Under Different Stars

by Amy A. Bartol

  “Why not?” he asks, like the idea of someone not celebrating her birthday is ludicrous.

  “Because it won’t be for me.”

  “Whom would it be for?” he asks in confusion.

  I wave my hand in a dismissive way. “Manus. You tell him it was my birthday and he’ll throw some outlandish swank—he’ll invite all his enemies and expect me to spy on them for him. He’ll make a big production of giving me some outrageously expensive gift—I won’t know what it is, thereby reducing me to a foolish-looking nim.”

  “Is that what you think? That you look like a foolish nim?” he asks me, his violet eyes searching mine. I feel fragile under their scrutiny.

  “People always laugh.”

  Trey’s eyes soften. “They laugh because they’re delighted by you—you enchant them. You’re cunningly naïve—vulnerable yet fierce. But, the party I had in mind wouldn’t involve Manus—it would be with your friends—”

  “That would be a very small party,” I smile in an attempt at levity.

  “I’d be there.”

  I look away from him, resting my head against his chest again in an attempt to hide the tears that brighten my eyes. He means just as friends, you idiot, my mind whispers. “You’re going to be far too busy for that,” I reply.

  His arm tenses around my shoulders. “What do you mean?”

  “The Alameeda are in Peney. You’ll be leaving.”

  “Nothing has been decided yet,” his heartbeat beneath my ear becomes rapid.

  “True, but you’ll probably be busy with your other swank.”

  “My other swank?” he asks in confusion.

  “Don’t you have a commitment ceremony you have to plan?” I close my eyes briefly. I didn’t intend to say that—I just blurted it out like a well-honed survival instinct. All the paper airplanes of my heart nosedive and crash, coming to rest in a heap in the pit of my stomach.

  Trey sighs, saying, “My commitment to Charisma has always been the expectation for both of us. Our families have pushed for it for as long as I can remember.”

  “Then you should do it,” I murmur, dying inside. “There’s nothing more important than family.”

  “Isn’t there?” he asks softly.

  “I can’t think of a single thing.”

  He lifts a piece of my hair and absently plays with it between his fingers. “What if what they want for me isn’t what I want for myself?”

  My cheeks flush and I become breathless. “What are you saying?

  “I spoke to Charisma. She and I both agreed that we aren’t right for each other.”

  “You’re not?”

  “No.” I feel him shake his head. “I don’t love her the way I should love her.”

  I can’t move. “How should you love her?”

  “I should love her like there is an ache that won’t go away unless I’m with her.”

  I know the ache he’s talking about. It’s the one I carry around for him, but mine doesn’t go away anymore. It’s always there; it gets even worse when I’m with him, like now. “When did you figure that out?”

  “Hmm?’ he murmurs, and I become fully alert. He’s stalling.

  “Trey, when did you call off your engagement to Charisma?”

  “I—” he pauses. He looks like he’s about to bluff before he exhales deeply. “The night the squelch tracker attacked us. I spoke to her that night after I spoke to you and I ended it. Deep down, I knew I was going to end it before I kissed you in the fountain.”

  “How did you know?”

  His soft groan rumbles his chest. “This would be so much easier if I could lie to you.”

  “Trey?” My eyebrows knit together in confusion.

  “I knew because I can’t stop picturing a very different ceremony…one performed in a gazebo adorned with wildflowers…with a bride in a white gown…who commits to the most enticing of promises…”

  Something that feels disgustingly like hope begins to paste small bits of my paper heart back together. “So…you’re not going to have a commitment ceremony?”

  “No.”

  “Because you love me?”

  “I told you before, I’m not allowed to love you,” he says with conviction. “I’m not supposed to have any feelings for you. Your guardian will never allow it.”

  “You’re right. It doesn’t matter. I’m not allowed to love you either. The Brotherhood will kill you,” I state with equal conviction.

  His warm hand cups my cheek, forcing me to meet his eyes. “I told you before, I’m not afraid of what the Brotherhood would try to do to me. It’s you I’m worried about. You’re Manus’ ward. You’re at his mercy until you’re of age. He has the power to make your life excruciating with very little effort.”

