Secrets of the Starcrossed

by Clara O'Connor

  “You said you serve a lord?” I recalled. The Briton territories stretched from Alba in the far north through Cymru to the west and as far as Kernow to the southwest; the Mercians held the north and the Anglians the midlands from York down to the borderlands. All of them were feudal societies. Cymru and Kernow had multiple princes while Alba, Mercia, and Anglia were all Kingdoms. Devyn’s previous life had begun in one of their ancient castles.

  “Yes,” he responded tersely.

  “In the north or the west?” I asked.

  “North.” We were back to pulling teeth it seemed, his fealty clearly a no-go area, but I persevered. “Alba?”

  “Close. They are also Celts, at least.”

  “I can’t tell,” I said as I surveyed his features. Should I be able to guess? “I’ve never really met a Briton.”

  “Of course you haven’t.” He smiled. “Apart from me.”

  “So, you’re not from Alba? Uh, who else is mostly Celt… Kernowans?”

  He ran his hand through his cropped hair again.

  “I serve a lord in Mercia.”

  “Aha, I know that one,” I said, recalling my second level geography. “It’s in the northeast. You’re from the Lakelands?”

  “My lord is,” he agreed. “I am from Gwynedd.”

  I wracked my brain. Mercia ran from the Cumbrian Lakelands down to Lancashire and all the way across to the Umbrian east coast

  “It’s in North Cymru,” he said taking pity on me.

  “Then why are you serving a house in Mercia?”

  His face went stony. “My family owes a debt.”

  A debt that he had walked out on when he came to Londinium, which would explain why he felt he would be in trouble when he returned. I wondered again who was so important that he would give up so much. A sister, perhaps?

  “What kind of debt?”

  “Quiet now, we’re approaching the barrier.” He shrugged deeper into his hood, indicating that I should now don mine. What convenient timing. Though to be fair, even as I asked the question, I hadn’t really expected an answer. Debts and family honour did not really fall under topics of casual conversation.

  We slid through the water. It was choppier here than it had been, our little boat bobbing up and down in the rougher water by the open barrier. Devyn pulled alongside a column of the tidal barrier and hooked us on with a rope. He pulled us closer then stepped out onto the concrete. He took from his pocket the all too familiar sliver of illegal tech and inserted it into the console he had opened above the waterline.

  “You haven’t sorted this out already?” I asked aghast.

  “I told you, power is sketchy out here. There is a ley line running through here and also elements of this system are local so it’s got to be done here,” he said abstractedly. I watched him work, bright lines of code flickering on his monitor. After a few minutes, he disconnected and the barrier lifted as he stepped back into the bobbing boat.

  We sailed through uneventfully. Devyn took us close to the northern bank where the small light of a lantern sat. We tacked towards a small pier and two men materialised out of the darkness, a whinny in the dark behind them indicating waiting horses.

  “Stay here,” Devyn told me as he lifted the limp bundle that was Marina. I placed a small kiss of farewell on her damp forehead.

  “Be well, sweetheart,” I whispered, my heart heavy at saying goodbye and at how ill she appeared. Would I ever see her again? Would she make it? In a short space of time, she had become someone I felt bonded to and the thought that this might be the last I saw of her felt deeply wrong. I tucked her cloak about her. I would see her again. The Wilders would help her. They must.

  Devyn carried Marina down to the waiting men, who came to meet him leading their horses and they exchanged words. From my place in the boat it looked like an argument was taking place. The taller of the men caught hold of Devyn’s arm. I did a quick count: there was an extra horse. Surely Devyn wouldn’t leave me here. Was that why he had told me the truth of his background? Not because we were outside all possible surveillance but because he was leaving? Now? Tonight?

  He couldn’t abandon me here. I couldn’t sail this thing. I sat up to get out of the boat and make sure he wouldn’t leave me when he pulled away from the man who held him and jogged quickly back down the pier, untying our boat before we drifted back out onto the Tamesis.

