All the Stars Left Behind

by Ashley Graham

  The floor under Roar’s feet vibrated. His pulse tripled. Time to see if there really is a god.

  “Brace for impact,” Roar said, his voice shaking as much as the floor. His teeth rattled and he clamped them together, keeping his muscles tight.

  Leda filled his mind with her smile and quick wit and sass; the way she melted against him when they kissed; the taste of her lips; the sound of her laugh; her hair swishing when she walked.

  Any second now.

  A bright light flashed onscreen, stinging his eyes. Roar covered his face with his arm and shut his eyes, confused by the light and waiting for the moment where the ships would collide. Bye-bye, Woede. Bye-bye, Equinox. The end.

  “Uh, Roar?”

  He replied through his sleeve, “Not a good time, Eren.”

  “I think you need to see this.”

  “See what? There’s nothing to…” His arm dropped away, and Roar saw the light had dimmed but not vanished. There in the vast blackness of space surrounding the battleships was a sparkling, starlit memory of the first time Roar had kissed Leda.

  “Jäger and Erlosser? How can that be?” Eren stumbled back. “You haven’t…made love, have you?” She seemed as horrified as Roar felt by the question.

  “No!” He avoided Leda’s grandmother’s interrogating stare. “No, I swear. Arne explained to me why that can’t happen. You know. Poison.”

  And thank God we didn’t get to that point.

  If being together turned their blood to poison, he didn’t want to think what would actually happen to them. Sickness? Death? That would be ironic. He finds the weapon only for both of them to unwittingly kill themselves because they couldn’t keep their hands off each other.

  “Arne is an Elder,” Eren said. “He was told only a piece of the puzzle.”

  Roar raised an eyebrow. “Well he seems to have been told a very important piece. One I wish the rest of you had told me all along—”

  Petrus ran onto the bridge, his hands signing in frantic bursts Roar didn’t comprehend. Eren watched him with increasing interest.

  “Yes! Yes, that’s exactly right!” She encouraged Petrus to sign again to Roar.

  “I can’t. I’ve tried. No matter what, it doesn’t work. I can never tell him, or anyone else, what I know.”

  “This is intriguing,” Inger said, “but something tells me Leda needs help, and Roar’s the one to give it to her.”

  Roar looked back at the screen and caught the tail end of their first kiss before the memory rewound and began from the top. Inger was right. Whatever this image in the sky meant, he’d figure that out later. Leda might be in trouble. And if she needed his help, she’d get it. At top speed, he rushed to the closest razor bay.

  It was only as he entered and looked through the bay door that he saw the worst.

  A missile. Its bright blue flame sending it toward its target.

  Leda.

  Don’t give up, honey.

  Leda was four-years-old.

  Daddy bought the unicorn sneakers from the mall. The ones with sparkly laces and rainbow lights that blinked when you walked.

  She tried and tried and tried but the dumb laces didn’t work.

  “Don’t give up, honey. We’ll figure it out together. I promise.”

  Leda pouted. “It’s too hard.”

  Daddy held her chin with his big hands. He looked at her the way Mommy never did. He looked at her with all his happy. He smiled with his whole face. “Nothing in this whole, wide universe is too hard. All you need is determination and some fresh air. What do I always tell you?”

  Leda pretended to think. She pretended for a whole minute. Maybe two minutes. She couldn’t see the clock. Daddy made his eyes open real wide, and that made Leda laugh.

  “You always tell me to go outside.”

  “That’s right!” He kissed her nose, and called her søteste—sweetest. “If you can’t figure something out, step outside.”

  “But Daddy.” She looked down at her sneakers. “I can’t walk like this.”

  “That’s why I invented piggy back rides!”

  He hoisted her up before she could say he so did not invent them.

  “Always remember,” he said, pushing the fire escape door open with one hand. “Everyone is strong in their own way. What matters is that you love yourself for who you are. Your own power. What matters is that you let yourself love.” He pointed at her. “And that you let others love you, too.” He smiled. “Now let’s go outside.”

