Pol nods once, ashen. He looks like he’s had the wind knocked from his lungs.
Riyan leaves the deck, disappearing into one of the cabins in the rear of the ship. Left alone with Pol, I sink onto the sofa and feel his eyes on me. A long moment of silence passes between us. If Clio were here, she’d try to lighten the mood by noting how the blue lighting inside the Valentina makes Pol’s horns look sexy, or something stupid like that. Stars, I miss her so much I can hardly breathe. Everything in me is out of balance without her by my side. I’m careening out of control, faster and faster, all thruster and no brakes.
“You think he’s right,” Pol says at last.
“Maybe.”
“Maybe,” he echoes in a hollow voice. “Well, then maybe you two should turn around and run to Volkov, like the tensor wants. Hand yourself over if you think the Union is so much better.”
“That’s not fair. You know that’s not what he’s saying.” I shoot him a cold look. “Pol, who are these people we’re meeting? What do they want?”
“Peace. Justice. The rightful heir on her rightful throne.”
“And what do you want?”
He throws up his hands, as if that should be obvious. “I want to see you where you belong. An empress restored to her place, the galaxy set right again.”
An empress. Not a friend. Not me, Stacia.
He wants Anya.
Maybe that’s all he ever wanted. Maybe all this time, whenever he looked at me, he saw her—this girl I’m supposed to be, this role he thinks I can pull on like a mask.
“I trust them,” he says. “I hope you will too.”
Trust.
Trust is a luxury I’ve always taken for granted—trusting my parents and Pol, trusting I’d wake up each morning and find my loved ones near and safe, trusting that the universe could be a fundamentally fair place. Trusting that my life wouldn’t implode in the course of a single hour.
Trust yourself, Pol urged me, just before we crashed onto Sapphine. Just before my intincts led us into Riyan’s trap. So much for that advice.
But there’s still Clio. I can trust her, even when I can’t trust myself. Especially then.
Whatever it takes to reach her, I’ll do it. With or without Pol, with or without his Loyalists, I’ll do it. Whoever I have to use or betray or leave behind, whatever the universe demands of me, I’ll do it. I’ll go with Pol until his road deviates from mine, and then I’ll go alone.
Worlds may burn and stars may fall, but I will never give up on her. No matter how far away she is, or how impossible to reach, as long as she is waiting at the end of it, my path is clear.
An hour later, we sail into a cloud of asteroids, guided by the data stick Pol inserted into the Valentina’s control board. As far as I can tell, Riyan still doesn’t know it’s there.
I’m standing at the control board with Pol, having freshened up and washed my face. A search of the clipper’s rear cabins uncovered several closets stocked with clothes, and I’m now dressed like a tensor, in a complicated wrap of gray tunic and black leggings. The cloth itches. I think it might be actual wool, like, from an animal, instead of the synthetic stuff I’ve always worn. Pol is dressed similarly, his tunic black and his pants looser than mine, but with his red scarf hanging around his neck.
Riyan appears beside me with no warning, and I nearly jump out of my skin. He moves like a ghost, gliding around in his own little zero gravity bubble.
“You have got to give a warning,” I say, my skin still crawling.
“Sorry.” He doesn’t appear sorry. He still seems angry and is very pointedly not looking at Pol.
The deck sizzles with tension. Pol stares straight ahead, as if the tensor isn’t there at all. I make sure I’m squarely between them. I can’t risk another fight, one that might push Riyan over the edge and cause him to break his own ship in half. The memory of the Laika’s crumpled gravity generator is still fresh in my mind.
Riyan’s staff is across the deck, leaning on the wall. He opens his hand toward it, finger curling, and the air over his palm splinters. The staff scrapes across the floor and then lifts, falling into his grasp.
“It’s called a stress field,” Riyan says, catching me staring.
“How does it work?”
He thinks a moment, then says, “Space-time is like a fabric, right? When I tessellate, I’m putting pressure on the threads in that fabric, so things around them are naturally pulled in—or repelled away. Gravity is just a distortion of space-time, after all. A tensor can provide that distortion in the form of a stress field. Whatever some might think”—he slides a narrow look at Pol—“it’s not magic or witchcraft.”
