  Tristan cracks open an eye, looking up at the concerned face above him. “I’m not sure I’m in a rush anymore.”

  Brielle’s lips part, her eyes softening. Tristan’s pretty sure he’s never seen anything so beautiful in his life. His body stills. His chest warms. One word trickles through his mind.

  Soulmate.

  The tinkling of his cell phone fractures the moment. Tristan jerks out of the spell that was being cast around him. Zarius!

  Instinctively, he reaches for his pocket only to find it empty. His cell appears in front of him, held in Brielle’s hand. Oh yes, she borrowed it to call Adalind.

  The traitor.

  Tristan takes his phone, his heart leaping when he sees Zarius’s name flashing on the screen. He swipes the screen and brings it to his ear. “Zarius, where are—”

  “Tristan!” Zarius’s voice is thick and urgent. “Don’t come—”

  Ice shoots through Tristan’s veins a second before a new voice slides over his ear.

  “Hello, Tristan.”

  Tristan sits up, fury replacing the frozen fear. “If you so much as—”

  Adalind chuckles. “I think it might be too late to be able to promise that. Now, if you want to see them again, you might want to listen.”

  Brielle scoots around, her eyes wide as she recognizes the voice. Tristan’s hand tightens around the cell so hard he has to consciously unclench it. “Talk, then.”

  “We’re at the warehouse and we’d like to chat.” Tristan wants to snort but he doesn’t. They don’t want to talk. They want more blood on their hands. “My bestie can come if she likes, but that’s it. We see anyone else, and your parents’ deaths are on your conscience.”

  “You bi—”

  “The feeling’s mutual, Zodiac filth,” Adalind growls. “I wouldn’t take too long.”

  The line goes dead.

  Tristan drops the phone before he crushes it. He looks at Brielle. “They have Zarius and Tess.”

  She gasps. “We have to save them!”

  Damn straight they do.

  Kneeling among the debris, Tristan picks up the box containing the stones. “You’ll need this, first.”

  Brielle’s eyes go wide and round. They lock with his and she nods once. “It’s time.”

  Tristan’s glad the nanites are already working their magic, because his chest has gone all tight again.

  It’s time.

  Turning the box around, it slides smoothly in Tristan’s palm. Zarius would bring it out regularly to show Tristan. To remind him.

  Your power is held within these stones. A power bestowed on you by the Universe.

  He’d pick them up one by one, always finishing with the second Gemini stone.

  When the Gemini Twins are united, their power is the greatest the Universe has ever seen. It is as good as Chardis is evil. It is the light to his night. It is the one thing he fears.

  Tristan swallows. If the prophecy is right, then thi
s might all be over before it started.

  He holds the box out to Brielle.

  They’re about to find out.

  24

  Brielle

  The stakes have risen considerably, and Brielle suddenly feels the weight of the world—no, the weight of the entire Universe—on her shoulders.

  The slick black box lays open in front of her. Sitting on its cushy purple cloth interior are six beautiful gems all about the size of a walnut. She can’t imagine how much each of them would be worth to a jeweler, but to her, to their cause, they’re priceless.

  Even though she knows the importance and urgency of making her choice, the impulse to stall this moment is undeniable.

  She turns to Tristan. “How many Zodiac Guardians are there? Twelve, one for each of the signs, right?”

  “Thirteen, actually,” he replies quickly. “There are two Geminis, remember?” His tone implies that he wants to rush her but that he’s holding back. He understands what this must be like for her, and she’s grateful for his indulgence, even though she understands what his parents’ ransom must be like for him.

  “There are only six stones here. What happened to the rest of them?”

  Tristan shakes his head with an air of futility. “I honestly don’t know. Maybe the older Heirs were sent with theirs, or maybe the stones still reside with their Guardians on their home planets, if any of them survived. I really can’t say. Zarius has only ever had these six.” He takes a step closer. “Which of them speaks to you?”

  His eyes flicker to the stones, and she tries like heck not to follow them, terrified to pick the stone he wants and fail to make it shine. She has to follow her gut here. It would be terrible for her to grab the Gemini stone and turn out not to be her, to see the look of disappointment on Tristan’s face. To deal with yet another heartbreak. And worse, what if none of them shine and everyone was wrong about her? Or her stone is lost in the cosmos somewhere? What then?

  She can’t think like that, she has to focus.

  Closing her eyes, she takes a deep calming breath, then turns her full attention to the stones.

  She scans each one carefully. Like a psychic, she decides to hover her hand over each gem to see if she feels a tug or an energy from a certain one. The brilliant golden citrine shines like the sun and is gorgeous, and the perfectly cut diamond that reflects any speck of light into beautiful rainbow flecks would make any girl faint. But it’s not beauty she’s looking for, and neither of those speak to her.

  Sitting next to each other at the top of the case are a pale purple stone and a shimmering pink stone. For whatever reason, she feels drawn to both. Why? She can’t tell if her desire to pick up the purple one stems from the fact that Tristan’s is a deep purple and this one would likely be for his counterpart. But she knows nothing about Zodiac signs and gems associated with them, that could be totally wrong. She inwardly curses her social ignorance.

  The sound of Tristan’s harried breathing urges her to make a decision. Thinking it better to try the pink one and fail than going for the purple and failing, she hastily grabs the pink stone.

  To her surprise, a euphoric sense of warmth saturates not her body but her soul. The pink gem in her palm shines, illuminating everything in the basement with a sunset-like sherbet glow.

  With the sense of rightness that just infused Brielle.

  A glee that she’s never known fills her chest like a balloon, and she wants to jump and dance for joy!

  This is the reason for everything! Her visions, her lie-detection, her orphancy. This tiny yet beautiful rock holds within it the truth of who and what she really is. An alien princess destined to join a battle to save the Universe.

