Zodiac

by Romina Russell

  In fact, what I touched was Lodestar Mathias Thais.

  “I’m so sorry,” I say, every part of me burning with Helios’s heat. “I just—I mean, excuse me.” I spin around and press my hands to my cheeks, trying to cool down and hide my mortification. It’s not helping that my mind keeps replaying the moment on a loop. Or that my skin still tingles from our close contact.

  “Don’t apologize,” he says softly. When I turn back around, his face is as scarlet as mine.

  “I’ve been sent to deliver a message. Admiral Crius has transmitted the candidates for your Council of Advisors to your Wave.”

  My Wave.

  I frantically dig my fingers into the pocket of my suit and pull out my gloves, my Wave, and—“Your Astralator!”

  I give the mother-of-pearl device to Mathias, who cups it in his hands like it’s a small bird. “Thank you.”

  I open my Wave and try hailing Dad and Stanton. There’s still no connection. I try Nishi’s Tracker next, but the signal seems to be scrambled so that it’s impossible to communicate with anyone. I have a feeling Crius is behind this—and I’m betting his justification is my protection.

  “Once you’ve selected your twelve Advisors,” says Mathias, as though there’d been no interruption, “you must designate one as your—”

  “Guide, I know,” I say, shutting off my Wave. Mom’s lessons were thorough, at least. “When a Guardian younger than twenty-two is selected, she must have a Guide who can train her in the ways of the Zodai.”

  He falls silent.

  Then I say, “I want you.”

  His face flushes all over again, and—realizing how that sounded—I quickly add, “To be my Guide!”

  I’ve never seen a face go from red to white so fast. Something flares in Mathias’s eyes, like shock—or worse, refusal. He looks straight ahead, not meeting my gaze, and says, “One of the more experienced Advisors would be a better choice. I’m new to the Royal Guard, unqualified to teach you.”

  “Then we’ll make a perfect pair, since I’m unqualified to lead.”

  “I still have a lot to learn about being an Advisor. It would be best if we each found our own mentors.”

  “Mathias.” At the sound of his name, his eyes travel down to mine. For a moment I can almost kid myself that we’re bickering about an afterschool group and not the leadership of our House.

  I take an uncertain step toward him. “We’re running out of familiar faces. I’m only asking for your help. And . . . if you can spare it, your friendship.”

  He bows. “As you wish, Holy M—”

  “What I wish,” I say loudly, before he can finish, “is that you use my name. Rho.” If Mathias ever calls me Mother, I will die.

  “Rho?” he repeats, like it’s a dirty word.

  “I’m sorry you don’t like it,” I say, crossing my arms. “But I called you Mathias and not Lodestar when you asked me to.”

  Another stare-off.

  Then, “As you wish.”

  “Thank you.”

  “In one week,” he says, picking up the old thread again, “there will be a ceremony and dinner in your honor, where you will be sworn in as our House’s new Guardian . . . Rho. It’s important you select the rest of your Advisors before then. During this week, I will also be training you.”

  “What about my friends?”

  “They have been given lodging on the base. They will be trained as Zodai, along with every surviving Acolyte.”

  The word surviving is a punch to my gut. “I want to see them,” I say, my breathing shallow.

  “I will try to arrange it.” He looks at me like he might say more, but instead he bows abruptly and strides to the door.

  “Mathias?”

  He stops and turns. “Yes?”

  “I can’t do this.”

  Speaking the words out loud, something hard and heavy shifts in my chest, allowing more air to reach my lungs. Like I’ve just removed an obstacle clogging my airways. I’m still as inadequate as I was seconds ago, but admitting it makes me feel like less of a fraud.

  “The stars don’t lie,” he says, his soft baritone lacking its gentleness. “You’ve been chosen for a reason. Search your heart, and you’ll find it.”

  His words of encouragement are as Cancrian as it gets, but they only make me feel worse.

  I heard it in his tone, saw it in his eyes, sensed it in his demeanor.

  Mathias doesn’t trust in me either.

