Dark Star

by Bethany Frenette

  He appeared to be sleeping when I entered, so I kept my footsteps light, creeping toward the chair at the side of the bed. I stopped beside him, pressing my fingers against the bed rail. Peering down at him, I took in the dark circles beneath his eyes, the evenness of his breathing. His face had lost a little color. I was reaching forward to brush aside a stray lock of hair when he abruptly sat up and caught my wrist.

  Which is how it happened that the first words I spoke weren’t an apology, as I’d intended. They weren’t words thanking him, either, or even asking how he felt. Instead, I yelped and jumped back, mumbling out gibberish. Then, as I tried to steady my breath, I said, “You are really determined to give me that heart attack, aren’t you?”

  He shrugged, pushing away that wayward lock of hair himself. “I’m helping you hone your abilities. Shouldn’t you have Known that was coming?”

  “Well, I’m glad you’re feeling better,” I grumbled, not nearly as nicely as I’d planned.

  “You know Guardians. We heal quickly.” Then his face darkened, that little frown of his appearing. “You did something amazing tonight, Audrey.”

  I thought of Iris disappearing Beneath, and Elspeth, and who would tell her. There was a catch in my voice as I said, “So did you guys.”

  He’d done something I wouldn’t ever be able to thank or repay him for. And the worst part of it was, he didn’t even have a choice. I took a deep breath. “Leon—”

  He must have guessed what I was thinking. He lifted a hand to silence me, then shifted in the bed, sitting so that we were at the same level, eye to eye. And he put on his most serious expression, the one usually reserved for lectures, or when someone criticized his baking. His voice, though, was soft. “It’s not what you think,” he said. “Being your Guardian.”

  It took a moment for his words to sink in. Then I stepped back, frowning down at him. “You want to have this conversation now?” I asked. I eyed him suspiciously. “You’re all drugged up on pain medication, aren’t you?”

  “I’m completely lucid, I swear,” he said. And then he gave me a crooked smile that crinkled his eyes and made my heart do that alarming little flip-flop thing again.

  To cover the heat I was certain was stealing up my cheeks, I turned away, mumbling, “Yeah. Uh-huh.”

  He caught my hand, drawing me back to him.

  “You need to hear this,” he said, and though his voice was still quiet, it was firm. He kept my hand tucked into his, but I couldn’t meet his eyes. He let out a ragged sigh. “I won’t lie to you, Audrey. I didn’t want to be a Guardian.”

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the rest of this, but Leon wasn’t done speaking.

  “My grandfather—I think he knew I’d be called. Even though he took me away from the Circle, he spent my childhood preparing me. And I hated it. I had plans. I knew what I wanted to do with my life, and it didn’t involve the Kin.”

  The opposite of Mom and me, I thought. I wondered if I’d have felt differently, if I’d grown up knowing.

  “When I was called, I thought I’d been cursed,” he continued. “I rebelled. Or thought I did. It was months before I came here to find you, and even then I kept telling myself I wouldn’t stay. But that changed. And—would you look at me, please?”

  I shook my head mutely. I kept my eyes focused on our hands, on the thin material of the sheet he lay on, on the little scar that hooked his wrist—anything but his face.

  He sighed again. “It changed. I changed. It’s been years since I felt that way. This is who I am. Being a Guardian—being your Guardian—it’s important to me.”

  I chanced looking at him. “Then why didn’t you tell me?” I asked. My voice sounded small, far away. “Why not tell me, instead of just—getting angry?”

  I didn’t think there was a power in the universe more devastating than the Hungry Puppy, but Leon managed it. He withdrew his hand and glanced away, his entire face transforming. He didn’t look like a hungry puppy now; he looked like a kicked one. “Because it’s also scary as hell,” he said, letting out a shaky breath. “I don’t . . . I don’t always know how to deal with it. It’s not just wanting to protect you. It’s needing to protect you. It’s physical. And I can’t shut it off. It’s always there.”

  I stared at him in horror. “So you’re trapped,” I whispered. This was the worst thing yet.

  He looked about as panicked as I felt. “No—that’s not what I’m saying.”

  “What are you saying?” My throat felt tight again, and my lungs. My heart wasn’t just flip-flopping anymore; it was thrashing like it wanted to jump right out from beneath my ribs and find a deep, dark hole to hide in. Sort of like I did. I kept waiting for Leon to say something, anything, but he just stared back at me. That familiar worry crease appeared in his forehead. Twice he seemed about to speak, then didn’t. Each time, the frown deepened.

  I couldn’t take it anymore. “I have to go,” I mumbled, beginning to turn away.

  That finally spurred him into action. “Audrey, wait,” he said, and he caught me a second time. But he didn’t just grab my hand. He sat forward, gripping me by the shoulders, and tugged me to him. “What I’m trying to say is—”

  Later, I would tell Tink it was perfect. That it was the sort of kiss you see in movies, with soft lights and spinning cameras and some pop singer crooning a ballad in the background. That it had been like gravity: me swaying into him, his hand curving around the back of my head, our faces tilting. That it was inevitable, inescapable, a force beyond our control.

  In reality, it wasn’t perfect. It wasn’t even close.