“It’s incredible,” I breathe.
Pol looks up, his jaw hard. “We’re almost there. So how about we stop with the science lessons and focus on finding the base?”
Riyan’s hand tightens around his staff. “I hope you’re not wrong about these people, aeyla.”
Pol savagely bites a ration bar and says nothing.
I stare at the navigation unit, frowning. “Granitas System. What’s that? It’s not a part of the Belt.”
“It’s a dead system,” says Riyan hollowly. “No habitable planets. A dwarf star that can’t support life. Nothing but rocks out here.”
“And plenty of them,” says Pol.
The asteroids seem to come out of nowhere: irregular, unwieldy lumps that look small until they’re right on us, and then seem ten times the size of the clipper. One hit and we’d be obliterated.
The eerie emptiness of this system seeps through the ship’s walls; it feels unreal, like we’ve passed into some nightmare. I’ve never been in a place that felt so utterly devoid of life. The asteroids seem to go on forever, and I wonder how long they’ve been here, drifting in the vacuum of space on their strange, ancient journey. My skin prickles, as if the asteroids have hidden eyes and are watching us, waking from their billion-year sleep.
“Look at that,” murmurs Pol. He points at an approaching rock, which at first looks no different from the others. But then I realize how slowly it’s approaching, and how large it already is.
“It’s massive,” says Riyan.
So that’s our destination. I know at once it must be. The ship isn’t changing course, and we’ve passed the window to avoid collision. Either that rock has a secret, or we’re going to smash full into it.
I notice Pol gripping the edges of his seat. So maybe he’s not as confident in this plan as he makes out.
“Could you shift that?” I ask Riyan.
He shakes his head. “Far too big. With ten other tensors, maybe. Not alone.”
The rock grows bigger and bigger. Soon it fills the whole width of the diamantglass window. Its shadow closes over us, the monster’s breath before it bites. I lean back in my seat, licking sweat from my upper lip.
“There’s a door,” Riyan says.
Pol and I lean forward, peering ahead.
“There!” I shout. “Lower left, you see?”
Pol nods. “Here we go.”
My stomach rises as the clipper angles for the rectangular hole carved into the underside of the asteroid. In moments, we’re sliding through rough-cut walls into total darkness. Only the clipper’s lights are visible, reflecting off the stone walls. But ahead—inky blackness.
I feel a slight bump and realize the ship has set itself down. For a moment, we sit in silence, listening to the hum of the engines.
We’re here.
I can’t see anything except a few patches of rock, lit by the clipper. No sign of people, no sign this hole in this asteroid is anything other than just that—a hole in an asteroid. I picture someone collapsing the tunnel behind us, shutting us inside the belly of this rock forever, in darkness and stone with no way out—
“That’s it, I’m going to investigate,” announces Pol. “Wait here till I know it’s safe.”
I jump up to follow him down the stairs. “As if!”
Riyan is on my h
eels, clipping on his cloak and picking up his staff.
Pol hurries down the steps to the main hatch and the exit ramp, which slowly lowers to the ground. It hits the rock floor with a thunk, and Pol slides down into the darkness.
“Gravity!” he says. “Either this rock’s big enough to generate its own, or—”
He cuts short as lights blast on from every direction.
Blinded, I throw up a hand and stumble backward into Riyan. For a few seconds, I can’t see anything. My eyes fill with spots of white. But I can hear well enough—hums as machines power up, the pounding of boots on stone, and voices.
“Freeze! Hands out! Drop the staff!”
I blink furiously, trying to see what’s going on. Slowly my surroundings blur into focus. The large gray blobs in the distance become ships of various classes and sizes. The nearer, moving blobs become people. They wear white uniforms, emblazoned with a red bird on the breast. I recognize it, vaguely, as the symbol of the old Empire. More and more of them appear, surrounding the ship with guns ready.
They close in on us, and before I know it, they grab me and press my face into the ground while my hands are pinned against my back. The barrel of a gun is inches from my face.
