Darken the Stars

by Amy A. Bartol

  “You’ve never struck me as someone who enjoys sharing.”

  “I don’t share—” his fingers gently caress my nape “—not you, not ever.”

  “Let’s make sure the Brotherhood knows that. I have no intention of being their toy.”

  I push away from his embrace without looking at him and walk to the door. He follows me. I wait as he opens it. Kyon’s arm goes up, barring the doorway. “You never go first, Kricket. It’s not safe. You always allow me go first so that I can take whatever fire is meant for you.”

  “That’s not a good plan for you. What makes you think I won’t shoot you in the back?”

  His lips twitch as he suppresses a smile. “You’re right. Together then?” he asks.

  “If you insist.”

  “I do.”

  Kyon takes my hand as we disembark. Once on the ground, the privacy we shared for the last few rotations is gone. Armed security is everywhere, stationing themselves along our route to the house and by every door and every stair that I see. People stream from every direction to gawk at us.

  I look straight ahead, keeping my eyes on the impressive entryway. It’s at the top of wide stone steps. The wooden doors are enormous, making it appear as if giants live here instead of just really tall Etharians. The edifice itself with all of its cathedral-like detail makes me feel like a munchkin. The lintel is made from marble and contains carvings of Ethar’s two moons: Inium and Sinder.

  Before we reach the massive entrance of the castle, a tall soldier approaches us. I lose color when I recognize him. He’s the soldier who I tricked into trusting me right before I shot him in the neck with my stolen tranquilizer gun and escaped from the doomed Ship of Skye. It makes me shudder, remembering my feeling of desperation as I tried to leave then—the raw fear. What was his name? I wonder with dread. His blond hair is cut shorter than it was—it doesn’t touch his ears anymore. The change makes his massive shoulders look even broader.

  “Keenan,” Kyon says as he greets the soldier.

  The soldier nods to him. “Brother Kyon.”

  Kyon gestures to me. “You remember Kricket, I’m sure.”

  Keenan doesn’t smile when he looks at me. “I do, cousin. Greetings, Elle Kricket.” He uses the title of “Elle” to denote my priestess status. It’s also very formal. We’re not going to be friends.

  “Greetings,” I mutter. His jaw is rigid. I have no luck at all.

  Kyon keeps walking, holding my hand so that I move with him. He says, “Keenan will take the lead on your security. He’ll be with you when I cannot. I chose him for you because he has an appreciation for how resourceful you can be.”

  I look over my shoulder at Keenan as he falls in step behind us. His gun faces away from us in a safe position as he narrows his blue eyes at me. I turn back around and face the house once more. Dammit! I think.

  A very calm older man waits for us at the top of the stairs. He has the military build that I’m used to seeing in all the fair-haired men on this cursed planet, but his eyes are brown. Streaks of gray hairs mix with his long blond ones. It’s rare to see it. They all live so long—thousands of years—it’s insane to think about how old he must be. Two thousand? Three? He fascinates me right away. He’s extremely amused with this situation, if the humor in his eyes is any indication. “So you found her,” he says by way of greeting to Kyon.

  “I found her. I lost her. I found her. I lost her.” He gestures to me. “I found her.”

  “If I’m lucky, he’ll lose me again,” I say absently.

  This elicits a delighted bark of laughter from the older gentleman. “I wouldn’t call that luck.”

  “Oh no?” I respond.

  “No.” He sobers a bit. “I would call that tragic—for you both.” His eyes shift to Kyon. “You have visitors.”

  “Do I?”

  “Curious fools,” he replies.

  “Ah,” Kyon says. “Thank you for entertaining them for me, Fulton.”

  “Would you like to meet some of the Brothers, Kricket?” Kyon asks me.

  “Not really,” I reply.

  “Smart girl.” Fulton smiles at me in delight.

  “Too smart,” Kyon agrees.

  “Is there such a thing?” Fulton asks with an admiring grin.

  Kyon addresses me. “Fulton is my mentor. He has been with me since my childhood.”

  “I think of him as my son,” Fulton says with an affectionate glance at Kyon.

