by F. T. Lukens
Come find me.
“So you found Ren on a drift?”
Jakob nodded and drank from a bottle of wine he had found in the stores. “Yeah. He and Asher were mounting this rescue that had ridiculously bad odds.”
“Shut up, Jakob,” Ren said, though he smiled. “We won, didn’t we?”
“Barely.”
“What happened to you, Sorcha? Where did you go?”
She took the bottle from Jakob and had a long pull. She wiped her mouth with the back of her sleeve. “I never made it back home. I’m sorry,” she said to Ren. “I never found your parents or your brother, but I made it to another village, and they took me and a bunch of the others in. They hid us when the soldiers came. And after Vos left and the birds came…” She trailed off. “We’re in a safe place now, but for a while it was almost as bad as when we were here.”
“And Sorcha became our drift-kickin’ leader,” a voice chimed out. “Took charge, and even the council listened to her!”
The group cheered and laughed, and Sorcha ducked her head. “I did what I needed to do to protect my new family, so be quiet, you weeds.”
Jakob took her hand. “We’re glad you didn’t make it home. We’re happy you’re safe. I’m happy I found you.”
She blushed; the pink in her cheeks was evident in the firelight. “I’m glad of that, too.”
Beatrice made a noise, stood, and left the group. Ezzy shot Ren a look that he couldn’t decipher, and Ren scooted closer to Asher’s side. Asher raised an eyebrow, and offered Ren the bottle Sorcha had passed. Ren shook his head. Asher took a swig, coughed, and then handed it off to another person whose name Ren didn’t know.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Ren said. He was—in both his power and in his decisions. “I’m happy they found each other.”
Ren looked back to where Jakob and Sorcha sat and startled when he saw them kissing. Jakob’s hand cupped Sorcha’s cheek, and she gripped Jakob’s jacket; her fingers twisted in his collar. They kissed as if they were dying for it, and Ren flushed and looked away.
“Oh,” Asher said. “We should give them some privacy. Probably?”
“Yeah.” Ren nodded. “I need air anyway.”
Ren stumbled to his feet. The main entrance to the room was blocked, but next to the fireplace he found an ornate wooden double-leaf door with decorative iron scrolls and swirling images carved into the wood. He pulled on the knocker, and the right side opened with a creak. The lights embedded in the stone lit as Ren entered and wandered past them, giving the space an eerie glow. Ren trailed his fingers along the wall and followed the path. He heard Asher behind him, but Ren kept going, pushed forward by an inkling, an urge.
Come find me.
“I’m coming,” Ren said softly.
The voice insisted, and Ren followed, and the passageway guided him to another open area. The lights were on there, too. The room was circular, with a desk, tapestries, and another door, which led farther into the castle. There were chairs along the walls, but the desk, heavy and lavish, had a screen embedded in the top. It glowed, and Ren approached it warily.
It wasn’t Abiathar’s room, which Ren remembered, with the tapestry that depicted sword and sorcery and with the lavish trappings.
No, this room was plainer, not as decadent—a room of a tactician, of a planner, of a leader. This was the room of Vos, a man with a mission, who wanted little distraction as he calculated his odds, his losses, his moves.
Ren sat in the uncomfortable chair behind the desk and stared down at the screen. It beckoned him.
You found me.
Ren touched the tech, and it hummed to life under his palm. His star engaged in his chest and Ren found himself standing in a room, a virtual area, with a green grid under his feet and walls of electric blue all around him.
In front of him stood a young man. Abiathar’s voice may have compelled him here, but that wasn’t who stood in front of him now. He wore simple clothes, like a duster: trousers and a homespun shirt overlaid with a black vest. His face was narrow, and his body was tall and thin. His chin was pointed, and he wore a mustache and a patch of a beard beneath his lower lip. His hair was long, brushing his shoulders, and black, and it curled at the ends.
“Who are you?” Ren’s voice echoed, bounced around like static. The sound sizzled.
