Starbright: The Complete Series

by Hilary Thompson

  I drag Irana along, running as best I can, screaming at the last few stragglers to hurry.

  “There isn’t any time!” I scream at a young man trying to lug several bags. I shove at him and he stumbles, dropping the bags and cursing me. But then the roar of the water behind him triggers a sprint, and soon he’s swallowed up by the crowd shoving to get inside a vehicle.

  The last thing I see when I glance back at Elysium is Zarea, standing alone in the empty courtyard, her hands spread wide as the concrete river before her cracks down the middle and the ocean rushes in, swallowing the river, then everything else in its path.

  THIRTY-ONE

  LEXAN

  July 7, 2067

  We finally managed to slip some dreamless herbs into Mother’s tea again, and I took Clota to visit Charles. The “orange boy” was there, and he told us his name – Maximus. Charles seemed to think this was funny, so maybe he was lying. But he and Clota took to each other like fire and oil. His words are slick and slippery, and she flares up in challenge each time they talk.

  From First Leader Lakessa’s personal journal

  Included in Firene’s secret papers

  My tiny arrows take the main gate guards down one by one, so fast I worry I might have inadvertently killed them. They struggle to sit back up, to cry out, but the sleeping tonic is so strong it slurs their movements and words into ineffective whisperings.

  When Pacem and I creep out of the shadows, all of their eyes are closed. I check pulses, and I sigh in relief to find them breathing deeply and slowly, just like sleep.

  I ready another arrow and beckon for Pacem to follow me.

  He nods, gripping a knife in each hand, the blades dripping with the same tonic.

  We slip past the enormous metal gate, wincing at the soft creaks its hinges make. A long concrete walkway crosses over the river which feeds all of Asphodel, and occasional drops of water fall on our shoulders from the rock ceiling high above.

  Seeing a solid door ahead, I duck into the shadows of the wall. There are no openings in the door to see what lies ahead.

  I glance at Pacem, and he shrugs. Then, before I can stop him, he approaches the door and knocks twice.

  Silence follows, but as he raises his hand to knock again, the handle begins to twist. He steps backward, turning his human side to the door.

  “Hey, can I come back in for the night? I got lost topside,” he says in a low voice to whoever is beyond the door. “The other guards let me in the gate, no problem.”

  The door opens a few more inches, and I can just make out the form of another guard when Pacem slashes at the man’s exposed hand, scratching the sleeping tonic into his skin. He slumps against the door, and Pacem catches him, letting him down gently and silently.

  He pokes his head inside, then waves at me to come on. I can’t help but grin at how easy this has been, even if I know it can’t last.

  We enter a compact room filled with metal cabinets. I frown as I slide the door shut behind us, then open a cabinet. More guns –from before the Cleansing, I’d guess. As far as I know, there’s no place to make weapons like this in the cave.

  But I’ve never seen this side of Asphodel, and I’m worried about the direction my home has been pushed. I know we had to leave, and I know I had to wait to return – I just pray I’m not too late to save the people from Keirna’s special brand of evil.

  Exiting the compact weapons room, we find ourselves in a long, twisting hall. I move in front, keeping my bow at the ready.

  A few wrong turns and dead ends later, the hallway lightens substantially. I hold my hand to Pacem to wait – I think I recognize where we are.

  I’ve never been in this hall before, but I do know the Leadership Complex has these same polished rock floors and tapestry portraits of past Leaders.

  Keirna’s office must be nearby.

  Pacem trails me, staying out of sight several yards behind. I round a corner and see a door slightly ajar. The light inside shines on black hair – a head bent over a desk, intent on a stack of papers.

  My heart twists into something black and ugly as I push open the door, remaining in the shadows of the hall. She doesn’t move, except to push her pen through a few more words.

  “Hello, Keirna,” I say, finally stepping into the room. She stops writing, although she still doesn’t look up.

  “Well,” she says, setting down her pen and examining her painted nails. “It looks like Saloman isn’t nearly as foolish as most believe. I’ve been waiting a long time for you to show back up. I almost lost my faith.” She lifts her head, and her black eyes meet mine.

