“Couldn’t they clone him?” Leda said.
“They tried, and failed. Only the offspring of the Erlosser carried the gene.” Grams drank from a glass and made a face—she still wasn’t used to the plant milk. “It was a great risk sending him away, but Aurelis had been under attack for many years when the decision was made. Several young men matching the Erlosser’s description were found dead around the globe, and the Elders weren’t willing to risk his being discovered by our enemies. The Woede were everywhere. And they are merciless.”
Leda had heard that name mentioned several times now. “Who are the Woede?”
“Evil incarnate,” Stein said, deadpan.
“Not all of them,” Grams said sternly, “but yes, the majority are hellbent on domination and destruction.”
Leda shifted her weight on the mattress. Her butt was falling asleep in this position. “You said before that most of the people on the ship spread out across Earth after the war. How did you find this Erlosser guy?”
“We didn’t,” Grams admitted. “Everyone believed he had been lost in the crash, and those of us remaining were too shaken from the war to search for him or his descendants. But when your mother expressed desire to marry, he came to us. Your father, Leda, was the Erlosser’s son.”
“So it’s true,” Oline said from Grams’s chair. “Leda is the weapon.”
Petrus stared at Leda, eyes wide and kinda totally creeped out at the same time.
“Yes,” Grams said. “And thanks to her father’s ingenuity, she is more powerful than her predecessors.”
“Wait a minute.” Leda shut her eyes and took a long, slow breath, then faced the room again. “Something doesn’t add up. My blood’s always been red, and now it’s silver all of a sudden, right?”
Grams nodded.
“Okay, so, Aurelis…people…they have silver blood, right?”
“Yes,” said Roar.
“And if my dad was one of you—or, us, I guess, he should’ve had silver blood, too, right? But it was red. I saw it, in the hospital.”
Grams lifted her chin. “Those Aurelites born on Earth had red blood. It has to do with the minerals and nutrients consumed during pregnancy, and after, as they grew. So long as an Aurelite eats food from Earth, their blood will remain red, like the people of the planet.”
“And how come my blood’s silver now?”
“I think,” Grams said, “when you and Roar came into close contact, he must have activated the dormant cells in your body.”
“The shock,” Roar murmured.
Leda turned to him. “What shock?”
“That day we met, you grabbed my hand.”
Leda blushed in memory but pushed the focus off her by saying, “So that’s why you looked at me like a terrified squirrel.”
Stein snickered. “Sounds like Roar, all right.”
Petrus moved his hands, sign language, Leda recognized. Then Roar said, “He’s right. We’ll have to take Leda back to Aurelis. She’s our only hope of seeing our home again.”
“Whoa, hold up!” Leda’s mind spun in circles. “Why do I have to go to an alien planet?”
“Leda,” Grams said softly, “you’re essential to the survival of our race.”
Would’ve been nice if someone asked her if she wanted to leave Earth and play the prophesized savior. She didn’t have anything against Jesus, but that wasn’t her. She didn’t want to be the hero unless she was parked in front of a computer or TV, and holding the controls. Avatars were fine by her, but actually going out into the universe and playing the white knight?
Well, when she put it that way… Leda nibbled on the inside of her cheek. Maybe she was looking at this all wrong. She could pretend it was all a game, and the winner got their name on the high scoring section for everyone else to see. Except she was the only player with a massive list of non-player characters on the sidelines, helping her with the mission.
“I suggest bringing Nils with us,” Stein said with a sneer.
“Nils?” Leda blinked, her thoughts puffing away like clouds in the sun. “But why?”
Oline gave Leda a tight smile. “Because he’s one of them.”
Fuzzy static erupted in Leda’s chest. “Them?”
“He’s Woede,” Roar said. “But no, Stein, he’s not coming with us. Nils has nothing to do with this.”
“I beg to differ.”
Leda turned to the doorway, where Nils stood, glancing nervously at Stein.
Nils added, “I’m coming with you. I already talked it over with Oline, and she agrees.”
