Black Moon

by Romina Russell

  “Hey!”

  We turn at the sound of Mathias’s voice. “Sorry about that,” he says, slightly out of breath. “There was a man here from the settlement on Secundus. He says the Fellowship Clan has been good to them, and they’re going to petition the Monarchy to see if they can formally band together as a Cancrian village under the Aquarian crown.”

  “Identification.”

  The same man and woman from earlier stop us at the paddock gate, only this time they’re addressing Pandora. When she presses her thumb to the screen, her holographic tag beams out—Pandora Koft, House Aquarius, Armada Survivor—and as the Elders scroll through additional details, I catch snippets like Nightwing Clan and Academy Dropout.

  “What’s your business in the Royal Kingdom?” the male Elder asks her.

  Pandora opens her mouth to speak, but a familiar baritone beats her to it. “We’re bringing Pandora with us to the palace,” says Mathias, speaking in the firm but respectful tone I remember from when I was his Guardian and he was my Guide. “She’s been invited to a royal ball tonight.”

  The woman Elder wrinkles her brow. “There is no indication of such an invitation on your astrological fingerprint,” she says to Pandora.

  “It’s a last-minute invitation. We can have someone from the palace hologram over and confirm.”

  Mathias’s assertiveness holds none of the hesitation he showed on Scorpio. Only rather than reassuring me, his newfound confidence makes me feel less secure.

  “We have no way of verifying that whomever you contact is the true organizer,” says the male Elder.

  Pandora’s shoulders sink, and her defeatist reaction makes me demand, “Why is it you don’t need to see our invitations? Why are you only concerned with hers?”

  The woman’s storm-colored eyes meet mine. “The Pegazi chose to bond with you, so your arrival and departure must have been ordained by the stars. Yet the same cannot be said of her.”

  “This is Wandering Star Rhoma Grace,” says Mathias, as if my name should settle the matter. “It’s on her authority that Pandora is to come with us.”

  “Plenum politics have no bearing on matters of Aquarian royalty,” says the male Elder, but he bows his head at me respectfully. “Apologies, but we must protect our sovereign and the royal family at all costs.”

  Pandora’s staring at the ground, and Mathias and I trade questioning glances, each of us looking to the other for more ideas. I’m halfway tempted to contact Crompton himself to help us, when suddenly the Pegazi begin to move.

  We all stare in awe as the gray and aqua steeds approach the paddock gate. The male Elder fumbles with the latch, and the woman helps him open the door for the Pegazi to step out. Then the Elders stumble back, giving the creatures a respectful distance as they clop over to us.

  As if the horses have understood our whole conversation, Candor nods at the gray steed, and the latter bows before Pandora. The female Elder can’t hold back her gasp.

  “Looks like the stars are speaking through the Pegazi,” says Mathias, and without waiting for permission, he helps Pandora climb on, showing her the dip in the horse’s back so she can slide into it. The two Elders look like they’d like to disagree but can’t find the words.

  “Want help getting on?” he asks me, and I shake my head. I walk over to Candor, and she bows extra low for me so that I can climb on alone. I look back and see Mathias sitting behind Pandora, their bodies so close that her hair touches his chin.

  Candor takes off first, which is a good thing since it means I won’t have to watch them the whole flight.

  The cold air whipping at my face clears my mind. Ophiuchus said the worst thing for us is to be truly alone—no friends, no family, no future. Yet since becoming a Guardian, I’ve spent as much time fighting against my heart as I have against the master.

  Maybe Mathias is right that rather than repressing our feelings, we should be embracing them. None of us is guaranteed a future—so why shouldn’t we seize the chance to be happy while we’re still here?

  A few months ago I thought love couldn’t exist in times of war . . . only now I think I was wrong. Love is how we win wars. It’s only when we’re leading a life we want to keep that war becomes worth waging and winning.

  Seeing Pandora enjoy Mathias’s Cancrian care and protection makes me miss it more than I thought possible. It makes me want to reach out and secure it before it’s gone. Except this time, Pandora brought out Mathias’s strength . . . not me.

  When the Marad captured them, they were thrown together in a situation so terrorizing that they still can’t fully describe what happened. For weeks that must have felt like years to them, they clung onto one another to survive. They were broken again and again, and each time they had to repair each other, before the next beating happened.

  After all they’ve been through, I’ve no doubt that the two of them could have something real and lasting.

  But only if Mathias and I can let each other go.

  13

  WE MEET STAN, NISHI, AND Imogen for lunch at the dining hall closest to the ninth tower. Beneath a high-arched roof is a sea of round tables surrounded by throne-like chairs.

  Nishi and Stan are waiting for me by the entrance with eager faces, and I shake my head as I approach. Letting Pandora and Mathias walk ahead, I say, “No news yet.” The look on my brother’s face makes me add, “but we knew this was too soon, and Crompton is hopeful.”

  “I’m hopeful, too,” says Nishi gently. She seems willing to forget our awkwardness this morning, and I’m glad because I don’t want to upset her, though my gut churns thinking of the moment when we finally do have the conversation she’s so determined to avoid.

