Ophiuchus closes his eyes and concentrates, like he’s trying to pick up his Stone’s scent. Outside, the smaller Leonine sun is already out of sight, and Helios has mostly set, so the skyline is tinged with pinks and purples. The blue sea beneath us is dark and still, and the horizon is flat on every side.
Aquarius could return at any moment. The Mothership is already crawling with Party members making preparations. And Hysan is going to land in the hangar in under fifteen minutes.
Success is sounding less and less probable by the second.
“Where is it?” I demand impatiently, glancing at my wristband in anticipation of the five-minute warning. “We have to get going!”
Ophiuchus’s eyes open, and he looks deliberately behind me like he’s spotted the Talisman. I turn to follow his gaze, and I see it, too.
Nestled in Aquarius’s hand.
31
“RHO, PLEASE GO TO THE hangar deck and board our ship with Blaze,” says the master in a parental tone. “Ophiuchus and I will join you soon.”
How will Hysan land if the Tomorrow Party ships are already here?
A pair of Marad soldiers marches into the hall to escort me, but Ophiuchus says, “She’s part of this now.”
He stares down the masked Risers—his people—and they stop moving. They look from one Original Guardian to the other, and then they leave the room without me, apparently obeying their true master.
Aquarius looks impressed, and I’m reminded of the way he and Ophiuchus used to take pride in each other’s victories. “It appears you are ready to return to your world.”
Now Ophiuchus directs his stony stare at him. “I have been waiting in the room where you left me for a week, and you have yet to come see me.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Will you speak to me now, or did you only bring me back to life to murder me again?”
Aquarius’s expression is pleasant, but a muscle quivers in his cheek. “We have a long trip to your House—why don’t we speak on the way?”
But Ophiuchus moves toward him, and as I watch his powerful strides I wonder how Aquarius intends to see his plans through since the Thirteenth Guardian physically outmatches any mortal I’ve ever met.
“After you and the other Guardians assassinated me, my Talisman alone wasn’t enough to retain my essence. Especially not when most of my people were gone and the whole Zodiac had forgotten me. I knew someone powerful had to be anchoring my soul.”
He stops when he’s face-to-face with Aquarius. “The only reason I didn’t completely lose myself was the hope that you couldn’t let me go. But it was your pragmatism, not your heart, that held on to me.”
“All this time and you still try to attach sentimentality to my motives,” says Aquarius in a pitying tone. “I may have lived among humans for millennia, but I am not one of them. If I were, I would be unable to push forward with the plan you thwarted three millennia ago.”
“That’s because you have never given people a chance. You never let anyone in. It’s why you have followers but no friends: You can’t trust anyone who isn’t you. Not even your soul mate.”
The term seems to anger Aquarius because his velvety voice unsheathes a sharp edge. “I know you want to think you operate from a place of moral supremacy, but let’s not forget that you were always guaranteed immortality. You knew the rest of us would perish and you alone would live on, and you were fine with that. It’s easy to be grandiose when you have nothing to risk.”
My wristband buzzes with Hysan’s five-minute warning, but before I can tell Ophiuchus, his booming voice cuts through the air.
“It took me just as long as the rest of you to uncover the secrets of my Talisman!” His words make the crystal walls around us quiver. “When I learned of this power and my ultimate purpose, I immediately set to work trying to harness it to share with others. Had you ever known me to think only of myself?”
Aquarius shakes his head resignedly, like he doesn’t want to argue. “Why do you insist on the past so much when it’s just dead time? Even we do not possess the power to change it.”
“If the past poses no threat, why do you refuse to look back?” asks the Thirteenth Guardian, still staring at him intensely.
“Because the present is all that matters. I don’t concern myself with anything beyond my control—it’s just a distraction.”
“If that were true, moments wouldn’t leave imprints. Our minds wouldn’t make memories.”
“Careful, you’re starting to sound like an old man,” Aquarius cautions him. “Memories are all mortals have left in the end, so they have to assign them importance. Otherwise, they’d have to face the futility of their lives and how truly meaningless they are.”
“Yet memories were all I had for millennia,” says Ophiuchus softly. “And I found them to be loopholes in the construct of time. We can’t change the past, but we can relive it. Memories store the answers to the riddles of the present. It’s just as the wisest of us, Capricorn, always said.”
“House Capricorn’s obsession with the past will cost them the future,” says Aquarius disdainfully. “It’s how I’ve kept Sage Ferez distracted for months—I made him think I stole a Snow Globe from one of his precious Membrexes so he’d be so focused on uncovering what it was that he’d disregard the present.”
I gasp.
He tricked Ferez.
“Would the mere memory of me have sufficed for you?” Aquarius asks Ophiuchus, and for the first time the master sounds as breakable as the rest of us. “When we passed on and you remained with the humans, would remembering me have been enough?”
Ophiuchus moves closer, leaving too little space between them, and though he’s physically superior, I’m scared for him. No one in the Zodiac has managed to outwit Aquarius in the history of humanity; I wouldn’t get that close to him if I were the Thirteenth Guardian.
Yet the latter seems willing to accept any destiny Aquarius wants to deal him. The original Ophiuchus would probably be appalled by the new him. How far I—
How far he’s fallen.
