by Anna Vera
Just when I feel like I’ve got nothing left to give, I see a rise and fall to her bony sternum. She’s breathing.
Breathing. Alive.
My voice is a croak. “Onyx?”
Onyx’s eyes drift to our hands clasping. Instantly, she tries to pull away—recoiling.
“You foolish, foolish girl. Don’t you realize you’re risking your life by doing this?”
“Doing what?” I say, grip tightening.
“You’re offering your soul to me.” Onyx blinks, those black eyes of hers swollen, sad. I realize she isn’t speaking out loud, that her lips aren’t moving. She’s speaking telepathically. “So clever, you are. So headstrong and foolish and brave.”
“Not brave enough,” I confess. “I didn’t—I should’ve—”
“I knew you were at the safe-house, Eos.”
“What?”
“Apollo told me, last night. We’ve been preparing to face my brother for days. It was all I could do not to go to you, but it was too dangerous.”
“Were you planning to betray Mabel?”
“Yes,” Onyx says tightly. “I see, now, the lengths she’ll go to preserve the cause we’re fighting for—the cause we established together, thirty years ago.”
“I forgive her,” Onyx adds. “Peridot, that is; Mabel Faye is a false identity she’s forged to stay covert. Her colleague, and one of her last Borealian allies, is a friend of mine. Io.”
Wind rolls forth over the smooth clearing. The chill of it is unlike anything I’ve felt before, not setting inside me but filtering through me, as though I’m made of nothing.
“I’m getting dizzy,” I say, sighing. My eyes drift to gaze at the blindingly white sky thick with churning clouds, a carapace as dense and tight as a lid on a jar.
Helicopters thunder wildly, spewing fire at what I know is the pile of corpses Merope and I found. The smell of cooking flesh fills the air, dizzying me further.
“What do I do?” I gasp, knowing I’m approaching the edge of a precipice fatal should I tip over it. “Who can I trust?”
“Yourself,” she says simply. “This is your life—forged by the choices you make—your Purpose is yours to chose, Eos.”
I feel something slip out of her hands, into my own: a knife.
A long, slender knife—unlike anything I’ve ever seen.
Onyx tightens her grip, lips firm. “What you’ve seen today cleaves a path previously straight,” she whispers, eyes locked on my own, unyielding. “Which will be yours to follow?”
I don’t know what to say. The words ripple through my core as catalytic as a large rock erupting against the glossy surface of untouched water—taking something stagnant, and breathing violent life and passion and purpose into it.
“Eos, it’s time to let me go.” Onyx grasps my hand in both of hers and eyes me severely, her voice taut. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life—”
“Onyx—”
“You were never one of them,” she ends, tears falling from the creases of her eyes. “You’re my best and only triumph.”
“Onyx, please!”
“I love you, Eos,” she says, peeling my fingers away, ready to leap into the void of death knowingly—bravely. “I love you, my daughter—may we meet again.”
“No,” I sob.
“This is not a goodbye, Eos. I’m going to sleep,” she says in a relieved kind of way, smiling. “And the next time I wake up, I hope you’re the first I see.”
I cling to my mother, for the first time ever, trying to absorb every single detail of her physical existence—the feel and smell and sound and sight of her, because I won’t get it again.
“Good night, Eos,” she whispers, fingers fanning to steeple my own, resting there temporarily—waiting.
Waiting for me to pull away.
The brink of my periphery coils and darkens, like the burnt edges of paper, and I know I could keep going. I could follow her the way Rion always hoped he could his mother, into that black abyss she’s readying to leap into. But she’s right . . .
I have a different path to follow.
“You’ve been brave enough,” I whisper. Though my fingers are trembling wildly, I adhere to those words. I won’t make you be brave now. This time, let me be brave for you . . .
I let my hand fall.
We disconnect to a suffocating silence.
“Good night, Mom,” I whisper, stroking the silver hair out of her face and standing to leave. “I love you.”
The others say their goodbyes—or good nights, I guess.
We decide, with minimal dialogue, that we’re going to raid all the supplies we can carry from the safe-house.
And then, we’re leaving.
We ignore the fire feasting on the corpses nearby, the thud of helicopter rotors. We ignore the roar of gunfire. Snow falls as soft as feathers, clinging to my eyelashes, dusting the surface of this crumbling planet with an ill-fitting perfection.
I get to the safe-house first, only to be stopped by a jumble of angry voices—inaudible. I drop down to my belly, peering over the crest of the hillside. The entrance is crowded by a retinue of soldiers filtering in and out of the safe-house; they wear black armor, slick as fish scales, operating in total uniformity.
“Your duty,” a voice spits angrily, “is simple: bring them all to me without slipping up!”
“My duty is to fly—not kidnap.”
“You owe me a debt!” Mabel Faye’s gray, overcast-colored eyes are as wide and churning as an ocean. “I’ll consider it repaid in totality, if only you comply.”
My mouth goes dry as Rion steps out of the trees, his face and body bruised, swelling in places. He’s been in battle. Is he all by himself, now that Apollo’s gone?
Where’s Jac?