  She links her arm with Stan’s, and we join Mathias, Pandora, and Imogen at a table. “So what have you guys been up to?” I ask as we sit down.

  “Watching the news,” says Stanton, his voice tight. “There’s been an update on Pisces.”

  I lean into the table, but our conversation is interrupted by the arrival of two velvet-clad valets with trays of food. They deposit massive gold and silver platters in the center of our table, enough food that it could feed a group twice our size. Holographic identification tags hover over each dish for a moment, and every ingredient sounds foreign to me—glazed oven roast, spiced porklings, sweet aquadile skewers—and accompanying the meats are bowls of the largest vegetables I’ve ever seen.

  I learned my lesson last night not to pile my plate with too much food—it’s good, but it’s so rich that a few bites are more than enough. As soon as the valets depart, my brother picks up the thread again. “Healers from other Houses have gotten to Pisces, and the situation is worse than was first reported. They still don’t know how the sleeping virus is being spread, but it’s moving so fast that it’s already infected over half the population. Prophet Marinda had to issue a decree confining people to their homes because bodies were dropping all over the place.”

  “What’s being done to try to cure them?” I ask.

  “First we have to know what’s affecting them,” he says darkly. “The Guardians have divided the care of the five planetoids among all the Houses. The first concern will be to protect those Piscenes who aren’t showing signs of infection yet, so they’ll separate the people of every planetoid into two camps.”

  “What could cause this?” I ask, turning to Nishi. She shakes her head like she’s just as baffled as I am, only she’s looking down at a holographic screen from her Tracker and typing a message.

  “But there’s a bigger problem,” says my brother, and I snap my gaze to him.

  “Worse than the whole Piscene population falling into comas—”

  “The infected can’t Center themselves,” says Pandora, and a heavy silence falls over the table.

  “They’ve been discussing this all morning on Nightwing,” she adds in her soft voice. “Since the
past two months have been peaceful, too few Piscenes are off world. Which means nearly the whole population is home.”

  She doesn’t have to say more for the full horror to settle on me. Cancer lost its land, but a tenth of our people survived thanks to early evacuations. Virgo lost 50 percent of its population, and Gemini lost a third, but if 99 percent of Piscenes lose their connection to the Collective Conscious . . .

  “House Pisces will be lost to the Psy,” I whisper.

  Just like House Ophiuchus.

  The loaded silence that follows my words is broken by my brother. “Only good news is the Houses are now so preoccupied with Pisces, they’ve forgotten to kick our people out of our settlements.”

  He stabs a piece of meat with his fork, and I notice his eyes are bloodshot again. I turn to Nishi, who’s barely picked at her food. She’s still answering messages, probably having to do with managing tonight’s event. Her complete focus on her duties reminds me of her intense dedication to our band. She’s being old Nishi, from before we lost our school and our safety and our Deke.

  “So when do we meet Blaze?” I ask, and the question finally pulls her away from her Tracker.

  She winks out the red holographic screen. “Now, if you’re ready!”

  She’s already pushing back from the table when Imogen says, “Just one thing. We should probably settle on dates for the ball first.”

  “Oh, right,” says Nishi.

  “Why do we need dates?” I ask.

  “It’s an Aquarian custom,” says Pandora, and it’s hard to miss the spark of hope in her voice. “We take an escort to most events. But especially a royal ball.”

  My gaze darts to Mathias, and a flush rises up my face when I find he’s already looking at me.

  “I’m not taking a date,” announces Stan.

  “We’re guests here, so we have to follow Aquarian traditions,” says Nishi, and the way she overrides him reminds me of how she used to override Deke at the Academy.

  “But, the thing is,” she goes on, her expression becoming apologetic as she turns to me, “since what we’re doing with the Tomorrow Party transcends House divisions, Blaze wants tonight to be different from previous balls. So we each have to take someone from a different House.”

  The moment the words are out of her mouth, I can’t look in Mathias and Pandora’s direction again.

  “Stanton, you’ll have the honor of escorting me tonight.” Imogen’s invitation sounds less like a question and more like a declaration. Her confidence reminds me of Miss Trii.

  I watch my brother’s neck glow red with embarrassment, and then he brings his glass of water to his lips to avoid answering.

  Knowing whom this night will be hardest on, I turn to my best friend and take her hand. “Will you go to the ball with me, Nish?”

  She nods and rests her head on my shoulder, and I caress her long, black tresses, trying to ignore what’s going across from me. All I can make out is Pandora’s Philosopher’s Stone, which she’s turning anxiously over and over in her hands.

  “Would you like to go together tonight?”

  At the sound of Mathias’s musical baritone, the Philosopher’s Stone stops spinning, and I pull Nishi to her feet to tune out Pandora’s reply.

  “We should go,” I say, leading the way to the ninth tower without looking back, my pulse rising and my hands becoming clammy.

  I don’t know how my heart got so twisted. Somewhere along the way I just started letting my emotions grow wild and tangled, without stopping to prune them, and now they’ve wrapped around my ribcage like vines, and they won’t let me see what’s going on in there.