  Alden wasn’t wrong about her, he didn’t die in vain! Tristan wasn’t wrong about her. She really is a Zodiac Guardian.

  With a smile so wide that her cheeks feel pinched, she turns to Tristan, expecting an equally joyous reaction.

  It’s not there.

  Her smile falters.

  The joyous bubble pops.

  She’s not the Gemini Princess.

  A part of her says that shouldn’t matter. She is still an alien princess, a Zodiac Guardian. She should still be outrageously jubilant to finally have the answers to every question she’s ever had.

  But she isn’t, and neither is Tristan. They both wanted her to be the other Gemini. The other half to his whole.

  If she’s not, what does this all mean? The connection between them that feels stronger than the gravitational pull of the sun, the burning delicious feeling she gets when he touches her. None of it makes any sense if she’s not her.

  Tristan has a soulmate out there. He’s destined to be with someone else.

  That realization is crushing, squeezing out any lingering joy that had survived the popped bubble.

  But if she’s not the other Gemini, who is she?

  As if seeing the unspoken question in her eyes, Tristan says with a heavy sigh, “Libra. You’re Libra.”

  Libra?

  Her shoulders slump. “Tristan… I’m so sor—”

  “It’s okay,” he cuts her off. He forces a small smile, shaking his head fervently. “This is good news. Really. You are a Zodiac as I thought, as Alden thought. This means we’re one step closer to reuniting with the rest of the Guardians and defeating Chardis.”

  She nods, even though they both know she can sense the lie in his words.

  She’s not his soulmate. So much for avoiding a broken heart. This is one wound she’s certain will never heal, and will in fact deepen when he does find her.

  She shuts her eyes and turns away from the thought.

  They have more important things to worry about, like rescuing Tristan’s parents.

  She swallows her despair and asks, “So, as the Libra Guardian, now that I have my stone, what are my powers? You said the stones amplify things, right?”

  He nods and rubs the back of his neck. “Honestly, I should have known from the start. Your ability to sense when someone’s lying. It should have been obvious, but I didn’t want to see it.”

  She ignores the implication. “I also get visions of people when I’m close, when they feel guilty about something. I can see the bad things they’ve done. And just recently, I discovered I can amplify their guilt. That’s how I made Suki confess her infidelity to Zayne. I didn’t mean to, I didn’t even know I’d done it until it was too late.”

  Tristan slaps his hand to his forehead. “That’s right! That’s your offensive weapon!”

  Brielle scrunches her brow at him. “I hardly see how making someone face their guilt is offensive. Psychologically, maybe. But it still makes me no good in a fight.”

  “No!” He shakes his head fervently, his blue eyes burning with hope. “Now that you have your stone, it’s so much more than that. Zarius called it a Penance Burn. Basically, you amplify someone’s guilt to such a degree that it inflicts physical pain. Depending on the level of guilt, it can even kill someone! With all the horrible things Skins do, you’re likely to burn them alive! This is great!”

  A miniature big bang erupts in Brielle’s mind.

  She’s capable of killing someone just with guilt?

  She’s not sure she wants that power. What if she accidentally uses it on someone who doesn’t deserve it? She doesn’t have control of her powers as it is, and now they’re considerably more powerful.

  In the words of Tristan, it scares the pitch out of her.

  “We actually have a real chance to fight against the Skins!” His excitement is so thick, she could scoop it with a spoon.

  “I’m not so sure about this,” she confesses. “I don’t have control of my abilities. What if I accidentally kill an innocent person?” She looks down at the pink stone in her hand, and it feels like a hand grenade.

  “That can’t happen,” he assures her. “If you turned your power on an innocent, they’d feel nothing. It only hurts them if they have done truly deplorable things. It depends on their degree of g
uilt. The more people they’ve hurt, the more wrongs they’ve committed, the more they have to feel guilty about.”

  “So if I used my powers now on Suki? What then? Would she burn?”

  “For cheating on a high school boyfriend?” He frowns, then scoffs. “She may feel a bit of discomfort, but you wouldn’t burn her alive.”

  “How do you know?” she pleads. From what Tristan’s said, he was a baby when he came here. How can he be sure of anything? How can he be certain that she won’t accidentally burn everyone to a crisp? Even him?

  “Because Zarius knew,” he says with finality. “Zarius worked behind the scenes of the Gemini Court. He witnessed the Guardians in action, and he passed that knowledge down to me. Which is why I should have linked lie-detection to your Libra powers.”

  “What does lie-detection have to do with Libra’s power?” she asks, desperate for clarification.

  “Libra is the epitome of justice and truth,” he explains, locking eyes with her as if to make his words sink in. “Libra is the Judge of the Zodiac. So it makes sense that you’d be able to sense lies, sniff out the truth, and make people face the wrongs they’ve done. And when those wrongs are severe enough, Libra can punish them.”

  They sit in silence for a moment, letting Brielle come to terms with this knowledge. If Tristan’s right, once she gains a firmer hold on her powers, she’ll actually be able to fight for herself, to help Tristan. No one will ever have to die for her again. If only she’d gotten to her stone before Alden showed up. But then, if he hadn’t, Tristan would have never figured out how to activate his suit.

  “Now, let’s put your stone to the test,” he says, as if on the same wavelength. “Let’s activate your suit.”

  Her leg twitches nervously, and she grips her stone tightly. “H-how do I do that?” Again, the fear that she might fail, might somehow be unable to meet Tristan’s expectations, slices into her, reopening the wound that will never heal.

  “Give me your stone,” he says, holding out his hand.

  She places it into his waiting palm, and he quickly affixes it to a simple black cord like the one around his neck.

  “May I?” He lifts the cord toward her with both hands.