The Fallen Stars (A Star Child Novel)

by Stephanie Keyes

  “I haven’t read them yet, but I will,” he said, patting the side of his suitcase.

  “Yeah.” Turning to leave, I looked back. “Hey, when you read them…if you need to, like, you know, talk, call me or something.”

  Roger nodded, paling slightly. Perhaps he guessed how bad they would be. He had no idea.

  Arawn waved a hand in front of Roger and he was gone then, luggage and all.

  Glancing in the direction of my new partner, I demanded, “He better have made it home.”

  “And he did.” Arawn’s voice no longer held the silky, amused tone that he’d used with me earlier. Now his voice betrayed his impatience, and perhaps a touch of weariness. “Willock!” His shout jarred me as Willock practically scurried into the room.

  He’d cleaned himself up, looking calmer than when I’d seen him on the patio. “Yes, Masters.”

  It was disconcerting the way that he’d started referring to me as “Master”. Though I supposed that such a title had become my only identity now. I was the Master of Danu’s Amulet.

  “It is time for Kellen here to lose his humanity.”

  Stepping forward, I forced myself to remember that I would not think about who I had been, about who I had to become to protect anyone else from becoming Arawn’s victim. I would only think about Cali and how she would have wanted me to protect her family. Inside, my heart steeled under my own resolve.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  KELLEN—AMULET

  “Willock, get Kellen into position for our ceremony.” Arawn sounded infinitely pleased, like a kid on Christmas morning. He appeared to rub his hands together.

  Willock led me to a chair in the middle of the room. He stood in front of me and placed his hands on my shoulders. It was a good thing, too, because I nearly fell out of the chair when his voice sounded in my head.

  I am going to relax you. Look at me. When I give you the sign, start twitching about like you’re in pain. And try to look evil, Willock said, communicating with me telepathically.

  Raising my eyebrows slightly, I otherwise acted like nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Arawn looked on.

  As the effects of Willock’s spell relaxed me, I sat back in the chair. My breath hitched slightly, but I did my best to focus on calming it. Bringing it down to a slow even keel. I closed my eyes.

  Cali. Her hair, her scent, her smile…

  Though I’d planned to keep my thoughts positive, to focus only on Cali as she was before and not as she had become, my thoughts drifted to the negative. Cali was my everything, and now she’d gone from this Earth. She would never be my wife. She would never be mine.

  What would I become now? What did being a changeling entail? Immortality? I’d already turned it down once, and without Cali I didn’t want to revisit the discussion. I should have asked these questions before, but what did it matter now?

  Maybe Willock could help me somehow. I couldn’t take down Arawn alone.

  “Kellen.” Arawn’s voice jarred me from my thoughts. “This is going to hurt.”

  Now, Kellen! Willock’s voice in my head prompted me to remember his earlier instructions.

  “Ahhh!” Crying out, I grabbed my mid-section and cringed, making my legs flail about in the chair. I even made a point of falling onto the floor for good measure. I didn’t find it too difficult to pretend I felt the pain. Thinking of Cali made the emotions come alive for me.

  “Noooo!” Curling into the fetal position, I made myself twitch erratically on the floor. Why wasn’t I feeling some intense pain? Did Willock prevent it from happening?

  “Ahhh!”

  Slow it down. Not as intense now.

  I eased the fake spasms until they were almost non-existent. With my shouts no longer filling the room, the silence overwhelmed me.

  Cali is dead. I choked back tears. I couldn’t think of her.

  Arawn’s voice broke the stillness. “Okay, Kellen. Get up.”

  Quickly I stood, my back to Arawn. Calling to mind every horrible thing that had ever happened to me, I slowly turned on the spot and looked to Arawn. Meeting his eyes, I willed him to believe me. Willock had clearly done something to save me. He was my only shot at getting the heck out of this twisted mess. I had to trust him.

  “Very good. You will make a fine changeling,” said Willock.