  Toorn’s laughter filled up every light place in her memory. His cruel words were a thick, ceaseless fog. She felt cold, so cold. All over. All the warmth, all the happy, it was gone. All the hope, everything good. Gone, gone, gone.

  Then Dad’s voice pushed through the haze in her head. “Your own power.”

  She turned to Toorn’s image. “I will find a way to stop you.”

  Toorn shook his head. “Foolish child. Even in your final moments, you still have hope. You are alone. You have always been alone. And now, you will die alone.”

  “You’re wrong. I—”

  The explosion knocked her off her feet and into the ship’s wall. Pain so thick it consumed her vision. And then, an icy blackness. She tried to breathe, but there was no oxygen. She tried to see, but only now did she realize why she saw unending darkness.

  There was darkness. There were stars. And growing farther away from her was the ship and the hole blown into its side.

  I am not going to die today.

  She had to see Roar again. He was so close, and yet, so far away. She could almost feel his arms around her, the warmth of his breath in her hair. Hear her name on his lips. His lips—oh, man, she missed the way he kissed her, like he couldn’t breathe without her.

  Roar’s hands in her hair as his mouth brushed hers. Yes, she wanted that—needed it.

  Needed him.

  Roar. Alone with him. Nothing between them but a whisper.

  “Shit.”

  Roar didn’t have time to think. Only to act.

  Faster than ever, he suited up, not taking time to check that everything was functional before attaching a cable to the RomTek suit. He slammed his hand against the decompression switch.

  When it reached its maximum extension, the cable would automatically retract. He just hoped it was long enough for him to reach Leda before they both died in the dead cold of space.

  Leda’s eyes flashed open. Someone’s arms were around her. It was Roar.

  She should feel cold. Dying. Dead.

  Instead, she knew what she had to do.

  Without the suit, her legs were about as useful as a couple of wet noodles. She looked up into Roar’s eyes.

  Let yourself love, her father had said. Let others love you, too.

  Stars exploded in the black space all around them, an unfathomable infinity of lights shining down as if they were the last two people in the universe.

  She could feel everything. Even Roar, as though he wasn’t wearing a RomTek suit. The firm press of his chest flush with hers, the slope of his hips. She felt his thoughts in the slow, steady beat of his heart, knew his feelings were burned into the universe like the constellations.

  If ever a moment were the most important of all moments, this would be the one. Leda wished she could capture the essence of this moment in a jar and keep it safe, forever peeking inside just to experience a fraction of the bliss she felt now. Because a miniscule glimpse of this moment would nourish even the most cynical, brokenhearted soul for decades.

  Very slowly, Roar pulled away, his hands sliding across her shoulders and down her arms. Goose bumps jumped up on her skin. He touched the hollow of her collar bone at the base of her throat with a tip of one finger.

  In a distance growing shorter by the moment, but one that couldn’t be crossed in time, she saw Roar’s ship. If they were going to die out here, hopeless, then to hell with Rika’s warning. To hell with anyone who would tell her who she was and what she could be and who she co
uld want. Her father had given her one final piece of advice before he died: to let herself love and be loved. So even though she couldn’t kiss Roar, even though she couldn’t be with him in the way she wanted, she would do what mattered. She would open her heart to him and hope he saw in her eyes the way she felt about him. Not because she wasn’t afraid, but because she saw now that being brave meant facing her fear. They couldn’t exist without the other.

  Jäger and Erlosser. Courage and fear. Two halves of the same whole.

  When her eyes met Roar’s, she was gone. Carried up into the deep black by a rogue solar wind and spun around through the stars. Her whole body shook from the intensity. A warmth filled her that defied the frozen vacuum.

  She felt the swell of power within her, what she’d been told was a trap that had to be resisted at all costs. Her blood and his could never mix. But that power wasn’t a trap. That power was the weapon.