The girl with white-blonde hair nodded her approval. “While Roar was here with Leda, and Stein was moping around because we grounded him and Petrus was busy keeping tabs on him, Nils and I got to talking. Turns out his mom is pretty important to the Woede, which means Nils could be our bargaining chip.”
“No way!” Leda tried to get up, but sharp, tearing pain sliced through her stomach and kept her in bed. “Nils, you’re not going to be a pawn.”
“Of course not,” he said. “But they don’t know that. So I figure we go to Aurelis, and if need be, offer me in exchange for a temporary ceasefire. Then Leda, you go in and do your awesome-cool weapon thing, and then we all celebrate with pizza, or whatever you guys eat on Aurelis.”
Leda did not like that idea one bit. She opened her mouth to say so, but was interrupted.
“Like they’re gonna want a scrawny, annoying nobody like you,” said Stein.
“They will,” Oline said, “because Nils isn’t a ‘nobody.’ His grandfather is Supreme Commander Toorn Kvellich.”
Chapter Eleven
Leda wasn’t sure who this supreme commander guy was, but the way Roar and his friends stared at Oline, silent as death, spoke volumes. Coupled with sharp intakes of breath and how Roar squeezed a handful of her blankets so tight it looked like the fabric would shred in his fingers, Leda learned that they feared Toorn.
Roar pushed out a heavy breath. “Are you sure?”
Oline flipped the curled ends of her ponytail over a thin shoulder. “His mother’s name is Eren Kvellich. So yes, I’m sure.”
“Then we have to go with Oline’s plan,” Stein said. “It’s our best bet at this point. None of us can fix the cloak on the ship, and Oline can hardly do the job for something that big without killing herself.”
Grams stood. “Perhaps Leda might be of assistance where your ship’s cloak is concerned.”
“What?” Leda blinked. “How can I possibly help with some technology that’s light years beyond anything I’ve ever known? Pun totally intended, by the way.”
Grams smiled. A network of lines erupted at the corners of her eyes. “Simple. Your father has been teaching you since you were young.”
“He has?” All the weekend and summer holiday lessons in her dad’s lab came back in picture flashes. She had enjoyed learning about the complex formulae Dad was working on, but he made her promise not to reveal them.
“It’s a secret side project I’m attempting,” he’d told her. And over time, Leda had understood the basics behind his ideas. But she never dreamed they belonged to a world where interstellar travel was the equivalent to the invention of the wheel for humans.
Oline rose from Grams’s rocking chair. “I guess that’s settled, then.”
“How is it settled?” Leda gritted her teeth in the misty confusion clouding her head. “I haven’t agreed to anything yet.”
Nils practically bounced on the spot, radiating bolts of excitement like electricity. “So we’re really leaving Earth?”
Glancing at the wall above Leda’s head, his eyes burning with an emotional hurricane, Roar said, “It looks that way.”
“Um, hello?” Leda waved her hands. “Not said I’m going anywhere. Anyone listening to me?”
“My mom has to come with me though,” Nils added, and he offered Leda a tight smile. At least he knew she was still there.
The rest of them? They were ignoring her.
Roar fixed his gaze on Nils. “We’ll talk about it.”
“Nope. Non-negotiable. If I go, she comes with me. Think about it—she knows things about Toorn that he wouldn’t want his enemies knowing.”
“But she’s kind of, well, you know.” Roar dropped off, his eyes veering away.
“It’s a risk, I know.” Nils paced the floor. “But I can’t leave her here on her own.”
The silence drew out so thin Leda could feel it, a spider’s web caught on her fingers that she couldn’t see. “So you’re forcing me to go on some hero mission, but you won’t let Nils take his mom? What kind of messed up alien drugs are you on?”
If Roar didn’t say yes, Leda would crack him over the head with her crutch until he changed his tune. She aimed a hot glare at the back of his head, hoping it’d get through his skin and skull and into his brain.
Roar was silent for a long moment. “I’ll consider it.”
Nils exhaled and seemed relieved. “That’s all I ask.”