  I’d like to claim I’ve been too focused on all the lives threatened by Ochus and the master and the Marad to think of my own. But the truth Engle forced me to face is that I was neglecting my heart long before the Lunar Quadract. Even as a kid on Cancer, rather than facing the pain of growing up in a house without Mom, I chose to escape to the moon. Then as an Acolyte, rather than risking the pain of opening my heart to someone, I chose the safety of loving an older man who was too noble to love me back, finding solace in the riddle of knowing that if Mathias had feelings for me when I was too young, he wouldn’t be the noble man I loved.

  But I can’t hide behind our age difference anymore because it doesn’t matter. So is my fear once more trying to guide me down a pain-free path? And if so, what frightens me more: that I’m in love with Mathias . . . or that I might not be?

  “Here we are,” says Nishi when we’re back in the ninth tower’s busy common room. She knocks on a door at the far end of the space.

  A voice from inside calls, “Come in!”

  When Nishi swings the door open, I pause on the threshold to Blaze’s office. I’ve never seen such a cluttered room in my life. Holographic posters cover every inch of wall space, and open boxes of every size are strewn throughout, spilling their colorful contents on the floor.

  “Over here!” the same voice says from somewhere deep inside, beyond the stacks upon stacks of documents and decorations and devices. As we pick our way through the jumble, I see that the boxes are there for a reason—they’re like flags indicating where one collection of items ends and the next begins.

  My gaze pans across mounds of books, food baskets, Tomorrow Party T-shirts . . . and the longer I stare at everything, the more I realize that the seemingly haphazard placement is purposeful. There’s some kind of unintelligible design in the chaos, a wild creature’s organizational system.

  “Just a little farther!” he calls out encouragingly.

  Wending through the piles of possessions, I pick up on a territorial vibe. However temporary the arrangement, this office clearly belongs to its inhabitant.

  We finally make it to the back of the room, where there’s a slightly open area with a table and chairs. “Welcome!” roars a beaming, blue-haired Leonine, baring his jaws in a broad smile.

  Rather than hold out his hand for the traditional greeting, he pulls each of us in for a hug. “It’s an honor, Rho,” says Blaze gruffly. After everyone’s been introduced, he looks to me and opens his arms like he’s offering another hug.

  “So, Wandering Star. What do you want to know?”

  Now that I’ve met him, I can understand the state of this office. Blaze seems like the kind of man who owns every room he walks into.

  “What’s your goal with the Tomorrow Party?” asks my brother before I can speak.

  Blaze takes a seat at the head of the table and gestures that we should join him. “Our goal is to build bridges across the Zodiac so that we can stop viewing each other as strangers. We want to usher in a new generation of leaders who want to work together with the other Houses and encourage people to see beyond the walls of their own worlds. And we’re doing that by focusing on a number of things.

  “First, fundraising. Without money, we can’t pay for things like tonight’s event, which is when we’re going to introduce ourselves to a small group of powerful people from the Houses and gauge what kind of support or resistance we’re likely to encounter from the rest of the Zodiac. Second, we’re researching the up-and-coming unionist leaders of every House to back them for upcoming elections.” He looks from my brother to me, and I spy the rainbow highlights peeking out through his blue locks. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the past couple of decades the stars have chosen some of the youngest Guardians we’ve ever had. Guardian Brynda of Sagittarius, Prophet Marinda of Pisces, Gortheaux of Aquarius—and, of course, you.”

  Hysan, too, I think to myself.

  “The stars have been choosing younger and younger Guardians because our galaxy is turning the page. A new order is needed for the Zodiac. A new vision for tomorrow.”

  “That sounds great,” I say. “But every House has its own governance and election cycle, and building new political players and platforms—on twelve worlds
—will take years. The Zodiac might not have that long. We need to come together now.”

  I didn’t mean to sound so ominous, but from the way everyone’s staring at me, I can tell they’re all wondering whether I’ve had a vision. The taste of Death sours my tongue again, but I force myself to ignore it.

  “You’re right,” says Blaze, his russet gaze so intense that I can’t pull away. “And that’s why we’re not waiting.”

  Nishi and Imogen sit up, and an air of suspense settles over the table.

  “The third and final task we’ve been working on will make sure that when this threat is over, our Zodiac’s newfound era of peace will be even better—and more progressive. We’re working with a privately funded team of scientists from every House to develop a terraform planet between the Leo and Virgo constellations. We’re petitioning the Plenum to allow this settlement to become, on a one-year experimental basis, home to a mixed population of people from across the Houses.”

  Nishi squeezes my hand under the table, but I can’t even blink.

  “We want to create a model of Zodiac living where we aren’t segregated by race. A system where we can just be a collection of individuals working together and celebrating a variety of cultures. A world where choice outweighs chance, where a man can change his stars.

  “And we’ve named this new world Black Moon.”

  14

  An hour later Nishi and I are lying side by side on the feathery bed, gazing up at the tower’s pointy ceiling.

  “Why Black Moon?” I whisper.

  “It’s a term for when there’s more than one new moon in a month,” she says softly. “So we’re thinking of it as a chance for a new beginning.”

  I’m still in too much shock to string my thoughts into cohesion. The only thing I can think of is Ferez and his vision for our future. It’s coming to fruition. Nishi was right. This Party is everything we’ve been fighting for.