Stargazers

by Bella Forrest

  I sprang to his defense, since he wasn’t here to defend himself. “Yes, he is, and if you don’t like that you can leave.”

  The eldest brother laughed, looking up at me. “I know you. You’re the pet, right? The one from the wedding?”

  “She isn’t a pet, Rethela,” Navan interjected sharply. “Guys, I’d like to introduce you to my wife, Riley. And this is our child, Nova.”

  Tentatively, I moved around the edge of the banister and came down the staircase toward them. A sea of eyes stared at the baby in my arms, scrutinizing me closely. Jareth followed, his presence somehow keeping them in line. It was hard to know what they really wanted to say about us, but I was well aware of the Southern stance on interspecies couples.

  “She’s a pretty little thing.” Garrik broke the ice, his stern face morphing into a mask of hearty cheer. He reached out for her. “Can I hold her? I’ve been trying to get my girlfriend to think about kids, but she’s having none of it. Can’t even get her to marry me.”

  “Be careful with her,” I said, handing Nova to him.

  “No worries, Riley. And hey, congrats on the wedding. Where did you have it?”

  “It was a little ceremony, out in space,” Navan replied, smiling proudly.

  Garrik nodded. “Cool, well, maybe if we win this thing and get ourselves a fair government, we can have a party or something to celebrate your union.”

  “I like the sound of that.” I looked at Navan, knowing our friends would definitely appreciate another ceremony to celebrate our marriage.

  “Does she have red wings?” Lojak peered over Garrik’s shoulder. “That’s mega-cool.”

  As Navan supervised our daughter being handed between all of her newly arrived uncles, I kept a close eye on Rethela. He seemed nice enough, but his comment about Kaido had irked me. If any of them thought they could treat Kaido like crap and get away with it, under this roof, they had another thing coming. Thinking about the sweet, peculiar coldblood, I cursed under my breath. He was probably still waiting for me, wondering where the hell I was. I’d been gone way longer than five minutes.

  Maybe he had seen the influx of brothers and decided to stay in his hut? Surely, he wouldn’t be too angry with me. Either way, I was going to have to make my excuses and get back to Kaido’s makeshift lab before he gave up on me completely.

  “Navan?” I tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Yes, my love?”

  “I’m just heading outside to work on something with Kaido. I won’t be too long.”

  He looked concerned. “Is everything okay?”

  “Yeah, we’re just trying out some serums.”

  He kissed the top of my head. “Orfaio stuff?”

  I nodded. “Orfaio stuff.”

  “Is it safe?”

  “Kaido would never put me in danger,” I promised, though I wasn’t entirely certain. “If anything happens, he’ll come and get you.”

  “He’d better.”

  I leaned up and kissed him on the lips, savoring the sensation. Realizing we had an audience, I pulled away, seeking out my daughter and planting a tender kiss on her cheek. She giggled happily, punching her tiny fists into Rethela’s chest. Despite the eldest brother’s reservations, he seemed completely smitten with Nova. There was no escaping her charm.

  “I love you, Nova. Mommy won’t be gone long,” I whispered, heading out the door.

  Making the short journey around the side of the house, moving toward the hut and every terrifying possibility it possessed, I realized that the only Stargazer premonitions that hadn’t yet been fulfilled were mine and Ronad’s.

  “Hey, you okay?” Ronad hurried to catch up. Speak of the devil.

  “Yeah, I’m just helping Kaido out with some experiments. Too much brotherly love for you in there?”

  He laughed. “Something like that. Since Naya, me and the boys haven’t really been the best of friends. I don’t think they liked it when I accused their father of murder—didn’t exactly make me popular.”

  “This might be a good way to patch things up.”

  “You think?”

  I grinned. “Hey, we’re all going to have to get pretty close for the foreseeable future, so you might as well get something useful out of it.”

  “I suppose,” he mused. “Anyway, what kind of experiments are you getting up to?”

  I shrugged. “Not sure yet. I’ll find out soon enough.”

  “Can I come?”