Mabel postures herself dangerously. “Where is she?”
“I told you,” Rion says, turning so we’re facing, though still at a relatively safe distance, “I don’t know—”
The first thing I realize is that Rion’s stopped speaking.
The second thing I realize is he’s looking at me.
Right at me.
“—where,” he goes on, strategically turning his body so he’s shading me from visibility, “Eos Europa is. Nobody has seen her, or her league, for well over a week.”
Cyb crawls to my side, pinching my arm brutishly.
“Let’s go!” she breathes.
“Wait—not yet.”
“What are we waiting for?” she begs, only to be distracted by the sight before us. Mabel Faye—Peridot—rounds on Rion, letting her illusionary human form drop like a veil.
She regards him viciously, fangs dripping with saliva.
“Have it your way,” she snarls. “Seize him!”
Rion barely fights as he’s forced to kneel—a wad of his hair used as leverage to drag his face upward, giving him no choice but to look Peridot in the eyes.
Her fingers snap, nostrils flared. “Remove your masks!”
The soldiers do.
The first one I recognize is a girl with frizzy hair, as orange as a candle’s delicate flame—pale, freckled skin; an upturned nose set under bright, cobalt blue eyes.
Eyes distant and empty.
“Calypso Mar,” Merope cries chillingly at my side.
“What’s happened to them?” Lios asks. He’s holding tightly to Cyb’s wrist. “Why are they following her orders?”
I see a black boy wander forth, pressing his palms against the trapdoor of the safe-house and setting fire to it.
Nova’s brother, Ares.
They are all here.
Peridot lowers her face, eyeing Rion—who instantly writhes and tries looking away. But she grips his jaw, forcing his maple eyes on hers, as though administering a kind of hypnosis.
�
��Why so resistant?” Peridot snarls. “You let the girl read your thoughts like a book. Why fight it now, boy? After all, you know what will happen if you do.”
What, exactly, will happen, Peridot?
Didn’t Apollo say there’s a way to resist being Scried—that if you didn’t want to reveal information to the person infiltrating your thoughts, you didn’t have to?
But at what cost?
Seconds later, Rion begins yelling in earnest—thrashing his head back and forth against the glare of her bulbous, black eyes as they dig deeper, clawing and ransacking, shredding his mind to ribbons as she looks for information on my whereabouts.
As she looks for me.
No—I won’t let him die for me.
I won’t make the same mistake twice.
I get up, but am stopped. I feel the invisible pull of a skillset ability at work and panic—thinking, at first, that Pavo’s back and he’s returned with a vengeance.
But it isn’t Pavo.
It’s Cyb—she’s Persuading me.
Eyes glistening with tears, she gives a subtle but stern shake of her head, as if to say, No, I’m sorry, I won’t let you.
Peridot’s eyes shift in color and Rion groans, thrashing.
The sight makes me sick.
Rion’s fight gives out—his eyes clouding over, their depth lost entirely, leaving him to stare blankly. The soldiers let him go, his vivacity lost with theirs.
“Pity,” Peridot says, breathing heavily, dusting herself off as she walks away—speaking to nobody I can see. Her human veil falls back into place, a curtain drawn. “I thought he’d give in.”
We run.
We pass the pit of burning corpses and thread through the trees of the forest. We dodge the eyes of soaring helicopters in the sky and slip in the snow.
We keep going until we can’t go any farther.
Exhausted, we stop by a stream trickling lightly, its edges shaped like lace. All the while, I barely notice the acidic burn of tears as they spill acrimoniously over my cheeks.
Wordlessly, I drop to my knees. The stream is icy, carrying a surprisingly strong current.
Merope clings to a tree. “What did we just see?”
Nobody speaks. I keep my focus on the stream—its black water carving into the snowy landscape. The knife Onyx gave me earlier jabs my leg; I’ve been keeping it in a pocket, with no other place for it, and only now wonder about its purpose.
Onyx doesn’t do anything without a reason.
Why did she give me this?
Cyb takes out a pistol, seeing if it’s loaded. “It looked like they were all in some kind of a trance. They didn’t seem to know what they were doing, did they?”
“A trance,” Lios says, brows furrowed, “or something else.”
“What else could it be?”
“She could’ve—well, I’ve heard of memory swipes being one of the only skillset abilities abolished.” At this, Lios’s eyes avoid mine completely. “If fought, the victim would lose their mind.”
I feel my spine ice over. “Lose their mind?”
I think of Peridot’s chilling words:
“Why fight it now, boy?
“You know what will happen if you do.”
I roll onto my hip, thrown off balance by the slap of reality as it claps me across the face. Rion’s lost his mind. He’s sacrificed his memory for me. To protect me. To keep me safe . . .
“Rion was right,” I crow. “PIO Morse can’t be trusted.”
“As long as it’s affiliated with Mabel Fa—”
“That’s not her real name,” I say, interrupting Cyb. “That’s an alias she’s invented. Her real name is Peridot—and the other ally we saw, with magenta hair, is Io.”
“PIO,” Merope says. “Peridot—Io—Onyx.”
“The gem, the moon, the stone,” I say, feeling shaky.
