I think of how Traxon can set aside his personal feelings for someone in his search for the truth, and I try to relinquish my revulsion for Ochus so that I can do the same now.
If we’re going to work together, I need to know more about you, I say.
Ask your questions then, he booms, and unlike the resistance I was expecting, he sounds calm, like I’ve finally said the right thing. We haven’t time to waste, crab.
Before I begin firing off questions, I envision an icy wall of Psynergy encasing my heart, barricading my emotions from infecting our interaction. The only way to have this conversation is by not making it about me.
You claim the other Guardians betrayed you because you attempted to achieve immortality—
Immortality wasn’t a discovery I made, he cuts in. Eternal life was a power given to me by my Talisman, because as the Guardian of Unity, I was meant to remain a living star among you.
I blink. What?
Unity does not merely extend to the Houses; I was once the glue between man and the stars, reality and the astral plane, the past and the future. His voice drops, like he’s mining deeper and deeper depths as he talks. I was never meant to die; I was to link humanity through the ages, so that you would never again forget each other, as you had in your old world.
Mom’s necklace flashes through my thoughts, and I think of House Ophiuchus not as a thirteenth pearl but as the chain holding our whole solar system together. So you were going to be . . . a god living among us? But how could they have defeated you if you were immortal?
He glares at me in icy silence, and he seems to be reevaluating his decision to share anything with me. I will share what I want you to know.
That’s not how this works, I shoot back. Either tell me the full story, or go find someone else to help you.
We stare at each other, and I force myself to summon every vestige of bravery in me so I won’t look away. I know I’m risking pain and violence by challenging him, but it’s time I hear his full story. The Zodiac can’t wait any longer.
Again, I start to ask, How did they defeat—
When I realized the gift I’d been given, he says in a harsh voice, I wanted to harness the power of my Talisman to lengthen human lives. I’ve had millennia to relive that life, and still I don’t know how I was found out. All I know is the other Guardians discovered my Talisman’s power, and they were outraged to learn that it was their destiny to perish and return to the stars, while I would remain on the mortal plane.
His form shrinks a little, and the cold air is less cutting. They insisted I share my immortality with them. I was given one year to work on a solution, and they threatened that if I couldn’t manage it on my own, they would confiscate my Talisman to investigate it themselves.
I’m so spellbound by his tale that I don’t realize until he’s midway through that his voice is no longer frosty and deafening, but rather it’s rising and falling, sharp and soft, rushing and halting. He’s talking like a human.
Only when I got home . . . the Talisman was gone. When I reported its theft to the other Guardians, they accused me of lying to keep my immortality for myself. I was charged with treason against the other Houses and sentenced to execution.
I shake my head. But you couldn’t die—
Silence! he booms, and a blast of cold air slams into me, knocking me off my feet. Pain echoes through me as I land on my arm, and I glare at him as I sit up, my breathing shallow.
If you want to kill me, do it, I say softly, gluing my gaze to his.
The rage fades from his expression, and he looks taken aback.
Do it, I say again from the floor. When he still doesn’t react, I slowly rise to my feet. You need my help just as much as I need yours. So quit acting like you’re the one in charge, and just tell me the truth. How did they do this to you?
To my extreme shock, he answers me.
Immortality works in cycles, he begins in a toneless voice, just like everything else in Nature. Eternal life isn’t a matter of locking one’s soul into an everlasting body, because all organic life dies. Instead, my Talisman functioned as a super-powered Psynergy source that enabled me to generate a new body when the one I inhabited gave out. Without the stone I couldn’t regenerate. And yet my essence did not return to the stars. I retained sentience without form. I could not touch or be seen. I could only float through the astral plane without affecting anything, pulled by a different kind of gravity. I was still enslaved to mortality’s master . . . Time.
He sighs, and the sadness within him is so deep that it infects the molecules of Psynergy in the air around us. The emotion feels like a heavy blanket that’s been draped over me, and my shoulders sag as even breathing begins to feel like too much work.
The Psynergy from people of every House attuned me to the changes in the worlds, making me torturously aware of time’s passing. I listened to the emotional symphony of humanity, watching you endure the same mistakes over and over again, slowly forgetting what you’d learned in your exodus to this new world. You were stuck in the same cycles of hate because you were still driven by your fear and not your faith.
The mist of ice that accompanies his presence seems to fill with pieces of the past, and I feel the Psynergy around us pressing in on me, probably as he always feels it. It’s like being shouted at by billions of competing voices—disembodied emotions, phantom physical pains, visions of the future—and it’s hard to withstand even for just a moment. I can’t imagine enduring it forever.
After being forced to watch my beloved House crushed by Dark Matter, I started to feel the Psynergy of lost Ophiuchan souls trying to Rise out of their ill-suited bodies. I hoped this time the stars might show my children mercy—but they betrayed us again. Instead of setting these Rising Ophiuchans free, fate forced them to assume slightly less uncomfortable forms, yet never the one that truly reflected them.
