“Did you guys find paint?”
Mara nods and stands up. She brings me a metal tray with several puddles of colored pigment on it. Her eyes are hollow and red from lack of sleep, but she’s at least willing to talk to us now. I’m not sure how she’s coping—I’ve been so preoccupied with Pol—but it seems we’ve struck a fragile truce. Still, she doesn’t quite meet my eyes.
“It’s not like we had a commissary to shop at,” she says, “but we found some flare powder and mixed it with water. Close enough, I hope.”
Pol stares at the tray as I turn to him. “What are you doing, Stace?”
“You only get one Trying. Did you think I’d let you skip the actual good part of it?”
He clears his throat, his voice rough when he replies. “An elder usually conducts the rite.”
“Yes, well.” I shrug. “We’re a little short on elders, so I’ll have to do. If … if you want me to. I know it’s sort of sacred and there are a lot of rules that I don’t know about, but I do know the basics and—”
He places his hands over mine, silencing me. I meet his gaze.
“I want you to do it.”
Feeling a nervous twinge in my gut, I set up the rest of the ceremony—holocandles burning in a circle around us, cast by tabletkas I set around. Not exactly the traditional burning tallow from the fat of a snaptooth, but they’re better than nothing. Then I dim the cabin lights, to simulate night. The Trying rite is supposed to be done precisely between sunset and dawn. I have no idea what time it is on Amethyne right now, but in space, it’s always night, so I figure the sacred aeyla laws aren’t being too violated.
Riyan and Mara slip away into the rear cabins. The rite is supposed to be done in private between the elder and the new aeyla warrior.
Pol kneels in front of me, which feels weird enough, but then he fixes his gaze on mine with such intensity that I almost forget what I’m supposed to be doing. Stars, he’s even handsomer than he was before, the new-and-improved Pol. Pol 2.0.
“Okay,” I mutter, breaking my eyes away and looking down at the tray of makeshift paints. I’ve read about Tryings enough to know the gist of the ceremony, but I hope I don’t screw it up. He only gets one of these during his life. I don’t want to be the one to ruin it.
I dip two fingers in the red paint and raise them to Pol’s face. His body is rigid, his brow still damp with sweat. Stars, he’s really taking this seriously.
“Son of Amethyne,” I murmur, “where is your past?”
“I carry it in my veins: the blood of my ancestors.”
I paint two red stripes down his forehead. Then I dip into the blue paint. Pol’s eyes don’t waver from my face.
“Son of Amethyne, where is your present?”
“I carry it in my lungs: the breath of this moment.”
Two blue crescents on his cheekbones. He doesn’t flinch as my fingers brush his skin, leaving azure trails.
Next is the green paint.
“Son of Amethyne, where is your future?”
He bows his head, his jaw hardening. “I carry it in my hands: the soil of Mithraya, to be tended, guarded, honored.”
He uses the old word for Amethyne, which was the planet’s true name before the Alexandrians annexed it to their empire. The aeyla still use it in their sacred ceremonies. His palms turn up, and I slowly print five green dots on each.
“We’ll never go back to how things were, will we?” he whispers, pressing his fingers to the dots. “Amethyne is behind us for good. Even if we go back there, it won’t be the same.”
“For years I dreamed of leaving Afka. Now all I want is to go home.” Raising my eyes back to his, I add, “This will sound selfish, but … I’m glad you’re here, Pol. I’m glad I’m not alone.”
His eyes don’t flinch as he replies, “I’m sorry I took you to Zhar. I should never have been so blind and stubborn. Can I even dare to ask for forgiveness?”
“You saved my life.” I dip my fingers into water, the green paint washing away. “On Amethyne and every day since, you’ve been there for me. You’ve lost so much on my account, and I don’t know how to thank you.”
“I don’t need thanks.”
“You don’t need forgiveness.”
The last part of the rite means dipping my fingers in the violet paint and tracing it over his heart. I wait as he pulls off his robe, until he’s kneeling in nothing but a loose pair of trousers that hang low on his hips. The bandage over his chest is fresh; I changed it several times throughout his Trying, when his thrashing caused it to bleed even more. But already the wound is beginning to close. The skin around it is healthier, thanks to the Trying boosting his growth hormones. He isn’t fully recovered, but looking at him now, I know he will pull through.