  Minus one girl. Her fate was in the hands of the Wilders now.

  The pain of sending her away with strangers was almost a physical thing, as if I could feel the distance between us stretching.

  “What was that about?” I asked as the wind and tide sent us speedily back towards the city.

  “Nothing.”

  “I thought you were going to leave me there.”

  His lips thinned and he gave no answer. Just like that, regular service had resumed.

  Whatever had taken place during the handoff made Devyn retreat and his mood was sour for the journey back.

  My own mood was irrepressible. The release of pressure fizzed through me and by the time we got back to Linus’s place I was positively giddy. Even my taciturn companion was starting to unclench at my constant stream of nonsense as we made our way through the winding streets. Once so grim and threatening, even they seemed lighter and more pleasant tonight.

  “We did it.”

  Once inside the relative safety of Devyn’s friend’s dingy flat, a fresh rush of jubilation and adrenaline ran through me. Without thinking I threw my arms around Devyn who finally gave in to my joy. Catching me, he lifted me into the air above him; I smiled widely and inhaled deeply, taking the moment in.

  Taking him in, and just that quickly the moment changed. Became aware. Tingled.

  Devyn lowered me slowly and stepped away and, much like a moth to a flame, I followed.

  I raised my hand tentatively, not sure that I was doing this even as my hand found the back of his neck and pulled his head down towards my own.

  Our lips touched, held, tangled. I might never have kissed anyone before, but I knew this wasn’t a standard off-the-shelf kind of kiss. What had been part curiosity, part experiment on my side was quickly becoming something more than I could handle.

  Devyn’s hands were moving now, roaming, tracing and retracing my body. Pulling me closer until we fit like two pieces of the same whole.

  I yanked myself free, shocked and heaving to breathe.

  He couldn’t touch me like that. I was horrified. What was he doing? What had I let him do? What if he did it again? Would I be able to stop him? Would I want to stop him? My skin still pulsed to the track of his fingers. My heartbeat was deafening in my ears.

  “I’m matched,” I protested. The word throbbed through me. Matched. 100% destined for another, for someone I was meant to be with, our DNA aligned to give me the perfect mate, and here I was risking that. With a Briton. A Briton who was leaving. Who had kissed me. “Officially and utterly matched and promised. You… you can’t touch me like that.”

  He leaned closer again, not touching me this time, but his eyelash fluttered against my cheek. His breath shuddered in and out of his chest, but he didn’t touch me. We were just close, the warmth of his body an almost tangible thing along the length of my body.

  “I know,” he said.

  He pushed back, putting distance between us.

  “You should go.” His voice was chipped with ice.

  And the room actually felt colder.

  My life was all planned out; I had a perfect man all lined up for me. All I had to do was stay the course. I barely even had to do that, just not mess up. I had done what I had set out to do. I had helped Oban and his sister leave the city. Who knew what would happen to them now, but Marina was such an independent thing and it felt right, like her path was meant to be outside the walls. The city would only stifle her; her life would not be a long one if she stayed here. She was better off outside.

  My life, on the other hand, meandered through the city, taking in
all the sights anybody could ask for. Stepping off that path was not a good idea.

  Marina was safe. Devyn had his tech back. He was moving on in his search for some missing Shadower girl who was not me. I hadn’t been arrested and I wanted it to stay that way. Didn’t I? Hadn’t that been the whole point?

  I took a step forward, placing a hand on Devyn’s shoulder. A shudder ran through him. I took another step, impulse or instinct or whatever it was taking over, and wrapped my arms around his rigid form as he stood looking out of the window.

  I could feel the warmth seep from my body into his, yet his form remained unyielding.

  “I hope you find her.”

  He stiffened and pulled out of my arms. “Why, because you think she’s my match? The most I can hope is that she lives, more than that is not even—”

  He stopped, scrubbing his hands across his face and hair.

