When Stars Burn Out (Europa Book 1)

by Anna Vera

  “No,” I say unconvincingly, but Rion lowers me back onto the snowy ground. I grip his jacket for balance as he hands me my other boot to wiggle back on.

  “That your signature move or something?” he asks, his lips forming a smirk. “The boot thing?”

  “Yeah, well, it’s harder to get a knife out than you’d think.”

  “A knife?” He cocks a brow, holding out a hand.

  “You’re not serious?” I ask and he gives me what’s become a very Rion-ish smile: lazy, but genuine. “Well fine, but I’ll only find another,” I avow, holding out the knife for him to take.

  But instead of taking it, Rion grabs its hilt and my hand all at once, pulling me close. I’m flush against his chest, breathing in the distinctive campfire scent of him as I stand—shocked—my hand trapped in the constraints of his warm, calloused one.

  “What,” I gasp, yanking away, “the hell are you doing?”

  “Trying something,” he replies cryptically, stuffing the knife in his pocket and trudging in front of me. “Trying something on the girl who can’t stop fighting.”

  The sky is darkening quickly, fading to dusk. A member of the quarantine walks with a burning torch, lighting up a series of tall-standing cressets lining the paths.

  After a beat of speechlessness, I say, “Trying what, Rion?”

  But he doesn’t answer—doesn’t say a word—going silently through the snow, rubbing a thumb over the blade of the knife he just took from me. Mia’s knife.

  I’m about to stop following when we reach a path that isn’t lit up by cressets—a path I recognize as the one leading directly to the quarantine’s eastern perimeter.

  The path to his hut.

  Then he turns and says, “Eat with me?”

  “Eat with you?” I echo stupidly. “What, just with—”

  “She will,” a voice blurts from my back. I glance over my shoulder and realize it’s Merope speaking. “But only if we can eat with you too.”

  “We?” Rion asks brusquely.

  “The three of us,” Jac replies, filtering out of the darkness with a slightly happier looking Cyb beside him. “What’s on the menu tonight, buddy?”

  Rion laughs, shaking his head, and starts walking off.

  Jac looks at me. “Guess that’s a yes.”

  I hang back with Merope and Cyb, looping arms between the pair of them, and we walk linked together.

  Cyb fixes Jac with an ironclad glare and launches back into a conversation they were already having. “Just give us a task and we’ll take care of it. We’re ready.”

  “Ladies, I’ve told you, it’s not up to me. It’s up to Mabel.”

  “And you can’t talk to Mabel for us?”

  “You’ll get your initiation,” Jac reassures confidently, resting an arm over Merope’s shoulder now too. She rolls her eyes in a flirtatious way. “Just relax. Now is the fun part.”

  “And where’s the fun exactly?” Merope asks.

  “Well, right now,” he says, nodding as Rion rips his hut open up ahead and like before, a flood of firelight breaks through the night’s liquid dark, “the eating-food-that’s-not-Pudge part.”

  Jac lifts his arms off Merope and Cyb’s shoulders, dashing off toward Rion’s hut excitedly, leaving us behind. Cyb gives me the happiest look she’s had yet.

  “Almost there,” she says, voraciously. “We’re so close.”

  “I hear we’re getting initiated?” I say.

  “Yes—and soon, if all goes according to plan.” Cyb’s voice drops to a whisper. “Jac has been cake to manipulate into trusting our group; a little flirtation, and he’s rooting for us already.”

  “But Rion,” Merope adds, eyeing him from afar as he sets up a small campfire outside of his hut. “We suspect he’s going to be a little harder to sway.”

  “Jac says Rion has the highest standing with Mabel, and so my guess is if we get his backing, we’re in,” Cyb raves, grabbing my hand and tugging me closer. Her silver-gray eyes are bright with hope. Her breath is a swirl of pale vapor. “Last night . . . did you guys talk?”

  “Kind of, I guess,” I say, shrugging.

  “Do you think you can win him over?”

  My gaze shifts back to Rion. Coincidentally, he looks up at me at the same time, giving me a subtle nod indicating I should join him and Jac by the fire.