“Son of Amethyne,” I whisper, kneeling so we are level, “where is your purpose?”
“I carry it in my heart: to serve and protect Anya Leonova, the last true empress.”
My hand freezes between us, violet paint running down my wrist.
“That’s not how the ceremony goes,” I whisper.
“It’s how mine goes.” He takes my hand, bringing my paint-dipped fingers closer to him. “Please, Stacia.”
With a short exhalation, I lean forward and stamp a handprint over his heart. Stars, his chest is solid. I can feel his breath warm on my cheek.
His hands close softly on my arm, holding my hand in place, and our eyes lock.
Then his eyes slip, fixing on my lips. Not daring to look at his mouth, I instead stare at his eyelids. I can make out each individual eyelash, and the threads of emerald in his gray irises when his gaze flashes up to mine.
Pol leans toward me.
The tip of his nose grazes my cheek. I freeze, barely breathing, feeling his pulse race under my palm, making my own accelerate. My heart tightens like a knot. I feel like I’m standing atop the highest hill above Afka, with a storm wind rushing around me, stealing my breath, tasting of lightning.
An image of Clio rises bright in my mind: her glowing eyes when she saw Pol riding toward us that last day on Amethyne, her flushed cheeks and wistful sigh.
Swallowing, I turn my face away. “Pol … Pol, no.”
“Stacia.” His tone is heavy, full of unspoken meaning. “I—”
“Please. Please don’t.”
He pulls back, letting out a breath, eyes darting everywhere but at me. I drop my hand, violet paint dripping from my fingertips to the floor. I can barely breathe, and my body is stretched taut, skin tingling from my scalp to my toes.
“Appollo Androsthenes,” I say, my voice strained, “you knelt as a child. Now rise as a man, a warrior of the aeyla.”
He stands rigidly and bows to me, then turns and strides away without another word. His cabin door hisses shut behind him. I’m left standing with paint all over my hands and my cheek still burning where he touched me.
What in the blazing stars just happened?
I draw a deep breath and let it out slowly, trying to calm my racing heart, trying to cool the heat in my face.
I won’t think about it.
I will forget it happened.
Clearly, Pol’s head is off from all the med patches we’ve been slapping onto him. The Trying has sent his hormones into overdrive, and his system is all out of sync. And I’m sleep deprived or something. There must be a limit to how many times a person can go into warp without their thoughts getting loopy.
“Stars,” I mutter, setting down the tray of paint.
Then I flee to my own cabin and lock the door.
The rest of the sixteen days pass in a blur.
I drink obscene amounts of coffee, wishing I had a couple bottles of Dad’s wine instead. The four of us are a wreck, moving around the ship like ghosts. Pol and I do an admirable job of avoiding each other, given the close confines of the ship. We don’t say more than five words to each other the rest of the trip.
He’s still fragile from the gun wound, but healing well. I check his wound
wordlessly, rewrapping it every twelve hours until the procedure becomes routine. I can’t go near him without remembering his touch, his soft breath on my neck. I can only hope he doesn’t notice the heat in my cheeks as I bind him, and when it’s done, I rush away to splash my face with cold water. I can barely think of Clio without shame curdling my blood.
Mara doesn’t speak, either. She spends most of her time in her cabin, sleeping or crying, stars know. I try not to bother her. She never asked to come on this trip, or to sacrifice her dad, or for any of it. I wish I could do more for her, but don’t know where to begin. I barely know the girl.
That leaves Riyan for company. But his mood gets darker the closer we get to Diamin.
I spend a good deal of time sourly pondering how I ended up warping to the farthest reaches of the galaxy with three people as wrecked as I am.
And then, finally, we drop out of warp, and there it is.
The Cold Moon of Diamin.
Riyan cuts the engine and engages the forward thrusters, slowing the Valentina. All four of us are on the control deck, seated and strapped in. A large reddish planet hangs to our left, the gas giant around which Diamin orbits. But there’s no sign of the moon itself—instead, something else is waiting for us.