The man smiled. He waved a hand, and the light from the grid reflected from a large ring, a signet ring, black and red, like the standards that flapped on top of the towers.
“You know who I am.” His voice rang out, deep and resonate, a vibration in the virtual space.
“Vos?”
“Baron Vos. To you, though, I’m a program. An illusion. Nothing for you to fear.” He walked around the space and approached Ren.
Ren blinked and took a step back. “You’re young.”
“Not as young as you.”
“That’s not saying much.”
Vos smiled.
“What is this?” Ren asked, looking around. “Why did you want me here?”
“You’re thinking, why the program? Why am I here waiting in this castle? This was not made specifically for anyone, though there are a few of you that I wager will come back here to find answers. That’s why I left the message, why I had Abiathar record a few words to call to you. As you know, he can only compel fellow hosts.”
Ren pushed his hair from his eyes. This message wasn’t only for him. It was for anyone with power, any star host. And Vos mentioned others, more who might have been here, who looked for answers. Who else had seen this?
The virtual Vos stalked around the room, and Ren spun to follow it, to keep his eyes on the figure.
“Some of you have always known the legends that surround your kind. Others have had their origin, their legends, hidden. I’m here to educate you, to give more information for you to join our cause of your own free will. By this time, I’ve either taken over the first few drifts, or I was defeated for a time and have gone to regroup at my base on Crei.”
Ren snapped to attention. Millicent’s home world! He was there. He was there, and maybe Liam was there as well. If he had another base, another army, and Liam had been captured…
“You have been made to hide all your lives because of the Phoenix Corps. They’ve hunted you, destroyed your homes. Even now, as I am certain that some of you have revealed yourselves to them and you’re being pursued or captured. You contain the power of the stars, and they are afraid of you. They want to wipe you out, make sure no one else can threaten them with your fantastic abilities.
“You must make a choice. Stand with me, and, together, we can make sure you will never have to hide again. You will never need to restrain yourself. You can give in to your power, become what you were made to be.”
Ren swallowed.
Vos stepped close to him. The figure almost touched Ren’s body, and his presence crackled through Ren and pierced almost as fiercely as his words. It brushed through Ren’s hand, and Ren’s skin tingled.
“You could rule,” Vos said, black eyes boring into Ren’s. “You could make them cower. You could live a quiet life wherever you wanted. You could touch the stars. You could be safe. You could do anything.” He took a breath. “You could be free.”
Ren shuddered. He could be free. He could join Vos at Crei and be free. He could find Liam and run away, the two of them, away from Erden, their parents, away from the Star Stream, away from the Corps. The only thing Ren ever wanted was to be free, to make his own choices. This could be that choice.
The program smiled, knowing, but genuine. The image flickered, and Ren blinked. Vos wavered, became a blur, then focused again.
“You have a choice, star host. Make the right one.”
Then Ren was back in the chair, staring down at the console, and Asher stood next to him with his hand on Ren’s
arm.
“Ren?”
Ren looked up into Asher’s concerned gaze. “Yes?”
“You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“What did you find in the system?”
Ren focused on Asher’s touch, clammy and warm, on the back of his hand. He focused on the cold air. There was no heat in this part of the citadel, and he had goosebumps on his arms.
“Nothing really.” He didn’t stumble over the lie. “I looked at that beacon again. We could send someone up to the tower to retrieve it. It’d be a way for the encampments to communicate with each other.”
Asher eyed him. “That’s a good idea.” He nodded at the console. “Anything about Vos’s plans in there?”
“Nothing but what that message said. To report somewhere else.”
“Huh. That’s unfortunate.”
“Yeah.”
Ren stood. His middle fluttered at the pointed look in Asher’s eyes.
“You know,” Asher said, pulling Ren close. “It would be a shame to waste this secluded room in an abandoned citadel where we used to be prisoners.”
Ren laughed, his lie momentarily forgotten. “Was that a horrible pickup line?”