  “Yeah,” I breathe to Cyb and Merope. “I’ve got him.”

  “That’s right.” Cyb walks ahead, pausing briefly before she turns around and quietly adds, “But don’t forget about the last part of our Purpose.”

  I glance sidelong at Merope. “What part?”

  I’m startled to see the pair equally hesitant to reply.

  Merope glares at Cyb. “Go on. Tell her.”

  Cyb sighs, traipsing back to my side, her cold hand clasping tight around my elbow, piloting me toward the campfire as she gives me the final details on our Purpose.

  “We don’t know what Mabel’s told them—if anything.”

  “They act like they know nothing,” I say.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Cyb says with a cruel sterility. “The only way to keep the Project’s secrets safe is to make sure we leave this place without a single end left untied.”

  I feel myself go numb. “And?”

  “And to do that, it’s our job to terminate the whole place.”

  “Every member,” Merope elaborates, eyes glistening. “If we fail to do so, our chances at making the Elite are revoked because we won’t have followed the rules.”

  “You’re . . . We can’t . . .” I feel ill. “All of them?”

  “All of them,” Cyb confirms unfeelingly, and then trudges off toward the campfire without looking back. Merope lingers at my side silently for a while, turning only after she’s sure we can’t be overheard, even by Cyb.

  “Get close to him,” she warns me, voice desperate and lost in ways I didn’t think her capable of, “but not too close.”

  14

  Cyb, Merope, and i sit with the boys in a series of brightly-colored, mismatched lawn chairs—the exact kind that might’ve perched beside a pool on a summer day, lifetimes ago.

  But instead of a pool, it’s mid-winter, and we’re roasting a bucket of plucked doves over a small campfire.

  That’s life on Earth these days.

  The sky is especially dark because it’s a new moon. Stars as bright as jewels occasionally peek out from the clouds knotted and straining overhead, but otherwise it’s overcast outside.

  Snow falls, so light it looks like glittering dust.

  Beside me, Jac rolls a cigarette. “So, ladies,” he says, sealing the paper with a lick. “You’re quiet tonight. What’s up?”

  “Today sucked, that’s what,” Cyb snorts. “Our best friend is in critical condition. Davy and Elizabeth got in a fight. We had a crude man yell at us over trying to get Pudge . . .”

  “Speaking of,” Silas speaks up, eyeing Rion cryptically, “Mia should know better than—”

  “I know.” Rion tosses the knife at Silas’s feet, where it thuds in the deep, wet snow. “Mia gave Elizabeth a pair of boots—and guess what was left inside?”

  “No way,” Silas laughs disbelievingly, holding up the knife.

  “That conniving little brat.” Jac lights a plump, freshly rolled cigarette and inhales, breathing deeply. “I bet she would’ve loved it if nobody had stopped Elizabeth from stabbing Tex to death.”

  Cyb’s brows tighten. “Why would she have wanted that?”

  Silas rolls the spit of plucked doves browning perfectly over the small fire. It fizzles as oil and juice rolls in flavorful beads off the skin of the birds. I imagine what it would’ve been like to share this meal with Rion alone—the way he’d wanted.

  “Mia doesn’t like outsiders,” Jac says, shrugging. “And aside
from good ol’ Davy, Elizabeth is the biggest hothead out of your whole group. Mia probably wanted her to do something so bad you would be denied a chance at initiating.”

  “Like killing a quarantine member?” Cyb guesses.

  “She might’ve too,” Jac adds, clearly amused, “if Rion hadn’t have stopped her.”

  “Not kill—castrate,” I interject jokingly, but heat rises in my cheeks despite my best efforts, suddenly painfully aware of how absurd I’ve been acting.

  Fighting with total strangers and friends alike?

  Enough, Eos. Enough of this.

  Thankfully the topic shifts to food as Silas removes the birds from the spit, none of which are very large, and I’m glad to see we don’t have to share.

  “Who shot these?” Merope asks, biting into her bird. Juice rolls over her lips, glistening in the firelight.