“What,” Pol breathes, “is that?”
Riyan gives a tight smile. “The Diamin Wall.”
My mouth hangs open, my eyes fixed on the shining black sphere in front of us. Perfectly round and impossibly smooth, the massive stress field is the color of obsidian. It blots out the stars, like a void suspended in the sky. I’ve seen something like it before—every time Riyan tessellates and the air warps at his command, folding like paper. But this is a thousand times bigger, an orb of condensed space-time, where gravity is shaped and stretched and turned against itself. The sight is enough to liquefy every ounce of courage I had.
I think of Riyan’s warning about what can happen when a tensor loses control and try to ignore the anxious knot of unease in my stomach.
“The moon is … behind that?” Mara asks.
Riyan nods. “Think of the wall as a sort of gravity shell. And Diamin is hidden inside.”
I look at the tensor. “We’re going into that thing?”
“Don’t worry, Princess,” he murmurs, “I’ll get you through in one piece.”
He closes his eyes and rests his hands on his knees, palms up. At first it looks like he’s not doing much at all. But I notice sweat start to form on his skin. The muscles in his neck and arms tighten. His relaxed fingers start to curl, as if he’s pulling against some unseen force. Like poisoned veins, dark lines spread from his eyes. When his forearms begin to shake, I feel a cold lump of fear.
What if it doesn’t work?
The massive stress field in front of us grows larger, and the closer we get, the harder I grip the arms of my chair. I can barely draw a breath for the terror clogging my throat.
“Look,” Mara whispers, glancing at the cup of coffee on the board in front of her.
The liquid inside is starting to toss.
She and I lock gazes, and then I feel it—the trembling of the ship as it begins to accelerate. But the engine is idling and the thrusters are off. We’re not propelling ourselves.
The wall is sucking us in.
Swallowing, I press myself against my seat. Pol catches my eye and shakes his head, probably still thinking this was a bad idea. Maybe he’s right.
Harder and harder the ship rattles. Riyan is sweating and straining in silence, his hands now in fists, the tendons in his wrists like taut cables. His entire frame is rigid, and I can see his pulse hammering in his temple. From ear to ear, his face is masked in black, as if he smeared soot over his skin.
A spine-tingling crunch sounds around us, and I watch in horror as the walls begin to buckle. It looks like some invisible space giant has grabbed the clipper and is slowly squeezing it. The sound gets louder: crunching, grinding, groaning. Mara lets out a soft, frightened cry, and Pol’s hand leaps to mine, his fingers tightening.
“He’s going to get us killed,” he says.
For once, I agree with him. But there’s no going back now. The pull of the wall is so strong I’m not sure we could escape it even if we tried. The closer we get, the more I realize it’s not as smooth as it appears. The wall bristles with static electricity—forking, bursting webs of light. I’d expected a solid wall, but it’s more like a storm trapped in glass. The shadows draw us in and swallow us whole, space-time boiling around us.
The force of it begins to pull at me, a pressure inside my chest, pushing forward, trying to burst through my ribs. Struggling for breath, I squeeze Pol’s hand back, while my bones cry out and my head reels. Black dots float in my eyes, expanding, and no amount of blinking washes them away. It’s like I’m suffocating all over again.
“Riyan,” I gasp through my teeth.
The tensor’s eyes slam open and he sucks in a breath as the pressure gripping the ship relaxes and we shoot through. The wall’s dark tentacles release us, and we sail toward the white moon that waits ahead. A few splinters of lightning crackle over the ship, then fade away.
I let out a gasp and crumple into my seat. Then I realize I’m still clutching Pol’s hand. He seems to realize this at the same time, and we pull apart.
“That was a little too close, brother,” Pol grumbles.
Riyan leans forward to ignite the engine, muttering. It sounds suspiciously like, “I can’t believe that worked.”
We stare at him.
“You … you have done that before, right?” Mara asks.
Riyan shakes his head. “The barrier only works one way. When I left, I sailed right through it.”