  She’s smiling.

  I almost lose it, but my grip on the rough wood of the door frame grounds me just enough. Air swirls gently through the room, brushing a strand of hair from her cheek, and she narrows her eyes.

  “Where is my brother?” I say.

  “Oh, I expect he’s enjoying his time off,” she says, the smile widening. “After all his hard work trying to start a coup, retirement really suits him.”

  I could use my power to kill her. I could suck the air from her lungs and watch as she shrivels and gasps. I want to feel her life in my own hands – the way she took my mother’s life. And my father’s. And so many others.

  I can almost taste my revenge, but justice is what I should be here for. I need to be careful not to surrender to the fiery rage in my chest.

  So I don’t do anything to hurt her. Not just yet.

  “Take me to him,” I say, pointing the arrow at her throat.

  She chuckles, leaning back in her chair and tenting her fingers. “So you’ve come home to claim a throne that was never meant to be yours. And where is your fire queen? Dead, I hope?”

  “Astrea is on her way here now, leading thousands of people right to your door.”

  “Good,” she says, the smile vanishing, her eyes glittering with hate. “That way, the whole world will bear witness to the truth that she is nothing but a human girl. There is no true power in that coward’s shell.”

  My jaw flexes as I bite down on all the things I’d love to say to her. I almost want to keep her alive just so she can see how wrong she is about Trea.

  “Take me to Aitan,” I manage, the words spitting out one by one.

  “Very well. But put your weapons away, and pull up your hood. I won’t have any of my people alarmed at your clandestine return. What have you done with the guards, by the way?”

  “They’re sleeping on the job,” I say, replacing my arrow in its quiver. There will be plenty of time to kill her after she’s answered my questions.

  “Well, I suppose that’s good – I can punish them for it later. I don’t particularly care for the one in the gun room anyways. You know, most intruders would have simply killed the guards. But your family has always lacked the stomach for killing, hasn’t it.”

  “You’d be surprised what my stomach can handle now,” I say before I can stop the words. She grins and stands, turning her back to me as she locks the papers into a wooden cabinet behind the desk – her lack of fear is the biggest insult of all.

  My fingers itch to bury a knife in her back and end this charade, but I can’t. Not yet. Not like this.

  She leads me through the Leadership Complex. Glancing behind me, I see Pacem slip into her office, and I smile to myself. Resourceful, that one.

  We enter the Common Area, and it’s empty, just the way I remember it always being at night. Her heels echo rhythmically on the rock floor as she crosses the cavernous space, then pauses in front of the hall which leads back to the private cells.

  The ones where her special criminals wait indefinitely.

  Of course, this is where Aitan would be. I’ve never been back here, although I know Brenn visited Stian here once. I wonder what has become of Brenn and his family. Of Isa, and Aitan’s partner, Anyel. Of Pasia, and the baby in her belly.

  Blinking hard, I force myself to focus on Keirna’s actions – there will be plenty of time to find
everyone, once she is captive or dead.

  Keirna unlocks the door using a key from a delicate chain around her wrist. Turning to me, she holds the door shut. “I apologize for his…mental state. He has been through a lot, poor thing. It’s always sad for me to see my favorites make the wrong choices.”

  I advance on her and she raises her eyebrows. “Patience, young Libran.”

  But she pushes the door open and stands aside. The space is too dark for me to see much, but there is a tall form slumped against the bars of a nearby cell.

  A soft chuckle begins, rippling down my spine.

  “Come to torture me again, K? You like it when I call you that, don’t you.” The voice is hoarse, but unmistakably Aitan’s.

  “Aitan, it’s me. Lexan.”

  The chuckle stops and the form moves. Keirna flips on a light, but it’s still barely enough to see by. I can’t tell if his face is shadowed or bruised.

  “Huh. You actually do look like my brother. Nice job, K.”

  I glare, advancing. “Aitan. It’s me.”

  He rests his head back against the bars, a grin slipped only halfway in place. “Yeah. Go ahead and slit his throat, K. Won’t bother me a bit.”