  • • •

  The next day, I return to the room where I was made Guardian, and I sit with Crius, Agatha, Dr. Eusta, and Mathias, while they introduce me to eight people—the rest of my Advisors. They fill me in on procedure, traditions, expectations. . . . Thanks to Mom, I already have a basic understanding, but it’s still a lot to process.

  In the afternoon, I join Mathias for our first Zodai lesson. We meet in a room filled with plushy mats, towels, and refreshments. Lola found me stretchy pants and an oversized shirt to wear for my training sessions.

  Mathias is lying on his back on one of the mats, a strip of abs visible below the hemline of his shirt. Lola walks me to the threshold, and I catch her gaze straying to his bare skin before she leaves.

  “First we’ll focus on refining your Centering technique,” says Mathias, once we’re alone. He sits upright. “I think the best way will be using Yarrot.”

  I swallow, hard. “Yarrot doesn’t work for me.” He freezes, and we do that thing where we shut up and stare. After watching for so many years, we’re each still a complete mystery to the other—but we don’t ask those questions yet.

  Looking into his eyes, I wonder what he sees. Sometimes the blue grows so soft when he’s watching me that I think he might care. Other times, like now, the indigo darkens, and I feel like all he sees is a little girl in grown-up shoes.

  He rises to his feet. “I used to practice every day on Elara.”

  “I remember.”

  This time the stare is more familiar. As if beyond being Guardian and Guide, we could also be those two people who watched each other grow from afar—only now brought together, forced to grow up even faster.

  “Maybe we could try one or two poses,” I cede, shrugging as if each movement won’t be a knife slicing my chest. Then I sit on the other mat and slip off my shoes.

  I don’t get back to my room until late, every muscle in my body sore and aching. At first I could barely pull off the easiest positions and kept losing my balance, but by the end it was as though I’d never stopped practicing. Every arc, stretch, and sweep of movement was etched inside my mind, like the dancing of my drumsticks, or the swirling of Cancer in the Ephemeris—everything felt connected, like it’s all part of a grand choreography designed by our stars.

  We cycled through all twelve poses until I could hold each one for fifteen minutes without breaking a sweat.

  When I get to my room, I’m supposed to open the black opal and Center myself, to see what effect the Yarrot has—but I collapse in bed, exhausted, and I don’t wake up until morning.

  • • •

  Three days have passed, and it’s nighttime, I think. Oceon 6 has no windows, and its alternating periods of artificial light confuse my sense of chronology.

  Everything’s confused. I’m still in shock.

  Yesterday, I awoke in a frenzy, thinking I was late for class. Then I remembered. The Academy is gone. So are my instructors and friends. Maybe even my family. My old life is a sand castle that’s been washed away in the Cancer Sea’s new tide.

  This other life feels surreal. I’m beginning to think the Advisors only chose me as Guardian because I’m young and easy to control, since they spend our morning meetings debating strategy among themselves and ignoring my suggestions. The way Mathias eyes me only strengthens my doubts. He keeps saying it’s my duty to play the part—but
he doesn’t say it’s my rightful place.

  Everyone else on this base looks at me like I’m their savior. I just wish they would tell me what I’m supposed to do.

  This morning, Crius told us he found the real cause of the explosion on Thebe—a critical overload in a quantum fusion reactor. What he and Dr. Eusta want to know is how it happened. I keep telling them we already know how—Dark Matter was the trigger. But Agatha is the only one who believes me.

  The question isn’t how—it’s who.

  Crius wants more answers, and he made me read the Ephemeris for most of the meeting. Mathias made me read it again this afternoon. But both times, I couldn’t see.

  We’ve lost twenty million people, a fifth of our population. It’s a number too large for me to understand.

  What I do understand is that Deke’s sisters drowned. Kai lost his parents. Dad and Stanton haven’t been found. I’m too full of the past to see the future.

