by Everly Frost
The bear with the mark whimpered.
It was such an unexpected sound, such a sad sound, that I willed myself toward it, touching ground, keeping a safe distance so that it couldn’t take a swipe at me. Ragged breaths racked its chest. Its arms and legs were curled inward as if it wanted to protect and heal itself.
Veins of light pulsed around its body, a sparkling life force. It was just like Michael’s heart glow—just like Seth’s before I put him in a coma—the glow of regeneration that only I seemed to be able to see. For a moment, I admired how beautifully the bear was put together.
It reminded me of the way I’d seen Michael’s heart at the dance recital, such a bright spark of life glowing inside his body as he regenerated and healed.
The bear was a weapon. A thinking weapon.
But did that also mean it was a feeling weapon?
As I drew closer, I kept away from the glow of light around its chest, wary of touching it and hurting it more than I already had. When I’d subdued Seth, it had been by touching him and releasing all my residual energy into his body.
The bear didn’t move. Only the single unharmed bear at the edge of the wreckage gave any indication of alarm, raising itself onto its two hind legs, staying on the perimeter where there was still snow as it waited for me to make my move.
I could touch the animal’s heart glow and stop its energy, sending it into hibernation—or worse. I knew I could. I’d done it to Seth.
I sought Snowboy’s face and found his expression closed, the planes of his cheeks set as though he wouldn’t make any choices for me.
Then I looked to the unharmed bear and the others who now gathered near us, all of them scorched, fur blackened in places, keeping their distance.
They were wary of me. They scented the air and shook their heads, as though the instinct to capture me was still strong, but the damage I’d done made them afraid to try.
I sought the black mark that I’d noticed on the bear’s chest, trying not to hurt it as I brushed the tips of its fur to see better.
On its chest was inked the number “9.”
My eyes burned. The bears were designed for a purpose—trapped into it and not by their own choice.
I swallowed and stepped away from the creature, closing the gap between me and Snowboy, reaching my hand out to him, willing him to take it, to walk away with me. I couldn’t decipher his expression, but relief washed through me when he grasped my palm in his and pulled me away from the destruction I’d caused.
Behind us, the bears raced toward the injured one, lifting it over the back of one who carried it away, the others forming a guard as they pounded away. I wondered if it would live after what I’d done to it. My chest squeezed at the thought that it might not.
I kept my focus on the movement of my legs, taking me closer to the other boys, who had gathered at the edge of the clearing. I was conscious of their expressions—as wary as the bears’.
I asked, “Will it survive?”
Snowboy didn’t answer my question. His eyes met mine and pinned me. “You exploded.”
I dismissed his words. “Well, it’s not the first time this has happened. And anyway, look at you. I saw what that bear did to you. Short of biting your head off, nothing hurt you, so don’t act so surprised.” I took a deep breath, knowing I was being defensive and not wanting to be.
He met my eyes as though it hurt him to look at me. “Ava, don’t freak out, but I have to tell you something.”
He looked at me as though I should know what he was about to say, but I didn’t.
He said, “You’re still exploding.”
Chapter Seven
I STARED. “I … what?”
Snowboy pointed. “Look behind you. Look at your body.”
A trail cut through the snow—melted ice and scorched earth that ended at my feet, as though I’d seared a path into the ground where I’d walked. It led all the way back to the site of the explosion.
At the tree line, the other boys stared, their eyes wide with shock.
My hands burned and suddenly that was all I could see. I touched my fingertips to my cheeks, then my lips, breathing out across them, and gasped as flames licked across my skin. Like the cracked blue when I burned ice, now I burned fire, fractures and fissures like molten lava. My skin boiled over me, a liquid mass. My clothing was in shreds.
Burn. Hot.
No wonder the bears had run from me…
Panic ripped through me.
“I need to cool down.” I couldn’t stop staring at my fingertips, splaying them apart, bright red against the icy white background.