  “Did you foster the ruthless spirit in him?” I ask point-blank.

  “I cannot take credit for his iron will. It’s a trait he inherited from his real father and . . . from circumstance—”

  “Kricket!” My name is screamed with a desperate fervor. Startled by it, we all turn to look behind us. Across the lawn, a young woman is running toward us. She’s soaking wet, having obviously climbed out of the river moat. She’s got a fanatical, frenzied look on her face. Armed men are chasing her. With her arms spread wide, she shouts, “Kricket! I love you!”

  She’s tackled to the ground. One soldier knees her in the back while another secures her hands behind her with handcuff spray. She struggles, continuing to call my name. She’s brought back up to her feet where she has to be lifted off them to get her to move in the other direction away from us. She screeches at the top of her lungs, “I just want to greet her! You don’t understand! I love her! She’s the one! She’s the one!” The soldier uses a tranquilizer gun on her and she becomes unconscious.

  “Your security has holes,” Kyon states as he turns to scowl at Keenan.

  “I’ll make sure we find the breach in security and report it to you by tonight,” Keenan replies.

  “Who was that?” I ask, startled. I stare at them. There was reverence in that girl’s tone when she shouted my name. She was desperate to get to me.

  “You are beloved here, Kricket,” Fulton replies. “Some citizens have been waiting for you for a long time.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She doesn’t know?” Fulton asks Kyon.

  “No. And here is not the place to discuss it.” Kyon points to the yellow bird perched on the lintel above us.

  Fulton nods. “Falla Kirk.”

  “Go home, Falla,” Kyon calls to the yellow bird.

  “Auden will be angry with me if I don’t tell him something useful,” the yellow bird says in a melodic feminine voice. The round shape of my eyes shows my surprise.

  “Tell him to bathe more. That’s useful,” Kyon replies to the beautiful canary.

  Kyon takes me by the elbow and escorts me through the doors. Inside we enter the first spire of the castle. The reception room is an enormous circle. The floors are made of blue glass with the Flower of Life pattern etched into them and repeated over and over. Silver pillars shaped like ancient trees grow up from the floor to a vaulted ceiling. The ceiling itself resembles a cosmic nebula of galaxies and stars—the same stars that reside in the sky above Ethar. Below the ceilings, there is a gallery with white archways overlooking us on the floor beneath.

  As I walk the room, all of the exquisite panels on the walls project holographic landscapes of Ethar. They’re like altarpieces in the way they hang and take up large areas of space. Some of the landscapes are familiar to me because I’ve been to them in the Forest of Omnicron and seen them firsthand. I shiver when I come upon the waterfall where I waded with Trey before the Comantre Syndic soldiers found us.

  I move on. There are glass doors that lead out to the grounds and some that lead to private, walled courtyards built into the interior of the castle. I pass archways with curtains that can be drawn to hide small niches. What interests me most is that there appears to be no stairs that lead to the gallery above and no way to access the rest of the house through this entrance. I make a complete circle and end up where I started, at the entrance.

  “Are you lost?” Kyon asks with his cunning smile—the one that tells me he has a secret.

  I’m drawn back to the portrait of th
e waterfall that Trey and I slept near. I remember what it was like to lay next to Trey—to have his arms around me, protecting me. An exquisite ache squeezes my chest. I want that back.

  I gaze at the landscape. It’s so clear that I feel as if I could step into it and be transported there. My hand reaches out to test the theory, but Kyon stays it at the last possible moment with his hand on mine. “You don’t want to do that,” he says as he puts my hand to his lips, kissing the back of it.

  “Would this take me there?” I ask. My hand trembles in his giant one.

  “Nothing gets by you, does it, my little savage? This is a portal of a kind. I have yet to perfect it, however. It still has complications that make it . . . unsafe.”

  “Complications?” I ask. I glance back at the landscape. The air feels misty, stirred up by the impact of water hitting water.

  “Keenan,” Kyon says over his shoulder to my bodyguard who has been trailing us around the room. “I need a volunteer.”