Later, when everyone had gone home, Leda rested in her bed, boredom a heavy cloud sucking the air from the room. Her thoughts were a mess. Her emotions so tangled she couldn’t find the ends. Part of her didn’t have the heart to try.
The door creaked open and Roar poked his head inside, a shy, questioning smile on his lips. Just the sight of him kicked up a torrent in her chest. Confused didn’t come close to describing how she felt. She liked him, really liked him, but after what had happened, how could she trust him?
And there was that strange warning from Grams. But now that she’d had a moment to herself, she thought she understood. The people closest to her had chosen lies and deception all for one purpose: to defeat the Woede. Of course they didn’t want her, their super important weapon, to get too close to Roar. What was a fling next to the duty of saving a planet?
The whole thing made her sick. Once again, other people were telling her who she was, what she could and couldn’t do. It was enough to make her want to grab Roar right now and kiss him just to prove them wrong.
She resisted the urge to laugh as Roar tossed his head back to get the hair out of his eyes and it fell across his brow, exactly as it had been before.
“Can I come in?” he said.
“Sure.”
He shut the door behind him with a soft click. Then he stood there, his expression unreadable. “I’m waiting for you to invite me over.”
“Is that an Aurelite thing? Did I say that right—Aurelite?”
He laughed, his gaze dropping to the floor. “Yes, that’s right.” Then he glanced up, and the look he fixed on her smoldered. “But seriously, I’m trying to gauge your level of forgiveness.”
A string in her chest plucked and vibrated. “Why?”
“You know why.” He moved a step closer, his hands thrust into his pockets. “If I had just stayed away, none of this would have happened.”
“If you’d stayed away, you wouldn’t have found your weapon.”
“Touché.”
She smiled. “Learning French now? Planning a side trip to Fronce before you leave?”
“Uh, no. Petrus took this mission pretty seriously, and when we were almost in orbit around Earth, he downloaded as much of Earth’s literature and pop culture as he could, and fed it to us. Everything that might be of use, going back thousands of years.”
“I see.” She patted the spot next to her. “So if I said ‘Et tu, Brute?’ would you know what it meant?”
He closed the distance between them, kicking his shoes off on the way, his strides long, his eyes never leaving hers. “There’s no evidence he actually said that.”
She smiled inwardly as he settled on the bed beside her and leaned back on the headboard. She could feel the warmth from his shoulder at her cheek. “True.”
“It’s a good line.” His hand found hers, his fingers sliding between each of her fingers. “To be honest, I didn’t read much Shakespeare. I did watch a lot of your television, though.”
“Of course you did.” She reached for a pillow to swat him with, but he was too fast. In a blink he grabbed it, flung it across the room, and pinned her down. His thighs cased hers. His hips pressed down, and her pulse tripled.
He dipped his head until the tip of his nose brushed hers, a teasing glint in his eyes. She shut her eyes and pressed her lips to his. To her surprise, kissing him felt as natural as taking a breath. She hadn’t forgotten the way he consumed her every thought the other night. It had taken the last of her resolve to send Roar away and remember that he’d been sneaking around.
He froze completely, his mouth a stone wall against hers. She licked his lips with the tip of her tongue, waiting for him to respond. He didn’t even seem to be breathing. A second later though, he began to kiss her back. His lips parted and she shared his sigh, savored the feel and taste of him. Leda slid her arms up, fingers seeking his shoulders. Heat poured off him and scalded her fingertips. Her body softened as he brought his hands to her face, pulling her even closer. A strong swell of desire rose up in her, jumbling her thoughts. She couldn’t touch enough of him, needed more. But when she arched against him, a sharp, tearing pain wrenched through her stomach.
Roar pulled away and examined her face. “You’re still in pain.”
“Duh. I did get shot.”
He shut his eyes slowly, inhaled, then opened them. “I’m so sorry about that.”
“It’s not your fault.” She palmed his jaw, the stubble rough and tickly. “I shouldn’t have been sneaking around in your house.”