Icy … white … snow.
I needed the snow.
I ran, ripping off my damaged clothing and dropping what remained of it behind me—the jackets first, my shirt next, then my boots and long pants. My leggings underneath were barely hanging together and all that remained was enough clothing to resemble shorts. I almost ripped off my singlet but stopped as my feet sunk into a drift. I headed left, away from the edge of the open space and toward its center, where I was sure the snow would be deeper, where I hoped I could sink into it and immerse my whole body in soothing ice.
I pushed through it, farther and farther into the increasing snow, until it reached my knees. I flung myself into it, splashing in the sudden wash, swimming in its iciness, soothing to my skin. When the water turned warm, I sought the next spot, the next patch of snow. Again and again, I raced from warm to freezing, trying to cool down until finally I sank into a drift so deep that I didn’t sink to the bottom and powder puffed up around me.
I sighed against the chill, the welcome cold, staring up at the crisp blue sky, resting there. I checked my hands and although they were still warm, no flames spread across them.
The sky blurred as unwelcome tears filled my vision. I’d looked at that sky with Michael. It had been patterned with stars and he’d wrapped me inside his jacket so I didn’t get cold. Now I needed the cold like I needed to breathe.
I needed Michael.
Because he was the only person who looked at me without fear.
I pushed my arms against the snow beside me, stretching them out and lifting them up and down, creating a pattern. Taking deep breaths, I sought calm in the movement, trying to find joy, not sadness, from the memory of Michael’s arms around me.
“Snow angels,” I said when Snowboy’s concerned face entered my field of view, hovering above me. “I saw a picture once of kids playing in the snow. When they lifted their arms like this, they looked like angels with wings.”
He bent down beside me, gently reaching out to stop my waving arms. He spoke with care. “Thank you. For the bears.”
He handed me my shirt and jacket, but I didn’t put them on. I was glad there was enough left of the clothing I was still wearing to keep me decent. The idea of anything other than the chill air against my skin right then made my stomach constrict. “Now I understand why you don’t wear a shirt.”
“Ava, I…” He swallowed. “I’m sorry that happened.”
“Which part? The bears, the nectar, or freaky Ava?”
His eyes widened. “Don’t call yourself that. What you can do, yes, even by our standards it’s pretty insane and I guess now I understand why you said you were scared. But you’re not alone. It’s taken each of us a lot of practice to control the thing that makes us strongest. But even so, we’ve never beaten the bears. We’ve learned to run from them, not fight them.” He ran his hand over his head. “The thing is … you shouldn’t have had to do that. It’s our job to look after you, not the other way around.”
I clambered to my feet and launched myself into hugging him, surprising him with the sudden move.
“It’s our job to protect each other,” I said when I pulled away. “Like it’s our tower. Right?”
He answered my smile with one of his own. “Right.”
“You’re not like anyone I’ve ever met,” I said.
“You’re just like the rest of u
s,” he answered.
I wasn’t sure what to expect when we reached the other boys. On the way back, I tied the remains of one of the jackets around my waist. Miraculously, most of the rose was still intact inside what remained of my pocket, insulated against the flame by the thick, padded material. I was conscious of my bare legs and singlet-clad torso, but the idea of putting on any other layers was suffocating. I didn’t think I could ever feel cold again.
Before we reached the others, the two snow leopards greeted us. I was glad they’d run from the bears and taken shelter in the trees. Snowboy smoothed the animals’ fur, one on either side of him, before Avalanche turned toward the mountains. I bent to Glacier, resting my face against her soft cheek, breathing in her scent—the smell of ice and freedom. She shivered and followed her mate into the snow.
I missed her already. “We’ll see them again, won’t we?”
“Absolutely.”
As Snowboy and I drew near, the boys stopped talking among themselves, settling into a rough line between me and the trees. Their expressions were inscrutable and I scrunched my hands into the folds of the ripped jacket, waiting for them to speak.