  “Manus? You’re worried about Manus?” I ask, surprised.

  “Don’t underestimate him, Kricket. You’re a Coriness, not to mention a priestess, and Manus’s favorite toy. I’m minor royalty, a Dreykar, it’s hardly a favorable match for you,” he admits. “There’s nothing for Manus to gain in it.”

  “He has a lot to lose, though, if I were to stop cooperating,” I reply.

  “You can’t afford to alienate Manus. He has the power to hurt you. I’m here at his request…that can change if he knew how I feel about you.” Trey reaches out and touches my cheek, like he can’t help himself. “If he were to decide that you should be handed over to the Alameeda, no diplomacy on our part would prevent it. I’d have to make you disappear—somehow convince Skye to intervene.”

  “What does Manus want from me? I feed him every bit of information he asks for.” Could I have missed something with Manus? I wonder. Maybe. I’ve been so distracted lately by Trey that I haven’t been as diligent about my surroundings as I should be. That fact alarms me.

  “I’ve been watching him, Kricket. I don’t like the way he looks at you lately.”

  “How does he look at me?”

  “Like you’re his inamorata,” Trey says honestly, gauging my reaction.

  “His lover? You have to be wrong!”

  “I’m not wrong.”

  A shiver of fear erases every other emotion inside of me. It’s like my foster father, Dan, all over again. “What can I do to make him not want me, Trey?” I whisper.

  “Nothing. There’s nothing you can do.”

  “We have to make the stars align for us now—find a way for us not to get burned for being together.”

  Something about what I said triggers a reaction in Trey. Maybe it’s the panic in my eyes, or maybe it’s that I said that I want us to be together. He leans forward and cups my cheek. “I’m working every angle I can think of to align those stars for you, Kricket. I promise,” he admits. “I’ll find a way out of this for you.”

  “What if I were to change my status?” I ask.

  His eyes search mine. “I’m sorry? Your status?”

  “Kyon’s gone now—he won’t be able to get to you—we could keep it from him—from the Brotherhood.”

  “Keep what from them?”

  “What if I were to change my status from virgin to...other? Maybe Manus wouldn’t want me then. What if you became my inamorata?”

  Pulling his hand back from my face, Trey tenses. “Inamorata is feminine. I would be your inamorato, your male lover.”

  I bite my lip, blushing, before I continue my argument, “It wouldn’t have to be a permanent arrangement for you...I would just need someone to...umm...be with me so that Manus gets the idea that I’m not his plaything.”

  “And you’d rather be my plaything than his?” he asks, his eyes growing dark and I can’t really tell if it’s with anger or desire.

  I nod, but I’m beginning to see by his frown that maybe he doesn’t like my plan. “It’s my body and my life. I’d rather my first time be with someone I care about than someone I don’t.”

  “This shouldn’t be a forced choice, Kricket! I don’t want you to be with me because I’m the lesser evil!”

  “You
’re my first choice, Trey. My only choice,” I state quietly. “There’s no one else I’d want but you.”

  “Your plan will never work, Kricket.”

  “Why not?”

  “There are so many reasons that I don’t know where to begin.”

  “You don’t want to be with me?” I ask in a small voice. The scraps of my paper heart blow away in my chest, leaving a baron, gaping hole.

  “You could never be a temporary situation for me, Kricket. I know that once I have you, I’ll never be able to let you go.” He looks concerned as he scans my face. “I want you as my consort…until death do us part, and then forever after that,” he quotes what I said on the transport plane to Comantre.

  His words do something to me. A flood of warmth begins in my belly and spreads throughout my body. “So you do want me?” I ask. I shift on the sofa, moving to straddle his legs and sit on his lap so that we’re face to face. “I’m right here.”

  Trey stares at me like he’s never seen me before. Reaching up, he tucks my loose hair behind my ear. His hand lingers there before his fingers entwine in my hair, gripping the back of my head. He leans forward, while his hand in my hair gently pulls me closer to him. My heart has found its way back to my chest and now pounds in it like it had never been torn apart.