  Tonight is the first time I get to be with my friends since we arrived. Wave communications finally started working again, so I spoke to Nishi for hours yesterday, filling her in on everything that’s happened since we parted. She was breathless for most of the conversation. It felt strange to share a laugh with someone again—the past three days, it’s been all bows and Holy Mothers from Lola, Leyla, and the Lodestars, and then a bunch of barking and bossing around from Mathias and my Advisors.

  Sagittarians don’t bow to their Guardian—they say doing so implies every soul is not equal—so thank Helios Nishi isn’t fazed by this stuff. For her part, Nishi told me that she, Deke, and Kai have been grouped together with the other Acolytes who survived . . . the Acolytes who didn’t come out to our show.

  After she said it, guilt choked both our vocal cords for a while. If we hadn’t organized the concert that night. If I’d heeded the warning signs in the Ephemeris. If we’d just stayed indoors . . .

  They might have died anyway, a small voice reminds me. The pieces of wreckage that struck the compound killed just as many people as the electric pulse did outdoors.

  Nishi said she and the guys have been in Zodai training all day, every day. A Lodestar Garrison trains them in the mornings—while I’m in with the Council of Advisors—and Agatha trains them in the afternoons.

  They had to take Abyssthe yesterday, and Kai panicked and refused. Deke was the only one who could convince him that it would be fine, that he wouldn’t pass out and wake up to the destruction of our world.

  I Waved Deke a few times, but he didn’t answer. When I asked Nishi about him, she grew cagey and said he’s dealing with loss his own way. I just wish I could help.

  This morning, Mathias told me he arranged for the three of them to eat dinner with me in my room tonight. The excitement of seeing my friends is so massive, it doesn’t leave room for anything else. I’ve been distracted all day, and I could tell Mathias and the rest of my Advisors are starting to lose their patience. I’ll need to manage something impressive tomorrow.

  The moment she’s in my room, Nishi and I spring into each other’s arms. Squeezed together, we laugh until we’re crying, and then we laugh again.

  Like all civilian refugees on Oceon 6, she’s wearing laboratory scrubs borrowed from the scientists, but she’s rolled up the sleeves and added a belt at her waist, so she still manages to look sexy. When we pull away, I turn to hug Deke, but he’s not there. Instead, Kai approaches me slowly, without meeting my gaze. He bows. “Holy Mother.”

  I crush him into an embrace, and I don’t let go until he returns it. “Kai, I’m so sorry about your parents,” I whisper into his ear. His hold tightens, and his breathing grows heavy, so we stay locked together a while longer. When we’re done, he looks at me like I’m Rho again.

  “Where’s—”

  “Holy Mother.” Deke bows at me from the other end of the room, his back against the wall and eyes looking straight ahead. It’s a Zodai stance, the same one Mathias assumes sometimes.

  “Deke—” I move toward him, but he edges away.

  Nishi marches up to him. “You’re seriously acting this way? She’s still Rho, our best friend—”

  “Nish, it’s okay,” I say, even though it isn’t.

  Shaking, I pull out a chair at the table Lola and Leyla laid out with drinks, fruit, and an assortment of seafood. Kai sits across from me. Soon, Nishi takes the chair next to mine, and once we’ve started eating, Deke slips into the last seat, his eyes never straying from the tablecloth. He loved his sisters as much as I love Stanton. Of course I understand.

  “There are eighteen girls and thirty-three guys, and we’re split into two bunkrooms.” Nishi is rattling off a lot of the same information she told me yesterday, but I know she’s just trying to lighten the mood. “Most of the others are young, between twelve and fourteen.”

  That’s probably why they didn’t come to the party. I stab a piece of fruit with my fork and stuff it into my mouth, even though I’m not hungry. “How does the training work if you’re all at different levels?” I ask through the food, trying to latch onto safer subjects.

  “The three of us, plus a fifteen-year-old named Freida, are in the advanced group,” says Nishi, passing me her napkin so I can wipe the fruit juice trailing down my chin. “Everyone else works with Stargazer Swayne, who teaches more basic stuff.”

  “When are you going home?” I ask her. It’s hard to believe there are people in the universe who can still do that.

