Dark Star

by Bethany Frenette

  “You promised me!” Mom snapped. “I explained the situation to you in the hope that you would be able to make informed decisions. I expected more from you, Audrey. You’re not a Guardian, and neither is Iris. What you did tonight wasn’t brave or clever.”

  It hadn’t felt brave or clever—simply necessary. I sighed, rubbing my forehead, and asked, “So, what, I’m grounded again?”

  “No. That obviously had no impact.” Her eyes were narrowed, her lips a thin line, and the expression on her face clearly meant she was assessing other options. Like sending me to boarding school on the other side of the planet.

  “I guess we’re going back to secrets and cryptic answers, then.”

  “What do you want me to say? That it’s all right for you to put yourself at risk? You could have been killed tonight.”

  “You could be killed every night,” I shot back.

  “Is that what this was about?” she demanded. “Trying to prove something?”

  “It was about saving a life!”

  She wasn’t even listening to me. “I don’t go out every night because I want to, Audrey. I do it because I have to. Morning Star is who I am. I can’t change that.”

  I looked away, toward the haze of streetlights and the glint of new snow. I felt a tear roll down my cheek and brushed it away. “Why didn’t you tell me about the Kin?”

  Her eyes flicked toward mine, then away. “This isn’t the time.”

  “It’s never the time. I want to know.”

  Silence.

  “You think I can’t handle it,” I said. “You think I’m still a little kid. Or that I’m too stupid to deal with it.”

  “You’re not stupid, Audrey. You just don’t think. There’s a difference.”

  And then, just as she’d accused me, I didn’t think about my next words. I just said them.

  “I wish I had a father.”

  I’d never said that before. I wasn’t sure I’d ever thought it before—but now I’d said it, and I couldn’t take it back. I didn’t even want to. The words just hung there between us.

  Mom didn’t hesitate. I heard a slight catch in her voice, but otherwise her tone was steady. “You know what? I wish that too. And it’s just too damn bad, because you don’t. You’re stuck with me.”

  I didn’t say anything. I knew I should have. I should have apologized, and told her I was wrong, that I hadn’t meant to say it. But I couldn’t make the words come out. I had meant to say it; I was exhausted and angry, my body sore, my nerves raw, and I wanted to lash out. My throat felt tight.

  We’re all we’ve got, Gram used to say. But we do just fine.

  But that wasn’t true. We had the Kin. We had the St. Croix family. And once, I’d had a father.

  And if Mom wouldn’t tell me about him, I’d have to ask someone else.

  25

  The following afternoon, I went to St. Paul to find Esther.

  She met me in the hall, her eyebrows arched as she looked me over. “What a lovely surprise. We don’t normally see you here on a Thursday. I’ll add another place at dinner.”

  “I won’t be long,” I said, keeping my voice even. “But I wanted to talk to you.”

  Her gaze met mine, and she gave me a slow, measuring look. Then she nodded. “Let’s go into my sitting room.”

  I followed her down the hall, to the room with the delicate floral walls and tidy furniture. She gestured for me to sit, then took the chair across from me.

  “I heard about your little escapade yesterday,” she said. “Well done.”

  Heat crept up my face. I couldn’t tell if she was being sincere or not. “You’re not going to yell at me?”

  “We use our abilities to aid others. I won’t lecture you. Thanks to your efforts, the girl has Guardian protection. Your instincts were correct.”

  “Someone should try telling my mom that,” I grumbled.

  “I imagine someone has. What is it you wanted to speak with me about?”

  I took a steadying breath, gripping the arms of the chair. Across from me, Esther’s face was impassive. “I want you to tell me why my mother kept the Kin a secret from me.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “You think she tells me why she does anything?”

  “I think you know. And I think it has something to do with my father. With what happened to him—during the Harrowing. I want you to tell me what happened.” I kept my gaze fixed on hers. Her eyes were very dark, more brown now than gold, taking on an almost reddish hue.

  “Lucy won’t appreciate my meddling. She keeps her secrets close.”