“Get off her!” Pol shouts. “She’s—”
He goes quiet with a grunt. I can hear a boot kicking him in the stomach. Meanwhile, Riyan, standing with his feet spread, plants his staff and tessellates the air around him. The soldiers trying to grab him are lifted up, where they hover like they’re in zero g. One by one, their guns hit the ground, crumpled balls of useless metal.
“It’s a blazing gravity witch!” someone screams. “Shoot him!”
“No!” I yell. “Riyan, stand down! Please!”
He glances at me, then relaxes. The men around him drop hard to the floor.
“Enough!” A commanding voice rips through the room, and at once the soldiers go to attention. I push up onto my knees, freed as the soldier holding me snaps a fist-to-chest salute. Beside me, Pol is also kneeling, one hand clutching his rib cage.
“You all right?” I whisper.
He nods, but I can hear him struggling for breath.
The woman comes to a halt several paces away, regarding us.
She holds a very small gun, almost like a toy. Her uniform is dazzlingly white, with a half cape and severe shoulders. Her short, spiked hair is as pale as her clothes, though her face is only middle-aged. She’s beautiful, in a menacing sort of way, like a glinting shard of ice. Her black eyes study each of us in turn.
“Identify yourselves,” she says softly.
Pol rises stiffly to his feet. “I’m Appollo Androsthenes, son of Spiros Androsthenes, who was formerly of the Imperial Interstellar Navy. And this is Anya Petrovna Leonova, heir to the Crescent Throne, the Firebird Princess, the last of her name and Guardian of the Jewels.”
“Allegedly,” I add, with a sideways glance at Pol. Blazing stars, what a mouthful of absurdity.
“We’ve come from Afka on Amethyne,” Pol adds. “Nearly two weeks ago a traitor—”
“I know about the situation at Afka,” the woman interrupts. “We received word of it six days ago, and we expected you in half that time. And on a different ship. And … with different hair.”
I glance at the purple locks hanging over my shoulders.
The woman asks, “Why should I believe you are who you say you are?”
“I know the codes.” Pol reels off a string of numbers, which the woman listens to closely. Even before he finishes, the woman’s gaze shifts, tightening on me like a vise.
“So it’s true. You are Princess Anya.” She considers me for a long, torturous moment. I’ve never felt so exposed in my life as I am underneath those eyes of hers. They suck at me like the vacuum of space.
But then, finally, she releases me. I let out a breath, feeling like I’ve just passed a test where the consequence of failure was death. Her demeanor shifts; she snaps a salute, then bows at the waist. All around me, the other soldiers do the same.
“Highness,” says the woman, “I am Lilyan Zhar, commander of the Loyalist Remnant Force. We are very glad to see you safe, and it is my honor to meet you at last. But I must ask, what in the stars are you doing with one of them?” Zhar nods at Riyan, who stands with his staff still on guard.
“We ran into a bit of … engine trouble,” I say. “Our ship malfunctioned and we dropped out of warp near Sapphine. This tensor helped us. He should be allowed to leave in peace, if he wants.”
Zhar studies Riyan, who looks back steadily, not intimidated in the least.
Then she shakes her head. “The boy is one of the Unsworn, who broke faith with the Empire when we needed them most.” Her jaw twitches, then she adds, “He’s a traitorous freak, like the rest of his kind.”
She raises her gun at the same moment that Riyan lifts his staff, and I burst into motion before I have a chance to even consider what I’m doing. I slide between them, ignoring Pol as he shouts my name.
“No!” I shout. “Don’t shoot him!”
Zhar’s lips pinch together. “Out of the way, Princess!”
“I won’t let you hurt him.”
“Grab her, soldier!”
I realize with a start that it’s Pol she’s talking to, ordering him to pull me away. He’s the closest to me, within arm’s reach.
“Soldier, that was an order!” Zhar snaps.
Pol blinks, then looks at her. “Stacia—Anya—is free to do as she likes. As the Leonova heir, she is the one in charge here, not you.”