  Keenan goes to the entrance and hails a guard from outside. I glance at Fulton, who winks at me conspiratorially. A brawny soldier enters through the large doors. He angles his automatic weapon—a freston, which is actually three weapons in one—downward in a safe position.

  “Come here, please,” Kyon requests as he continues to look at the landscape of the waterfall in front of us.

  The soldier looks at us and decides that he was the one Kyon meant. He does as he’s ordered and stands next to Kyon.

  “What do you think of my landscape?” Kyon asks the soldier.

  “It’s very nice,” the soldier replies.

  “Nice! It’s nice?” Kyon laughs, seemingly amused. He lets go of my hand and clamps his arm around the soldier’s shoulder. “Why don’t you have a closer look?” Kyon pushes the man into the landscape. The soldier disappears from the room and reappears on the bank of the waterfall in the portrait where he falls to his knees, blood dripping out of his mouth, ears, nose, and eyes. He collapses on the ground in the grass.

  I take a step back from the portrait. Kyon glances at me. “You see? It has a few problems.”

  “Why didn’t you just tell me the problems? You didn’t have to kill him!”

  “I made it easy for you to understand that you can never use this to leave here. I could’ve told you, but you don’t trust me. This way, I can be assured that you believe me.”

  “Why do you need it?” I ask, turning away from the dead man on the other side of the portal. I hold my hands behind my back so no one will see them shaking.

  “Think of the ramifications that something like this can have for us. We could move troops—be everywhere and nowhere in a matter of seconds. It is a very useful tool—if I can get it to exert less pressure on the soft tissue of the body, it will be perfect. I have to find a way to protect the brain and internal organs,” he says absently.

  “The funny thing about weapons like this, Kyon, is that the door works both ways. Someone could find it and come to us as well,” I reply.

  Kyon turns and faces me. “I did not have you pegged as a ‘glass half empty’ person.”

  “I’m not. I’m just being practical,” I reply to cover up my gut-wrenching fear of his intellect. He’s so smart. He won’t need priestesses or me soon. He’s a force all his own. I take another step back from him. I rest my hand against the nearby tree pillar for support. Instantly the glass floor becomes a platform and lifts me to the gallery level.

  Kyon laughs below me. He comes to stand next to the tree pillar on the opposite side. “You figured out my puzzle,” he says. He puts his hand on the pillar, and another glass platform raises him up to me. “Now what?” His eyebrow arches in question. I glance across the open airspace to the gallery railing across the room.

  I have no idea what will happen if I move forward off the glass step, but I know that something will, because Kyon is watching me with an air of expectation. I take a deep breath, hold it, and take a step forward toward the railing. My foot connects solidly with another glass step in the shape of a clear river stone.

  “Did you know it was there? Or were you just being brave?” Kyon asks.

  “I was being hopeful.”

  From below, it must look as if we’re walking on air as we cross the room to the gallery railing, which turns out to be merely a hologram. The gallery is real enough, though, and I’m grateful for the solid stone beneath my feet. “Do you want to see more?” Kyon asks me.

  “I want to see everything,” I reply. I do. I want to know him so that I have a better chance of surviving him. I will put up no fight yet. I have to bide my time. I need him. If I’m to be free of the Brotherhood, he’s my best chance. He has as much to gain by their demise as I do. I’m just afraid that he’ll see through the cracks in my heart. I have more weaknesses than I’d like to admit.

  “Fulton,” Kyon calls to his mentor on the ground. “Where have you put our guests?”

  “They’re in Beauty—garden level.”

  “Beauty?” I ask.

  Kyon escorts me from the gallery to a long hallway that is entirely glass on one side. Sunlight falls on us and warms me. This hallway overlooks a flower garden outside. Butterflies flitter around it in droves, feasting on lush buds. “I’ve named all the towers in the house.”

  “What was the one I just left called?”

  “Kingdom,” he replies.

  “And this one?” I ask when we reach the end of the corridor. We enter through a magnificent archway into another tower.

  “This part of the house is called Foundation.”

