Elara gave a start. “What? Why?”
Koren Vey flickered, pain creasing between her brows. “Get out,” she commanded, and then more frantic. “Leave!”
“What? No—I can’t—” Elara began, reaching for the woman even though she was only a hologram, when the crystal gave a pulse, and the rings began to spin faster. A terrible, high song echoed through the cavern of the ark, so loud it rattled Robb’s heart in his chest.
He cursed. Of all the times for a thousand-year-old piece of technology to decide to blow up, it had to be now. Koren Vey had told them to leave, and he didn’t need to be told twice. “Elara! We have to go!”
“I won’t! We must do something,” she replied, turning back to the ancient C’zar. “Can’t we do something?”
Koren Vey tried to take Elara by the shoulders, but her hands passed through her, and her eyebrows furrowed all the more. How many times had Elara visited this ark while her parents studied it? How many conversations had they had? Elara must have been the first person Koren Vey had seen in a very long time. “Please, you must leave before—”
There was a loud crack, and a fissure opened down the middle of the crystal like a bolt of lightning. He spun around, trying to see if there was an exit or some way to jam the rings—some way to get out of this death trap. His metal arm twitched, gears whirring as dread began to pour into his blood.
“Shit,” Ana hissed between her teeth, and whirled back to Koren Vey. “Can’t you stop it? Can’t you do something?”
The ancient C’zar shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’m only a part of it—I can’t control it.” And then she said something quieter to Elara in the Old Langauge, pieces that Robb picked out between the high song of the rings whistling through the air.
It sounded like Sorry and failed you.
Elara stepped back, shaking her head. “No—no, there’s a way out of this. I’m not going to let you die!” Determined, she walked through Koren Vey to the control board beside the crystal, brushing off centuries of rubble and dirt and leaves to reveal the strange console underneath.
The crystal began to whine, emitting a strange energy that prickled at Robb’s skin.
“No, Elara, don’t touch—!”
The moment Elara touched the controls, the crystal sent out a sizzling shock wave that threw her back. She skidded like a rag doll across the floor, again through Koren Vey, who tried to catch her, and came to rest an arm’s length away from the spinning rings. She didn’t move.
“Elara!” the ancient C’zar cried, and her body flickered again. The core was failing.
Goddess, he prayed as the loud, high roar filled his ears, and he clung to Ana, death so close he could taste the bitter fear of it on the back of his tongue, I wish I could see Jax again.
Jax
“Darling, I need you to wake up.”
He knew that voice. He had heard it a hundred times before. In a small starship sailing across space—he piloted starships? That felt . . . impossible. He was a C’zar. He was a weapon for his people against the darkness. Trapped in a role he couldn’t escape. He couldn’t have been a starship pilot.
But that voice . . . it was so familiar.
It reminded him of a woman whose hair changed colors with her mood, in a red murdercoat with polished buttons and too many secret pockets. The first time he met her, he had just tried to pick one of those secret pockets in the Market District of Nevaeh. He’d snagged a piece of jewelry—a strange crest that wouldn’t fetch much, all dented and rusty. A bird with outstretched wings, catching the tail of a star. He now knew it to be an Ironblood crest—a rare one.
He took it and ran.
The woman, who had been walking beside another woman with long black hair, had noticed a few moments later and shouted after him, “Oy! You little—”
But he was too fast, and he knew all the hiding holes in this space station since he’d stolen his way aboard a few months ago. He hadn’t had a good meal in ages. This would at least get him—
As he rounded the corner where a shopkeeper sold watches, he slammed into someone else. He backpedaled, about to apologize, when the tall woman with long black hair took him by the wrist and twisted it just far enough to make him let go. She had a grim set to her face.
A moment later, the woman with burning orange hair caught up with them. Jax struggled against his captor, but her grip was like iron. She tossed the crest back to the woman he’d stolen it from. “You seem to keep losing that, Sunshine.”
“The little bugger nabbed it right out of my pocket. The Duchess would’ve been furious.”