And as if the pain of not fitting into their own bodies wasn’t enough, humanity cast my people off as completely as the stars. They ostracized Risers and subjected them to inhumane hate. I longed to stop watching, to undo time, to cease existing. Yet I could not end my life because I wasn’t alive. And so, as the centuries passed, I grew to hate you.
Something small and warm cracks the Psynergy shell guarding my heart, and to my horror, I realize it’s pity. But I will not—cannot—commiserate with my father’s murderer. The destroyer of my world.
The being whose existence I vowed to end.
When did the master find you?
The sadness in the air has shifted into something darker and heavier. Two years ago I heard a voice addressing me for the first time in millennia. It whispered in my ear, telling me nothing of itself but offering a way out of my condition. The voice painted a picture of my House returning to its former glory, and the other Houses suffering for their ignorance and brutality. I didn’t need to know more—I only wanted the chance to exist again. So I pledged my allegiance to my new master, and when he combined his Psynergy with mine, we were able to direct Dark Matter to disturb the natural order of things. We produced forest fires on the Leonine moons, mud slides in the Hoof on Vitulus, drought in the Piscene planetoids . . . and then, one day, he told me we were going to destroy a whole House.
His dark eyes lock on mine, and the hole that pity burned into my heart’s shield repairs itself. But Ochus is looking at me curiously, like there’s something I might be able to add to his unbelievable story.
How did you discover me in the Psy the first time we spoke? he suddenly asks me.
I think back to that night. I heard voices coming from Helios, and when I touched the hologram, I appeared in the slipstream.
He shakes his icy head. How could a mere mortal access that dimension?
Another Guardian’s words echo in my memory—You have been singled out, but not by the one you think. Caasy said the person challenging me in the Psy
was someone using “a timeless weapon.” If Ophiuchus wasn’t the one singling me out, then he was the weapon. The master brought us together, I say.
He stares at me like he’s considering my theory. Original Guardians were the only ones who could communicate through the Psy; there’s no way I could have found Ochus unless someone guided me to him. The same someone who guided Ochus’s manipulation of Dark Matter.
Ever since I saw you that first time, he says, I’ve been able to find you. Even when I’ve been hiding from him. Perhaps, in enabling us to interact that first night, he unwittingly opened a Psynergy pathway between us that he can’t close.
I nod. Vecily Matador’s vision when she first became Guardian of Taurus was that a Guardian had long ago betrayed all the others, and there would be no trust in the Zodiac until that treachery was brought to light. If Ochus didn’t betray anyone, that means another fallen star betrayed them all.
The master is another Original Guardian, I say, and as I accept this truth, at last I trust Ophiuchus. Like Risers, he’s another homeless, hopeless soul the master has taken advantage of for his own ends.
Which other Guardians knew about the information in your Talisman?
The Talisman is a secret entrusted to one House; I would not have betrayed my people by sharing it. I have never known how the other Guardians learned of the immortality stored within it.
Can you think of anyone who could have feasibly figured it out?
Have you not been listening? he booms, the temperature dropping as his voice rises. I have thought of little else for millennia. If there were clues in my past, I would have found them.
Guardian Sagittarius was obsessed with time and would have been fascinated by such an object. Guardian Aquarius would have longed to use the Talisman to ensure the royal line would continue forever. The Geminin Guardians would have wanted nothing more than eternal life. Anyone could have had reason to steal it.
There’s another Original Guardian around, I say out loud, to organize my thoughts, and since the Talisman lets him or her change their body, it could be anyone, anywhere.
Ophiuchus turns his back to me, and the movement almost makes him seem vulnerable. He’s looking at the place beyond Pisces, where his House once was. The jittery Psynergy around us makes the Dark Matter writhe like a nest of sea snakes.
Over time, as I watched my constellation’s light fade from the night sky, I also watched it fade from human memory. The Original Guardians vilified me to the Zodiac, blaming me for my world’s destruction, until the last generations of humans who knew about the Thirteenth House passed on. My peers lived a handful of centuries each, and they must have agreed to erase me from their House’s history, because by the time their bodies became stardust, every trace of a Thirteenth world in the Zodiac was wiped from official record. The only thing they couldn’t change was art. So I snaked through time, unnoticed, hidden in your nursery rhymes and morality tales and childhood lullabies.
And now, I have become the villain you created.
I don’t say anything because there’s nothing to be said. I may trust his version of events, and I may even see that he’s been betrayed, but I still hate him. I will always hate him.
The part I don’t understand, I say, treading away from my emotions, is how Dark Matter swallowed your House. The Guardians punished you, not your planet.
Ochus faces me again, and his expression is so human that there might still be a heart buried beneath all that snow.
The Guardians’ treachery ushered Dark Matter into our galaxy. By subverting the natural order of things and setting themselves against me, they failed to understand the fundamentals of Unity. They didn’t grasp that in ousting me, the Zodiac was attacking itself—and this self-inflicted wound uprooted Unity from our solar system.
He’s still wearing a startlingly human stare as he says, Haven’t you noticed yet? We create our own darkness.