  Trey covers my lips with his firm, enticing ones. I feel his other hand on my back; he pulls me to his chest. I melt against him. My arms slowly encircle the back of his neck while my mouth opens to taste him against my tongue. The most delicious pleasure I have ever felt winds it’s way through my veins. I want this; I want him so much that I ache from it.

  My hands cup his cheeks. He hasn’t shaved since this morning; my fingers revel in the sandpaper-like feel of new growth against my skin. He groans as his tongue strokes mine; the sound he makes sends a hunger through me that I’ve never experienced before. I want to find a way to make him groan like that again.

  “Kricket,” he whispers against my lips, “I’m not about to deflower you as a means of keeping you away from Manus. It would never work anyway. The minute he finds out about us is the exact moment that he gets rid of me and you become well and truly his. The fact that you’re untouched is the only thing keeping him from you.”

  “Oh,” I say as I shift on his lap to meet his eyes. “But if I were your consort…then he couldn’t separate us, and it would be okay if I did this?” I lean forward and nuzzle his neck just below his earlobe.

  “Yes,” Trey breathes as his hands rest on my hips. “If you were my consort.”

  “And…this would be okay, too?” I whisper, nibbling on his earlobe and feeling his fingers tighten on my sides when my teeth gently graze his skin.

  “That would be required,” Trey replies in a strained voice.

  “And this?” I touch my lips to his as the flushed heat of intense desire builds between us.

  “At least a hundred times a rotation,” he replies against my lips.

  “At least a hundred a day?” I ask with a growing smile.

  “You’re right…at least a thousand,” he smiles, too, and then it fades. “But you’d need Manus’ consent to commit to me. He’ll never give it to us.”

  “You don’t know that. We just have to find something he wants more than me.”

  “There’s nothing he wants more than you.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I know it because he has the same look as must be on my face every time you enter the room.”

  Trey’s lips turn down as his expression becomes grim. I lower my lips to his, gliding over them and feeling them soften their hard line. Tugging his bottom lip between mine, I nibble on it. He kisses me hard, like he can’t get enough of me. It goes on like that until I’m breathless with the need to consume him and be consumed by him.

  “I wish I knew a way for us to always be together, Trey,” I whisper to him in his ear. “I would do it, no matter the cost.”

  “I’ll find one,” Trey promises. His voice is rough as he grips me possessively.

  Suddenly, something deep down inside of me feels very wrong. Pressure builds from within my head, like it’s an overblown balloon ready to burst. “Uhh,” I exhale a deep breath as searing heat, like sparks of molten dust from a white-hot sun pass over my skin. Fear and pain erupt in the core of me. I pull back from Trey to look in his eyes. As I gasp to take a breath, I whisper, “Trey...help me!” The world whirls around; something rips me away from Trey and thrusts me forward out of my body. I see myself from above as my body slackens in Trey’s arms. I feel cold in a way that I’ve never felt before.

  “KRICKET!” Trey shouts, shaking my body that I have left behind, as the walls of the lodge crumble around us in flakes of ashy embers.

  In seconds, I flash forward into the starry night. The sky bleeds above me like tears of black and the pinpoints of light streak horizontally with the speed of eternity. Instantly, I’m in stasis in front of the gates of the palace; the blue beams of the security fences illuminate the dark sky.

  A military-style skiff is pulling up to the security gates, attempting to exit the palace. Inside, Drex and Fenton are seated in front, while I can just make out Jax, Wayra, and Kyon in the back. An instant later, I move from beyond the palace gate to the side of the skiff, standing by the open window as it pulls next to the security checkpoint.

  The palace security detail moves forward to speak with Fenton through the window of the skiff. The guard has his weapon strapped to him, but lowered away from the interior of the vehicle.

  “Prisoner transport to Skye—authorization Indie, Mega, Preston, one, seven, two…” Fenton trails off as the guard grasps his neck, pulling out a silver dart from his skin with a groan of agony.

  To my horror, the guard begins to swell up, his hands and face inflating to grotesque proportions, before his eyes pop out of his head and his body explodes all over the side of the skiff. A vapor trail of blood hangs in the air where the guard had stood. Fear, like a paralyzing drug, roots me in place.