  Injured though he was, Leon was still stronger than he realized. I lost my balance when he pulled me toward him; I ended up crashing against him, and not even in a sexy way. Then my mouth missed his. As I grappled with the side of the bed, trying to regain balance, I slipped again. I would’ve ended up on the floor if not for Leon’s arm circling me. And then he started laughing. Laughing so hard that, when he finally managed to tangle his hand in my hair and drag my mouth to his, he was still laughing as he kissed me.

  But I didn’t care that it wasn’t perfect. I didn’t care that our background music consisted of whirring hospital machinery and a janitor pushing a cart down the hall, or that we were in a room that smelled like applesauce and latex gloves and disinfectant. I didn’t care that it took us three tries to kiss—really kiss—or that the metal bar of the hospital bed was digging into my ribs. This was what I’d been waiting for. What I’d been wanting. What I hadn’t wanted to admit.

  After a while, Leon broke away, sighing softly as he pressed his forehead to mine. “This is a problem,” he said.

  I couldn’t stop grinning. “You worry too much.”

  “You don’t worry at all,” he replied, and the slightest hint of that stern expression returned.

  I decided to take Tink’s advice. To shut him up, I leaned forward and kissed him again. I didn’t stop. I dragged my hands through his hair, that dark hair that curled at the ends, and then I climbed up onto the bed beside him. And I went right on kissing him until his heart monitor began beeping and the nurse rushed in.

  ***

  Leon was discharged from the hospital the following morning. If the doctors thought something was strange about his rapid recovery, they didn’t mention it. They sent him home with pain medication and instructions to take it easy.

  The next few days passed quickly. Details about the Harrowers’ attack trickled in, and for once my mother didn’t try to keep them from me. There had been incursions scattered throughout the metro area, Harrowers creeping out from the murky places they hid Beneath to prey upon the vulnerable cities, their assault cut short by the revival of the Circle. Several Guardians had been hurt—including Mr. Alvarez, who assured me his minor injuries would not delay our precalc exam. But since Tigue’s death, the Twin Cities had gone quiet. With the Astral Circle at full strength, few Harrowers would be able to emerge from Beneath. Demon activity was minimal, and in Mi
nneapolis, at least, things were returning to normal.

  I tried to put other thoughts out of my mind: the knowledge that the Remnant was still out there, in need of protection—and the certainty that Verrick, wherever he was, definitely wasn’t dead.

  There were other matters that needed more immediate attention.

  Elspeth was inconsolable. She refused to go to school. She refused to eat. She spent most of her days sitting up in her room, crying, and wouldn’t let anyone near her. I waited outside her door a few times, knocking gently and letting her know I’d be there for her, whenever she wanted to talk.

  We’d heard nothing from Iris. I hadn’t expected to. I didn’t know where it was she’d gone, but I didn’t think she would be coming back. Esther didn’t speak of it, but I saw the worry and grief in her eyes, the hint of words she wouldn’t speak.

  Then there was Gideon.

  He wasn’t happy with me, and I couldn’t exactly blame him. Though, as it turned out, he was angrier that I’d kept secrets from him than about the fact that my creepy cousin had kidnapped him, dragged him across the city, and used him as a hostage in her attempt to force me to unleash an unspeakable evil upon the land.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” he said, when I’d forced my way into his house after he wouldn’t return my phone calls.

  I took a long breath. I should have told him before, I realized —regardless of my mother’s warnings and my own fears. I would tell him now. I would tell him everything. About the Kin and about Harrowers. About the Circle and the Beneath and the power that ran through us all. He wasn’t Kin, but he was a part of it now, bound by another kind of heritage: those who had seen too much. He’d seen demons; it was time to show him the other half.

  But Tink was the one I told about Leon.

  “I thought you hated him,” she said, when I called her Saturday night.

  “So did I.”

  She laughed. “You are such a mess.”

  This from a girl who wouldn’t date a boy if he had hazel eyes, wore sports jerseys to school, or was color blind. In ninth grade I’d spent an entire month telling Tommy Ferguson what color of shirt Tink had on.

  Before I could mention this, she squeaked into the phone. “Oh! I almost forgot. The weirdest thing happened last night. I was at the Drought and Deluge—”

  “I can’t believe you went back there,” I said, though I supposed it shouldn’t have shocked me. She’d wanted to go to the Halloween party, after all—and she’d just broken up with her exchange student. “Who did you get to go with you?”

  “Greg,” she groaned. “Let’s not talk about that. Here’s the weird thing. The owner came up to me and asked me to give you a message.”

  I frowned. “Shane? What did he say?”

  “Something about how he was glad to see you ‘found your shine.’ And then he called you a star or something. Like I said, it was weird. He was pretty hot, though.”

  “You know he’s a demon, right?”

  “It’s just an observation.”

  “And I’m the mess?”

  Instead of a ready comeback, she turned serious. Apparently, it was a night for confessions.

  “I lied to you,” she said. “About the night I was attacked. I remember everything. And I know that you came for me. You put yourself in danger to help me. I haven’t forgotten that.” Then she was lighthearted again. “But I’m still not running off to join the Kin.” Like we’d progressed from cult to circus—and, in Tink’s mind, the latter was worse.