  “I’m surprised you feel that way, Aitan,” Keirna says, her voice smooth and too close. In my concern for Aitan, I’ve allowed her to get too close to me.

  Something cold and hard presses itself to my neck, and I curse myself for my stupidity.

  “I was thinking a gun this time, Aitan. A little messier, but I do love it when the bang makes you jump,” she says, her voice like a silk thread winding its way around my neck and stretching upward. A noose of my own making.

  Why didn’t I just kill her when I had the chance?

  “I told you your family has no stomach for violence,” she whispers in my ear, as though she’s heard my thoughts.

  “Good thing my family does,” another familiar voice rings out.

  Keirna sighs, grasping my arm with sharp fingernails and turning me enough to see the door. “Not now, darling. I’m working.”

  Head Minister Saloman stands in the doorway, his hair as disheveled as always, the only difference being the gun held awkwardly in his own hand.

  “Looking for this?” he grins at her.

  “Don’t be an idiot. I have mine right here. Where did you get that?” Keirna’s voice is growing impatient, and suddenly I’m worried she’ll shoot Saloman first, then me.

  “Ah. So sure of yourself, K…” Aitan whispers from the cell behind us. “You know what they say about pride.”

  She huffs and presses the gun tighter against my skin. I study Saloman, trying to find out what he has planned, but his eyes are wild and unfocused.

  Then Keirna curses and turns the gun on Saloman. She pulls the trigger, but nothing happens. Her face twists in rage.

  He cackles and darts back into the hallway, faster than I’ve ever seen the old man move. Keirna fairly screams in frustration, pointing the gun at my shoulder and clicking it again and again.

  Too slow, I realize I should be escaping or at least reaching for my knife. But just then she clocks my temple with the gun before hurling it at Aitan. It bounces against his bars, and he does indeed jump, skittering to the back of his cage like a kicked animal.

  My eyes are slow to focus after the blow, and my stomach wrings, realizing Aitan wasn’t joking about the torture.

  Keirna darts out the door after Saloman. I sprint after her, realizing she must not have brought another weapon.

  Pride, indeed.

  I chase her through the hall, fumbling for my knife as I run back into the Common Area. She is wrestling with Saloman, desperately trying to retrieve the gun he must have stolen from her.

  A bang seems to shake the entire cave, as the gunshot echoes off the rock ceiling nearly a hundred feet above us. Dust drifts down, settling on the limp form of Head Minister Saloman, whose blood is streaming from his neck, pooling on the cold floor.

  Keirna stands shakily, glancing down at her dead partner.

  She swivels to point the gun at me, just as I hurl my knife.

  She twists away and it hits her in the shoulder, but she grunts, stumbling backward.

  She turns and runs toward a nearby passage, tilting slightly as she tries to hold her arm and the gun steady. But she’s still grinning when she turns back to look at me.

  I still haven’t taken a step.

  But I have pulled my bow up and nocked an arrow. My vision seems to tunnel into her black, soulless eyes as I aim and let the arrow slip from my fingers.

  It hits her in the back, just where the knife hit Trea’s mother, Chanah, so many months ago.

  Just like I promised Trea.

  She cries out and stumbles to the floor, but somehow has enough strength to crawl. She fires a random shot back toward me, but it’s too wide.

  So I nock another arrow, and fling it into her arm, just where my dreams have told me the snake bit Mother. She shrieks again, but weaker this time. The gun clatters to the floor.

  And I advance.

  I kick the gun away and stand over her, looking down at the red spots growing on her body, the evil and life seeping out of her at a pace faster than I expected.

  “You won’t win,” she rasps, and glances over my shoulder.

  I turn just in time to see blond curls racing by. The girl turns and I realize it’s Isa, something glinting in her hands. She’s racing to the cells where Aitan is prisoner.

  Keirna pushes out a breathy laugh. “You won’t win,” she repeats.