  “Not this time, Ro. Sorry.” I offered an apologetic smile. He seemed more like himself, and the last thing I wanted to do was push him away when we were taking steps to tighten our friendship.

  “Fair enough. Well, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, eh?” He leaned in and gave me an awkward hug, a strange tone in his voice. With that, he turned and bounded away, disappearing back into the house, leaving me reeling with confusion. What part did he have to play in all of this?

  More than ever, I wondered how the pieces of this puzzle were going to fit together in the end.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Worried about Ronad, I made my way back to Kaido’s hut. Opening the door, I found Kaido perched on a stool, gazing through a microscope at the glowing petal of one of his plants, one hand scribbling notes while the other gently moved the petal this way and that. He didn’t look up as I entered, so I waited, giving him a moment with his study subject.

  “I thought you had decided against the experiment,” he said at last, one eye still fixed on the microscope lens. “I came to the house to see if I had offended you in some way. I did not expect to see my brothers there. I am sure you can understand why I felt it necessary to retreat back here to wait for you.”

  I nodded. “I thought that might be the case when you didn’t come to the cottage to see what was going on. Either that, or I figured you were mad at me for staying longer than five minutes.”

  “Indeed, I was somewhat frustrated by your tardiness, but once I saw my brothers I understood why you had been detained.”

  “Do you get along with any of them?”

  He looked at me blankly. “They have never wished to associate themselves with me, so I have respectfully kept my distance. It has always been easier to avoid them than to endure their torments. ‘Crabweed’ is not a name I wish to be called again—it took me a great deal of care to get Sarrask to stop.” He smiled abruptly. “I suppose you could say that I ‘get along’ with Sarrask these days. And Navan and Bashrik seem to tolerate me more than they did.”

  “I’m sorry you’ve had to grow up in a place like this,” I said.

  “Where else should I have grown up?” he replied. “I am a Vysanthean. Our species is isolated on this planet. I could not have been born anywhere else. Any alteration in the timing and a very different person would have been gifted with life instead of me.”

  I smiled. “I just meant… I’m sorry you’ve been treated the way you have, by everyone around you. It’s not right.”

  “It is Vysanthe.”

  “That still doesn’t make it right.”

  He shrugged. “Never mind, one day I shall write my thesis on the Stardust Principle and nobody will care about my peculiarities anymore. They will see my intellectual mind, instead of what is broken. Perhaps, in seeing my successes, they will strive to change the law of extinguishing coldbloods who are born with my particular affliction.”

  “You aren’t broken, Kaido,” I assured him. “But I hope, one day, things do change here.” I thought again of Seraphina, and the hope she might bring to the future of the Vysanthean people. All of them, “peculiar” ones included.

  “Are you ready for the experiment?” Kaido asked. “We ought to get on with it before the potency of the serum expires.”

  I nodded. “Hook me up.”

  Sitting me in the nauseating chair, he attached two nodes to the sides of my head and more across my chest. A screen beeped on the workbench, showing my heartbeat. Another image showed a three-dimensional map of my brain, each part
lit up like a Christmas tree.

  “Try and relax as much as you can. It is much harder to insert a needle through tense muscle,” Kaido instructed.

  “And here I was, thinking you were trying to calm me down,” I teased.

  “Are you panicked?”

  I shook my head. “No, I was joking. Sorry, I’ll shut up.”

  “It would be easier if you did not distract me with unrelated conversation.”

  I stifled a giggle, drawing my fingers across my lips like a zipper.

  He frowned. “Are you thirsty? Do you require hydration?”

  “No, Kaido… never mind. I’m ready for the serum when you are.”

  Retrieving a syringe from the top drawer of his workbench, he brought it over and slipped the sharp tip beneath the surface of my skin without a word of warning. Slowly, he pressed down on the plunger, the bright liquid disappearing inside my body. Well, there was no going back now. Soon enough, it would reach my brain… and, hopefully, the visions would follow.

  A split second later, my eyes closed, and yet my eyesight continued. It seemed to sharpen, a searing fire coursing through my muscles. My mouth felt dry and tingly, my teeth itching, my brain sparking with white-hot electricity, as though someone had set my very cells alight. It was a familiar sensation, bringing me back to the basement lab in the Idrax house, where Kaido had first pushed the vision-inducing serum through my body. I’d forgotten just how painful it was.