“I would never have abandoned you,” the Thirteenth Guardian murmurs.
Aquarius raises his hand, and I’m certain he’s about to strike—but then the room blackens, and I realize what’s happening. He’s cueing a memory.
When the darkness lifts, we’re in a hall with sandstone walls that seems familiar . . . the Aquarian royal palace. A holographic solar system orbits us, and it’s so detailed that it must be projected by a Talisman.
I stare at the brightest blue light that was the crown jewel of the Zodiac, and when I pull my gaze away from home, I notice there’s something different about the constellations. There’s a large gap between Houses Scorpio and Sagittarius . . . and as I look closer, I see the Dark Matter. It’s not near Pisces the way it is now.
Does that mean the Thirteenth House wasn’t really number thirteen? Was it actually located between the Eighth and Ninth Houses, like this Ephemeris shows?
Beneath the star map is a round table, where fourteen people are gathered. Two of them are identical, so they must be the Geminin Twins. Everyone here looks human, which means this is after the Original Guardians died out.
I scan the faces until I spot an Aquarian with long platinum hair and pink eyes.
“Wandering Star,” says the Guardian dressed in red, “we must have your tie-breaking vote. Prophet Draema has foreseen a threat to our galactic sun, and she believes we must create a commission of Zodai from across our worlds to investigate the Dead Zone between Scorpio and Sagittarius and see what we can learn. She thinks they might be connected.”
“What’s the argument against?” asks Aquarius—and with a jolt, I realize he’s this era’s Wandering Star.
“The Stridents who’ve studied that area have discovered a destructive substance they’ve been calling Dark Matter, and i
t seems to have latched on to a planet and consumed it,” says the Ariean General. “Supreme Guardian Forsythe has foreseen that our team of Zodai will accidentally trigger the Dark Matter’s spread and cause the sun’s darkening that we’re trying to avoid. So, the question is—would investigating it save us or damn us?”
Aquarius nods, his eyebrows pulling together like he’s deep in thought. There’s no doubt in my mind that he sent his House’s Guardian that vision of doom. After a long moment of consideration he says, “I have always believed free will sets fate in motion, so I must vote against.”
“Then the matter is settled.”
We fast-forward in time, and now the same group is meeting in a different location, and once more the spectral star map hangs over them. I gasp as I take in the deep blue lapis lazuli walls around me—they look like water that’s fossilized into stone—and I know where we are.
Cancer.
There’s no roof over our heads, just the infinite blue sky I grew up staring at, and I could cry from happiness to be seeing it again.
“This is the first year that the Helios’s Halo effect has stopped happening,” says a gray-clad woman with delicate features. “It’s a sign of the prophecy I’ve Seen. We must investigate,” insists Prophet Draema.
A small voice a couple seats over says, “I’ve Seen something, too.”
Everyone looks at the Guardian in olive green—the youngest of them by far—and I get the impression she doesn’t speak often. Her brown skin pales as all eyes focus on her. “I think the Dark Matter is connected to a vision I had—”
“Speak up, honey, we’re not all twenty,” says an old man in black. Nice to know Scorps have always been charmers.
The Taurian looks like she’s not going to finish her sentence, but then the Cancrian Guardian—a stunningly beautiful woman who looks familiar—leans into the table and says to the Scorp Chieftain, “If you’re going deaf, maybe you should build yourself a better hearing aid.”
Then she looks down the table to the Taurian and says, “Take your time, and speak at any volume you’d like, Vecily.”
Vecily Matador.
I ogle at the short-haired, almond-eyed Taurian, and then I swing my gaze to the Cancrian beauty I should have instantly recognized. Brianella Amarise—the Guardian who led our House into the Trinary Axis.
She’s just as breathtaking as history says—her long blue-black curls cascade down to her waist, and her dark skin holds hints of light, making me think of the black opal Talisman. But most striking of all are her crystal blue eyes, which are spiderwebbed with faint lines, like fractured crystals.
I look one seat over to the Leonine man beside Brianella—Blazon Logax. He has a square jaw and facial hair, and his arms are covered in tattoos. He looks more like a musician than a politician.
“I’ve Seen that a Guardian from the past has betrayed us all, and we won’t escape darkness until their treachery is brought to light.” Vecily says it all in one long whoosh, and from her insecure delivery it’s clear that no one at the table takes her vision seriously.
Except Aquarius. He’s staring at her through murderous pink eyes.
“Is there anything else before we close this session?” asks the Ariean General, dismissing Vecily completely.
I look to see if Brianella will defend her again, but she’s gazing adoringly at Blazon, who’s edged his chair closer to hers.
“I’d like to introduce a motion,” says Aquarius, and I notice he’s watching the Cancrian and Leonine Guardians, too.
Everyone looks to the Ariean General questioningly, and I realize it’s probably taboo for the Wandering Star to propose something. When he nods, Aquarius says, “I’ve come across texts saying the first Aquarian Guardian believed we should each live on our own House, among our own people, so we could focus our efforts on designing our worlds and evolving to suit our environments. But it’s now been two millennia and our worlds are developed, each House with its own sense of identity—so isn’t it time we came together and lifted the ban on inter-House marriage?”
