Soul of Stars

by Ashley Poston

  The estate had been a castle in ancient times, but over the years it was outfitted and refortified until only the front wall was the ancient, crumbling sandstone of old. He made his way up the steps to the front door, his breath coming out in puffs of steam. It didn’t look like anyone was here. He tried the front door, expecting it to be locked—but it eased open at his touch. There were scrapes against the doorway. Someone had forced their way inside.

  Fear curled in his gut like a poisonous snake, tail rattling. He didn’t like this at all. Was he too late?

  Quietly, he stepped into the foyer and hung his coat on the hook by the door, resituating his lightsword on his back and closed the door behind him.

  “Hello?” he called.

  But there was no answer.

  His mechanical arm twitched, and he pulled it tight against his chest to keep it from moving. The stairs whined loudly as he ascended to the second floor, toward his mother’s study. Upstairs, his old room had been completely renovated, his things sold, but his mother’s room had gone untouched. A thin layer of dust covered the armoire, the dressing table she’d loved so much, where he had the most vivid memories of her sitting, brushing her long peppery-black hair with a fine-toothed comb. Nothing was out of order or misplaced. Her dresses were in her wardrobe, her bed made, her books neatly displayed on a wall of shelves.

  But she was gone.

  In the blink of an eye.

  And while he’d loved her, he hadn’t always liked her—and he was sure she’d never liked him. Which was why he never understood why she had shielded him with her body so that he, the son she clearly despised, could live. The son who, just a few hours before, had disavowed his Valerio name.

  He just didn’t understand why she couldn’t love him that much while she was alive.

  Closing the door to her room, he crept down to the end of the hallway lined with portraits of past Valerios, all dark curls and sky-blue eyes, each as dour and dapper as the last. At the very end were his mother and father, holding each other’s hands, staring out of the portrait as if judging his ratty winter coat and glitching arm.

  While his father smiled, one side of his mouth slightly higher than the other, his mother’s lips were pressed into a thin, disapproving line, as if to say, Look how far you’ve fallen.

  He tried to ignore the portrait as he came into her study. The first thing that hit him was the smell of leather—leather-bound books and leather-covered chairs—and then the muskiness of old wood. The same thin layer of dust coated every inch of the mahogany desk and the towering bookshelves and the regal busts of Emperors of old. He crept into the study, the Calavanian rug beneath his snow-stuck shoes soft.

  His metal arm twitched again, and he hugged it tighter against his chest. Not now. His arm had done so well—so well—the last few hours. He was beginning to realize when it acted out—when he wanted to be impulsive but made himself measured and cool. It rebelled against everything his mother had taught him.

  Funny, he thought as he fisted his gloved metal hand, my mother always said I wore my heart on my sleeve.

  He remembered that the file had been in the bottommost desk drawer, so he went there first—and paused. Fingerprints had broken the dust on the desk. Someone had been in here recently.

  “Shit,” he cursed and opened the bottom drawer.

  There was nothing there.

  “It’s amazing what you can find with a little digging,” said a voice.

  Robb glanced up. His brother stood blocking the doorway in a deep brown leather jacket with mink fur at the collar and dark trousers. His boots were well polished and decorated with the Valerio insignia—a snake eating its own tail. He filled the doorway just like he had in Robb’s nightmares, his hair short, the sides shaved with celestial designs, and he narrowed his eyes like their mother always did—disapproving, but not surprised, as if nothing Robb would ever do would be worthy of approval. In his gloved hand was a derelict holo-pad, and he wagged it playfully. “It would seem as though our mother funded all of Lord Rasovant’s early research. It’s all quite startling, really. Ancient tech found in the ruins of a shrine. Apparently, Lord Rasovant looked for it for twenty years, and my mother had hidden it right under his nose.”

  “Erik,” he said carefully, reaching out a hand. “I need those files.”

  A wolfish smile curled across his lips. “Do you now? And what would you give me for them?”

  “I’m not here to play a game.”

  “The crown?” Erik asked. “Your life?”

  “Erik . . .”