  “Go, Cass,” he repeated. “Just leave. Go back to your life.”

  “Will you leave now?” I asked. Much as I couldn’t imagine never seeing him again, he needed to leave soon. I couldn’t believe he’d remained undiscovered this long.

  “It’ll be easier if I have my citizenship papers if I want to keep looking within the Empire. So I’m here until graduation at least.”

  There was a flicker, a hesitation. There was something he wasn’t telling me, but I nodded, relieved to know he wouldn’t be leaving just yet.

  “Will you go back to visit your family before you move on?” I should leave… why wasn’t I putting myself on the other side of that door?

  “It’s not really on my way.”

  How could he be so dismissive of the people who cared for him? He’d left at sixteen so surely going to see them before he headed deeper into the Empire would be worth it. It had been years.

  “Surely you could take a little detour?” I persisted.

  “Enough, Cassandra. My life and my family are none of your business.” His eyes blazed with anger before he shut them and when they opened again, they were the dull, forgettable mud-brown behind which he hid his real self.

  As I watched, the mask dropped into place. The intense coiled man disappeared behind the mild-mannered illusion. Illusion. The word rang like a bell inside my head. He was a Celt – this wasn’t some kind of augmenting tech.

  “You’re not just a Celt. You… you… you’re using…”

  Magic. That was it. That was how he seemed so different. He was using magic. The illegal tech was nothing – that he had helped someone slip out of the city was one of the naughty antics of a misguided youth in comparison. Helping Marina leave no doubt broke the Code. I’d known if we were caught we would wind up on the sands but I didn’t think it was a capital crime. I wasn’t sure, as this wasn’t a crime I’d ever witnessed; nobody voluntarily left the safety of the walls. I’d thought about it a lot, but between my father’s influence and my lack of awareness, if it was an actual crime, I was hoping the punishment wouldn’t be too severe.

  But Devyn. He was so much worse than that. He was a Briton… with magic, whom I had been seen with. Whom my mother knew I had covered for. I didn’t know what they did to Britons when they caught them and I didn’t know what they did to the people who associated with them either.

  Because this never happened. Or at least it hadn’t, not in centuries. If he was caught and revealed to be a Briton, it would likely mean his death. But the death of a Briton with magic would mean war. There was a reason the walls and our advanced technology existed. It kept the Britons and their magic out.

  “The tech, the chaos in the Code. That’s what it is. You’ve found a way to inject your hocus pocus into the technology that protects the city. Are you planning to attack? Why? There’s been peace for centuries. What are you doing? Why don’t you just stay on your side of the wall?”

  “Hocus pocus?” A hint of amusement tugged at his lips.

  “Seriously?” I asked back. “I could be on the sands just for having this conversation. And you’re mocking my choice of words.”

  “The tech is what got Oban and Marina out,” he said in a calm tone. “And only tech.”

  “But you are using magic,” I insisted. “Don’t lie to me.”

  He drew in a deep considering breath and the illusion dropped. He immediately felt more present, more alive, more charismatic and more physically impressive. Now I was sure of the difference it was shocking to me that I had ever doubted what I had glimpsed.

  “Seems we’re a little past that now,” he said. “Yes, it’s a skill I have.”

  “How?”

  “I have abilities that allow me to blend in, to manipulate the perceptions of others. They appeared when I was sixteen.”

  “Sixteen?” The age he had been when he arrived in Londinium.

  “It’s part of the reason I was so convinced she was here,” he said, confirming my guess that the events were related. “These are skills that would allow me to protect her. I’m more adept than anyone of my line in generations. It’s also how I met Linus. He saw through the illusion I maintained to avoid drawing attention to myself. He sought me out, helped me, and when he got ill I was able to return the favour.”

  He was using magic.

  As did the owner of this flat. And it seemed Marina would too. If she survived.

  My heart pounded in my veins.