“The Duchess thinks you’re dead.” Then, “I could always cut off his hands.”
Jax had felt a cold chill down his spine—and briefly wondered if, without hands, his curse would go away—before he realized how utterly stupid that was. He tried to twist out of her grip again. “Don’t touch me! Let go!”
So the tall woman did.
He stumbled back. He could try to escape, but he had the feeling they wouldn’t let him go. The optic-haired lady tucked the crest into a different, more-inner pocket and appraised him. She touched the goggles around his neck, much too big for him, and noticed the ring of hacking keys on his belt loop. He’d won them off some idiot in a Wicked Luck game the first night in Nevaeh. They underestimated a ten-year-old boy. Everyone did. “These are mighty fine for a street rat like you, darling. Orphan or runaway?”
“No one,” he had replied tightly.
“No one? What a pity.” Then she turned away with her partner, and they began down the market street, and for some reason his skin tingled as they left—as if something was passing him by that he would regret. They were talking about the mechanics of a ship, their ship, and it sounded like the same conversation from earlier when he pickpocketed her.
Before he could stop himself, he piped up, “A decompressor switch won’t work.”
The two women paused and turned back to him. He kept his eyes trained on the ground. What are you doing?
“Oh?” the tall woman asked.
He shook his head. “That’ll only limit the output to the main thrusters and make your ship slower. Cercian class, right? Maybe a level eight?”
“Seven,” the other woman said, her hair shifting from orange to red. “You know a lot about ships, darling.”
“My mother worked on the docks of . . .” He stopped himself. He couldn’t say Zenteli. If the Elder Court had put out a missing-person request on the newsfeeds, then it would surely clue them in. He had his silver hair tucked up into a black beanie and too-large gloves tied up to his elbows, so there would be no accidents, but he didn’t want to risk his truth-telling mouth to rat him out. So he said instead, “I was raised around ships.”
“Huh.” She looked at her partner and back at him again. “Say, would you want to come and look at my ship?”
“He’s a child, Sunshine,” the tall woman said.
“All the more extraordinary.” Then she looked back at him, yellows and blues bleeding deeper into her hair. “And if—only if—you can figure out what’s wrong with the old girl, I’ll take you on.”
“Take me . . . on?” He didn’t understand.
“I’ll teach you how to fly with the best of them. Better, in fact. I’ll teach you to be the best pilot in the kingdom. And you’ll have somewhere to sleep and food in your belly. It’ll be hard work, and it won’t be safe, but I don’t think you’re looking for safe.”
He wasn’t sure what he was looking for. Food sounded good, and somewhere to sleep without risk of being pickpocketed or kidnapped or killed. The maintenance tunnels underneath Nevaeh, where the orphans and runaways lived, smelled, and it was hard to sleep when you were constantly surrounded by people who wanted to steal from you and sell you to a diamond mine. But why would some lady captain and her partner want to take him on? “Is . . . there a catch?”
“No catch. I just thought you looked miserable enough for me to offer,” the captain admitted, and add
ed after a thought, “Perhaps you could change your stars.”
His eyes widened. Change his stars—even though he had already seen his fate. He hadn’t thought of trying to change them. “Who are you?”
The captain smirked and outstretched her hand. “Siege, and this is my wife, Talle.”
Jax hesitated for a moment and then took her hand. “Jax,” he replied, “and I’ll be the best pilot you’ve ever seen.”
Captain Siege was the only person he had ever confided in—the only person who really knew him, down to the bone, and never said a word. She pushed him to be better. To be different.
To change his stars.
But that was a dream. It had to be. He didn’t fly starships. In no past, in no present, in no future. All fates flowed in a river of time, and it was impossible to swim against that kind of current.
He was so tired from trying.
He was so, so tired.
“Darling,” the voice said, and he felt lips press against his cheek. There was a sigh, and a warmth spread into him like dye in water. “I know it hurts, and I know you don’t want to be here—but we need you a little while longer. The Iron Shrine in Zenteli is burning, and the Great Dark is getting closer and we need you.” Then, quieter, “Robb needs you.”
