The Fallen Stars (A Star Child Novel)

by Stephanie Keyes

Dillion spoke up again. “It’s more important that you be safe right now, Gabe. We’re going to need you in the future. Your job isn’t done.” Dillion’s use of Gabriel’s nickname seemed to jar him and Gabriel appeared as though he considered Dillion’s suggestion.

  For a time no one spoke, but Gabriel, always searching for ways to end any unfilled silence, spoke. “What about the car?”

  “Dillion will figure something out for us,” Kellen said. “Just…take it.”

  “You’re probably right.” Gabriel’s eyes brimmed with unshed tears again. He wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve. Quickly he dismissed his own behavior. “I don’t know why I’m taking this so personally anyway.”

  “Lugh gave you a job to do. You just don’t want to let him down.” Kellen relaxed his pose. “It will be okay, and Cali and I will come and visit you when this has all died down.” Kellen’s voice sounded deliberately nonchalant.

  As if reading my thoughts, Gabriel looked to me and I tried to rearrange my expression so that it looked like I agreed with Kellen, but I wasn’t fast enough. After all, things might not die down until we were dead.

  ***

  A sense of depressing finality seemed to settle in the house as Gabriel went upstairs to pack. Despite the danger to Gabriel, we’d been a trio. It had seemed a little less ambitious, our fighting Faerie, with Gabriel involved.

  When Gabriel came back downstairs, he reached into his pocket, took out a ring of keys, and extracted one from the ring. He then handed it to Kellen. “I’ll split, but I need you to lock up before you leave, okay?”

  “Sure, whatever you need.” Kellen patted him on the back, placing the key on a hook by the food cooker.

  After a moment’s hesitation, Gabriel turned to me. “You take care of him for me, C, all right?”

  The notion that we might never see him again crossed my mind and I waved it off, unwilling to accept that this might be our last meeting—though the tears running down my cheeks told a different story. Carefully, as if I might break, he hugged me. “I will, Gabriel.”

  Pulling back, Gabriel nodded to us all, and walked out the door and quite possibly out of our lives for good.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CALI—VISIONS AND VIPERS

  The door clicked shut behind Gabriel and I looked to Dillion, finding his eyes on me.

  “Why did Gabriel react that way about our protection?” I asked. Again, the feeling that I should know more than I did irritated me.

  Dillion walked back into the living room and I followed him, hoping for an answer. “You remember nothing of Gabriel’s fate, do you, Calienta?” he asked, turning to look at me. But I didn’t have time to answer. Dillion stared at me for a moment and then looked at Kellen.

  When Dillion’s brow furrowed, I realized that Kellen had not participated in the discussion and looked at him. He stood in an unnatural position by the door. His eyes were glazed over, unseeing, his body unnaturally rigid.

  “Kellen.” My voice was loud, jarring in the moderately sized room. He didn’t respond to me when I spoke his name. “Kellen!” My cries went ignored and Kellen continued to stand there, rigid as a statue.

  “Kellen.” Dillion shook his shoulder firmly, but still no response.

  Panic constricted my chest, bound me up like a prisoner as I tried to stare past the glassiness of his eyes to the place where that sparkle should have been. This strange, comatose Kellen held no familiarity for me. “Dillion, do something!”

  Dillion touched Kellen’s bruised and battered hand and it started to glow, a soft amber glow that ran slowly up Kellen’s arm, encircling him until his entire body was encased in light. Dillion’s eyes were closed, focused, while he worked his magick.

  After a moment, Kellen blinked, drawing in several ragged breaths as though he couldn’t take in enough air. He blinked furiously, repeatedly, before he looked at me. What I read in his eyes spoke volumes. Fear. Normally Kellen hid his emotions with wit or evasion, but they were on display then for me to see.

  Touching his arm, I leaned toward him. “What happened to you?”

  Pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes, he rubbed them roughly. “I don’t know. It’s like I had a dream. I’ve been having them.” He walked around the room, swinging his arms as if trying to shake it off, continuing to draw in slow breaths. His already unusually pale skin grew whiter as he walked. The green of his eyes seemed to stand out in stark contrast to the paleness of his skin.

