The Darkest Star

by Jennifer L. Armentrout

  “Things would’ve ended the same way,” Luc cut into my thoughts. “Whether you stayed in the room or not, but you could’ve been hurt.”

  “Don’t read my mind.”

  He stared at me, somewhat unapologetically.

  I sighed heavily. “They were scary, Luc.”

  “They are. Most Luxen care for humans. Some don’t. Those Luxen were dangerous.” He leaned in, placing one hand on the bar, beside my hip. His lashes lowered. “I’m sorry you had to see that. I’m sorry you could’ve been hurt.”

  I really could’ve been.

  “She called you Peaches?” A faint smile tugged at his lips as he lifted his gaze. “I kind of like that.”

  My nose wrinkled. “I don’t.”

  “It works for you.”

  “It’s just … lotion.”

  “No.” He let his head fall back. “It’s more than that.”

  I had no idea what to say to that. My gaze started to trek back over to the bodies. “Are all Origins capable of what you did?”

  “No.” Two fingertips curled under my chin, guiding my stare away from the fallen Luxen. Luc lifted my head. He didn’t speak as our gazes connected. Silence stretched out between us. I should have been frightened of him, especially after seeing that. I should have been running out that door and screaming at the top of my lungs.

  But I wasn’t.

  I wanted to be, because that seemed smarter, feeling that way.

  But I wasn’t.

  “Most weren’t as … skilled as I am,” he said, and I couldn’t suppress the shiver skating over me. “But there were a few who were a hell of lot scarier than me. Ones who…”

  “Who what?” I whispered.

  “Origins that lacked all humanity.” His thick lashes lowered, shielding his eyes. “Ones I thought I could change—teach them to be empathetic, to be more human. I learned that even though we want to believe that there is never a lost cause, there are examples of such. There are times when there is nothing we can do to change an outcome.”

  “I don’t want to believe that there are people out there who are lost causes,” I admitted. “It feels too defeatist.”

  His fingers dipped, barely grazing the center of my throat. A different kind of shiver skated over me. “It’s being realistic, Peaches.”

  “Don’t call me that,” I said, pulse thundering as the pupils of his eyes faded into a fuzzy black.

  “What in the world did I miss?”

  We both turned, finding Kent standing by the stage. Luc stepped back, and I felt like I could breathe again.

  “I have to cut our time together short,” Luc said, dragging a hand over his messy bronze hair. “I’ll make sure you get home safe.”

  “Wait. Why wouldn’t I get home safe?”

  “Luxen come in threes, and from what I know of Sean and Charity, they have a brother. He may be dead already or he may come walking through the doors any minute, looking for his siblings.”

  Holy crap, that was right. Luxen were triplets. I’d just never seen a complete set of them.

  “Grayson is making sure no one is lingering outside right now, but I’d rather be safe than sorry and have you out of here just in case.”

  Kent looked over at us. “Seriously? Why are there dead Luxen on the floor? And better yet, who is cleaning that up? Cuz it ain’t me.”

  Luc ignored him. “You’re okay. Just didn’t want to take chances.”

  I suddenly remembered what Sean had said about misunderstandings. “Wait. Do you think they had something to do with what happened to Colleen and Amanda?”

  A weird look flickered across Luc’s face, one I couldn’t read because it was gone before I had a chance to really figure it out. “They could be,” he said, but for some reason, I didn’t think he believed that. He took my hand, pulling me out from behind the bar. “If there is another one, Grayson will find him.”

  “Really? Because Grayson literally just sat there that whole time,” I pointed out. “The only thing he seems capable of finding is a lollipop.”

  Kent snorted. “Sounds like Grayson.”

  “It’ll be okay,” Luc said, his gaze flickering over me as he led me to Kent. “I’d just rather you be home at the moment and not here.”

  Kent’s brows lifted. “Oh wow, tonight sounds like it’s going to be fun. Can’t wait. Still not cleaning up that mess.”

  “But—” I paused as Kent patted my shoulder. I shook my head, turning from him. “Wait. We haven’t—”

  “We’ll get time,” Luc cut in. “I’ll make sure of it, Peaches.”