  “They don’t really have the ships to spare right now. Since there will be representatives from other Houses coming to your swearing-in ceremony, I’m hitching a ride with the Sagittarian envoy.”

  The thought of Nishi leaving me to do this alone is unbearable. Now that I’m with her, I don’t even know how I made it this far. After tonight, I can’t go back to the loneliness of the past few days.

  “Did you read anything in the stars today?” she asks, her voice lower. Kai leans into the table, eager to listen. Deke stays still, staring at the table.

  I shake my head. “Lately, I can’t . . . concentrate.” My voice breaks. At this, Deke’s head tilts slightly, and his eyes almost look up.

  “Of course you can’t, Rho,” says Nishi, surveying me with her sharp amber eyes. She squeezes my hand. “You’re human, you can’t block out everything that’s happened to you and your House.” In a whisper only I can hear, she adds, “It’s okay to feel your pain before walling it off.”

  I wipe a tear before anyone can see.

  In what feels like barely any time at all, there’s a knock on my door, and the officer outside informs me it’s the base’s curfew. Kai hugs me on his way out. He seems to have reverted to his nonspeaking ways—he didn’t say a word the entire night.

  I look down when Deke passes me, not wanting to feel the pain of his rejection again. But he stops in front of me. I chance a peek, and he offers me his fist for the hand touch. It’s not a hug, but I still take it.

  When she’s the last one left, I grab Nishi’s hand. “Can you stay a sec?”

  She’s the only person who trusted in my visions, even when I didn’t, so she’s the best person to consult now. She pokes her head out and tells the officer, “Holy Mother needs me a few more minutes. I’ll catch up.” When she closes the door behind her, there’s a gleam of excitement in her eyes. “What is it?”

  I dive right in. “Back on Elara, I saw something . . . strange. I’d activated Instructor Tidus’s Ephemeris, and when she turned it off, a series of holograms drowned the room. They were diagrams that looked like the usual stuff we all have on our Waves—history of the galaxy, layout of the stars, facts about the universe. Only her version of the Zodiac included an unnamed constellation. A Thirteenth House.”

  Nishi’s eyes grow wide. Cancrians can be very skeptical, often because we’re so quick to get our hopes up that our first instinct is to protect ourselves; but Sagittarians w
ill accept even the most incredible truths, as long as they trust the source.

  “Instructor Tidus wouldn’t have kept that fact stored on her Wave if she didn’t believe it was real,” says Nishi, her reasoning soon out-speeding mine. “That means there must be evidence somewhere of a Thirteenth House, enough evidence that she would trust it . . . and something that big will surely have a trail.”

  “Follow it,” I whisper, darting a glance at the door to make sure we’re not overheard. I don’t want to panic anyone until I have all the facts. “Find out what you can.”

  “Is this about the omen?”

  I nod. “It’s always out past the Twelfth House. And I was thinking of the way the Dark Matter showed up in Leo and Taurus when I read the black opal that first night. The stars showed me something that wasn’t the future—it was the past. So what if the omen they keep showing me isn’t an omen—what if they’re pointing to who’s responsible?”

  Nishi looks entranced by my theory. She whispers, “The Thirteenth House.”

  I nod. “We need to be certain.”

  She gives me a quick hug before bouncing to the door, probably already mapping out the ways she’ll tackle her search.

  “We will be.”

  8

  THE DAY OF THE CEREMONY, my Advisors are busy making arrangements, so I train with Mathias in the morning. He’s teaching me what he says will be one of our hardest lessons: communicating through the Psy Network, the way the Zodai do.

  He gives me my very own Ring, and as soon as I slip it on my finger, I feel a new energy seep into my skin, like the metallic silicon is bonding with me on a psychic level. An intense inner buzzing pulses through the area, as if my finger’s taken a huge swig of Abyssthe.

  “Communicating in the Psy doesn’t require Centering because the Ring’s core is a pool of Abyssthe,” says Mathias. We’re in our normal training room, standing on a Yarrot mat, facing each other. “The Ring attracts Psynergy to you.”