Black Moon

by Romina Russell

  “Oh . . . sorry.” I stare at the ground to keep Neith from seeing the depth of my disappointment, even though I’m sure he’s already perceived it.

  The truth is, even if Hysan were still talking to me, nothing has changed. Maybe he was right that I was too afraid to love him—but that doesn’t matter now. As Wandering Star, I’m once again in the Guardians’ ranks, even if I don’t have an official vote; and while the Taboo technically only applies to Guardians, we’d still be violating the spirit of the law.

  Our universal unity is too fragile to stir up over just two hearts. The Trinary Axis already proved that.

  “If I might be so bold as to share yet another observation,” says Neith, pausing until I’ve met his gaze and nodded for him to go on. “Sending that message to Hysan was the admirable thing to do. As you said, there will be time to work out everything else that’s between you, but for now, you each have different tasks that require your full attention. While I cannot provide more details on Hysan’s whereabouts, I can at least assure you that he is doing his part. Whatever happens between you two personally, please trust that he and I will always stand with you and House Cancer.”

  His quartz eyes twinkling, he adds, “I swear it on my father’s life.”

  After a heavy pause, I manage to say, “Thank you.” How is it an android is able to restore my faith in humanity so much better than humans?

  “Hysan aside,” I add, “I hope you know, Lord Neith, that I am honored by your friendship.”

  “And I by yours, Wandering Star.” He gives me a low bow, and as he starts to straighten, the smile on my face freezes.

  His torso twitches jerkily, stopping at an odd angle, and the light in his eyes flickers. “L-lord Neith?” But before the words are even out, he’s upright again, his eyes as lively and human as ever.

  “Take care, Lady Rho,” he says, as if nothing happened. Then the holographic ship disappears, and I’m alone again.

  • • •

  Long after ’Nox’s nose has faded from the room’s walls, I’m still staring into them, thinking of Mom. I’ve been scouring the Psy for a sign of her every day since realizing it was her face Rising into an Aquarian, and not mine.

  As much as I want to uncover and defeat the master, I’ve finally found something else I want just as desperately.

  I want to find out what happened to my mother.

  If she really took off to spare us the stigma of staining our family’s reputation, just as Grey/Aryll did, then maybe she went to House Aquarius.

  And maybe she’s still there.

  I’m desperate to discover if the black seashell Aryll gave me is the real thing, or if, like him, it’s just a very convincing imitation. Then again, where could Aryll have learned so many details from my childhood if not from Mom?

  I’d give anything to take off to the Water Bearer constellation and start searching for her this instant. Except my focus can’t be love or revenge or even family anymore. I’m not allowed personal missions, not after the promises I made to everyone I met on Centaurion. So instead, I shake those thoughts off, shut the room’s fabric curtains, and grab Vecily’s heart-shaped Ephemeris.

  Rho?

  My finger buzzes as Mathias calls to me through the Psy. Are you okay?

  Even though he hasn’t knocked, I have a feeling he’s outside my room. I bring up my wristband to unlock the door, but I stop short—I need all my concentration right now. And Mathias is one of my heart’s favorite distractions.

  I’m doing a reading, I send back through the Collective Conscious. But thanks for checking in.

  After a moment, he says, Find me after?

  Sure.

  When I hear his footsteps fade away, I flick on the device in my hand. Silver light drowns the room as the twelve constellations of our solar system take form, and I focus on the Fourth House. Cancer’s blue blaze is drowned by the rocky ring of rubble orbiting it, and the places where our four moons once shone are now dense patches of Dark Matter.

  It looks like the planet is wearing a necklace, and I’m reminded of the pearls Mom gave me so many moons ago. My soul drifts back to that day on the Strider, and I can almost see Helios glinting off Mom’s light locks and ivory features. Were her paling hair and skin signs of her transition into an Aquarian? How much more did we never know about her?

  I’m so deeply Centered that I don’t immediately notice when he appears.

  Galactic gold coin for your thoughts, crab?