  He tucked the holo-pad into an inside pocket of his coat and reached for the lightsword at his waist. He pulled out the long sword, blade glittering across the mirrors and gold-foiled titles of the books on the shelves. “I think I’ll take the latter anyway.”

  “We’re family—Father said family doesn’t fight each oth—”

  “You are no Valerio I know!” he snarled, and charged.

  Robb sprang away, reaching for his own lightsword on his back—and couldn’t. His mechancial fingers refused to unfist to grab the hilt. This was exactly what he had been afraid of these last six months, a moment when he would need to fight back and realize he couldn’t. Not to the same caliber as before, at least. He was useless without his sword arm.

  He dodged under Erik’s first attack and drew his sword with his nondominant hand. A moment later he raised the blade to block—

  Sparks flew between their lightswords, as bright as evening stars. He parried one way, then another, backing out of his mother’s study and down the hallway again, until his back was pressed against the railing of the stairway balcony. He wasn’t nearly as fast as his brother, and the sword in his nondominant hand felt sluggish in comparison. Erik lunged. Robb sidestepped and vaulted over the stairs, landing so hard it knocked the wind out of him. As his brother raced down the stairs, he managed to scramble back to his feet, a sharp pain slicing through his chest. Oh, he must’ve cracked a rib. That wasn’t good.

  Above them, a large crystalline chandelier hung, sending rays of sunlight spiraling down onto the hardwood floor, and they sparred between them, one second blinded, the next in shadows.

  “Erik, can’t we talk?” he wheezed, trying not to plead, but really he didn’t want to fight.

  “I was supposed to be Emperor! The Iron Kingdom was to be mine!” Erik shoved him back and slashed again—and again. Robb blocked and sliced—he didn’t want to kill Erik. And maybe that was the difference between them. That made him a second too slow, a fraction too late.

  Because Erik most certainly wanted to kill him.

  “I was supposed to be Mother’s crowning achievement! I was supposed to bring our family greatness! And you ruined it!”

  Seeing an opening, Erik slammed a foot into Robb’s middle, and if Robb hadn’t had a cracked rib before, he definitely did now. He stumbled back, gasping for air, trying with all his might to keep hold of his lightsword and bring it back up before—

  His heel met the first step, and he went toppling backward onto the stairs. Erik knocked his lightsword out of his hand. It went skittering across the deep crimson carpet, burning holes into it as it toppled and then fell dormant.

  Erik pointed the sword at his neck, so close he could feel the heat from the white blade. “You ruined everything, and what’s more, you killed Mother. She’d still be alive if it weren’t for you.”

  I know that.

  Robb had blamed himself for so long, he didn’t know what it was like to think, just for a moment, that it hadn’t been his fault. He knew he should have died when Mellifare pulled the trigger, but it was as if his mother had been there waiting the entire time. She could have left. She could have run.

  But she hadn’t.

  Because Valerios did not run away.

  “And where were you?” Robb snarled. “Fleeing like the good little Ironblood you are?”

  The lightsword pressed to his throat shook with Erik’s rage. He ground his teeth, unabl
e to find an answer worthy of a Valerio, and Robb knew it the moment he saw the crease in his brows. He’d run—and no one had caught him until now.

  “Toriean el agh Lothorne,” Erik said, his voice barely controlled rage. “Glory in the Pursuit.” Then, with a cry, he raised his blade for one last strike.

  Robb was helpless. He was pinned to the stairs without any way to block, his sword too far to reach—

  His brother’s blade came down.

  He felt his mechanical arm move, and he caught the blade in his hand. It heated his fingers and burned his glove away to reveal his metal fingers. His arm—his hand—saved him.

  Something clicked then where it hadn’t the last six months. He might have lost his sword arm at the palace, but he had survived.

  And he was stronger now because of it.

  Erik stared, wide-eyed. “You have a metal arm?”

  “Unlike you, I didn’t come out of the coronation unscathed,” Robb replied as the gears in his arm whined, louder and louder, until his grip broke the blade in two.