  My lips thinned. “Don’t call me that.”

  “I’ll be in touch,” he insisted. “I promise, but I need you to go.” His hand tightened around mine. A heartbeat passed and then he tugged me to him, chest to chest. He dipped his head and his breath moved against my temple. The contact startled me. “Do this for me. Go home.” His lips brushed my skin. “Please.”

  Unsettled and thrown off, because I had a suspicion he didn’t say please a lot, I did what he asked when he let go.

  I left.

  19

  I woke early Sunday morning, jerking straight up in bed, gasping for air. My hand flew to my throat. It hurt. The skin, the fragile bones. Like someone had their hands around my neck, squeezing.…

  I’d been dreaming.

  That much I knew, because moments ago, I’d been back inside that club with those Luxen, but Luc hadn’t been there. Instead it had been a man who looked like Sean and he’d been choking me.

  “God,” I whispered, willing my heart to slow down. “It was just a nightmare.”

  But there were tiny bumps all over the bare skin of my arms, and my throat hurt. I lowered my hand, and my gaze trekked around the dark room. The comforter was at the foot of my bed, kicked off in my sleep. Everything was quiet, and I could make out the still shadows of my dresser and desk. The clock on the nightstand read only twenty minutes after three.

  Way too early to be awake.

  I pushed it out of my face. I shouldn’t be surprised by the fact that I was having nightmares after … well, everything. Who’d blame me? Especially considering I didn’t really think for one second that the Luxen who Luc had fought had been responsible for what had happened to Colleen and Amanda. It wouldn’t make any sense, since they were trying to get out of this city without drawing attention.

  I pressed my lips together as my stomach knotted. What if there was also a very ticked-off Luxen sibling out there now, seeking revenge? On top of everything else? And wouldn’t that be my fault? If I’d stayed in Luc’s room—

  “Stop,” I said. “Just stop.”

  This was the last thing I needed to be stressing over if I wanted to fall back to sleep. I reached for the blanket piled at the end of the bed but stopped when a sharp pain skated along my stomach.

  “Ouch.” Frowning, I straightened and placed a hand on my stomach. I jerked. The area was tender.

  Carefully, I leaned over and turned on the bedside lamp. Buttery light filled the room as I sat back. I wrapped my fingers around the hem of my sleep shirt and pulled it up.

  “Holy crap,” I said, and gasped.

  Three long, jagged welts cut into my skin, right above my navel, like a cat … or a demon had gotten ahold of me. They weren’t open scratches and they didn’t look like they’d bled at all, but there were definitely three marks.

  What in the world?

  I looked around my room again, like it held the answers or something. Then I poked at the welts. Wincing at the spike of pain, I pulled my hand away. I let go of my shirt and walked into the bathroom. From there, I did a full-body scan. There were no other scratches, but there was a bruise on my right hip, probably from when Luc had tackled me.

  The scratches had to have happened during that. But how? I didn’t know, but that was the only thing that made sense unless I’d done it to myself while sleeping. The nightmare was pretty vivid, so Lord only knows what I could’ve done.

&n
bsp; I grabbed the bottle of peroxide out from underneath the sink and with a couple of dabs with a cotton ball, I determined that I’d done my due diligence when it came to not developing a flesh-eating bacteria.

  I turned off the light, hurried back to bed, and all but dived under the covers. I closed my eyes, squeezed them tight, and tried not to think about Luc, the club, or anything, but it was a long time before I fell back to sleep.

  * * *

  My mood plummeted as I walked into the cafeteria on Monday and saw that the only options for lunch were pizza and salad. Both looked like they’d been sitting out over the weekend.

  “What kind of fresh hell is this?” I muttered.

  James laughed as he brushed past me. “Want half of my sandwich?”

  “Yes.” I followed after him like a lost puppy, practically snapping at his heels. “Please and thank you.”

  Finding Heidi already at our table, I sat down next to her and dropped my bag onto the floor while James grabbed the seat across from me.

  He opened his bag and pulled out the ziplocked piece of peanut butter heaven. “I should make you work for this,” he said.