Blaze was the first to move, glancing at the others, before closing the gap between us in two strides and dropping to a bended knee. “You,” he said, “have to marry me.”
I stared. “Um…?”
Beside me, Snowboy was suddenly doubled up with laughter.
A grin split Blaze’s face. “I’m serious,” he said, ignoring Snowboy, and looking anything but serious. “You’re fire. I’m fire. We belong together.” But there was a twinkle in his eye and a grin he couldn’t control, and I couldn’t help but smile back.
Snowboy patted Blaze on the back. “Nice try, but her heart’s already spoken for.” He lowered his voice. “And even if it weren’t, it’s the snow she needs more.”
They feinted at each other as Quake put a fist over his heart and gave me a nod, but it was Rift who took my hand and drew me along the path.
“Come with me,” he said, his voice calm.
Inside, the forest was green and gold, the foliage surprisingly lush when the frosty snow belt was so close by.
He said, “You cast a shadow when you fight. Did you know that?”
I shook my head.
“But not an ordinary shadow.” He stopped beside a soaring tree, its branches dropping his face into darkness. “What do you see when the nectar hits?”
I remembered the hallucination in the green room back at the Terminal: the golden scorpion resting on the red rose with its stinger ready to strike. It was a scorpion that kept coming back to me. Sometimes in the shape of clouds, sometimes in shadows, even etched into the nectar ampule that Cheyne had implanted into my back for a while.
I said, “I see scorpions.”
He nodded. “That’s the shape of your shadow.” He stepped into the light filtering between the trees. The outline of his body blurred, as though he were fighting to keep his own shadows under control.
I blinked away the sudden burn of tears behind my eyes. “Do you have the hallucinations too?”
He seemed surprised. “They’re not hallucinations, Ava. They’re visions.”
I blinked at him, surprised. “Visions…”
“We’ve all seen the scorpions. In fact, they’re the first thing we each saw. But you need to understand that what you see when you take nectar—it’s real, not imaginary. Not real in the sense that it’s happening right then, but the scorpions exist.”
A part of me had suspected that. I’d seen a golden scorpion and it was the same as the scorpion on Naomi’s bracelet, the one she wore when she took my parents away. I’d seen a scorpion ready to strike—and then Naomi had. Although her motives weren’t malicious.
“It gets easier to put the visions to the side, to keep them in a safe place, and act without being afraid of them.”
As we continued into the forest, the rocks and trees grew thicker and thicker. If anything, our surroundings became even wilder the farther we went. It was exhilarating. I could smell the sea. Hear the ocean. I tilted my head back, closed my eyes, and murmured. “I hear the waves. They’re crashing on the cliffs.”
He studied me. “When the bear was on the ground, you leaned over it, like you were looking at something. Like you were … trying to make a decision.”
“I was trying to decide whether to let it live.” I wasn’t entirely sure how to describe what I’d done, so I used the only words I could think of. “I saw its heart glow.”
A confused frown spread across Rift’s features.
I took a deep breath, knowing that I had to explain. “When I was on my way here, there was a man who wanted me dead because I’m mortal. I saw light inside his body, kind of like his heartbeat, but different. The nectar you have here in Starsgard is so … raw. It’s different from the kind they gave me in Evereach and when I take it, I can see…” I didn’t know how to describe it. “It’s like I can see regeneration.”
“What did you do? When you saw that man’s heart glow?”
“I stopped it. I stopped his regeneration by touching him.” I twined my fingers together, staring down at them. “I could have done that to the bear too, but I didn’t want to. It had a number on its chest.”
“Do you believe you could have killed it?”
I swallowed, not wanting to meet his eyes. I nodded. “Yes, but the bears were bred. They didn’t choose this. I know what it’s like to be trapped. To be a prisoner.”
Rift’s expression was deep, pensive. “We all do.”