A look as cold as stone crosses Zhar’s face. “You are on my base now, and my rules will be followed. The princess’s safety is our first priority, and if she won’t let us protect her, she will be made to comply. Anya, you will stand down.”
“No.” I look at Pol. “If Riyan isn’t safe here, then we’re leaving. Now. All three of us.”
Pol’s eyes flicker to me. All the color has left his face.
“We tried it your way,” I whisper to him. “Now it’s my turn. Pol, please.”
The next moment that passes seems like an eternity.
Where does Pol’s true heart lie? With these Loyalists and their cause—or with me? As a heartbeat passes between us, I see that question weighing in his eyes.
Then he lets out a breath, his chest collapsing, and I know he’s reached a decision.
“Stacia,” he murmurs. “Get back on the ship.”
I stare at him, my heart unfolding with relief.
He’s mine. He’s still mine.
“Don’t do this, soldier,” Zhar warns.
“Stacia, go!” Pol shouts. He turns—then collapses, knees hitting the ground, tilting sideways with a look of confusion.
By the time I realize that Zhar has shot him, Pol is sprawled on the rock floor, blood spreading in a dark pool around him.
“It’s so beautiful.”
“That means it’s poisonous, Stace. Don’t touch it.”
“You’re not my boss!”
“You’re seven and I’m eight and I say it’s poison.”
“And I say you’re a bossy grouch.”
“Stacia, no! Stop!”
The memory is so bright it’s like I’m standing inside a holo, watching it play out all over again. I remember how the air smelled of wine that day, even though we were miles from the vineyard. The wind swept the heady scent over the forested hills. It chased us through the slinke trees, me leading, Pol following, as usual. It was just me and him, exploring the pastel hills, arguing every step of the way. Rivals in all things: For dibs on the swing. For the last cookie. For my mother’s attention.
I picked the flower, just to spite Pol.
He’d been right, of course. He usually was. The poison caused a reaction, and in moments my throat closed up and I could barely breathe. Pol picked me up and ran the whole way home, me bouncing in his arms. A mile from the house he twisted his ankle, but I didn’t find out about that until later, because he didn’t
let it slow him down.
Pol saved my life that day.
And he was only eight years old. That was four years before he would make a vow to protect the girl he thought was a princess. He saved me for no other reason than that he was my friend.
When I see him fall in front of Lilyan Zhar, it’s like my heart is torn from my chest.
I know I’m screaming, but I don’t hear it. I can’t hear anything over the roar in my ears. My knee bursts with pain; dimly I realize I fell forward, driving it into the ground. My nails dig into the stone floor. Someone grabs me. I shove them away, crawling toward Pol, turning him over, his head in my lap. I rock as I hold him, shaking my head, murmuring his name. My fingers threaded through his hair, I lean over to press my forehead to his.
His eyes are shut, a trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth. I can’t find a pulse, can’t see his chest rise for breath. I shake him but he doesn’t stir. His dark curls spread across my lap, and one of his horns digs into my leg.
“Help him!” I scream. “Someone help him!”
A hand slaps a sleep patch against my neck. It’s almost a relief, to feel darkness overtake me and silence the inferno inside my head. I cling to Pol as I slump onto the floor beside him.
I wake facedown on a spongy surface and, with a groan, try to roll onto my back. Instead, I drop onto a hard floor. For a moment I lie there, blinking away the sudden pain, taking in the room.
White walls, stone floor, harsh lights in the ceiling. A white metal box in the upper corner that I’m sure is a camera. A panel to my left is a fold-out lavatory. The bed I awoke on is really no more than a soft pad on a metal frame.
It’s a cell.
The door is diamantglass, unbreakable but transparent. I scramble toward it, finding nothing but a dim white corridor outside, lined with closed doors like this one. I bang on it for a while, but no one comes.
“I want to see my friend!” I shout. “Where is Pol? Where is he?”
With a cry of rage, I beat on the door harder and longer. I yell and scream and curse, until my already raw throat feels like I’ve been swallowing knives.
Last of Her Name Page 10