  I didn’t argue with her. I didn’t tell her it was a part of her, whether or not she wanted it to be. That I could sense it in her as clearly as in my mother or Elspeth, that I could see it in the way she moved and the way air settled upon her, that it might even be the reason we’d first become friends. An unspoken thread between us. Kin drawn to Kin.

  “Tink has to find her own way,” my mother said, when I asked her about it. “Just like the rest of us.”

  I nodded, following her out onto the front step, where she sat with a cup of cocoa, gazing out into the quiet street. A light snow fell, hanging in the air. Around us, I felt the presence of the Astral Circle, shielding us from Beneath.

  “The Cities will be safer now, right?” I asked, sitting beside her and taking a sip of her cocoa. I watched a little frown flit across her brow.

  “Safer,” she agreed.

  But not safe. Though the barrier had been strengthened, some Harrowers would still push through. The Circle protected us, but it was not absolute.

  I chewed my lip, drawing little circles in the snow with the edge of my mitten. “I’ve been thinking about something,” I began.

  Mom looked at me expectantly.

  “Releasing Verrick—unsealing his powers. That would have unsealed my father, too.” I’d felt that, as I stood atop Harlow Tower, watching my blood spill out. I hadn’t been able to process it then, but I thought of it now. The ritual would have brought my father back. Woken the sleeping heart, that laughing boy who had vanished so long ago. I glanced at Mom. She’d turned slightly away, facing down the road. Snowflakes caught in her pale hair. I felt the sadness she carried—a dull ache she had learned to ignore. “Do you still miss him?”

  “I miss who he was. I miss who he made me.” She turned to me, and I saw the shine of tears in her eyes. “But I have you. He would have been very proud of you.”

  I hesitated. “Will you tell me about him?”

  She took my hand, squeezing it. A little smile crossed her face. “I can try,” she said. She laughed softly, shaking her head, and lifted one hand to wipe the moisture from her eyes. “If I can figure out where to start.”

  “Tell me how you met,” I suggested.

  This time, her laugh was loud. “No, you don’t want that story. I was horrible to him.”

  “Horrible how?”

  “I put him in the hospital.”

  No wonder Esther had disapproved. I grinned at her. “Okay, now I definitely want that story.”

  “Later,” she said, and refused to say more. Instead, she told me the things my father loved: Rain, she said, especially thunderstorms; wet grass and red autumn leaves, greasy popcorn, the smell of old books. He loved winter, cold soundless nights and the fall of snow. And the Kin. He’d loved being a Guardian.

  “I wish I could have known him,” I said.

  There was a catch in her voice, but her smile remained. “I wish he could have known you.”

  I leaned back, looking up at the low, cloud-filled sky and the swirl of snow that drifted through the air. Down the street, Christmas lights blurred, colors shining and bright. I took deep breaths, filling my lungs.

  I turned back to Mom.

  “I want to begin training,” I said. She started to respond, but I lifted a hand to stay her. “Just to be prepared. Even if I’m never called, I’m still Kin. And . . .” I paused, thinking of Iris, and the light that had poured from my veins, and the connection I still felt to the Circle—the power that bound us. I didn’t know what the connection meant, but it was there, within me. “I’m ready.”

  It was a long moment before my mother spoke. When she did, I heard a slight tremor in her voice. “This is what you want?”

  She gazed across the darkness at me. Her eyes met mine, and for a moment, I saw both Morning Star, fierce and defiant, and the girl she’d once been, before she’d been bound by duty and shaped by her own myth.

  “I’m ready,” I repeated.

  Mom nodded, another soft smile touching her lips. “Okay,” she said. “But not tonight.”

  I leaned against her, resting my head on her shoulder.

  We sat on the steps and watched the snow fall.

  Acknowledgments

  The first thing I need to acknowledge is that there are far, far too many people who belong on this page to ever list them. Nevertheless, I will attempt it. Completing this book was a long process, and I will be forever grateful to the tireless efforts of a number of people. Spec
ifically:

  My brilliant agent, Caitlin Blasdell, who has my deepest thanks for everything she does; without her support and guidance—and especially her hand-holding—I would be utterly lost. My awesome editor, Abby Ranger, who challenges and encourages me in equal measure, and who frequently assures me that I’m not nearly as neurotic as I think I am. Two others who helped this book along the way: Laura Schreiber, whose insights are invaluable, and Ari Lewin, whose enthusiasm I cherish.

  The friends who kept me sane, and didn’t complain (at least to my face) about midnight brainstorming sessions and emails that were nearly novels in length: Sarah Bauer, Brinson Thieme, Patricia Reinwald, and Leah Raeder. The amazing individuals I’ve had the great luck to know as both teachers and writers: Bill Meissner, Mary Logue, and the wise and wonderful Sheila O’Connor, who told me to be brave.

  And finally, my mother, who taught me to chase my dreams, and always believed I’d reach them. Even if she did seriously ask me, “Is this a kissing book?” (And made a face when I answered.)

  Table of Contents

  Dark Star

  Table of Contents

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  Acknowledgments