  “Now, Kellen, Willock has given me the amulet. You will give me the pendant from your neck and I will insert it into the amulet,” Arawn said.

  My brow furrowed, but then I remembered that I was supposed to look evil. “Should I not be the one to do that? You said that you needed me to wield the amulet’s power.”

  Arawn smiled. “Yes, but Willock, my loyal servant, has guaranteed that if I join the two I will be restored to my original body. The one that the amulet stole from me all those years ago.”

  Willock’s voice was there again, in my head. Give it to him, Kellen. It’s the only way.

  Knowing I had little choice, I offered my mother’s pendant to Arawn. As Arawn’s hand reached for the pendant, I remembered Lugh’s words that my pendant had little more than sentimental value.

  As Arawn snapped it roughly from my hand, its absence made me want to stop him, to reclaim what was mine. Greedily, he held my mother’s pendant up to the light and inspected it. Then, ever so carefully, he brought it down on top of the amulet.

  For a moment, he transformed in front of my eyes into one of the most handsome men that I’d ever seen. His hair was long and blond, falling down over his ripped muscles. He had the same blue eyes that all of Cali’s family members did. They looked up at me and they were alight with triumph and evil.

  “I own you now, Kellen St. James,” said Arawn.

  Take cover! Willock’s astounded cry broke my concentration and I turned and ran toward the same chair that I’d sat in earlier. The explosion threw me forward, past the chair and against the wall with a resounding thud. A sickening crunch, along with accompanying pain and the taste of blood in the back of my mouth, told me that my nose was broken.

  An immense blast of light filled the room, taking out the windows and burning my back. Closing my eyes, I shielded them with my other arm. I stayed there until the heat of the explosion died down.

  Rubble had landed upon me in the explosion and I shifted it, grabbing the back of a table for support as I stood. I squinted in the darkness. The light had gone and smoke filled the room, hovering in the air like a thick fog for several feet above the floor. I crouched back down, coughing, and crawled, making my way over to the spot where Arawn had stood only a moment ago.

  Where Arawn had been, however, nothing remained but a large black ring burned into the carpet. Like a carpet crop circle. In the middle of the circle lay my pendant. Inching forward, I extended my left hand toward the pendant.

  “You can pick it up. Nothing will happen.” Willock’s voice made me jump. Turning in the direction from which I’d hear it, I found Willock sitting up on the carpet. His face and hair were tinged with soot, but otherwise he looked unharmed. Willock waved a hand and the smoke vanished.

  Standing up, I walked over and extended a hand to him. He took it and stood as well, brushing the filth off his clothes as he rose.

  Okay, I’ll ask the obvious question. “What happened to Arawn?” Standing straighter, my back cracked and I tried not to wince from the pain.

  “Arawn was given misinformation. He thought that if he held the amulet in his hand and joined it with your pendant that it would heal him.”

  “And that wasn’t true?”

  “It might have been, if I had given him the real amulet,” Willock said with a grim smile.

  There was a rushing sound in my ears as I digested this. “So what did you give him?”

  “A decoy, a fake. I have the true amulet. When the two are joined it can only be done by one person.”

  “Me.” Though I said the word instantly, my tone betrayed my lack of conviction.

  “Yes. You are the only one who can joi
n them and the only one who can touch them once they are combined.”

  “But I don’t understand why. If I’m part changeling, why would I have control over the amulet?” This stuff was messed up. All I wanted to do was go home, though I probably had no home to go to now. Who knew if Gran’s house had been spared?

  “That is what I am trying to get to, Kellen, if you’ll let me. You’re not part changeling. The Stephen that you knew, that you lived with, wasn’t your father. He fathered your brother, but not you.”

  The rushing in my ears came back full force. I wasn’t Stephen’s son. I had a different father. I wasn’t a changeling? As per usual when dealing with Faerie, it overwhelmed me.

  Cali is dead. Gabe is dead. The pseudo-weird Stephen is dead. Where do I belong? Where?