  “I’m her daughter,” I protested.

  “Why have you come to me, then?”

  I didn’t answer.

  Esther folded her arms and gave me a shrewd look. “It is not a happy story.”

  “I didn’t think it was.”

  She rose, turning toward the tall, frost-glazed windows that flanked the room. From the back, she looked just like Elspeth, except for the touch of silver in her hair. “I didn’t approve of your mother and Adrian. You should know that.”

  I swallowed. She’d grown very closed off, her tone unreadable. “Our Morning Star was never one to listen to anyone,” she said. “She became a Guardian at the age of fifteen, and grew very powerful very quickly. She was reckless. I feared she would be a danger to Adrian. She was certainly a danger to herself.”

  She walked to the desk and bent, opening a drawer and retrieving her Nav cards. I watched her hands close over the deck, the absent way she shuffled them. Not like Gram, who had treated her cards with such reverence, letting her fingertips linger along the edges.

  “We’re doing a reading?” I asked.

  “Hold on to these,” she said, crossing the room and dropping the deck in my hands. “You may as well have them.”

  I crinkled my brow in confusion. “You’re giving me your Nav cards?” Kind of pointless, I thought, since I already had Gram’s.

  “They were never mine. They belonged to your father. I use them from time to time, but Adrian was the only one in this family with any real talent in Knowing. Until you.”

  I shuffled twice and flipped the top card over. Inverted Crescent.

  “That was his card, too,” Esther said. I looked up at her.

  For a second, I got a sense of him, some memory from Esther— a slow, half smile, laughter echoing. A sort of irrepressible buoyancy. Someone who knew joy.

  Esther returned to her seat, crossing her legs and folding her hands together. “You know about Amplification, yes? Iris told you, I suspect.”

  I gave a short nod.

  “It was Adrian’s greatest gift. Lucy was an exceptional Guardian in her own right, but with him at her side, your mother was nearly unstoppable. She was a force of power unparalleled, at least in Kin history.” Pausing for some sort of effect, she looked at me, then said, “Nearly unstoppable. Until the Harrowing.”

  I waited, listening. There was a soft knock on the door, but Esther sent whoever it was away with a curt dismissal. Outside, the last of the light had faded.

  “Most Harrowings are organized. We sense them coming. There’s a breach in one of the Circles, or a mass of powerful demons able to push through. They work together, hunting the Kin. Hundreds of them, sometimes more. But this . . . this was something else. This Harrowing was the work of only one.”

  “Verrick,” I said. The word hung in the air before me, as though it had been imprinted on the air.

  She nodded slowly. “We don’t know when exactly he came to the Cities. He was here long before any of us realized. Verrick was—different. He rarely went Beneath, kept himself separate from other Harrowers. His human form was without flaw. His aliases were simple, and he took care to avoid notice. In this way, he remained hidden and lay dormant for many years.”

  “What changed?”

  “I can’t say for certain. It may simply have been a matter of timing.” She took a long breath, closing her eyes. “We knew by then that some danger was
approaching. For years, we’d been watching for signs of a Harrowing, but we weren’t aware of Verrick until he showed himself. He was cunning. It took us far too long to realize his true intent.”

  “He wanted the Remnant.” When Esther nodded, I said, “But she wouldn’t have even been born. Not if the demons are bleeding sixteen-year-olds. I thought they wanted her power, not to stop her existence.”

  “Verrick had information we didn’t. His Knowing was strong, stronger than that of any Kin. He knew when and where the Remnant would be born—perhaps even her identity. He wanted us fragmented, the Astral Circle destroyed, so nothing would remain to impede him.”

  “Mom stopped him,” I said. “She killed him. But why were my father’s powers sealed?”

  She turned back to me. Her face was blank, but she couldn’t hide the grief in her tone. “Your mother battled Verrick many times before she defeated him. She was strong, but so was he. And though she wounded him, he always managed to escape. He recovered. He grew in power. And we sensed that this was worse than what had come before. That he was waiting for something. That he was planning.”