  A million thoughts and images bombarded my skull, pounding at my temples until I thought my brain might explode. As before, some of the visions were memories from my past, while others I didn’t recognize. Past, present, future, all swirling in one vortex.

  I saw burning planets with towering infernos engulfing civilizations I’d never seen before. A thousand different species whizzed past in a tunnel of faces, their mouths open in silent screams. Jean and Roger waved to me from the front porch of our house, only their skin had blackened like charcoal, the flesh peeling away from their bodies in rising ashes. Rushing along, I saw the heads of my friends stuck on pikes along the entrance to Gianne’s palace, their hollow eyes turned outward in accusation: Angie, Lauren, Stone, Ronad, Xiphio, Mort. On the ground below, ten bodies lay in a neat row—the Idrax brothers and their father. Navan’s face was in the dirt, while Bashrik’s looked upward, his body beginning to collapse into dust.

  A swirl of shadow and embers tore through my mind, the images shifting, twisting upward like a tornado in a Texan summer. The fearsome darkness gave way to an icy palace, where a coldblood sat on a throne with a crown of jagged icicles balanced on his head. I’d seen this strange man a few times now, a familiarity still resonating in my mind—an understanding that I couldn’t put my finger on, no matter how hard I tried. Was this Him?

  His face was fuzzier than it had been in previous visits, and though I knew his eyes were pitch black, with the tiniest flicker of fire where the pupils should be, I couldn’t get myself to look at them. It was like two poles meeting, pushing my gaze away. He rose from his throne and walked toward me down a glinting path of silvered ice. There were no swords this time, but I felt the heat of fire on my face as he neared. I tried to scream, but no sound came out.

  The figure paused close to where my frozen figure stood. I fought to look at him, but his features were blurred. I could make out his mouth, opening in a mournful expression, but only fire emerged. Suddenly, he raised his wrists. I turned away, thinking he was going to strike me, the way he’d tried to do with the swords. When no blow came, I turned back. A swirl of shadows dissipated to reveal two cuffs of solid gold, gripped to his wrists. They were peppered with strange designs, emblems carved into the gold. Somehow, deep down, I got the feeling they were curses—complex enchantments intended to keep the cuffs locked and the prisoner in chains.

  The last Vysanthean god, a voice whispered in my mind. It half belonged to me and half belonged to a stranger, the echo of their voice chiming off the sound of mine like an afterthought. The cuffs were stolen from the Museum of the Universe. Stone was the one who took them. It is as Xiphio told you. A vague memory came rushing back, of Xiphio labeling Stone’s crimes. Sure enough, he’d told us that the ambaka had swiped a pair of priceless handcuffs from the museum, hoping to sell them to the highest bidder. Did Stone still have those cuffs? I needed to find out.

  Gathering my courage, I forced the image of the shadowy king to clear. The vision sharpened for a moment. His eyes locked with mine, the fiery embers within searing into my soul. A moment later, my body disintegrated. Agonizing pain tore through every nerve ending, the inner blaze burning me up. This had happened before, the last time I’d tried to hold his gaze. It was like my body was rejecting the strength of the icy king’s glare, unable to endure it. Looking down, I saw my skin turn to ash, the gray petals fluttering away on an unseen breeze. I opened my mouth to scream, but again, no sound came out—an unwelcome case of déjà vu.

  My eyes sprang open, my lungs clawing for breath.

  “Riley?” Kaido leaned into view, his brow furrowed.

  “Here…” I wheezed.

  “Did you have the visions?”

  I dragged oxygen into my lungs, tearing the nodes off my head. “Give me a minute, Kaido.”

  “My apologies.” He backed off, watching me from his stool.

  A few minutes later, my breathing returned to normal, my heartrate slowing. Unlike the last time Kaido had tried these experiments on me, I could remember everything I’d seen. The images were blurry and unclear, but my mind clung to them, retaining the sensations they’d dredged up. I shuddered at the thought of my friends’ heads on pikes, willing away that particular vision.