“I still don’t get that.” He climbed off her lap and settled next to her again. “You followed me, right?”
“Right.”
“But I didn’t go straight home.”
“Nope.”
His smile was at odds with the look he shot her. “How did you get there before me if you were following me?”
Leda’s cheeks warmed. “Well, I knew where you lived, and when I realized you weren’t going home at first, I thought I could use the opportunity to do a little spying.”
“Spying.” Roar shook his head. “On me? But, why?”
“Why not? You were turning to a blur. You were breaking into people’s houses.”
“At least now it makes sense—how you could see me when I was moving faster than a human’s brain can comprehend. That we know of, only an Aurelite can sense the super-fast movements of another Aurelite.”
She rolled her eyes. “We get it, I’m not human. You don’t have to keep rubbing it in.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know. Anyway, I went to your place because I wanted to see if I could find what you’d stolen, if you’d stolen anything.”
He stared at her.
“And if you hadn’t taken anything from the houses you broke into, then I wouldn’t need to go straight to the police. But if you had—”
“Which I hadn’t.”
She nodded. “And I thought the place was empty. The door was unlocked and it was quiet.”
“It was almost midnight. People could have been asleep.”
“With the front door unlocked?”
He flashed a high-watt, sunbeam smile. “This is Vardø, not New York.”
“Anyway, I was in your room looking around—”
“You’re a terrible spy, by the way. I knew someone had been in my room the moment I opened the door.”
“I can’t be awesome at everything, you know. Plus, I was interrupted.”
“Charlie,” Roar said softly.
“Yeah.” Leda looked down at her hands. Roar’s guilt over what had happened weighed heavy on her shoulders. She couldn’t imagine what that weight felt like to him.
He took her hand in his again. “What are you thinking?”
How much my life is changing in such a short time. She tipped her head up to the ceiling, wishing Dad were here. The one person she could always count on to hear her out and help her work through her thoughts rationally. Leda had a more passionate appro
ach, but they’d both end up at the same conclusion: things change and you’d better get on board or be left behind.
She turned to him and smiled. “Too much.”
He smiled back. “Hey, your turn to tell me.”
“Do you remember when I asked if you’d lost someone, too?”
He gave a sharp intake of breath. “I didn’t even stop to realize what you meant—”
“It’s okay. My dad. He died a few weeks ago.”
“Leda,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”
“That’s just it, though.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “That’s nothing compared to you losing an entire planet.”
He held out his hand. She kept one hand around herself but took his with her other. His palms were soft, nothing like the hard skin she expected from a guy fighting to save his race, even if he was a teenager.
“You lost one of the most important people in your life,” he said. “Don’t ever diminish that. It’s part of you.”
Didn’t she know it? That was the problem. She’d never be able to let go of his death because she couldn’t escape the feeling that somehow, she should have been able to stop it. If this were a fantasy, she would have been able to save the one person she loved. Instead, he’d been ripped from her, and she’d been helpless to stop it.
And now, Roar was asking her to open up to him. But she couldn’t. Not when opening up could mean losing someone all over again.
But she did have a new purpose now. She hadn’t been able to save her dad, but maybe if she could help Roar save his people, she could spare him the agony that would remain with her for the rest of her life.
The upside to not being human was, according to Grams and Arne, faster than normal healing, and for the briefest moment, Leda conceded that having alien DNA might not be the worst thing in the universe.
Less than forty-eight hours after Charlie shot her, Leda was mobile again. Sitting on the edge of her bed, she lifted the hem of her top and bared her stomach. The only sign she had been injured, an angry-looking, puckered scar on one side of her navel, served as a reminder of the “Charlie Ordeal.”
She attached the crutch straps to her wrists and stood before the full-length mirror on the back of her bedroom door, studying her appearance. She didn’t look any different than she had before the earth-shattering alien discovery, but deep down, she felt different, as though the fragile veneer of the girl she’d been had cracked, exploding into a fine powder, vanishing for eternity.
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