As I followed him along the path, we passed the broken cameras. “Councilor Ruth said she wanted to build bridges with you. She wanted to reach out.”
The planes of his face became hard. “It’s too late for that. They tried to spy on us, to control us, to use us. They know what we can do. We’re supposedly the weakest and yet we can wield power they will never wield. They know we guard the source of nectar. They want to destroy it.”
Ruth and Jonah had called the source an abomination. I hadn’t known at the time that was what they were talking about. But Jonah had said they should destroy it.
“We have an uneasy alliance,” Rift continued. “We protect the northern border and they leave us alone.”
He sucked in a breath as I reached out to touch his arm. “What’s your real name?”
“My mother named me Ephron. In Seversandian, it means ‘fields of the dead.’ It’s a warrior’s name. But I left it behind when I came here.” He withdrew from my touch and gestured to the path. “The tower’s this way. Pip will be waiting.”
The crumbling remnants of a path were the only indication that a tower stood on the other side of the trees. As we emerged into a large clearing the size of a small park, the path curved toward the base of the tower a few hundred feet away. I leaned backward, expecting to see the tower soar toward the sky like all the others in Starsgard, only to find that this tower stopped about ten floors from the ground. There was nothing but jagged edges and sky where the other hundred floors should have been.
Pip ran up to us and I paused in the leafy clearing that preceded the path. Each of the southern Starsgardian towers had a theme—a sculpture or decorative garden at the front. Eyeing the gardens at either side of the path and a broken steel monument to the right hand side, I tried to figure out what this tower’s had been.
The steel monument was twisted and torn, but it might once have been a sphere, perhaps painted white with flecks of silver sparkles still clinging in patches. The tower too was pale, portions of white marble peeking from underneath a climbing vine swathed in white roses, all of them blooming. As pebbles crunched underfoot, I noticed that even the path was cut from some kind of ivory quartz.
Opposite the mangled sculpture, on the left hand side of the path, a tree bloomed. It reminded me of the cherry blossom tree outside Tower Seventeen, except that these flowers were enormous, bigger than my two cupped hands, and were dusted with silver, darke
ning to a deep black in the center.
Nerves invaded my stomach. This was the mortals’ home and I was about to meet the rest of them.
As Pip reached us and Snowboy drew level with me, I snagged his arm. “I’m nervous about meeting the others.”
Snowboy’s expression was blank. “What others?”
“The other mortals.” I waited for him to speak.
Snowboy paused. He opened his mouth and closed it again.
“There are others … right?”
He still didn’t respond. Then, he sighed. A thoughtful expression fell over his face. “There aren’t any others. It’s just us.”
I looked from Rift’s frozen features to Quake’s gentle ones to Blaze’s intense gaze, and then to Pip, whose expression told me he didn’t want me to be disappointed.
“It’s just us.” Pip repeated Snowboy’s words.
My heart sank.
Five boys.
No girls.
I was still alone.
I stumbled. “There aren’t any other girls.”
As I spoke, I realized it was probably a good thing. Michael’s father hadn’t been able to make a mortality serum from my brother’s DNA, only from mine. Cheyne had told me it was because I was a girl, that the two X chromosomes made the difference. He’d told me that the gene that inhibited regeneration existed on both my X chromosomes, that both genes were active, and that male DNA didn’t allow for this.
If there were no other girls, then there was less chance of another mortality weapon.
But I couldn’t hide my disappointment. “I guess I hoped there would be.”
Suddenly, nobody was looking at me and I didn’t know why. Snowboy nudged a loose stone at his feet and a mask had fallen over Rift’s face. Their discomfort was as palpable as if the vines from the trees had twined into the air and strangled it.
Finally, Snowboy glanced at Rift, whose expression was carefully controlled, and said, “It’s just that it’s complicated—”
The mask dropped from Rift’s face. “There are no other girls.” His dark brown eyes swirled with layers, but none of them were anger, only sadness. “Not everyone’s lucky like you.”