“Oh,” says Pol. “Well. That’s reassuring. And we’re listening to this guy why?”
“Be quiet,” I mutter, but my heart’s still knocking around like a bird trying to escape.
“Don’t we need to get entry clearance?” Pol asks.
Riyan gives him a look. “That was clearance. Only a tensor can get in and out of the wall. Welcome to the safest bit of space in the galaxy.”
Riyan navigates the clipper across the frigid Diamin landscape. Spindly trees flick below us, endless frozen forest cast in muted twilight. They are much taller than any tree on Amethyne due to the lower gravity of Diamin, bristling with short, stiff needles, their trunks pale. Snow clouds gather to the east, thick as foam. From this side, the gravity wall isn’t even visible. Instead, the dead planet fills the sky, massive and looming, its rim burning gold from the star beyond. The sight is awe-inspiring but strange, reminding me how far I am from home.
“Looks cheerful,” Pol murmurs.
“Nothing out there but frost bison and minki,” Riyan says. “Bison are good for eating, minki good for dropping out of trees and ripping your eyes out. Don’t go on any long walks alone if you can help it, my brother.”
“What are those?” I ask, pointing to dome-like structures that huddle in the distance.
“Those are the glazieries.”
Right. All diamantglass comes from here, made by some secret process only the tensors know. Supposedly their people are wildly wealthy, given their monopoly on the glass trade. You can’t have Prisms without diamantglass. It’s the only material capable of containing the gravitational fields required for the crystal to spin. If it weren’t for the glass, I wonder if the tensors would have anything to do with the rest of the Belt at all, or if they would become wholly secluded.
Riyan makes a wide turn, angling for a mountain range in the distance. The ship is so low I half expect to clip the tops of the trees. We skim over the domes, and I can just glimpse tiny figures moving between them, workers coming and going.
Mara emerges from the back cabins with clear masks and oxygen tanks.
“Good, you found them,” Riyan says. “Put them on and make sure your tanks are full. Otherwise, you’ll pass out within a few minutes of setting foot in our atmo. It’s not so bad inside Tyrrha, because
we regulate the air, but you’ll still need a boost from time to time.”
“Tyrrha?”
“Our city. It’s more of a stronghold, really. You’ll see.”
My stomach flutters nervously; Riyan assured me we’d be safe here, but I can’t forget the target hovering over me like a holo. After what happened in the Granitas System, the Loyalists will be looking for me as ruthlessly as the vityazes. There’s no way of knowing whether Zhar was captured or killed by the Union, or if she somehow escaped. I feel like a minnow swimming between two hungry snapteeth, hoping desperately that neither notices me hiding in its shadow.
“There it is,” Riyan says wryly, cutting the ship’s power to half. “Tyrrha, ancient home of the tensors.”
“Holy stars,” breathes Mara. “How is it possible?”
Set in a flat vale between two mountains, Tyrrha is an enormous pyramid of stone—turned upside down. It balances on a fine point, sloping upward and outward until it forms a vast flat surface directed at the sky. Its sides are smooth and gleaming, reflecting the jagged landscape around it, so it assumes all the colors of the mountains, forests, and sky. Like an optical illusion, like Riyan’s power itself, it bends my perception nearly to a breaking point. The more I stare, the less possible it seems. My eyes search for the trick to the thing—hidden supports or mirrors or anything to explain that impossible structure. It looks like it would tip at the slightest touch of wind, and across those peaks around it, the gales must be powerful.
“It was built by the first generations of tensors who landed here,” says Riyan. “There are always fifty of us in meditation across the city, keeping the whole thing balanced.”
“That seems … risky,” I point out. “What if someone messes up? What if you’re attacked? The whole place would tip over.”
“Exactly.”
“It’s a defense mechanism,” Pol says, his eyes widening. “If the enemy ever breached the city, you could just roll it over, completely changing the battlefield in your favor. Genius!”
Riyan nods. “Just so, brother.”
The clipper tilts upward, pressing me back against my seat. We rise, dwarfed in Tyrrha’s shadow. The outer wall is so smooth I can see the reflection of our ship flitting across it, chasing us up to the sky.
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