  I bite into mine too. It’s plump and flavorful, spiced lightly with dried rosemary and sage Silas took from the kitchens. I’ve never had anything so delicious in my life. The Ora’s rations were always limited: freeze-dried, chewy, and consistently flavorless.

  “Rion, of course,” Jac praises.

  “Well,” she says through a mouthful of meat, “thank you.”

  For a while nobody speaks. The night fills, instead, with the sound of cracking bone as wings are dislocated and chest cavities picked completely clean.

  When we’re finished, and our plates are left with only a pile of delicate bones, discussion ramps back up.

  “So, Mabel gets back soon,” Silas announces suddenly.

  “Really?” Cyb leans closer, intrigued. “Will she be seeing to our initiations soon?”

  “I don’t know if, for you guys, it’ll be like that.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Cyb eyes Silas, who looks away from her—her gaze leaps to Jac and Rion. “What are we supposed to expect from initiation, anyway?”

  A coarse hush falls upon us.

  It’s obvious, suddenly, that this isn’t a welcome discussion.

  Rion clears his throat. “It’s different for everybody.”

  “How?” Cyb probes, either ignoring or not catching the stiff faces of our company. “What about your experiences—examples?”

  I curl into the chrysalis of my jacket awkwardly, trying to keep my eyes on the fire. I hate prying, but we’ve got to get into this quarantine or risk failing our Purpose.

  Do you care anymore, Eos? a voice begs in my mind, a voice that sounds eerily like Nova’s. Do you even want to fulfill a mission so gruesome? Could you ever, really, live happily in the Elite knowing it came at the cost of hundreds of lives?

  “Mine was a test,” Silas divulges unexpectedly, whispering.

  Both Jac and Rion’s eyes flash, giving me reason to believe that not even they, Silas’s friends, knew about this.

  Again, a heavy silence falls, but this time it’s rife with the electric buzz of anticipation—of suspense.

  Cyb leans forward, elbows resting on her knees. “What kind of a test did you take, Silas?”

  Silas shakes his head, as though he’s disinterested in saying anything more, but goes on regardless. “There were four others.”

  “Ah,” Cyb says. “A competition, was it?”

  Silas gives her a slow nod. “We were released together, right outside this compound, near a large nest of the Muted. We were told whoever killed the most would win.”

  “And you won,” Cyb finishes gleefully.

  “No. I won by default,” he says. “There was a guy, he was bigger than me. Killed twelve of the Muted in ten minutes. He was the one who really won, but he died.”

  “How?” Merope asks breathlessly.

  “I killed him.” Silas’s pale gray eyes are dead. “I’d been all by myself for nearly four months—my family gone, my friends all killed off, my resources used up.”

  Silas dives his face into the cover of his hands, miserable, as the rest of us wait in shocked silence.

  “I should’ve died that day—not that guy,” he croaks.

  “You’re wrong, Si,” Jac says, speaking softly, his cigarette all but forgotten, burning low in his hand. “You’ve done so much for all of us, for this quarantine . . .”

  Silas’s mutters, “I’ll never forgive myself.”

  “We’ve all,” Rion interjects, speaking low, “done things we regret in the name of staying alive—things we wish we could take back but can’t. You’re not alone, Si.”

  “Nothing is worse than what I’ve done.” Silas grips his pale, straw-colored hair, ripping out a fistful of wispy strands. “I didn’t kill to survive. I killed out of cowardice.”

  My eyes find Rion, who’s staring intensely at the flickering flames of the campfire. He looks on edge.

  Just as I register as much, he grabs a bucket of water at his side and throws it at the fire. It hisses, coils of steam rising up from hellish coals.

  We’d be left in total darkness if it weren’t for the fire raging in the hearth of Rion’s hut. Its light filters dimly out through a small window, highlighting our grim faces.

  “You’re not a coward,” Rion says, angrily kicking the empty bucket aside as he strides to his hut’s door, rips it open—spraying ice everywhere—and slams it shut behind him.

  We’re left startled, silent. The empty bucket sways noisily back and forth, scratching the icy surface of the snow. I hear the shuffle of chairs moving. Jac takes the plates, piled high with bird bones, and swipes their contents into another bucket.

  Nobody speaks. Nobody does anything.