  He . . . hadn’t realized his arm was that strong. Then again, he’d never thought his arm was anything more than a nuisance. He hadn’t let himself accept it, but it was a part of him nonetheless, wires and all.

  With Erik stunned, he slammed his foot into Erik’s stomach and kicked him back. Then he pushed himself off the stairs and grabbed Erik by the collar, forcing him up against the wall. An antique Baseren painting rattled with the force. His metal arm smoked, fingers slowly dulling from a vibrant orange, leaving burn marks across Erik’s collar. “Can we stop fighting? We’re brothers, for Goddess’s sake, and there’re bigger things to fight about than whether you have your damn crown. We’re all going to die, Erik, if you don’t give me that file.”

  His brother gritted his teeth as if just the thought repulsed him. They were almost the same height now, which was strange to Robb. He had always been shorter—but now that he was at eye level with his brother, he began to wonder why he had been so afraid of him all these years. He looked like any other insufferable asshole in the world, who took and took and never thought about giving back, and Robb pitied him.

  But only a little.

  “Fine,” he hissed between clenched teeth. “Take your stupid file.”

  Robb extracted the holo-pad, putting it into his own pocket, and then let go of his brother’s coat with a shove. He went to retrieve his lightsword and sheathed it onto his back. “Elara,” he said into his comm-link, “I’m leaving.”

  “You can’t beat it,” said Erik as he left. “Whatever that thing is—whatever the Emperor is. I had to watch that monster sit on my throne, and command my kingdom, and tell everyone to praise him—and he isn’t even human!”

  No, Di wasn’t human.

  Then Erik said, “He’s a monster.”

  Robb slowed to a stop with his hand on the front doorknob. “He isn’t.”

  “You’ve never even met him—”

  “He isn’t a monster,” he insisted, and in the stained glass of the front door, he watched his brother come up behind him and take something out of his pocket—silver and glinting. His knuckle rings. “I fear you are.”

  Then he spun around and slammed his metal fist into Erik’s pretty face so hard he was out before he even hit the floor. Erik was right about one thing—Robb wasn’t a Valerio. He was someone else altogether, and it was high time he started acting like it.

  “Sorry, swung too hard,” he told his unconscious brother, before he tied Erik’s hands and dragged him out of the house by his feet. A skysailer came up the front drive to meet him halfway.

  Elara lifted her goggles. “Robb!”

  He dropped his brother in the snow. “What’s wrong?”

  “I just got an emergency call from the Dossier. Siege is calling in her debts. All of them. I think something happened at the shrine.”

  That did not sound good.

  “They want us to meet at a waystation in the ass end of nowhere— Is that your brother?” she added, giving Erik, groaning on the ground, a pointed look.

  “Sadly,” he replied. He knew Siege well enough to know that if she was calling in debts from her career, then things were dire indeed—and the sooner she got the information on the holo-pad, the sooner they would know what they were fighting. “Help me get this sack of shit into the skysailer. We can take my family’s ship out.”

  She helped him heave Erik into the back of the sailer. “The Caterina? You sure they’ll let us on?”

  “One way to find out.”

  Erik didn’t wake up until Robb and Elara almost had him on the Caterina, and then he flew into a raging spittle-infested fit about why the militia needed to listen to him. “He’s a traitor!” Erik screamed. “I am the one true Valerio!”

  But by a strange connection of coincidences, the same guard who Robb had paid time and again to keep his mouth shut about Robb’s . . . escapades (the last being on Nevaeh) was now the captain of the militia, and he didn’t much care for Erik.

  None of them did.

  “So where to, Sir Robb?” the old guard asked.

  “Just Robb, please, and Elara can tell you the coordinates,” he replied as two militiamen carried a struggling Erik onto the ship, and they followed the guard captain inside.

  Di

  Memories warred in his head.

  Of Siege, the nefarious captain of the Dossier, and Marigold, the daughter of Duchessa Aragon. A woman with hellfire hair and a girl with a smile for trouble. He hesitated as he faced her, unsure of what to do—of what to say. The last time he saw her, he was D09 in this new, strange body, and now he was Dmitri in the same body, but with the knowledge that it had been made for him. He longed for a moment without emotions—without the bubbling fizz of anxiety and the heavy weight of guilt—and all he could do was twist his fingers and look away.