  “Tell us what happened, boy.” Dillion’s voice bordered on patient but always held that trace of frustration that he seemed to reserve just for Kellen.

  Kellen stopped pacing and went to the refrigerator and pulled out a Pepsi and a Snickers candy bar. Early on in our relationship, I learned of Kellen’s simple addiction to both of these things, which he seemed to inhale on an almost daily basis. After biting off half of the candy and chewing quickly, Kellen sat down and looked at us both. “I keep having these dreams about my father, Stephen.”

  It surprised me that Kellen used the term “father”. As long as I’d known him he’d always referred to Stephen by his first name.

  Kellen pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment and then looked up to meet my eyes. “He’s not right in the dreams. There’s something even more messed up about him, and that really is saying something.”

  “Tell us more,” I said.”

  “In the first dream, he talked about how he wanted to find me and how worried he’s been about me. The second dream was about how much he needs me…” Kellen began.

  “That can’t be so bad, then. Maybe he’s come to his senses,” I said.

  He continued, trancelike. “In this one, someone murdered him. I only saw him afterward, but I just knew that it had happened. It just seemed so real. It’s like I was there, watching it all.” Kellen shook his head, rubbing his arms.

  “It sounds like the same sort of thing that happened to you last night,” Dillion said.”

  “Maybe,” Kellen agreed. “But Cali said that I could only have been made to have these dreams if the person knew of my location. I started having these dreams in the car on the way up here.”

  “I don’t understand why they wouldn’t have just taken you then, or even on the plane,” Dillion said.

  “Dillion, what does that piece of paper that Lugh gave to Gabe say?”

  Dillion’s face registered nothing but a blank look. “I haven’t the foggiest. He didn’t give it to me, now did he?”

  “Uncle, please. Gabe read something from the paper and things would happen. The plane righted itself after Gabe read the words.”

  “Whatever it is, Lugh never mentioned it.” He frowned and looked at me. “Have you and Kellen talked more about the second part of the prophecy?”

  For a moment, I could only look at him as I once again fought to remember information from my past. Yet now that I found myself confronted with one of my greatest fears, it raced up to meet me and my memory returned faster than I would have liked, bringing the details back into sharper relief.

  “I thought that didn’t have anything to do with us,” Kellen said. Kellen had heard the term “second part of the prophecy” before. At the time I’d just brushed it off, and he hadn’t brought it up again because when it had been mentioned we’d been in a dire situation. However, if he didn’t know about it, then how could it hurt him?

  I could feel his eyes on me, but I stared at the floor. If I’d been honest with myself, I recognized that I intentionally hadn’t wanted to discuss the prophecy. Besides, I’d spent all this time trying to protect him from it. I couldn’t let him find out about it now. The second part claimed that he’d turn against me.

  “The second part of the prophecy doesn’t apply to him.” My voice sounded like steel. I wanted to make Dillion drop the subject; it would upset Kellen.

  Dillion took a step closer to me. “Who are you to say that? You probably don’t remember all of the facts,” Dillion said in a calm, understandi
ng voice, that had the opposite effect on me.

  “Cali, what’s Dillion talking about?” Kellen asked. He’d stilled beside me, his hand gripping my arm.

  Ignoring Kellen, I pushed on, wanting the subject to end. “Of course I do, and he would never ever go to the other side! He won’t change. Kellen isn’t evil!” My voice raised several octaves without my intent and it now rang through the large house, sounding crass as it reverberated in the empty hallways.

  “But he should know about the possibility that he could become evil.” Dillion’s voice sounded sad.

  “He’s not evil, Dillion.” My heart slammed in my chest.

  “What’s he talking about, Calienta?” Kellen sounded shocked.

  “But whose choice is that, Cali? Is it yours or is it Kellen’s?” Dillion’s voice sounded like a whisper after all of the shouting that I’d done. “You can’t keep something this important from him.”