  I suck in a quick breath as I turn and meet Ophiuchus’s black-hole eyes. My body grows leaden with dread as the mist of Psynergy around him solidifies into icy skin and Ochus manifests in the star-dappled air.

  I-I’ve been searching for you for months, I say, trying to sound stronger than I feel. Where have you been?

  Only Helios may command her stars, he warns, the temperature in my room dropping rapidly as his full frigid form expands into being, taking up most of the space. I have to cross my arms over my chest to keep warm.

  The last time you showed up, you told me Risers are descendants of your House. My voice quakes as I finally form the question I’ve been burning to ask since that day: But if Risers really are Ophiuchans, why aren’t whole bloodlines affected? Wouldn’t whole families change Houses if they’re descended from your line?

  Ochus’s booming voice makes the air colder. Only the truest Ophiuchans cannot fit into another House. Every time a bonafide Ophiuchan is born, he must eventually Rise.

  I exhale slowly, holding myself tightly while considering his answer. I don’t know the values of House Ophiuchus—beyond Unity—so I have no way to evaluate whether I might also be a Riser. I guess I could just ask the Thirteenth Guardian himself.

  I meet Ophiuchus’s gaze again, but something in his expression silences me.

  You’ve changed, he says icily, his black eyes growing larger as he takes me in.

  Yeah, turns out torture, murder, and destruction can be pretty transformative, I shoot back before I can consider the consequences.

  My stomach clenches preemptively, and to stave off punishment for my sarcasm, I quickly add, If you still want me to help end your existence, tell me where the Marad is so I can stop the master.

  I don’t know their location. His voice is like a low rumble that threatens thunder. The master still has plans, and he cares as little for his soldiers’ lives as he does yours. Every one of us is a pawn in his game. We are all victims here.

  I can’t trap the cold, cutting laugh that escapes my lips; a sound so chilling it doesn’t seem mine. You don’t get to wear the word victim. It could never fit you.

  Ochus shoots upward, taking over every particle of air. His form melts into a violent ice storm, and I bury my head in my arms to escape the wintry wind whipping against me, the glacial gales nearly lifting me off the ground.

  Icicles stab my skin like knife blades, and I gasp, cowering close to the floor, my left arm and nail-free fingers scorching with pain, like the wounds are fresh. My eyes burn and my heart hammers so hard I’m sure it will give out, until I can’t take it anymore, and I just want him to kill me already. I just want it to be over.

  The violence vanishes at once, but I stay small on the floor, holding my limbs to my chest, trying to slow my breathing.

  You are weak, he booms in a voice colder than his storm. You have never shown fear in here, not even when you believed I would kill you.

  I refuse to look up, refuse to believe his words. He’s trying to protect Risers. He’s making excuses so he won’t have to tell me anything about the Marad—

  You are of no use to me now.

  A light draft shushes past me, and the temperature rises. He’s gone. Relieved, I unclench my muscles and lift my head.

  Then I freeze again. Ochus is sitting down beside me.

  I’m barely breathing as I gape at the Thirteenth
Guardian, his body so close to mine that his icy Psynergy burns my skin. My gut fills with foreboding as his primordial eyes stare into me. You believe personal loss and physical pain are the worst things you can endure?

  His voice is a whisper, so small it slips in through my pores, chilling me from the inside. There is worse, he says softly. There is being alone.

  A feeling that isn’t bloodlust or hatred pulls on his features. The mortal emotion makes him look less familiar and more frightening.

  When you are an exile with no home, no personal agency, no living loved ones, no hope to keep you sane, no sign of an end to your despair—that is when you are truly dead.

  I’d like to point out the hypocrisy of what he’s saying, given he’s the reason I lost my home and loved ones—he did to me the very thing he claims was done to him—but I don’t want to provoke more physical pain. So instead, I say, I’m not alone. I still have a few loved ones left you haven’t killed.

  Alone has nothing to do with how many people surround us. He sounds distant, as if his Center is ebbing away from our conversation. Loneliness is a condition of the soul. Once it infects you, you must suck it out, like Maw poison, before it reaches your heart. Especially you.