  She opened herself to him with all of the intensity she’d forbidden herself.

  Then the world unraveled.

  In her mind’s eye, Leda witnessed electric blue nerves and silver veins and tiny pulsing cells evolve into something unknown, something powerful. Something dangerous. The earlier heat erupted, a volcano inside her chest, spreading out to her fingertips. Curling, seeking, surrounding her.

  Somehow Leda could see everything. She knew where the Woede ships were in relation to Equinox and Patience. She knew where to find Toorn, and where the boarding pods were, saw them drifting around Equinox like flies. Leda drifted through the dark, flashes of laser light erupted from her hands punctuating the battle. She heard no sound when Stein hit his mark time after time, but she felt the power ripple through space.

  You know what you have to do.

  They were almost back at the ship. She couldn’t wait to tell Roar what she’d discovered. The most she could give him was a smile. That and a brief display of the power within her.

  Glancing down at her hands, Leda turned them palms-up. They glowed bright, so bright they almost blinded her, so hot her skin prickled from the heat. Hot, searing pain went through her arms to the palms. But she didn’t burn. Something like an electrical charge buzzed in her veins, and at the same moment, a hundred memories flowed in her mind like an unstoppable river.

  Faces.

  Voices.

  Flashes.

  Same.

  Same.

  Same.

  Activating the weapon doesn’t simply destroy the Woede…

  Aurelites and Woede…connected…

  We’re not so different, you and I.

  No, Toorn, they weren’t. And now Leda knew why.

  A smile tugged at her mouth and she raised her arms above her head, letting the heat build up. Time to send a warning.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Roar wasn’t sure what he expected, but he never imagined this.

  Leda was a star, burning bright and strong and true. Thousands of tiny glowing creatures swam around Leda, lighting up the darkness of space. Big ones, like whales in the ocean. Small ones, the size of pelicans and robins. And some were so tiny he could see the glow but not their shape. They all had wispy tentacles drifting underneath them, like the arms dangling from a jellyfish. Leda reached out as one drifted by her right hand and it slid over her luminous palm. The light, it came from her.

  And like rays of sunshine, where the light touched him, its energy pierced his body, his mind, his essence.

  She’s okay?

  Hope blossomed deep in his chest.

  A funny smile pulled her mouth to one side as she played with the creatures. She saw them? He hadn’t imagined them? Roar blinked, just to be sure. The creatures were still there, surrounding Leda. One tickled her nose and she laughed.

  As if she felt him watching, she met his stare, and her lips parted in a million-watt grin. Then the creatures of light buoyed them both across the blackness of space and back to the ship.

  Once the airlock was secure and the room pressurized, he took off his helmet and held her close.

  “I told you I’d be all right,” she said, laughing. “And Roar, I figured it out.”

  “Oh?” He pressed his head into her shoulder. He couldn’t get enough of her.

  “Pay attention.”

  Reluctantly, he lifted his head from her shoulder. Something in her eyes made him uneasy.

  “We’re the same,” she said. “Aurelites, Woede. We’re the same.”

  “The same? What do you mean?”

  But he already knew—the song whispered through time and space, an answer to a question he never thought to ask.

  Here beneath the setting sun, the day complete and night begun; in the æther, both together, hold my hand dear, can you feel it? You and me, we’re both the same, we live as one and die as one; we need each other, friends or lovers, one won’t survive without the other.

  “Live as one and die as one,” he murmured, staring at the Woede ships.

  “One won’t survive without the other,” Leda finished.

  Roar snapped his attention back to her. “How did you…?”

  “I can hear the song. I don’t know how.” Her gaze traveled around the vessels locked in battle, unaware of how close everyone came to extinction. “I have an idea. Have you ever played poker?”

  A knot formed between his eyebrows. “The Earth card game? No, I haven’t. Why?”

  “Because you and I are going to pull the biggest bluff the universe has ever seen.”

