Beneath the Guarding Stars
Page 24
I took a deep breath, biting my lip. “But I do.” I gestured around me. “This is me hiding. This is what I have to do now. I’m dead to the world and I have to keep it that way.”
He smiled. “Believe me, you’re not dead to me. You aren’t dead to us.”
There was that “us” again. I needed to know who he was, the same way I needed so many things. I needed my family and I needed Michael and I needed to stop shaking. Maybe I needed food and water and a bath. I didn’t know what awaited me in the vast snowy land outside the tunnel or how I’d survive in it. I didn’t know how I could trust this boy who reminded me of sunlight, even though every bone in my body told me that I could.
“Please,” I said, snagging Snowboy’s arm before he could go any further. “What are you? Really?”
He gave me a sad smile. “I’m proof of a terrible secret, Ava—that there are and always have been others like you.”
He drew me in and his eyes were pools of dread and hope, as though what he was about to tell me would either break me or heal me.
“You belong with your people now.”
My heart pounded. “My people?”
“The other mortals.”
Find out what happens next in
Mortality Book Three
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Sneak Peek at Mortality Book Three
Chapter One
SNOWBOY’S WORDS broke through the ice that had formed over my heart.
I am proof of a terrible secret. That there are and always have been other mortals.
A sensation of warmth blossomed in my chest, fed by the light of hope in his eyes.
“There are others?” I could barely speak. It had to be a trick and his expression held the first hint of fear I’d seen: fear that I wouldn’t believe him.
We stood in an icy tunnel in the wild mountains of Starsgard’s north. The tunnel wasn’t much more than a fissure between two soaring rock faces. Enough light filtered down from the gap high above us to reveal that the pathway ahead sloped upward. I’d left Councilor Naomi behind with her staff and the wreckage of the train that had carried me in a coffin this far north. She’d weighted the coffin and nailed it shut, the only person who knew that I was no longer inside it. Other than this boy standing before me.
Snowboy’s hands were warm in mine. He didn’t smile, didn’t move at all, as though he was afraid the smallest movement would break my trust. The way he held me reminded me of when I was little, of crossing the road with my brother Josh, when mom would call out to us from the car outside school. “Take care, I don’t want to have to pay for a recovery dome.” There was a way that Josh always took my hand in his, his palm turned into mine—just like Snowboy was doing now—as though he was watching, sensing, ready to pull me out of harm’s way.
Yet, Snowboy was so quiet, so silent and resolute.
“Are you…?” I choked on the words I needed to say, trying to grasp at the ice that had protected my heart just moments before, trying to pull it back and protect myself from his answer.
He waited for me to speak, unmoving, holding me.
“Are you mortal?” Finally the words were free. “Are you like me?”
My words hovered in the air and all the breath in my body exhaled with them, emptying me of everything except a terrifying hope. I wanted to believe that he was telling the truth.
I wanted to believe that there were others. That he was one of them.
That I was not alone.
Read more in Mortality Book Three.