Robb.
Dark curly hair and kind blue eyes and a smile that cut to the bone. A boy who always looked sad when he thought no one was looking, and liked to lace their hands together, one finger at a time, with so much care Jax could cry. Robb, who had found out about his curse and didn’t care. Robb, who never once mentioned how they could never kiss lips to lips, or touch skin to skin, and loved him nonetheless. Robb, who accepted him while not knowing he was the C’zar and all the baggage that came with it.
He wanted to hear his voice again—just once more. He wanted to tell him what ma’alor meant. He needed to.
“He’s in trouble, darling,” Siege said, because Jax knew it was Siege, from her rough cadence and her soft words. He knew her voice as well as he did his own mother’s. “And you need to wake up.”
The warmth spread through his body, numbing the hunger in his bones. It was light, but a different kind. A light as hot and bright as the sun. It drew him back to the surface, to the edges of his skin, and gave him the strength to open his eyes.
Siege’s hair glowed as brilliant as a supernova, and she smiled.
Ana
Goddess damn it all, she’d survived too many things to be blown up by a weird ancient space contraption.
“I can try to delete myself from the allahlav’s mainframe,” said Koren Vey. She was crouched down beside Elara, who was breathing but unconscious. There was a terrible wound on the back of her head where she had struck the floor. “My light powers the core.”
“You would kill yourself?” Ana asked, surprised. “No—there has to be another way.”
Koren Vey gave her a sad look. “Daughter of the Moon, I have been dead for centuries.”
“If you’re here, you’re not dead” was Ana’s reply.
The crystal was only a few feet away, but as soon as she stepped toward it, her head swarmed dizzily. Around them, the vines seemed to shiver and grow with the strange energy pouring out of the crystal, buds flowering into wide pink and purple and blue flowers. Her chest felt tight, her skin buzzing like it did when she got too close to a live wire; she stepped again and stumbled.
Robb grabbed her underneath the arms and pulled her back to a safe distance.
He helped her back to her feet. “Are you okay?”
“I—I think?” she replied as the floor slowly stopped spinning. “I can get near it.”
Robb set his jaw. “Maybe I can.”
“No, don’t—”
Of course he didn’t listen to her. He stood and marched toward the console, but as he reached his metal arm out toward it, the wires in his arm sparked. He gave a cry and backpedaled. His metal fingers jerked and swiveled every which way. He cursed between his gritted teeth. “This is not good.”
“I told you!”
“I had to try!”
She snapped back, “If I told you, ‘Hey, that’s a live wire,’ would you still touch it just to make sure?”
His jaw worked angrily. Finally, he settled on “Maybe.”
She gave him a pointed look. “Jax was right—you are insufferable.”
“You cannot get close to it,” Koren Vey said, standing. She watched them apprehensively. “Your body cannot withstand the energy. Only certain Solani can. Now do you understand?”
Ana was shaking her head. “I told you, we’ll find a way—stop!” she added as Koren Vey disappeared, then reappeared next to the console and reached up her hand to the crystal. “Please, stop! Listen!”
To her surprise, Koren Vey did. Her eyebrows furrowed at the sound. Above the whine of the astrolable, the hum of a skysailer drew near, until it crested over the treetops beyond the bony ruins. It flew into the cavern of the ark, and a silvery-white-haired young man stepped out of the ship.
The ancient C’zar stared in wonder.
“Nan c’zar,” she whispered in disbelief.
Robb
Violet eyes, sharp cheekbones, a star-shaped burn scar on his neck from where he had pried off a voxcollar half a year ago. The life support on his chest pulsed in quick, staccato waves, and it looked as though it took him all the energy he had to walk.
“Jax?” he asked.
The young man turned his deep violet eyes to Robb, and they looked like home.
He was here.