  They’re all possible futures, I thought. Not premonitions, just possibilities.

  “How are you feeling? Can you tell me anything about what you saw?” Kaido launched into science-mode, lifting out a pad so he could make notes.

  “The images were really fuzzy this time,” I said, sitting forward in the chair. “My mind has retained them, for the most part, but the actual visions were blurry and unclear. I don’t know what any of it means.”

  He frowned. “The serum hasn’t changed. I just added a hint of the stardust.”

  “Maybe that’s the reason I can remember the visions this time,” I suggested.

  “Is that not what you were seeking to accomplish?”

  I shook my head. “It’s not enough. I can’t explain in detail but… I was told that I have to be able to see ‘Him,’ so ‘He’ will see me… And I couldn’t see Him properly. I couldn’t hold His gaze for longer than a split second. My body felt like it was rejecting the whole thing, trying to protect me from His eyes.”

  Kaido tapped his chin. “I have another idea that I can try, if it is a clearer image you want, but I will require a day to figure out the complexities. You must go. There is no time to waste,” he urged, dragging me up from the chair and practically shoving me out of the hut in exasperation. Clearly, I’d outstayed my welcome. Kaido didn’t like to be wrong, and I’d pretty much told him his serum had been useless. I wanted to reassure him that he’d done a good job, but the hut door had already slammed in my face.

  Turning, I was startled to find Ronad standing right in front of me, looking shifty. He’d clearly been eavesdropping, and now he didn’t know what to do with himself. He shuffled awkwardly, shoving his hands in his pockets.

  “Did you hear anything interesting?” I asked, frowning. I figured his sudden interest had something to do with his piece of the puzzle, putting me right in the center of things once again. That wasn’t where I wanted to be.

  He shrugged. “I wasn’t listening in, I was just waiting for you to come out.”

  “You couldn’t have done that in the house?”

  “It seemed easier to stand here and wait,” he said sheepishly. “I needed a bit of fresh air, that’s all. Figured I could kill two birds with one stone.”

  “Have you been told to eavesdrop on me?”

>   He looked up in alarm. “No.”

  “Not that you could tell me, anyway, right?”

  “Like I say, I was just waiting for you to come out,” he insisted.

  “Well, I need to go and speak to Stone and Lauren about something. You can come with me if you want,” I said, thinking over the weird voice in my head telling me about the last Vysanthean god. Stone had to know more about those cuffs, and Lauren had read just about everything in Brisha’s library. Surely, there’d been a book in there about the old Vysanthean gods.

  “Actually, there is something I need to speak to you about first,” he admitted. “It’s why I was waiting.”

  “What’s up?”

  “Bashrik was helping me repair some of the systems in Sarrask’s and Kaido’s ships, and we picked up a glitch on the radar while you were… well, in the middle of your experiment,” Ronad said guiltily. “I was just waiting for you to be finished, so I could let you know.”

  “Let me know what?”

  “The glitch was coming from a tiny vessel, flying low to the ground, moving through barren wasteland. I hacked into the frequency, and we heard the crew talking—it was the ship carrying Lazar. The queens have successfully snatched him from the North, and Navan and some of his brothers have gone to intercept.”

  I gaped at him. “Already? Why didn’t you wake me up?” I looked up and realized the sun was low in the sky. “Wait… how long was I out?”

  Ronad cast his eyes down. “Nearly six hours.”

  “What?!”

  “You’ve been out a long time. Anyway, they’re okay. We’ve heard from them, and they’re on course. There shouldn’t be anything to worry about.” I could hear the uncertainty in his words.

  Truth be told, I was incredibly worried. Navan had gone off to steal the queens’ most valued possession, and I’d more or less been unconscious through the whole thing. Had he come to say goodbye? I didn’t remember anyone disturbing the visions, but maybe he’d popped his head in. Knowing Kaido, he’d have chased Navan back out again, but I liked to think he’d at least attempted to say farewell. Fear bristled through my nerves, making me glad of something useful to distract my disjointed mind.