  “You said before we couldn’t be overheard here, right? How are you doing that?”

  He stood and pulled back the threadbare rug on the floor to reveal a mark etched into the floorboard underneath: a triangle of three leaf-shaped loops, entwined by a circle.

  “It’s a Celtic knot, a triquetra. It symbolises the Celtic Trinity and the circle woven through it makes it a protection charm,” he explained holding out his wristband and twisting the disc held in it to display the same symbol hidden on the underside. My fingers found the etchings scratched into the rose gold disc that hung around my own neck. I let loose one of the more interesting new phrases I had picked up in my recent tours of the docks.

  “So graphic, Cass.” His dark eyes gleamed his amusement.

  I struggled to smother an even more choice phrase.

  “If you were caught, they would burn you alive.” I might not know what they did to captured Britons but I knew the punishment that used to be dealt to users of magic.

  He shrugged. “Possibly.” His eyes lost focus as he contemplated his situation. “It wouldn’t really matter.”

  “It wouldn’t really matter,” I echoed. My blood was pounding against my skull. “It matters to me.”

  I stepped back.

  “I can’t do this. I can’t be here.” My mind had gone into complete meltdown.

  I took another step. Back on to my path.

  “Stay away from me.”

  I reached for the door. My hand trembled, waiting for him to call my name, but it didn’t come. I took hold of the doorknob.

  I turned it.

  And left.

  Part Two

  All We Need of Hell

  My life closed twice before its close—

  It yet remains to see

  If Immortality unveil

  A third event to me

  * * *

  So huge, so hopeless to conceive

  As these that twice befell.

  Parting is all we know of heaven,

  And all we need of hell.

  — Parting, Emily Dickinson

  Chapter Ten

  Over the next weeks, I threw myself into my courses at the forum as college results were released and graduation fast approached. I refused to look for Devyn. He was there though, back in the shadows, occasionally passing me in the halls or on the stairs. He never looked at me, but sometimes I could feel his gaze move across me, never stopping.

  I didn’t care. I refused to care.

  I had no way of explaining the kiss or the moment we had shared that day, but I felt hollow when I thought about it. I reached more frequently for the pendant I still wore arou
nd my neck, the only substantial proof I had that anything had ever happened. I knew with its Celtic symbol it was also evidence to others, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to take it off and throw it into the river. Instead, I completely blocked out any further thoughts about Britons, magic, or the last few weeks. It was over. After graduation he would leave on his search and that would be it. I could forget any of this ever happened.

  By the time graduation came, I almost felt like my old self – at least, I was pretty sure I would appear like the old me to anyone who cared to look. I dressed for my graduation dinner carefully. My new dress had a fabulous bias cut which flattered my slim figure, and the long cuffs were to die for. It wasn’t a patch on Oban’s beautiful creation, but I couldn’t bring myself to wear that now. The dress that symbolised my moment of defiance had arrived at our door a few days after – and it had lived in its box under my bed ever since.

  Its significance had changed from a moment of stupid, childish rebellion against my mother into something more. Something I couldn’t articulate, jumbled as it was with my new fear of the authorities and my worries for Oban and Marina. Not to mention the seething morass of unidentifiable emotion that Devyn incited.

  I sighed as I twirled my hair up, the brightest strands catching the light wonderfully as I leaned forward to put in my earrings. They had been a gift from my father on my twenty-first birthday; he would expect to see them.

  Sure enough, he smiled fondly at me as I entered the room, his smile growing wider as he spotted the earrings swinging jauntily.

  “Darling.” He hugged me to him. “Well done, we’re so proud of you.”

  “Thanks, Papa.” I smiled back up at him. This alone made putting my defiance behind me worthwhile. If he ever found out how badly I had betrayed the Code he would be heartbroken.

  My mother entered the room from behind me, her fingers sweeping lightly across the collar of my dress, slightly smoothing the ends, before she turned around to wave in the man loitering in the hallway.