  We enter at the gallery level. It looks a lot like a study. The walls of the gallery are lined with books and artifacts. Iron helmets adorned with wings as well as wicked-looking swords are on display behind glass. As I gaze over the wrought-iron railing, I find below us is another round room. The floors are stone with inlaid Nordic knot symbols. Beautiful tapestry carpets with rune symbols of green and gold cover large areas of the floor. Four sets of stairs descend to the lower level from four areas of the gallery. Spiral staircases wind upward to more levels in Foundation. The rows and rows of books and artifacts go all the way up to the pointed peak at least fifteen stories above us.

  I leave Kyon’s side and explore the room. Taking the stairs down, I see a study of a kind and a space that Kyon must use to tinker around with things. The first table I happen upon is covered with parts—cogs and washers and metal pieces. The inner workings of some machine is laid out in a definite pattern, as if he took a clock apart and laid it out in a road map in order to be able to put it back together. Another long table with bottles and vials and burners is laid out in the most particular way, as if an experiment had been started and abandoned, but then preserved so that he could pick it up again. I don’t touch anything, treating it with the kind of respect it deserves.

  “This is your study?” I ask.

  “Yes. I spend much of my time here.”

  Only one portrait is in this room: an oil rendering of a very beautiful, petite woman. She looks like a Norse goddess. Her cerulean eyes sparkle with a secret truth that she ponders while she stares back at me. Her face is the graceful, flawless, feminine form of Kyon’s. She has to be a close relation.

  “Is she why you’re bad?” I ask as Kyon joins me to gaze at the lovely woman frozen in repose.

  “She’s my mother. Her name was Farling.”

  “She was a priestess?”

  “She was. She was also your mother’s best friend. They used to say their names together—Farling and Arissa—Arissa and Farling. There’s a portrait of the two of them together in a different tower.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “My mother? She helped your mother escape Alameeda. She paid for it. They executed her for treason.”

  “Who did?”

  “The Brotherhood—my father. He was infatuated with your mother. He wanted her for his own.”

  “How could Excelsior have claimed her when he had already claimed your mo
ther?”

  “He can do whatever he wants. He knows how everyone will vote because he tells the majority of them how they’ll vote. He has always been untouchable.”

  “Your mother saved my mother from him?”

  “She helped Arissa get out of Alameeda, but she couldn’t save herself.”

  “Or you,” I whisper to him and the portrait of the ghost who broke his heart.

  “I didn’t need saving. I am bad, Kricket, but she didn’t make me bad.”

  “You don’t have to be bad.”

  “I do, but I’ll be worse to anyone who is bad to you. Come, let’s go meet some of the Brothers.” He holds his hand out to me and this time I take it.

  CHAPTER 11

  BEAUTY GOES DEEP

  We exit through the brown leather doors, leaving Kyon’s study behind. A short corridor brings us to tall, thin ivory doors. They remind me of keys on a piano. Kyon pauses before we enter the room. He turns to me, grasping my chin and making me look at him. “You’ll be the most important person in the room, but if you don’t demand their respect, they’ll never give it to you.”

  “So they’re normal,” I reply.

  “I’m always protecting you, whether you know it or not.” He’s not lying—at least he believes what he says. I wonder, and not for the first time, if he knows just how broken he is.

  “We’re on the same team for now, Kyon. I’ll follow your lead. Just tell me one thing: What are they most afraid of?”

  “This.” He motions to both of us with his index finger. “You and I aligned and out of their control. To see us together will unsettle them.”

  “What if we’re in love?”

  “They’d be unable to look away.”

  “Hmm,” I respond.

  I wish that I’d had time to prepare for this. If I’d been given a moment, I could’ve launched myself into the future for a dry run. No such luck, though. I have to play this one straight and hope for the best.

  My feet are heavy as I trudge into the room. It’s grand in a way I’m somewhat accustomed to now that I’ve lived in Rafe’s palace. The left side of this regal room is open to the outside by a series of white wood-framed French doors that run the length of the pastel blue room. Silken, white curtains are draped to the sides. The tranquil breeze brings with it the scent of flowers. I don’t recognize them, but that aroma is lovely. They’re melon-colored and grow on the vines creeping over the outside of the doorframes.