  “Stars help me, I will finish you,” I grind out between my teeth. Aitan will have to wait. I see the split second when Keirna realizes these are her last seconds on this earth, and I finally see fear.

  “So you can feel emotion,” I muse, my heart twisting again, getting harder and uglier with each act.

  I draw another knife from my belt. In one smooth motion, I slice across her neck, and the blood washes out, taking with it the life from her eyes.

  She sleeps, finally, in death.

  I might have traded my brother’s life, and I certainly traded my soul for this particular revenge, but Keirna is gone.

  I stand stiffly, my brain working in slow motion. Wiping my bloody fingers on my thighs, I bend and yank my arrows from her body. Her hand jerks, then smacks back to the rock.

  The sound shakes something loose in my mind, and I remember Aitan. Breaking into a sprint, I careen around the corner and through the door to find Isa standing in front of Aitan’s cell, both hands stretched out toward him.

  She’s offering him a choice, but of what I can’t yet see.

  “Don’t move a muscle, Lexan. I have three guards in here with me. I’m not nearly as prideful as Keirna,” she says, without even turning. Glancing at the shadows, which now begin to move, I see she isn’t bluffing.

  “Now, Aitan,” she says. “Last chance – either way, I’m leaving you in here and going topside forever. You can join us, or stay behind. Do you want the knife and the prayer book or the vial and the key?”

  Her voice is tragically uninterested in his actual decision. This isn’t the Isa I know – regardless of her feelings for Aitan, she would never hurt someone like this. It must be some plan of Keirna’s. I glance again at the guards. One has crept forward enough that I see I’d never get a shot in before one of them shoots me.

  “I’d rather be dead than forget the feelings I have for you,” I hear Aitan say. “Keirna will kill both of us eventually. If you were really Isa, you’d remember that I love you.”

  My brain stumbles. Aitan…loves Isa? Can I trust his damaged mind? I need more time.

  “Stop, please!” I call, and she turns her head just enough to look at me.

  “Keirna is dead!” I say. “You don’t have to follow her orders anymore.”

  “I don’t need her to tell me what to do. I can reason it out for myself,” Isa responds, her voice cold and her eyes blank. “Her orders match my own objective, w
hether she is alive or not.”

  Suddenly I realize what Aitan was trying to explain in his message.

  She’s not dead, but she’s not alive either. She’s just gone.

  “The Starbright serum,” she says, offering the vial to Aitan. “Take it and you can be free. You can see your sister, your brother, your partner. You can live your life in peace in the Garden.”

  “Peace is nothing without love,” Aitan whispers. “I don’t want Anyel, and you know it. I want you, Isa. Don’t you remember any of it?”

  “All I remember is us breaking laws and risking our lives for a childish emotion – an emotion I no longer entertain.”

  Aitan’s face crumples in evident pain, and I know they must have had something real between them, for him to react so strongly.

  “Isa,” I begin. “Trea’s coming back – she’s on her way now. We want to make things right in Asphodel. Can’t you–”

  “What do I care for that traitor?” Isa interrupts, her voice hard but still flat and emotionless. “She had an opportunity to help the city, but she ran away. So did you. You will both be tried for treason before the eyes of the people.” She nods at one of the guards, and they run to me, securing my arms before I can even draw a weapon.

  “Put him in the other cell,” she tells them. They half-carry, half-shove me through the doorway, and the bars clang shut.

  “If you’ll excuse me, I have a mess to clean up.” She nods her head at me, then turns to Aitan. “Since you are unable to choose, I will leave one of each. Here is the prayer book, and here is the Starbright serum. Someone will be back later to check your progress.”

  She places both items on the floor in front of his cell, just within reach if he stretches his arm between the bars, and she leaves, the three guards trailing obediently behind her.

  She flicks the light off, leaving us in darkness.

  THIRTY-TWO

  ASTREA

  July 13, 2067

  I caught Clota sneaking out to see the orange boy last night.

  She promised me something good to keep quiet, and I know exactly what I want. I’ve already made a list for Charles – crystals this time. The sisters tell me there is as much power in them as in the elements that shake our safe house every day.