  His voice and gaze grow present again, and I feel his focus shifting from himself back to me. Your soft, Cancrian heart could never survive true loneliness.

  I’ve been learning more and more what my heart can endure, I snap. And it’s not as soft as you think.

  I wouldn’t say that so proudly, crab. Your soft heart is the very thing that makes you Cancrian. Lose it, and you lose yourself.

  My teeth chatter not from the temperature but from the fear I’ve been harboring since I first saw the Aquarian face in my stars. The possibility that I could Rise.

  A little unsolicited advice? Ochus expands again, growing more transparent as his ice starts to melt. Trust someone. It’s what I didn’t have. And it might be what saves you.

  Where is the Marad? I demand as he fades.

  You cannot help me anymore, he whispers, and soon all that remains of him is a mist of Psynergy.

  4

  THE LIGHTS OF VECILY’S EPHEMERIS glimmer in the darkness around me as I sit on the spongy floor and suck in deep breaths, trying to process my conversation with Ochus. Is he done helping me? Does that mean he’s going back to the master?

  “RHO!” My brother bangs on my door. “Open up!”

  I unlock it with my wristband, and he barges in, shouting, “There’s news!”

  Then he rushes back out, and I scramble to my feet and run to catch up. “Where are we going?” I call after him.

  “Sirna’s stateroom!”

  “Did you tell Mathias?”

  I don’t hear his answer because he’s already rounded the corner, so just in case, I stop and turn toward Mathias’s door.

  I’m outside, I send, touching my Ring.

  Come in, he sends back.

  When I look inside, he’s sitting on his waterbed, wearing a dreamy look on his face that I caught him wearing once before, on Tierre. “What’s up?” he asks.

  “Stan says there’s news.”

  It takes a moment for my words to break through his expression, and then he grabs the Wave sitting next to him and joins me.

  “Were you just talking to Pandora?” I ask as we hurry down the hall.

  “I . . . was. Is everything okay?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, feeling less comfortable than I was a moment ago. “They’re waiting for us in Sirna’s stateroom.”

  When an ambassador from another House or waterworld visits Pelagio in non-Plenum times, they’re put up in a stateroom on the topmost floor of the visitors’ burrow. The door to Sirna’s suite is wide open, and inside we find her, Engle, and Stanton watching the same somber newscaster from earlier on a wallscreen. I avoid her gaze as I turn my attention to the reporter.

  “We’re coming to you with more breaking news, this time from House Pisces. We have just received word that an epidemic is plaguing Piscenes of all five planetoids. All we know of this illness so far is that it’s causing people to fall into comatose states without warning. It’s unclear how they’re becoming infected, but healers are reporting new cases at an alarming rate, and quarantine procedures are already underway.”

  I exchange panicked looks with Stan and Mathias as my pulse triples its speed.

  “Prophet Marinda has asked the Houses to send help,” the reporter goes on. “Disciples from her Royal Guard believe the stars are punishing the Fish constellation for not foreseeing the Marad’s threat; however, our viewers will be pleased to hear that our own Stridents are already en route to diagnose the true cause.”

  “We already know the cause—it’s the Marad!” Stanton’s shout is so loud and sudden that we all jump.

  “Anything they touch, they destroy!”

  “The Marad’s attack was a targeted strike on one planetoid’s communication grid,” Sirna snaps at him. “This is a virus infecting Piscenes of every planetoid. There is absolutely no evidence linking it to the army, and you hurt our cause and Cancer’s credibility when you make unfounded accusations like those.”

  I pointedly raise the volume of the broadcast.

  “Those Piscenes who do not yet show signs of the affliction are asking for immediate sanctuary at other Houses,” the newscaster continues. “An anonymous Advisor on Chieftain Skiff’s Council has said our Guardian plans to propose a galactic quarantine of the Twelfth House, and I believe anyone of sound mind will agree. Whatever is happening on Pisces, it must be contained to that constellation. We are also hearing that there is no correlation between this epidemic and the Marad attack from a few months ago, nor Wandering Star Rhoma Grace’s alleged Thirteenth House.”

  “This is a load of sharkshit!” snarls Stanton.