  Not until a jagged cry pierces the night’s quiet like the slow rip of fabric being torn. It’s the strangest noise: a scream that’s raw and phlegm-filled and strikingly inhuman.

  The Muted.

  Jac groans, chucking his cigarette. “Ah, shit.”

  Beside me I hear Merope begin to gasp for breath, her hand cold and clammy, gripping mine.

  “Cyb,” I bark, and in an instant her silver-gray eyes find mine in the darkness. “What do we do?”

  Jac mistakes my question for him, and says, “You’re aware of how the Muted are drawn to groups? Quarantines often become targets for that reason. We’ve got to go fight them off.”

  “Or better yet,” Silas says, “draw them away.”

  “It’s not bad enough for—” Jac’s cut off by a host of shrieking tolling through the night in chilling waves. It’s clear to us all that this really could be bad enough.

  “We’re leading them away,” Silas ratifies. “If we don’t get them out of here, they’ll take over the compound again.”

  “Again?” Cyb snaps.

  “Don’t worry, you won’t be coming.” Jac pounds a gloved fist against Rion’s door. “That mistake isn’t one we’re ever going to make again.”

  But before I can ask for details, Rion’s door opens. A rifle is tossed out, which Jac catches. A second follows, which is passed quickly on to Silas.

  “I heard” is all Rion says as he cocks his rifle with one hand and holds a lit torch aloft in his other. “They are always hungrier in winter, aren’t they?”

  “Where are all of you going?” I ask as they walk by, my tone high-pitched, imploring. “Take us with you. We’ll help. It could be our initiation!”

  Rion passes the torch to Silas, trudging back down the path toward the three of us. A moment later, he’s so close to me he doesn’t have to speak louder than a whisper.

  “The three of you stay inside,” he says, pressing his rifle into my arms, nodding at his hut glowing beside us. “We’ll be back in a few hours—maybe dawn.”

  “I can help you,” I repeat, stopping only because Rion’s put his face so close to mine we’re sharing breath.

  “No,” he says. “You can’t.”

  And then he’s turning back to Jac and Silas, issui
ng rounds of orders and coded warnings: “Tell Mia we’re performing what we think is a Grade 10 pushback—and get the keys to the truck at the entry perimeter while you’re at it.”

  “Who else are we bringing?” Jac asks.

  “Mabel’s council will insist on being involved . . .” Rion starts to say as the three walk up the path, their torch a golden ball of light bobbing as they go. A chorus of shrieking fills the night yet again, pointing out the Muted’s alarmingly close proximity like an arrow.

  “Hurry,” Rion says as the shrieking continues to fill the night full of panic, voices of those awoken by the chaos—hasty and terrified—adding to the mix.

  His eyes find mine once more, holding my gaze. Without another word, he leaves, disappearing into the night’s pitch-black to fight the Muted without us.

  At Cyb’s insistence, we follow Rion’s orders, hunkering down in his fire-warmed hut for hours, yet as the Muted’s cries begin to reach higher and shriller, our doubts intensify.

  When it’s clear the Muted have reached the perimeter, their claws raking violently against the wall, I feel my resolve to stand back and wait unravel altogether.

  Cyb picks nervously at a dirty fingernail. “We can’t give him a reason to kick us out, Eos. Disobey his direct orders, and we’re as good as done here.”

  I grip the rifle Rion gave me, knuckles white.

  Merope’s pale, sweaty face lifts. “There are hundreds, if not a thousand, coming tonight.” Her violet eyes pin Cyb in place as she speaks. “Do you actually believe these native-borns will come back in one piece—alive?”

  Cyb purses her lips and doesn’t answer, throwing another log into the flames. Outside, the wall booms thunderously under the fists of the Muted trying to gain access to the compound.

  “You said so yourself,” I argue wildly. “We need their trust to get into the quarantine. We can’t fulfill our Purpose without their blessing. How will we get that if they’re all dead?”

  Cyb sighs, a hiss. “How will the three of us make any damn difference? You don’t even have a skillset! And Merope’s barely acclimated as it—”

  “We’ve got to get Apollo.”