  Until she took him by the face and made him look at her.

  Marigold and Siege, childhood friend and starship captain.

  “Captain,” he greeted her carefully.

  “Metalhead,” she replied, and let go of his chin. Her hair simmered like a slow-burning bonfire, crackling like the question in her eyes. He rubbed the back of his neck, trying to find the right words—but how do you explain to someone who thought you’ve been dead for twenty years that you were alive? And had been right under her nose? The words didn’t seem to want to come.

  Because while she was twenty years wiser, he was still that lost teenage boy who had sold his soul to the Great Dark.

  But then the captain drew her arms around him and pulled him tightly into a hug. She burrowed her face into his hair and murmured, “Welcome home.”

  Home.

  After so long, after all those months with that cold, red song in his head. The word home felt too large, and he too small and too undeserving. He curled his fingers into the back of Siege’s coat as the dam he had built up cracked, and all the emotions came pouring out. A sob escaped his lips, even though he could not cry. He was home, and yet he had betrayed it.

  He had almost killed Ana.

  But he never would again—that he would make sure of.

  Ana

  The Dossier reached Haven’s Grave a few hours later. It was a graveyard of sorts, halfway between Cerces and Iliad, where derelict ships congregated through some strange cosmic magnitism, and in the center of the graveyard was a waystation only a few knew about. It was where the captain had asked for her fleetships to meet, because she had called in all of her favors. She had never so much as called in one before.

  Not many merchants traveled through Haven’s Grave, not many mercenaries camped there, and not many outlaws lived there. It simply existed as a respite, like Xourix at the edge of the asteroid belt. There were already three ships there by the time the Dossier docked. Two of them Ana didn’t recognize, but the third she knew well—it was an Ironblood ship, the crest of the Wysteria family.

  Wynn.

  She hadn’t seen Wynn since the c
oronation. She hadn’t realized that the Wysterias owed Siege a debt. Then again, Ana didn’t know about half of the debts Siege called to collect.

  “I hope Elara is safe,” said Xu as they both looked out of the starshield to the nearing waystation. They were dressed in a simple frock coat and breeches, and had shined themselves so nicely, Ana could clearly see her reflection in their face.

  Jax, from the pilot’s chair, eased the ship in to dock. “I haven’t heard anything from her or Robb since they landed on Eros.”

  Xu nodded decisively. “Then there is a high percentage that she is in trouble.”

  “I hope not.”

  “Robb is very good at getting into trouble,” Ana added, earning a glare form Jax.

  “You’re one to talk—”

  “The three of you better stop chatting and get back to work. Darlin’, are you really going to wear that to the meeting?” Siege added as she stepped into the cockpit, giving Ana’s wardrobe a pointed look. “You haven’t seen Redbeard or Cullen in years. Don’t you want to look your best?”

  Ana could care less about her dirty, sweat-stained clothes. “Is Di okay?”

  “He’s fine. He just needs a little time. I have him recalibrating the thrusters for something to do,” she added, “since we no longer have E0S to do it. And I meant what I said about wondering if you’re wearing that to the meeting.”

  “I . . . didn’t think I’d be part of it?”

  “You’re the Empress of the Iron Kingdom; of course you’ll be.”

  The Empress of the Iron Kingdom. She didn’t feel much like one, and even if she freshened up she doubted she would suddenly become the hero the kingdom needed.

  Jax spun around in his chair. “And the rest of us, Captain?”

  “Only you two,” the captain replied, nodding to Xu and Jax. “It’s a small room.”

  If Ana remembered correctly, the room in question was not small. It was a meeting hall, able to hold well over fifty people. It was also one of the most secure rooms in the kingdom anywhere outside of the palace. The waystation itself operated on a self-sufficient program and didn’t communicate with the rest of the kingdom. The only way to get a signal out was to do it manually, but Ana still worried that the HIVE could be listening.