  I looked to Willock for answers. “Then who am I?” I asked, trying to remain calm.

  “I think that we should wait until—”

  “No, we’re not going to wait!” Taking a step back, I ran a hand through my hair and let out a slow breath. “Who am I, Willock?”

  “Kellen—”

  “You people mess with me all the time and I’m sick of it!” I said, my anger building as I got right up in his face. If he wanted to kill me, let him. I was so done.

  “But I don’t know if I’m—”

  “Who the hell am I, Willock?”

  “You’re a prince,” Willock finally said, his voice almost a whisper.

  “What?” I could only stare at him.

  “You’re the Prince of Faerie, Kellen.” Willock fell to one knee and extended his hand, offering the amulet to me.

  His words swirled around my head like a tornado. I stared at Willock’s hand the amulet that lay on his palm. It came to me that after I claimed it, I would lose my identity and life would never be the same.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  CALI—END

  The light came closer. My suffering would end soon. It had to.

  Kellen.

  I will always love—

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  KELLEN—PRINCE

  I managed to get myself out of the house and onto the balcony just in time to throw up over the side. Looking down, I confirmed that I’d hit the patio furniture as I retched. Oh well. The furniture had always been gross-looking—or at least it was now.

  When I finally straightened up, I started to wipe my mouth off on the back of my sleeve, only to see that it was covered with blood and filth. Checking the other sleeve, I found the same. I grabbed the bottom of the shirt, the part that fell below the waistband of my jeans, and used that instead. “Ouch!” I’d forgotten about my broken nose. Wonderful.

  “Here.” Willock came out behind me and waved his hand in the air. In a moment, he’d repaired my nose, cleaned up the blood, and presented me with a clean shirt.

  “You’re good,” I said, tearing off my soiled shirt and discarding it, blood, puke, and all.

  “Thanks, but I draw the line at dressing you,” Willock said. Again, the serious look that appeared on his face clashed with his words.

  Shivering I pulled the new shirt over my head as quickly as possible. “Thanks. This is much warmer.” I buttoned the buttons of the new shirt and felt a bit of the chill leave me. I looked at Willock. “But…how? How is this possible? I’m just a kid from New York.”

  “Yes, but your father is the new King of Faerie.”

  “What?”

  “Your true father, the real Stephen St. James, still lives in Faerie. Arawn sort of converted him into a true faerie and…adopted him, I guess you could say.”

  “You know him, don’t you?”

  Willock nodded. “We grew up together, Stephen and I. We were like brothers. Arawn did very much the same thing to us that he did with you tonight. He created a glamour of this perfect family life, this fairy tale story. Arawn told me that my father had forgotten about me, and I tried to forget about him. It’s easy to forget that you have another life, another purpose, when you’re given perfection.”

  Man, did I get that. “I understand. I turned down perfection once,” I said. “Maybe I would have been better off if I hadn’t.”

  “Things happen for a reason,” said Willock.

  “Maybe. Tell me more about the “good” Stephen.” I didn’t know what to think about finding out I had a different father entirely. It had been a dream of mine for years; now finding out that it had become my reality seemed surreal.

  “We were both content for many years until I found Arawn’s journal and realized none of it was real,” Willock said.

  “Arawn wrote all this down in a journal?” I asked. “That seems unlike him.”

  Willock’s eyes held years of torment. “I think that he enjoyed reliving the ways in which he tortured others.”

  A shudder passed through me.

  “I told Stephen the truth about Arawn and we rebelled. Stephen made it aboveground, but Arawn caught me and I received the punishment because it was my idea.”

  “What about my father?”

  “He went missing for about a week before Arawn lured him home and locked him away. I think that’s when he met your mother. I don’t believe that he even knows about you.”

  “Then how do you know that ‘bad Stephen’ isn’t my father?”

  “Arawn asked me to sift through his thoughts. I’ve always been particularly good at that. I knew that Arawn was particularly interested in whether or not Stephen had met anyone,” Willock swallowed. “I lied.”