  “That would be incredibly mean and opportunistic,” I told him, extending my hands. I wiggled my fingers. “Yummy. Yummy in my tummy.”

  “Do you know what that song actually meant?” Heidi said, peeling the lid back on her Lunchable. I hadn’t seen anyone else eat them since middle school, but Heidi loved them. “The whole yummy-in-the-tummy part?”

  James pulled apart the sandwich. “Probably something dirty.”

  “It is.” Heidi picked up a cracker, placed her ham on it, and then topped it off with a slice of cheddar. “Just think about something that involves being with a dude that could end up being yummy in the tummy.”

  “What? Ew.” I wrinkled my nose. “That’s gross.”

  “It’s true. Look it up.” She offered me a cheese-and-ham-cracker stack.

  “Thank you.” I placed it next to my sandwich. “Look at me, piecing together an amazing lunch from parts of my friends’ lunches.”

  “You really need to start bringing your own.” Zoe dropped into the seat beside me. She had a salad, because of course she did. “Or try eating something green.”

  My lip curled.

  “So, you guys hear that Coop’s party is back on for Friday night?” James took a swig of his water. “You guys are going, right?”

  Heidi continued to build her cracker delights while I tried not to think about how weird it was to have such a normal conversation. “I don’t think so.”

  “Oh, so you go and get an older girlfriend, and now you’re too cool for us and our childish high school parties,” teased James.

  “Pretty much,” she replied.

  I laughed. “At least you’re honest about it.”

  “Speaking of being honest—” Zoe’s eyes narrowed. “What in the hell?”

  I followed her gaze as James twisted in his seat, spying April and a handful of students. April was marching—legit marching—across the cafeteria, her blond ponytail swinging in a way that made me want to cut my hair. She was holding some kind of poster in her hands and had a handful of minions with her.

  “I have a really bad feeling about this,” Zoe said, sighing.

  My gaze flew to the table of Luxen, and I tensed. Connor, the dark-haired Luxen who’d been at the club when I went back to get my phone, was the first to notice April. His mouth moved and the rest of the Luxen looked up.

  Heidi craned her neck to see over the table behind us as April grabbed a free chair and pulled it across the floor, creating a horrible screeching sound. She planted the chair in the middle of the cafeteria and then stepped up on it with the aid of one of the guy minions.

  She held her hands up in the air and flipped her poster over. My mouth dropped open.

  In the center of the poster was the typical alien face, the one with the pointy chin and big black eyes. The face was even colored green. Over it was the circle-backslash symbol.

  “Holy crap,” muttered James.

  A second later her minions lifted their signs. They were all the same.

  “Are you kidding me?” I said, lowering my sandwich.

  “I wish.” Zoe pressed her lips together

  “Listen up, everyone!” April shouted, and it was like a switch was thrown. The cafeteria quieted, because, hello, there was a girl standing on a chair holding a “Just say no to aliens” sign. “We have the right to be safe in our schools and in our homes, and we don’t have that safety. Colleen wasn’t safe here—not from them! Neither was Amanda!”

  My gaze shot to the Luxen table, and I saw that Connor was still but his face was devoid of emotion.

  “They shouldn’t be allowed to go to school with us. They’re not human. They’re aliens!” April continued.

  “They shouldn’t be here!” shouted one of the guys standing with her. He rattled his sign as if that helped get the point across. “They don’t belong!”

  Pink splashed across the face of one of the younger Luxen. She dipped her chin, letting her brown hair fall forward.

  April’s eyes gleamed as she shook her arms. “No more Luxen! No more fear! Come on. Say it with me! No more Luxen! No more fear!”

  Those with her picked up the chant. Someone behind us stood, yelling the same. I turned in my seat as Heidi cursed. “Where are the teachers? Jesus!”

  “No more Luxen! No more fear!” The chants rose from several other tables. Students lumbered to their feet, climbing onto their seats. Their fists pumped the air, reminding me of those dancing at Foretoken.

  Not everyone was chanting.

  Others stayed quiet, exchanging awkward looks. I shifted toward Zoe. “This is so wrong.”