So the Original Guardians destroyed the Thirteenth House, then they hid their shame by erasing Ophiuchus from history. And if Mom’s a Riser, that means I’m descended from that forgotten world, making Cancer the second home I’ve lost.
My Mom is a Riser. I’m not sure why I say it.
I know.
How? I blurt.
Everything is Psynergy. What you bring with you into this dimension is not your physical form, but your soul. The thoughts and memories and feelings that make you—
He stops speaking suddenly and turns toward the Thirteenth House, like he hears something. As the jittery Psynergy tenses around us, I realize Ochus is Seeing a vision. What is it?
I’m not sure, he says in a tone so distant, he already seems to be fading. The Dark Matter covering my constellation seems to be . . . awakening.
A bitter taste stings my tongue, and the rotting smell of decay invades my nose. Ochus turns to me like he tastes it, too, his black eyes wide.
Death is coming for you again, Rhoma Grace. It’s the first time he’s ever said my name, and I strain to hear the rest of his prophecy as he dissolves into icy mist.
And this time, you will not escape its touch.
25
WHEN OCHUS DISAPPEARS, MY HEARTBEAT is making it too hard to think, and I’m breathing like I’ve just run farther than I have my whole life.
My whole life.
Could this be it? Are seventeen and a half years all I’ll know? It’s more time than most of my classmates got.
From the moment I became Guardian, I’ve known that any day could be my last. But since coming to Aquarius, and learning about Black Moon, and reuniting with Hysan, I found myself facing not just a future worth fighting for, but one worth living. Hope came in the form of a tomorrow I desperately want to be around to experience.
But there isn’t time to mourn myself now, and that means I have to wall this knowledge off and forget I ever learned it. And if Ferez is right, and free will is stronger than fate, then who knows? Maybe I’ll even defy my stars.
• • •
I carefully crack open the trapdoor, and seeing the coast is clear I climb onto the sandstone floor and race toward the ninth tower. As the burgundy-and-blue cloth waves into view, someone topples into me.
“Oh—sorry!”
“Rho, it’s me,” says Nishi near my ear. She interlocks her arm with mine and pulls me hurriedly down the hall in the opposite direction.
She cuts across a sunlit drawing room, and neither of us speaks as we weave through valets in velvet top hats and high-ranking dignitaries in aqua coats. “What’d you find?” I ask once we’re out of that room.
She doesn’t answer me until white mist overtakes us, and we’re ensconced in the clouds of a thought tunnel. Then she finally stops moving and faces me.
I take her hand and squeeze it. “Since we’re taking precautions, I’m guessing you found something?”
“I’m sorry about earlier, Rho. I wanted to prove you wrong, so while Blaze met with the Locations Committee, I went through the Black Moon population lists we’ve been passing around for every House.”
I bite my lip to keep my mouth shut, and she sighs, like she knows everything I’m not saying. “Look, I’m not saying it was right, but we did block off a percentage of spots for sponsors. It’s just how things get done. But that’s not the point. I wanted to find the list of interested people from House Pisces so I could show you there was always a plan to bring them in eventually . . . only there wasn’t one.”
Her amber eyes remind me of the terrified look she wore on Equinox. “The Piscene plague appeared only a week ago, and these lists date back to before my involvement with the Party. So how did they know Pisces wouldn’t be around to participate?”
This is the exactly the kind of evidence we can use to expose the Party—and it’s the proof Mathias needs to believe me. “It’s the master, Nishi. He’s behind the Tomorrow Party.”
“But how, Rho?” she asks, her voice splintering.
“The Marad disappeared around the same time the Tomorrow Party emerged,” I say softly. “The master is manipulating the people best suited to lead our war against him. It’s a preemptive attack. We think it’s a distraction from whatever he’s planning for Pisces, so that’s where we need to go.”
Nishi’s expression is so broken that I pull her in for a hug because I can’t stand to see her like this. It hurts even more that I know intimately how it feels to be taken in by something so completely that you give your whole self over to it—and when it’s ripped away from you, you feel like you’re left with less of yourself than you started with.
“I can’t believe I fell for this,” she says when we pull away, her face pallid. “I really thought Blaze was a good person.”
A shadow flickers over her shoulder, and I take Nishi’s hand, spinning her around to my side as a silhouette presses into the fog.
“I am a good person.”
Nishi gasps as blue-haired Blaze steps through the white smoke, his russet eyes afire. How did he find us here?
Fear quickens my pulse and my breathing as Nishi and I back away from him slowly. Is he alone? Are others surrounding us?
“I still want to build a united tomorrow for the Zodiac,” says Blaze calmly. “And if you give me a chance to tell you what we’ve Seen, I think you’ll understand.”
“Not if it means joining sides with the master,” growls Nishi, and I squeeze her hand twice to signal her to be ready.
Blaze’s features harden, but not in an angry way. He looks hurt. The holographic lion on his shirt roars soundlessly from his chest. “You don’t have the full picture yet, so you don’t understand. But we’re saving people. When you and I first spoke a month ago, you told me the only way to change the norm is to break it. Remember that?”
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