“Did it work?”
“Yeah, it did.”
Asher pulled Ren away from the console, then backed him up against the wall, caging him in. He splayed his fingers over Ren’s jaw and tilted it up. “You’re cold.”
“Are you going to warm me up?”
“Now that was a bad line.”
Ren laughed breathlessly. “Well, you know what they say about—”
Asher sealed his mouth over Ren’s, cutting him off, kissing him softly, thoroughly.
After a few long moments, Asher broke away. His eyes were bright in the artificial glow of the lights, and his expression was not one that Ren wanted to see after kissing.
“What’s wrong?”
Asher met Ren’s gaze, unflinching. “I just… don’t know what I would do if I lost you.”
The statement was so earnest that Ren’s heart stuttered with affection and then sank. His and Asher’s relationship was never going to be easy, not like Sorcha’s and Jakob’s. It would always be in question, especially while Asher remained in the Corps and Ren was a star host. That much had been proven to Ren months ago on Mykonos and confirmed along the way—aboard the Star Stream, by VanMeerten, by his parents’ confession, by the message from Vos. There would always be doubt, suspicion, distrust, and Ren couldn’t promise Asher anything. He couldn’t promise that he wouldn’t burn up from the inside or that he wouldn’t detach completely, so his humanity would be lost, and everything that made Ren himself would be gone in a spark and a bang.
“You haven’t lost me yet,” Ren said. “Despite my best efforts.”
Asher kissed him again, surged forward, and captured Ren’s lips with renewed desperation. Whatever this was, whatever feelings were warring within Asher, be it hope because of Jakob’s and Sorcha’s reunion, or despair at the revelation of the Corps’ actions, or even simple nostalgia at revisiting the site where they first met, Ren didn’t know. And he didn’t need to know.
He sank into the kiss, wrapped his arms around Asher’s shoulders, and hung on.
It was nice to be a teenager, to forget all that awaited them outside the door, and to give in to being alone, in the dark, with someone he was attracted to, held affection for, and wanted to be with. Any ties to the program, the beacon, the citadel, fell away, and all Ren could feel was the pass of Asher’s lips over his own, the heat of Asher’s body so close, and the ache in his chest that this may be taken away from him, too.
They kissed until they heard footsteps in the hallway and hushed voices and saw the approaching glow of a light.
Ezzy appeared in Vos’s office, holding a torch above her head. Beatrice was a step behind.
“There you are,” Beatrice said, hands on her hips. “Just as I thought.”
Asher stepped away, straightened his clothes and cleared his throat. Ren smoothed his hair, but he couldn’t hide his kiss-swollen mouth or the pink of his cheeks.
Ezzy’s gaze flickered between them and she frowned, confused at first, then embarrassed when she realized what she had walked in on, and then heart-broken. She bit her lip and blinked rapidly. Her hand shook as it held the torch. Ren’s shoulders slumped, and he looked away; he couldn’t watch the tearful expression on Ezzy’s features. He awkwardly shuffled farther from Asher and rubbed the back of his hand over his tingling mouth.
“We’re setting up a watch rotation. Do you want first or last?” Beatrice didn’t notice Ezzy’s demeanor, and Ren didn’t want to draw attention to it.
“I’ll take first,” Asher said. “Ren needs to sleep, since he didn’t last night.”
“Okay. I’ll take last. Jakob can have the middle. I’m sure he and his girlfriend will be awake anyway.”
“What about me?” Ezzy piped up, brandishing the torch while flames dripped onto the stone floor. “I want to take watch.”
Beatrice smirked and messed up Ezzy’s hair. “Believe me, it’s better to sleep, kid.”
Ezzy flushed, indignant.
“I’m not a kid. I can do the job. I don’t need protecting.”
“Fine, whatever, let’s go back to the main hall.” Beatrice turned away from Ezzy and rolled her eyes at Asher and Ren.