  “Stan—”

  My words die as he hurls his new Wave at the wall. Everyone flinches as the golden clamshell shatters into pieces.

  “The only answer is war,” he says savagely, passing a trembling hand through his blond curls, revealing eyes that are bloodshot from a lack of sleep. “We need to round up teams of Zodai from every House to form our own army, and then we need to smoke the bastards out and end this.”

  “That decision isn’t up to you or Rho—it’s for the Plenum to decide,” injects Sirna.

  Ignoring her, my brother comes over to me and actually meets my eyes for what feels like the first time since I showed him Mom’s seashell. I’d thought for sure he’d want to discuss that discovery with me, but he’s barely looked at me until now.

  “Rho, use your Wandering Star status to convene an emergency session.” He takes my hands in his. “I know I’m asking for too much, for you to set yourself against the Zodiac, again. But this time, I promise to be by your side through everything. You won’t be alone.”

  Everyone is now watching us instead of the news. Looking into my brother’s pale green eyes, my memory flashes back to the bioluminescent microbes from the inner lagoon on Kalymnos, and I see us dipping our feet in the cool water and tracing constellations in the microbes’ designs. I never imagined my brother ever asking me for anything—and I certainly never envisioned myself denying him.

  While the room awaits my answer, I scan the wallscreen again, and instead of the reporter speaking, it’s Skarlet. She’s broadcasting live from the Hippodrome on Phaetonis, addressing a crowd of Arieans that’s made up of both Zodai and soldiers. For the first time in decades, the House’s military government and the Zodai they’ve marginalized are sitting side by side.

  Last week, it was reported that Guardian Eurek’s house arrest had been lifted and that he was invited to a sit-down with the junta’s twelve warlocks. Skarlet’s hopeful words are healing her House’s old wounds and bringing Aries back into the Zodiac fold.

  “Most of us become who we are
by living up to the standards set by our superiors, our role models, and our families,” she begins, her clear voice cutting through the tension. “But Risers have no one to look up to. What kind of existence can they hope to achieve in our worlds when we’ve offered them no path to success? No home? No chance at happiness?

  “We Arieans are warriors, and true warriors do not think of violence as a weapon. Violence is a shield we must sometimes put on to protect our loved ones, and it is always the final form of defense. It’s now up to us to teach this to the members of the Marad. If we can offer them something they want—something hopeful—maybe we can find a solution without unnecessary bloodshed.”

  My heart swells at Skarlet’s words, and as I feel the forgotten bond between Houses Aries and Cancer, my mind ticks toward a decision. I always thought Aries must be Cancer’s polar opposite, but I was wrong—we’re sisters.

  Skarlet is right that war should be a last resort. But Stanton is right, too—we must take aggressive actions to stop the Marad . . . even if I don’t like seeing my brother so violent and vengeful, and I’d rather not validate those feelings.

  “I’d like to invoke my Wandering Star status to create a commission to open up a large-scale investigation into the Marad, and I’d like to invite Skarlet to join me in addressing the Plenum about this. I think if our Houses present our case together, we’ll have a better chance.”

  “I’m sorry, but no.”

  It takes me a second to process Sirna’s speedy rejection, and before I do, Stanton is already shouting, “What do you mean NO?”

  “You lack the authority to call a Plenum meeting,” says Sirna, looking at me and ignoring my brother. “Your role is symbolic only. The Plenum can call you in for consultations, but that privilege does not work both ways.”

  “THAT’S—”

  “Peace has been declared,” says Sirna, cutting off my brother’s renewed outrage. “There are more pressing matters to attend to.”

  “Sirna,” I say before Stan can respond. “You don’t really believe that the Marad’s threat is over, do you?” I point to Mathias, who’s stoically watching us without giving any indication of what he’s thinking. Beside him, Engle is just as inscrutably silent. “Mathias can tell you this isn’t just a handful of terrorists. This is an organized army that has been planning these attacks for too long to stop now. We have to learn from each experience, or we’ll never be ready for what’s ahead. We can’t reset to zero after every tragedy.”