  Kellen’s eyes stayed on me. Slowly, I turned my head and faced him. My heart broke, for it looked as though every bit of love that he had for me had gone and been replaced by contempt.

  A sob escaped my lips. “No! No! You don’t understand. I was afraid to tell you about this, and then I didn’t remember it. Everything’s gone, Kellen! I only remember patches of things and then I remember them too late.” Yet it was a poor excuse. Despite my memory loss, we both knew that I could have told him before, should have told him before.

  “In Cali’s defense, what she has is a little like what you would call amnesia. Things have simply been wiped out as far as her immortal education is concerned. If something had been important to her in her immortal life, then she will be able to recall it, but not easily,” Dillion said.

  That made sense. The dreams would matter to me because I spent so much time in Kellen’s life popping in and out of his. The prophecy because I feared it. I opened my mouth to say as much, but Kellen’s next words silenced me.

  “I’ve had a lifetime of people making decisions on my behalf, a lifetime of lies and secrets. I can’t handle any more, especially from you. You’ve…disappointed me.” Without another word, he got up and walked out of the room.

  My life crashed down around me in waves of confusion and pain. He still didn’t know about the entire prophecy. If he’d become this angered with such a small amount of information, what would he do when he knew everything? If only I could talk to him alone, to explain about the prophecy. Remembering the look on his face, I doubted that would be enough. Why had I been so foolish? I could have told him about it in Faerie.

  While you were running for your lives, or after he’d almost sacrificed his in the Upside-Down Ocean? I asked myself. Shivers wracked me from the inside out as I thought about the Upside-Down Ocean; the sea filled with unforgiven Celtic souls, the Sluagh. Or would you have told him in the days before your wedding? I thought.

  Dillion stood next to me in an instant. “I’m sorry, my child, but you can’t keep this from him. If he is prepared, then maybe he’ll make the right choice when the time comes.”

  “And what choice is that, Uncle?” A tear slid down my cheek, dropping off along my jaw. Despite any efforts to the contrary, my mind already tried to process a life without Kellen St. James, or worse, one where Kellen was evil.

  When Kellen defeated Arawn, odds increased that the second part of the prophecy would come true. In the first part of the prophecy, Kellen had been the one who was supposed to save the world; a second part had foreseen him turning to the other side. The side of darkness.

  I’d known about it all along, but I couldn’t bring myself to share any of it with Kellen. Besides, I didn’t know exactly what the prophecy said, only the main theme. I didn’t want to know. If I never knew about it then it wouldn’t come true. Certainly, a truer example of denial had never been seen before, but every time I considered bringing it up, I shied away from the truth.

  Leaving the light meant that he would leave me.

  Dillion handed me a cloth to wipe my face. “He will make the right choice. You.”

  Laughing wryly, I looked down at Dillion. “What if I’m not the right choice for Kellen anymore? Maybe there’s someone else for him.” There, I’d said it, my biggest fear, and the one that kept me awake at night.

  “Go and talk to him. I’m going to go outside and do some more, uh, searching,” he said. He spoke again after another pause, “Do not be foolish, Cali. There have never been two people more suited to one another than the two of you.”

  Closing my eyes, I hoped that he was right. Though I didn’t hear the door open or shut, I knew he’d gone. That meant that I had to use this time to go and speak with Kellen. The very idea of facing him, regardless of my reasons, upset me. He’d seen me considering using my powers against him, and now I’d been caught in a lie. If there were two things that Kellen St. James didn’t believe in, they were abuse of power and dishonesty. He’d had enough of both to last a lifetime.

  Looking down the empty hallway through which Kellen had left just moments earlier, I could only hope that Dillion was right.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  KELLEN—SECRETS

  Fisting my hands in my hair, I grabbed at the strands so tightly I’d come close to pulling it out. Cali had tried to use her powers on me. Then on top of that she’d kissed William, or he kissed her. Every part of me understood that she didn’t want him…I knew in my gut that she loved me. But this prophecy thing…she lied to me. Technically, we were talking a lie by omission, but a lie nonetheless. If I couldn’t trust Cali, who could I trust?