Cyb’s eyes are cupped in dark circles. “Well, what now?”
“I have an idea,” I whisper, extracting the blade Onyx gave me and cupping it in my palms. It isn’t thick enough to inflict any real damage—and maybe that’s because it isn’t supposed to.
It’s not a fighting knife. It’s a surgical one.
Holding out my wrist—microchip scar visible, rising and falling to the rapid pulse of my heart—I glide the blade over the slender scar, thin as thread.
The others hold perfectly still, staying quiet.
The knife maneuvers effortlessly, dipping between a mess of veins and tendons—though, it’s not without pain. If it weren’t for the shaking blare of adrenaline, I’d scream.
But I grit my teeth. I lock my jaw.
I keep going.
I keep going until I find my chips.
And when I do, they go straight into the stream, swept up in the surging current—and as far as Pavo knows, my pulse has stopped and my tracker isn’t trustworthy.
As far as he knows, I’m dead.
I hold out my wrist for Lios, whose ability to Heal fuses the delicate flesh back together instantly. I stand, shifting so I can look at the sky, at the early moon and the glowing orb beside it.
For all those years—for all my life—I looked out of the window in my pod and gazed at the planet I thought I was created to save.
And now, finally, it’s the other way around.
Just as it should be.
“We’re the only ones left,” Merope acknowledges, her hand slipping into mine as Cyb and Lios close in. She looks up at the four of us, a wry smile parting her lips. “Do we stand a chance?”
Cyb reaches for the knife.
With a swift pull, she’s following my lead; the knife’s sound zeal for extracting microchips makes it easy, and without the cherry red orb—filled with poison that explodes if a microchip extraction is attempted, which Onyx deliberately left out of our implants for this reason—there isn’t anything to fear.
We’re free. We’re free.
Cyb tosses her chips like grenades; they plunk into the swift rush of water, carried away. Turning to us, she smiles. “The real question is: do they?”
I keep my eyes locked on the sky, feeling a dawn buoying to the surface within me. Merope takes the knife, throwing her old life away and chasing a new one—and just like our first lives, this one was given to us by Onyx.
Lios watches his microchips float downstream, pressing a clean strip of fabric against his wrist.
“For Onyx,” he whispers.
“For Onyx,” Cyb and Merope say together—and aboard the ship we’ve just disowned, I know Apollo’s saying the same thing as he sees us, one by one, fall off the radar.
“For Onyx,” I say, thinking of her, of where beings without souls go after they die. “They won’t even see us coming.”
Pronunciation Guide
Eos (EE-ose)
Merope (MARE-oh-pee)
Cybele (SIB-elle-ee)
Lios (LEE-ose)
Apollo (Ah-PAHL-oh)
Rion (RHY-ahn)
Jac (Jack)
Silas (S-EYE-las)
Pavo (PAH-voe)
Onyx (AWN-ix)
Peridot (PEAR-a-doe)
Io (EYE-oh)
About the Author
When Anna Vera was a girl, she would’ve told you she was secretly a mermaid, could see ghosts, and teleport to other planets. Now that she’s a mature adult, she keeps these things to herself.
Anna currently resides in Arizona, where she continues to write about fantasy realms, post-apocalyptic worlds, and alien invasions. When she isn't writing books, she's practicing hot yoga, playing videogames, and buying too many scented candles.
Her other interests include: Reading, videogames, hot yoga, horseback riding, nature hikes, and expert-level earth muffining.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To my team . . .
To Trisha Leigh (author of Return Once More), for being the first perfect stranger to love this story enough to champion it. Pitch Wars 2014 has shaped the direction of my career in incredible ways—and if it weren’t for you selecting me as your Mentee, this book likely wouldn’t be here today.
To my brilliant editor, Max Dobson of The Polished Pen, for all the incredible guidance—both in track-changes and over the phone on those early, coffee-fueled summer mornings. I can’t wait to share the sequel with you this spring!
To Stuart Whitmore of Crenel Publishing, for working against the clock to get this book proofread in time for its release date. You’ve been such a pleasure to work with, and I hope to see more of you early this year for work on A Dark Sky Opens.
To the mind-blowing talent of Qamber Designs, for my perfect cover and internal formatting/design. Najla and Nada—you’ll be seeing a lot more of me next year, when I’m publishing more books. Thank you both for your outstanding work!
To my phenomenal critique partners . . .
To Rebecca “Bejon” Frank, for being the first person in the world to read this story, and the first to love it. Your strength—especially in the face of tragedy—is unparalleled and inspirational. I’m lucky to have you as a critique partner and friend.
To Meredith Jaeger, for taking me under your wing. It’s due to your careful guidance through the hazards of this industry that I have made it as far as I have. I thank the Twitter Gods daily for bringing us together and can’t imagine taking another step without you in tow.
To my fellow Pitch Warrior, Allie Ziegler. My thanks to you are overwhelming and endless. Thank you for being a buoy when the waves of doubt threaten so frequently to drag me under, for always offering to read and reread, and for taking up residence in my life (where I plan to keep you for the rest of forever).