And there it is.
The seed for the Trinary Axis.
Fire ignites in Blazon and Brianella’s eyes, and the flames look like they come from the Everblaze—the kind of blaze that can’t be stomped out. With a few words Aquarius got the entire universe to look down instead of up.
Arguing breaks out immediately.
It’s obvious he’s not the first to consider this measure, but he is the first to say it out loud in this official forum. Everyone is shouting over each other, and there’s no hope of shutting this down. And as the whole meeting devolves into chaos, Aquarius quietly slips out the diamond-bright Talisman under the table and closes his eyes.
Suddenly, every Guardian keels forward, squeezing their heads like they’re hearing the screeching noise of Psynergy. A vein is popping in Aquarius’s forehead, and it looks like whatever he’s doing is costing him every ounce of life force, and as I look around I notice a shifting in the stars.
The holographic map is shaking, like the very galaxy is becoming unstable, and it seems like what happened at the Piscene Cathedral is about to take place, as lighting streaks across the galaxy. Only instead of uncovering the Ophiuchan constellation, the Dark Matter begins to drift away until it’s at the edge of our solar system, just beyond Pisces.
When it’s over, everyone slumps forward, unconscious. But Aquarius rises. He eagerly looks around the room, like he’s expecting to see someone, and then he stares up at the stars—and cries out in horror.
He rushes to the place where the Dark Matter has strayed, at the very edge of our universe. “I’m so sorry,” he whispers to the stars, tears rolling down his cheeks. “I thought I could bring you back to have a life together . . . but I have to wait for the portal. There’s no other way.”
I watch Aquarius’s grieving face until the emotion recedes from his eyes, and I realize he probably designed this particular body for this life cycle because he thought he’d be reunited with Ophiuchus.
He wanted to wear his original eyes.
Watching him I understand what’s happening: His window for love has just passed. The next time he sees Ophiuchus will be to kill him so he can open the portal. I see the emotions sliding down until they’re so deep within him that he can only access his mind, not his heart.
I know the look.
It’s the face of letting go.
32
WHEN THE MEMORY IS OVER, it takes me a moment to readjust to the Mothership’s crystal-walled reading room.
By now the sky has cooled to a dusky violet, and silver stars are starting to peek out overhead. Panic snakes through my insides as I realize too much time has passed. Hysan must have taken off by now.
I turn to Ophiuchus in alarm—and I gasp.
The Thirteenth Guardian is curled into himself on the floor, looking ancient and near death, like his lifeforce was just sucked out of him.
No, not sucked.
Psyphoned.
Aquarius didn’t pull on the Unity Talisman’s Psynergy, or even his own, to play us these memories. He distracted us with the past so he could steal Ophiuchus’s power in the present.
Life is a dance of illusions, he said to me at the Cathedral. With the right distraction, you can make a person believe anything. It’s always the same trick, and we’re always falling for it.
I glower at Aquarius, only he’s also looking down at Ophiuchus, and something in his face has shifted. Seeing the Thirteenth Guardian reduced to this half-dead state, and knowing he’s the one who’s caused his condition . . . He’s not as indifferent as he’d like to think.
I decide to drop all the acts I’ve been balancing and just go back to what I know best—honesty.
“Please don’t do this to him,” I say softly. “Hasn’t he been through enough?”
“I told myself I
wouldn’t go through with this plan if humanity proved itself worthy,” says Aquarius, still staring at Ophiuchus while speaking to me. “If you evolved, if you were a species worth saving . . . But I’ve watched you since the beginning, and you’re not.
“Just like your predecessors, you can’t come together for the greater good. Even in your ancestors’ world, humans have always needed tragedy and violence to learn their lessons. Your species doesn’t do subtle.”
“Please,” I beg, moving closer to him. “I know you want to see what’s beyond that portal, but how much more do you need? You’ve been a star in the sky. You’ve been immortal for millennia. Please don’t take more from us. We can be better, I know we can.”
He finally looks at me, and I notice the star-kissed glow of his skin has dampened. He looks less like Aquarius and more like Crompton. “You still don’t understand,” he says sadly. “I’m not doing this for myself anymore. . . . I’m doing it for you.”
His eyes beam at me, cutting a pink path through the darkening air. “This whole time you’ve managed to see how special everyone around you is, but the only person you’ve never seen is yourself. Do you know how many events had to play out just so for you to be here, before me, burning brightly despite everything?”
“You’re right,” I say, once I manage to find my voice again. “I don’t understand.”
He walks up to the crystal wall and stares out at the purpling horizon. “I found you the first time you Saw Dark Matter. I felt it. At the time you didn’t know you were Seeing it, but I’ve been using much of my Psynergy to veil the Thirteenth House from the Psy, so when you Saw through it . . . I couldn’t believe a human was capable of that.”
He turns to me with a warm smile, and he seems like a proud parent. “When I looked into you, I learned that you were different. You didn’t show your work at the Academy when you made your predictions. Your mediocre instructors faulted you for this, but they were the ones in the wrong.”
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