  “So . . . your basic apocalypse,” I said, shifting uncomfortably.

  Esther threw me a look that meant she was not amused. “We lost a third of our numbers. Many of our people fled the Cities, seeking what little safety they could find elsewhere, among other Kin. Those of us who remained had little hope of survival. He was hunting down Guardians, one by one. Slaughtering them. And gathering his strength in the most brutal way imaginable. Whether it was something he learned or something inherent to him, I couldn’t say, but Verrick had an ability other Harrowers do not. He wasn’t just killing the Guardians—he was taking their power, their life forces into himself. And he grew stronger with each Guardian he drained. Eventually, he caught your father.”

  At her words, an image shot through me: a young man’s body bent, unmoving. From far off, I caught my mother’s voice, a harsh, screamingsob—Adrian!

  But he wasn’t dead. They’d told me that. His heart was sleeping. “Mom saved him,” I said.

  Esther inclined her head. “Lucy fought Verrick off before he could finish draining your father. She brought him back here, to me.” Her eyes clouded. She looked past me, into the dark distance beyond the windows. “We feared the worst, but Adrian surprised us. He recovered on his own. And then . . . then he began to grow stronger.”

  A tingling began on the back of my neck. “Stronger how?”

  She lowered her eyes, trailing her fingers down the upholstered arm of her chair. “It was little things at first. His Knowing increased. He could tell Lucy where Verrick would attack next, and when. That was when we realized what had happened. Adrian was an Amplifier; he could share the powers of others. When Verrick began draining him, Adrian attempted to reverse the process, to drain him back. A link had formed between them. A connection that wasn’t severed.”

  “A connection,” I repeated. Dread pooled in my stomach. I knew where this was headed.

  “It was Adrian who told us of the Remnant—that she would be born here, and soon, and that Verrick was preparing. Adrian’s abilities as a Guardian grew, as well. In time it’s possible he would have become powerful enough to defeat Verrick on his own terms. But we didn’t have time. Too many lives had been lost already. An entire generation of Guardians—gone.”

  Like Leon’s parents. I felt another tremor of grief from Esther, the weight of guilt. Not just for my father, but for all the others who had been lost.

  “By then it had become clear to us that the connection went both ways,” she continued. “Verrick had made an error when he drained an Amplifier. And that was when we discovered the solution. To wound one was to wound the other. The way to weaken Verrick was to use the link: to seal both of their life forces. Permanently.”

  A ritual, Iris had said. Blood from the five sacred spaces. Life spilling out.

  “So you sealed his powers, and then he just left?” I asked. I might not have a clear sense of my father, but I knew what he had left behind. I had felt it a thousand times behind my mother’s eyes: a keen but quiet longing, fierce and hidden.

  Esther shook her head slowly. “There was no other choice. It was for his own safety. Who we are as humans can’t be separated from who we are as Kin. Sealing his life force meant sealing away that part of him forever. His knowledge.” She paused, her voice unsteady. “His memories. He couldn’t stay with us.”

  The sleeping heart.

  Both living and dead.

  Not quite what Iris had made it seem.

  “He agreed to that?” I looked down at the cards in my hands. I’d been shuffling them absently, but the Inverted Crescent remained flipped up. His card, too, Esther had said. But no longer. Whatever ties he had to the Kin had been severed.

  “He went to it willingly, though Lucy objected.”

  She would have. I knew my mother.

  Esther’s tone grew hesitant. “I can’t tell you everything you want to know. But it’s possible you can see it for yourself.” She drew back in her chair, sighing faintly. In the dim light, she seemed less severe than I was accustomed to, almost vulnerable. “It’s something that is rarely done, but you have the ability. You have to move past Knowing, into echo and reverie.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I whispered.

  Except I did. She meant using my Knowing to see into the past, and I didn’t know if I could. I’d had glimpses, flickers now and then—but those were things I felt rather than saw, like the northern lights that lingered at the edges of every memory in Mickey Wyle’s boyhood, or Iris’s black shoes at her parents’ funeral. I had never done anything like what Esther was suggesting.