  “Why?’ I asked.

  “Because Stephen was like a brother to me. And I could tell that he loved your mother. Arawn would have killed her.”

  That would have killed me. I pinched the bridge of my nose.

  “I’ll get to that in a moment,” Willock said. “My father and I…” Willock teared up, his face cringing, then he composed himself again. “We were working together. Danu had foreseen Arawn’s betrayal and she enlisted both my father and me to help her long ago. She said that Lugh would have been too obvious, but we could infiltrate Faerie and steal her power back when the time came.”

  My mind flashed to Dillion, to the way his face had looked when he spoke of Willock as his son. Was it all an act?

  “Nevertheless, the power of Arawn seduced me and I became his lackey even though he called me ‘son’. He made everything seem so wonderful that I abandoned my own father, my own cause, for something that ruined me. Evil.”

  “But you didn’t know—”

  “Don’t make excuses for me, Kellen,” Willock said. “I turned against the light.”

  “Until Cali,” I added.

  A tear trailed down his face. “She reminded me in a single kiss of the man I used to be. Of the man I could have been.”

  Jealousy surged within me, but I forced myself to tamp it down. “You are that guy, Willock. You saved me, you saved all of the people here, and you didn’t have to.”

  “I didn’t do it for either you or me. What I did, I did for her…She loves you, and I love her enough to…”

  I nodded, digesting this information. I wondered if I could have been big enough, brave enough to walk away like that. “But I still don’t get how this other Stephen can be my father.” My mind tried to sort out the mechanics of it all. How could it be possible that I was the son of someone trapped in Faerie? I’d always been a part of the mortal world, hadn’t I?

  “It’s not my place to tell you all of this, Kellen. Some of it your father will have to tell you about himself,” Willock said.

  My eyes met his. “Where is he now? Can I see him? If Danu knew all this was going to happen, why not stop it?”

  Willock settled on my last question. “Because fate decreed otherwise. There had already been a time of great peace, and now was the time for the darkness to come. It is an on-going battle between the two. Danu would never have tried to twist fate. Yet she knew that you would come one day and she made plans to make sure you had as much help as possible. She wrapped the amulet in a curse that
would prevent anyone but you from using it to its full extent.”

  “But why me?”

  “Because you are the child of mortal and faerie, born in the shadow of darkness. The child with the sign of light burned into his skin.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  Willock remained calm despite my outburst. “I thought you knew about the second part of the prophecy. Don’t you have a knack for remembering things?” His eyes seemed sad, despite the mocking tone in his voice.

  “I do, but there was nothing in the prophecy about—”

  Willock held out his palm in front of him and waved his other hand over the top of it in a slow circle, much like an entertainment magician would. The amulet still gleamed in his hand and my fingers clasped around the pendant in my pocket.

  The book that I’d read at Tai’s appeared on his palm and he extended the volume to me. My breath hung like a puff of smoke in the air as I expelled it and snatched the book from Willock. Without hesitation, I turned to the page that contained the second part of the prophecy. After reading it, I looked up at him, confused. It was the exact same piece of text that I’d read at Tai’s house. “I still don’t get it,” I said.

  Without a word, Willock reached over and turned the page.

  The one who refuses immortality in light will receive it in darkness. The child of mortal and faerie, born in the shadow of night, with the sign of light burned into his skin, will lead the immortal world in a new age of rule.

  My pulse hammered in my ears, temporarily blocking out all sound. “I don’t have a sign of light burned into my skin,” I said after a moment.

  “Yes, you do. Take your shirt off again.”

  “You’re insane. It’s freezing.” I shook my head.

  Willock just looked at me and I complied with a grumble. Shrugging out of the warmth of my shirt, the cold hit me again. With a snap of his fingers, a light turned on a little way from where we stood on the patio. Walking up to me, Willock held the amulet close to my chest. “Look at your reflection in the window.”