  I had no idea where I’d walked, but I found myself in a room constructed with windows on three sides. The view of the ocean outside seemed larger than life, like a postcard. There were about a million rooms in the house and I’d never been in this one before. The wall space that hadn’t been covered with windows held floor to ceiling shelves stacked high with colorful books. Under different circumstances, this would have been my favorite room in the house. Yet without Gabe to lighten the place, the home had a depressed quality to it, like a house out of some English novel where they wandered the moors. The American flag that hung within my vantage point from the nearest window quickly dispelled that image, as did the surf.

  My heart hurt, ached, like someone had reached in and punched it. More like ripped it out. What could she have been thinking? I fought the angry tears that wanted to come. I was just so damn tired of not being able to trust anyone. Or rather, trusting the wrong people and finding out that they lied. I wiped at my eyes roughly with my sleeve, refusing to cry, scratching myself on the face with my watch as I did so.

  Who would be next, Gabe and Alistair? This was why you kept things to yourself. If you didn’t trust people, then they couldn’t cut you. That’s what Cali had done. She’d cut me as effectively as if she’d taken a knife and plunged it into me. And what would I do now? Break up with her? I supposed that was what people did when they came to a point of contention that they couldn’t get past. The very thought of being apart from her, of leaving her behind, made me want to puke on the plush beige carpeting that blanketed the floor of the room.

  A sigh abruptly alerted me to Cali’s presence beside me. I didn’t know that she’d come in, probably a testament to my own sadness and anger, emotions that competed for first place within me. Refusing to look at her, I stared down at the floor so that the tears that came anyway would fall at an angle to the ground instead of running down my face.

  “Do you miss it? Ireland, I mean?” Cali asked.

  I hadn’t said a word about it since our arrival, but I hadn’t known that I would miss home as much as I did. Despite being born in New York, Ireland had become my adopted country. It would always be home to me. To Cali, it was even more than that. Her love for her country had been as passionate as a romance.

  Her emotions assaulted me then, as though she had chosen to project them to me. Sadness. Regret. Maybe she had. However, if I hadn’t known she’d come in before, I would’ve then. H
er sorrow overpowered me. If my own feelings were a small river of emotion, then hers was an endless sea, as if no one hurt more than Cali did in that moment, no one lamented more than she.

  But I couldn’t just forgive her. I’d always based my own beliefs on facts and I had none, other than she’d lied to me. Worse, this lie could cost us, could get us killed. I raised my shoulders a fraction as I sighed, debating about walking away from her. Yet despite my hurt, despite my pain, we stood at a crossroads, two would-be lovers with fractured hearts. Whatever decision I made at that point would impact us forever.

  I answered her question about missing Ireland honestly. “Yeah. Pretty bad.” Turning, I looked at her, knowing the disappointment could be read plainly on my face. “I asked you about the second part of the prophecy before, remember? In Faerie? You told me that it had nothing to do with me. It sounds like it has everything to do with me, and maybe my father too. Why would you lie?” Every part of me screamed to be held by her, to touch a lock of her hair, to smell her sweet scent and feel the softness of her skin. I needed her, but I just couldn’t… Please say something to make me believe in you again, my mind begged. Please.

  She cried as she spoke, unabashed tears that I found myself fighting to keep from wiping away. “Because I didn’t want it to come true. The other part of the prophecy did. How could I risk losing you like that, to evil?”

  Forcing my hands into my pockets and away from the dampness of her face took all of the restraint that I had. “But you lied, Cali. You kept it from me.” I balled my fists but just as quickly relaxed my hands, choosing instead to turn and place them on the back of a chair that had been positioned in front of the largest window. It had started to rain; the drops pelted the glass-walled room.

  “I did,” she admitted simply. Again, the emotion of regret bridged the space between us.

  “So what else haven’t you told me?” I knew that my words sounded harsh, but I wanted them to. I wanted her to know how I felt, to know— Dammit!