He began to walk toward them. The gigantic rings swooped around so fast, Robb knew he couldn’t make it through them. He tried to shout—to warn him to leave because this place was about to explode, to go to Eros, to get the heart and run as fast as he could out of the kingdom—when Jax stepped into the circle of rings. He raised his hand as one swooped down toward him—
And stopped.
The ring just—just stopped. Hovering an inch above Jax’s raised hand, it quivered, shaking off the ivy that had somehow still clung to it.
Koren Vey appeared beside Robb, her hand outstretched toward the rings. It shook as she tried to keep the rings from moving. Her face pinched with concentration. “You should not be here.”
“I can’t be anywhere else, nan c’zar,” Jax replied, and turned his gaze to Robb. “Come on, ma’alor. Out you go. Ana,” he added, and she hurriedly retrieved Elara, pulling an arm over her shoulder. Elara gave a pathetic groan as she dragged her out of the astrolabe and toward the skysailer.
“I thought we were dead,” Ana said in relief. “I thought you were dead.”
“Dead?” Jax gave her a smile, although it didn’t reach his eyes. “You know I’m too pretty to die.”
The astrolabe gave another groan, and the crystal flashed. A wave of energy swept across the ground, bringing up dust and dirt in a wave. Robb staggered as it passed him, his heart fluttering in his chest.
The life support on Jax’s chest sparked, and he winced.
Koren Vey shook her head. “I cannot hold it much longer. All of you, go as far away as you can.”
Ana ducked underneath the rings with Elara, hurrying toward Siege and Talle and the skysailer, but Robb stayed rooted to the ground. Something felt off, like that moment on the dreadnought when Jax kissed him.
His partner inclined his head. “You don’t have much time, ma’alor.” The rings groaned; Koren Vey’s hand shook. “Please.”
“Not without you,” he replied, and his voice broke. “I can’t without you.”
Jax sighed. “Of course you won’t, ma’alor.”
Then the Solani prince leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth.
There were no flashes of the future. The stars did not reach down and show Jax Robb’s fate—not of the Great Dark or the heart or the shrine. Robb knew this because he felt Jax in the kiss for the first time, no magic or stardust or curses. It was simply a kiss between two people who loved each other very much, and tho
ught they had all the time in the world to say it, and now knew they never would, and it broke his heart.
“Al gat ha astri ke’eto, ma’alor,” Jax whispered, and then he grabbed Robb by the jacket, pulled him out of the rings, and stepped inside.
Robb caught his footing and spun back just as the rings snapped back into motion with a thunderclap, whirling faster and faster. They trapped Jax inside. The bright, ravenous light of the crystal lit the entire cavern like an inferno. The power it gave off made it hard for him to breathe. His metal arm twisted and jerked, but he didn’t care—he didn’t want to leave Jax. He couldn’t leave Jax—
He screamed his name over and over again, but Jax never turned around. He never looked back.
The Solani prince walked up to the crystal, a shadow against the blinding light, Koren Vey barely an outline beside him. The wind created by the swooping rings fluttered at his hospital gown and undid his loosely clasped hair, fluttering around him like silver streamers. The strange energy from the crystal didn’t seem to affect him, or if it did he pushed through it and swiped his fingers against the console at its base.
“Robb!” Siege shouted above the sound of the astrolabe, vaulting out of the skysailer to get him and drag him into it.
But he couldn’t take his eyes off Jax. He was talking to Koren Vey, and there was a surprise on his face that Robb couldn’t quite understand. He wanted to hear what they were saying. Was Koren Vey telling him that it was hopeless? That he was sacrificing his life for nothing?
Tears burned in his eyes, and he was helpless. The wind picked at his clothes and hair and stung at his eyes so badly they teared up. He didn’t want to face the Great Dark. Not without him.
It all felt so meaningless without someone to fight with.
Without Jax.
No, he thought, no no no—
Siege grabbed him by the shoulder to take him to the skysailer, but he wrenched away from her.
Koren Vey lifted up her hand, palm out, to Jax, and he did the same.
Suddenly, the astrolabe gave a terrible cry, and a radiant light swept through the cavern, swelling like an expanding sun—
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