  Despite every protest he made, Roar piloted a shuttle containing Leda and Arne to the coordinates she’d given him. Battle-ready warrior drones hovered around a menacing black ship with enough artillery of its own. Toorn’s ship.

  In a last attempt to sway her, Roar brushed a kiss on Leda’s cheek. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “I know.” She adjusted the legs on her suit and stood up straight, one hand closed around her locket. “I want to do this.”

  “But what if—”

  She touched a finger to his lips, silencing him. “It’ll work.”

  Grabbing her hand and placing it flat on his chest, above his stampeding heart, was his opening plea. He followed with: “How can you be sure?”

  “Because I sent him a warning.”

  “What do you mean?” Then he realized. “The light from you. The weapon.”

  “Exactly. You felt it, and so did he. And he knows what it means. Now he knows what I can do. What I will do. I can’t wait to see the look on his—”

  “I hope you’re ready, Leda.” Arne motioned to the screen. “We’re being hailed.”

  Warning seared a path down his spine as Roar looked to Leda for any hesitation. Her shoulders were relaxed, her eyes focused. Up for whatever the universe threw her way next. She was brave and strong and beautiful.

  Rather than feed any fear she might feel, Roar squeezed her hand and whispered, “I believe in you.”

  She flashed a brief smile. “Thank you.” Without a second thought, she hit the button to accept the incoming hail.

  Onscreen, the image faded from ships in space to a dark figure perched on a black throne-like seat. He knew in an instant, this was Toorn. Even though his cloak obscured any view of his face, Roar could sense the Woede was smiling.

  “What a lovely surprise,” Toorn said, although his tone betrayed his rage at seeing her alive. “You brought me some toys.”

  Anger flashed bright through her whole body, but Leda held firm. She raised her chin, drew in a breath, and pressed a panel that broadcast to every ship gathered. Then, she began to sing.

  “Here beneath the setting sun, the day complete and night begun; in the æther, both together, hold my hand dear, can you feel it? You and me, we’re both the same, we live as one and die as one; we need each other, friends or lovers, one won’t survive without the other.”

  As she sang, Toorn rose from his chair. The black cloak trembled and thinned with every step he took closer to the screen, until Roar could see the skelet
al form beneath the Woede’s threadbare facade.

  “We’re the same. That’s what you kept trying to tell me earlier.” Her words were clear, her attention fully engaged with the specter on the shuttle’s display. “If I destroy the Woede, I’ll also destroy the Aurelites, because we’re the same.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Toorn said. “I will destroy you.”

  “But you won’t. Because if you even think about it, I’ll end this war, no matter the cost.”

  Toorn narrowed his eyes. “You wouldn’t.”

  “I would. My life has been one choice after the next taken from me. Not this. If it’s the only meaningful thing I do, I will end this war whatever way I must.”

  Toorn hesitated a second. “You’re bluffing.”

  Sunbeams blinked to life in Leda’s hands. “Are you willing to test that theory?”

  The most feared man in several galaxies appeared frail and defeated. “Name your terms.”

  “The Woede will leave Aurelis, and never use violence against another living soul, or I swear I’ll find you and destroy you.”

  Deafening silence hung over the strange congregation as her words permeated every last conscious being. Live in peace, or die now—that was the choice. And Roar felt the weight of her promise, so he knew the others would, too. He tried not to think about what would happen if Toorn didn’t back down. All along, he’d feared the end; the end of his people, the end of his time with Leda, the end of everything.

  The Woede commander spoke once more. “How do I know you won’t hunt us down anyway?”

  Ice melted from her eyes, replaced by softness as she aimed her gaze at Roar, then Arne. “I have reasons to live. The only way I’ll consider sacrificing myself and using the weapon is if I see no other solution.” Now she turned back to the screen. “Do we have another solution, Toorn?”

  Toorn growled. “You know I’ll find you. You know this won’t be the end.”

  “I know you’ll try. But until then, I’m not giving you a choice.”