  “It’s about focus and control,” she continued. “Like when you use your Nav cards. The significance is in the act. You clear everything else away.”

  “It’s not that simple,” I protested. “If I want to see the past —Mom’s past—I’d need to have her here. My Knowings aren’t nearly as strong when I don’t have the subject with me.”

  Esther merely shrugged. “Perhaps usually. But this is your mother. She is a part of you. She carried you. Her blood lives in your blood.”

  “Her blood. Not her memories.”

  “That is why you use your Knowing.”

  I began to shuffle, and Esther rose from her chair, moving in front of me. Her hands settled on mine, halting their motion. I looked up at her questioningly.

  She chuckled softly. “Use your Knowing—and my help. Did Iris mention that I’m also an Amplifier?”

  I nodded mutely.

  “We will do this together. Focus.” Her fingers closed over mine. Tightened. Her hands were cool and her veins lightly stained, ribbons of color that threaded down her left wrist. I could imagine a pale glow there, her knuckles bent. She was a Guardian, too, I remembered.

  “Focus, Audrey.”

  “I am,” I muttered.

  Echo and reverie, I thought. Gram had never had me do anything like this. Once, she had sat before me and placed her hands over mine, a sort of connection, she said—the space where Knowing met Knowing—but that had been to help me clear my thoughts, so that I could see the pattern.

  This wasn’t just a pattern. This was a history. Heritage. All the words my mother couldn’t speak. Esther’s Amplification was powerful, I could sense that, could feel my Knowing strengthening, but I still wasn’t certain I could do this. I couldn’t quite focus. I couldn’t quite think—

  Can’t you ever be serious?

  I jerked suddenly, searching Esther’s face. She hadn’t spoken. But—

  It’s like arguing with the weather, with you.

  My mother’s voice. A sound of laughter bubbling. And then, again, her piercing cry, all the strength of her powerful lungs within it. Adrian!

  I closed my eyes. Opened them.

  And for the first time in my life, I saw my father’s face.

  26

  It wasn’t like dreaming.
>
  I saw everything with a strange, sharp clarity. The dark, storm-battered sky. Picnic tables and tree branches glistening with rain. The light that grazed my parents’ faces didn’t come from above, it came from below. Fireflies in the grass. They stood near a lake.

  My mother said his name, but I knew him before she spoke. He had St. Croix eyes. Even in the semidarkness I could see them, dusty gold, their steady focus on my mother as she stood before him. His curly hair was a rich brown, tousled by the wind that stirred up through the pines. He was tall and lean and had a crooked smile that was meant for mischief—except that now there was something a little sad about it, and the hand he rested on my mother’s shoulder tightened when she said his name.

  I looked at my mother. Her cheeks were red. It looked as though she’d been crying. She looked so young and lost, her pregnancy—me—a swell not quite concealed by her baggy shirt.

  “There’s another way, I know there is,” she said, staring up at him as clouds covered the moon. “We just have to find it. Give me time, Adrian. I’ll find it, I swear I’ll find it.”

  “We don’t have time. We’ve been over this. Verrick is growing stronger with every Guardian he drains. This is our only chance, and we have to take it. We agreed—”

  “No, you agreed,” my mother snapped, jerking out of his grip. Her hair, down about her shoulders, flapped in the breeze. “You and Esther. You haven’t let me find another solution.”

  “There is no other solution. You can’t handle Verrick.”

  “I can handle anything.” Her eyes caught a sliver of moonlight. She stood straight, her hands balled into fists at her side.

  My father’s voice was gentle. “You know I’m right.”

  She turned away from him, toward the lake, where the water was motionless and void of color. “I’ll come to you after I defeat Verrick. I’ll go with you. We’ll start over. Leave all of this.”

  “You can’t give up being Kin, being a Guardian. It’s who you are.”

  “It’s who you are, too!” She paused, relaxing her hands. She looked tired. “I’ll have them seal my blood, too. And we’ll leave together. I can’t do this alone.”