Asher ignored the gesture. “We need to discuss getting that beacon down from the tower tomorrow. Ren says it would be a good way to connect the two different encampments and maybe find others.”
Nodding sharply, Beatrice walked down the hall, and they followed with Ezzy trailing behind.
Once back in the main room, they gathered around the fire and talked about the day ahead. Ren nodded off several times before Asher suggested he go to bed. Ren didn’t argue. He didn’t have the energy. Suddenly exhausted from the day, he found a blanket and an empty spot on the rug next to the fire and fell into sleep. The chatter of the others was his lullaby.
* * *
Ren woke from a dream suddenly, disoriented. He blinked his eyes in the low light; the only glow came from the embers of the fire and the low-slung pink of dawn through the large window. His thoughts were in a fog. What had pulled him out of sleep? The rest of the group was still and quiet; no one stirred. Ren was curled in a ball next to the fireplace under his blanket with his pack for a pillow. He lifted his head and found Asher at his back and Jakob spooned around Sorcha nearby, but all asleep. Ren was drifting back to sleep when he heard it.
“Ren.” The voice was muffled from static.
Ren sat up slightly and found a comm next to his pack. He hadn’t put it there the night before, but he recognized it as one he and Ezzy had found together.
Ezzy. “Ren, please. Please wake up. Please.”
Ren grabbed it. “Ezzy?” His voice was rough from sleep and loud in the quiet. Asher stirred beside him.
“Oh, thank the stars.” She sounded strange, as if she were scared of getting in trouble,
“Where are you?”
“In the tower, getting the beacon.”
Ren rubbed the sleep from his eyes. “Why are you in the tower? We decided Jakob and Asher would bring it down. And why are you whispering?”
“Because they’re here. Ren, they’re everywhere.”
“Who?”
“The birdmen.”
Ren snapped to full wakefulness. He pushed off the blanket and scrambled from the makeshift bed. He accidentally kicked Asher, who grunted and opened his eyes, scowling.
“Okay, first thing, are you safe?”
“I think so.”
“Okay, second, are we safe?”
She didn’t answer for a long moment. “No.”
Asher jumped to his feet. He woke Jakob first, then Sorcha, and in momen
ts they were all mobilized, quietly but quickly packing and preparing.
Jakob hung over Ren’s shoulder.
“What do you see, Ezzy?”
Her harsh stuttering breath came over the comm. “I see them all around the castle and in the courtyard. And some of them went into the keep and…” She started to cry, and Jakob snatched the comm.
Ren handed over comforting duties to someone better equipped and turned to the others. “What do we do?”
“I can’t raise Fox,” Sorcha said, her own comm in her hand. “He’s not answering.”
“Which means what?” Asher asked.
Sorcha’s mouth turned down. “They’ve got him.”
“Where’s Beatrice? I thought she was on watch.”
“How did Ezzy get out if the door was shut and barricaded?”
“We are coming to get you,” Jakob said, over the din of their questions. “Don’t worry. Stay put. Shut yourself in or whatever you have to do. But I am going to come get you, okay?”
“Okay.”
“You’re in the highest tower, right?”
“Yes.”
“There is a good chance they won’t come up there. So you’ll be fine. You’ll be fine.”
Jakob’s tone didn’t waver or tremble, but his hand clenched the comm tight, and his jaw clenched with worry.
Sorcha strode toward the main door, where the barricade of chairs and tables was in place. “We’ve got to figure out where they are and get everyone out of here.” She grabbed a stunner and hefted it. “We have weapons but I’d rather—”
She was cut off by a loud knocking on the door.
Everyone froze as if they were playing some child’s game. They waited.
There were voices and footsteps and the scuffle of people—and a long pause. Ren held his breath. Asher squeezed Ren’s hand. The noise on the other side of the barrier ceased. Ren tensed, his muscles taut, his heart pounding so loud he could feel the pulse in his ears. Then he heard the high whine of weapons charging swiftly followed by a bang.