  From the security house, a squelch tracker streaks to the vehicle, emitting a humming scream, while its green laser flails around it. Its long, silvery, razor-sharp point passes right through me, like I’m made of air, as it locates its target ahead.

  “SQUELCH TRACKER,” Fenton shouts before the weapon penetrates his door, entering the cab and stabbing his side. Once it enters his body the lasers tear and cut Fenton to pieces in seconds, leaving no more than a pile of flesh on the front seat.

  “AMBUSH,” Jax shouts, pulling his machine gun up and pointing it out the window. “REVERSE, REVERSE, REVERSE—” he orders Drex, as metallic, mechanized spiders tumble from the security house, scrambling toward the vehicle.

  A second later, I’m inside the vehicle with them, sitting across from Jax in the skiff while it’s wildly careening over the manicured grass of the palace’s geometric gardens. Hearing a scurrying sound of metal tapping against metal, two mechanized spiders have forced their way through the hood of the skiff, disabling the engine. Our vehicle immediately falls to the ground, with a bouncing, jarring crash. Sparks fall on us from the roof before the metal groans as it’s pulled back like the lid of a tin can.

  Wayra points his weapon at the sky, dispersing several bursts of electricity from it. The energy flashes out around a spider, frying its circuitry and rendering it useless. “AHHHH, I HATE THOSE CHROME-PLATED CHIGGERS!” Wayra shouts. “DON’T EVEN THINK OF MOVING YOU BLOND KNOB KNOCKER, OR I’LL PUSH A SANCTUM AMP DOWN YOUR THROAT,” he screams at Kyon, who’s struggling to try to remove his neck restraint.

  The ominous sound of rapid gunfire splinters the air around our skiff. Glass shatters and sprays the interior of the vehicle, cutting through me as if I don’t exist. “I’M HIT!” Jax screams, the spray of his blood peppering the seat beside him. Blood is spilling unchecked from the gaping hole in Jax’s chest, as his eyes close in agony and he writhes in pain.

  Light shines down on us; the powerful beam blinds me as the e
erily quiet sound of an E-One helicopter hovers above us. Shielding my eyes from the light, I can just make out the growing smile on Kyon’s face as he’s plucked off his seat like iron to a powerful magnet and is gone from the skiff.

  The ping of metal hitting metal draws my eyes to the floorboard.

  “SANCTUM AMP!” Wayra shouts. He moves to cover it with his body to save Drex and Jax. An instant later, the loudest BOOM I’ve ever heard in my life blows out of the grenade. Shrapnel cuts through Wayra as a fireball consumes the vehicle.

  The blast forces me from the skiff, launching me through the starry night.

  “NOOOOO!” I scream, but it only comes out in a cracked whisper.

  “Kricket!” Trey breathes, holding me tight to his chest while he rocks me back and forth with his body.

  My arms feel heavy and limp as I stare at the fire in front of me. “Burning...” I whisper weakly, still feeling the eerie coldness within me.

  “Burning? Kitten, you’re freezing—your skin is like ice,” Trey says frantically, rubbing my arms.

  “Ambush, Trey,” I say in a raspy voice, breathing heavily as I try to force more of the words from me. Trey’s hands still on me and his eyes meet mine.

  “What?” he asks in a tense voice.

  “Ambush—retreat…Jax is dead…Wayra—sanctum amp, chiggers, squelch—reverse…Kyon gone—” I say in a frantic stream of words, my voice oscillating with a need to scream when I can hardly speak.

  “Did you see something?” Trey asks, the pressure of his hands on my upper arms causes pain.

  “Palace gates—AMBUSH—PALACE GATES!” I shout at him, my eyes opening wide as I try to make him understand me.

  “There’s an ambush at the palace gates?” Trey asks in a military tone, his jaw tensing as his eyes search my face.

  “YES! THEY’RE ALL DEAD!” I sob, feeling my body shaking with cold and trauma. Seeing Trey check the pockets of his pants he exhales with a grim expression.

  “HOLLIS! GIBON!” Trey roars, while letting go of me gently and getting up from his knees on the floor in front of the fireplace.

  “SIR!” Hollis responds, running into the drawing room.