  Zoe lips pursed. “I cannot believe I was ever nice to her.”

  “You and me both.” Anxious energy rose from the pit of my stomach. I should do something. We needed do something. I looked away from Heidi’s pale face and shifted toward Zoe. “We need—”

  “That’s enough! Everyone, get off the chairs and shut up!” Coach Saunders, the phys ed teacher, stalked down the middle of the cafeteria. “Right now.”

  April’s chin jutted out stubbornly. “You can’t stop me. It’s my right to protest. That’s what being a human means.”

  James slowly turned around. “I don’t think April knows what the whole right to protest thing means.”

  “He can’t stop us,” April told those around her. “Come on! No more Luxen! No more fear! No—”

  “Your right to protest doesn’t extend to the middle of cafeteria, Ms. Collins.” Coach Saunders snatched a poster out of a boy’s hand and tossed it aside. “Get down now and, all of you—every single one of you, get to Principle Newman’s office.”

  A few of April’s minions stopped right then and there, but April kept shouting her lame chant until a female teacher showed up and practically yanked her right off the chair. That didn’t quiet April down. She was still yelling as she was escorted out of the cafeteria.

  “Wow.” James slowly faced us. “Doesn’t she make you feel all warm and fuzzy?”

  Heidi snorted.

  “She makes me feel things, all right.” Zoe stabbed her lettuce with a fork. “But more like cold and prickly.”

  The table where the Luxen usually sat was now empty.

  As I glanced over my shoulder, I saw that some of the shouting students were still standing, their gazes fastened on the doorway, where you could hear April’s distant chants.

  They looked … woke.

  Like they’d just experienced something enlightening and found a righteous path laid out before them. A reason. A cause. A purpose. They were nodding as they looked among one another, faces I’d recognized and saw nearly every day for the last four years. Nice girls. Smart guys. Clever people.

  I saw my ex, Brandon.

  He was standing by the windows, his floppy brown hair golden in the sunlight. His warm, friendly smile was gone, replaced by a t
hin, hard line. He was slowly nodding too, as if he were answering April’s call.

  He yanked his chair back, climbed up onto it, and then jumped onto the table. “No more Luxen! No more fear!” He thrust his fist into the air. “No more Luxen!”

  * * *

  I yawned loudly as I switched out my textbooks at the end of the day. I needed to grab my chem book, since I had a feeling there was going to be a quiz tomorrow.

  “You doing anything later?” James asked. He was lounging against the locker next to mine, staring down the hall. Part of me wondered if he knew he was staring at the girls’ bathroom.

  “I think I’m just going to go home and sleep. Today has been exhausting.” I started to close my locker. “So I’m thinking about napping the evening away.”

  “Want company?”

  My entire body jerked. That question had so not come from James, but from a now-familiar voice. My breath caught, and I slowly turned to my left.

  Luc stood there.

  Wearing one of those slouchy knit beanies. Dove gray. He looked good in it. Really good, even though it had to be seventy outside and he was wearing a short-sleeve shirt.

  I blinked hard, thinking he had to be a mirage, because he couldn’t be here. But he was still there, standing in the hallway of my school.

  One side of his lips kicked up. “Hey, Peaches.”

  Knocked out of my stupor, I shut the locker door. “What are you doing here?”

  “Recon.” He was wearing those damn contacts.

  “Recon?”

  “Yeah.” The other side of his lips tipped up. “Thinking about enrolling in good ole Centennial High.”

  I gaped at him. He couldn’t be serious.

  “Who’s this, Evie?” James asked.

  “Luc.” He answered, leaning around me and extending a hand before I could say a thing. “And you’re James.”

  James’s gaze flicked to Luc and then back up. His shoulders tensed, and he didn’t take Luc’s hand.

  Luc arched a brow.

  Oh dear.

  “You’re the friend who let her roam around the club when she went to get her phone.” Luc tilted his head to the side. “You’re a good friend.”

  “All right,” I said as I gripped Luc’s arm. A charge of electricity, much more benign than before, passed through my palm. “Glad you two have formally met. Can you excuse us?” I asked James. “I’ve got to talk to him.”