Beneath the Guarding Stars (Mortality Book 2)

by Frost, Everly

  It was a different kind of burn.

  “There’s …” wrong with you.” With a snarl, he snatched up the spear and advanced on me.

  I had only my hands. Only my body and my soul.

  He went for the quick kill first, assuming that’s all it would take, but he’d forgotten the day I arrived, when I’d tangled my limbs with his and could have dropped him to the floor. He forgot that I’d spent the last month watching the dancers, learning their graceful dances with weaponry.

  He stabbed with the knife, leaving the spear exposed. I spun, snatching the spear from his hand, and before he knew it I was behind him. He recovered, mimicked my spin, and kicked low to swipe my feet out from under me, but I was already out of reach.

  He grinned as we traded near misses, one after the other.

  “Tell me what you feel.” He wasn’t puffing, but neither was I.

  He needed to feel it. As much as he hated my mortality, he wanted all the emotions that came with it. He needed all the senses, all the feelings.

  “No.”

  I wouldn’t give him what he wanted. My foot connected with his face, a high kick that forced him off balance so I could get in close and beat him down. What I’d do then, I didn’t know.

  As I lunged, there was a boom and the train lurched forward.

  It was as though someone had booted it from behind and kicked it along the track, causing it to skid through the next turn. The link between cars lifted, tipping Naomi forward and rolling her a couple of feet toward us, where she knocked into the back of Seth’s feet.

  The train leaned. Loose roses and lavender skidded across the floor.

  I snatched at Seth, teetered, then we both lost our balance, crashing to the side. Coming to a stop when we hit the wall, I rolled as far away from him as I could, not risking letting him get to me while I was down. I drew to my feet, crouching, staying low to keep my balance. There were flowers everywhere and I snatched up another, cramming a whole rosebud into my mouth while Seth was distracted, trying to get his balance.

  The petals were soft, full of life, and the liquid inside them trickled down my throat. I tasted the nectar this time, burning as it went.

  Finally, the car righted itself, but the train was going way too fast and it was gaining speed.

  “That’ll be the next fuel wad.” Seth clambered to his feet in the corner of the car. “It has a nice kick, doesn’t it?”

  Next to him, Naomi moaned. She was getting her voice back, but the fear in her eyes was all for me.

  Seth snatched her up by her hair.

  “Leave her alone!” My blood boiled as he dragged her into the corner he’d vacated and dropped her there.

  The spear I held was not enough. I couldn’t get close enough to use it. Every time I tried, he came back at me with the knife.

  “If I fail,” he said, “The train will take you over the cliffs and finish what I can’t.”

  I met Naomi’s watering eyes. The train was going too fast to take any corner safely. At the next one we’d fly off the tracks. We were going to crash. Seth had made sure of it.

  If we were going with it, then Seth was too.

  He didn’t seem to care. He lunged at me again, but this time I let the spear drop before he reached me. The move surprised him enough that I landed a punch on his face, filling it with everything I had, the force of my anger, my disgust at how he’d treated Naomi, my fear, all my lost hope.

  He grunted and cried out as though I’d struck him with rock, and for the first time I noticed what he’d seen when he touched my cheek.

  My skin was burning blue. My knuckles contained little fissures, as though the impact had caused them to crack like the surface of a frozen lake.

  But I felt nothing. There was no pain.

  Maybe I was dying already. Maybe rose petal nectar was poison and I’d just given myself another lethal dose. If it was—if I had only moments before the train crashed—I was going to stop Seth first. He was the reason I’d lost Michael, the reason I had to go north.

  He shoved me but I hit him again. This time with such force that he flew backward and smashed into the side of the car. Now I was burning from the inside out, burning with emptiness, as though a hollow had formed inside me and sucked everything away.

  Seth had asked me to tell him what I felt.

  I felt nothing. Nothing where Michael’s heart used to warm mine. Nothing where his arms once held me. Nothing where his love used to be.

  Seth recovered, lunged at me, connected, and still I felt not a thing.

  Not even when I realized that he’d stabbed me in the heart.

  Now I knew how Michael felt the night he killed Josh, right before he slipped the weapon from his own chest, freeing it. There was nothing but cracks across my vision and impulses where thoughts used to be.

  The knife was free. It was in my hand.

  Seth’s face registered shock. “What are you?”

  I pulled him close and he didn’t fight me. I drew the knife back, poised to plunge it.

  The train buckled. We hit another bend.

  This time it didn’t stay on the tracks. There was a second of calm as we shot out into space. The car ahead of us dropped first. Then everything lifted. Seth flew up with me like angels in flight, floating for a second.

  I grabbed hold of him, locked my arms around him, and crushed him against me as I clutched the knife in my fist behind his back. He shouted and struggled against me but I wouldn’t let him go.

  With a smash, we hit the roof and plunged.

  Falling and churning, crashing with furniture and glass and even the coffin, everything fell with us, rotating and spiraling as the train spun out of control, around and around until nothing was up nor down, there was no north or south, no home, no family, no Michael.

  Together we plunged into the abyss.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  WE HIT the earth.

  The train connected with the ground and the side with the bench smashed into the ground first. Windows shattered and wood imploded. Fragments and glass blasted inward around us. The car crumpled as gravity forced it down into snow and rock.

  We landed on our sides and I was sure I would shatter like crystal. Pieces of train and furniture rained down around us, smashing and scattering. Only the bones of the train remained upright, part of the side still intact and forming a canopy over us. Nearby there was fire. I could smell the fuel burning, mixing smoke with the snow flurry.

  Beside me, Seth’s eyes were vacant, but he wouldn’t be dead for long. His body heat kept me focused, giving me enough clarity and purpose to assess my own damage. My skin reflected the white snow, covered in icicles and cracks where my veins should have been. Blue fire danced around me, burning slowly like sadness.

  The train had crashed into a gully between mountain peaks. By some crazy chance, it looked as though the coffin had landed in one piece, flung out into the snow. Naomi’s silk dress was visible in the wreckage about ten feet away, half in and half out of the car, a gold and red stain against the white landscape. I couldn’t be sure how many other people were in the rubble and whether they were inside the wreckage or thrown, like the coffin, beyond it.

  Ash and snow and rose petals wafted down around us, settling on me like memories. I still held the knife gripped behind Seth, but my right arm was crushed under his weight.

  I forced Seth onto his back, releasing my arm and pulling it free, hovering over him.

  At the same moment, I registered his indrawn breath.

  His eyes flew open. He was back.

  He lashed at me, shoving upward, but I wouldn’t let him go. My knee lifted and crashed down onto his chest, winding him long enough for me to tangle my other leg into his, my left arm pinning his. My right hand drew the knife to his throat. He tried to leverage himself out from under me but I adjusted, twisting us into a knot from which neither one of us could disentangle.

  Where my skin touched his, ice blossomed out like ripples in water, fr
osting his skin, tingeing it blue. The knife trembled at his throat and waves of frost swept across his neck where my hand pressed against him. He grunted, inhaling sharply, shivering as the cold transferred from my body into his.

  The blade I held at his neck was sharp. I only had to let it drop and glide. But even if I did, he’d be back within moments, and the realization that I could never defeat regeneration brought tears to my eyes. I wondered how long I could stay like that—how long it would take Naomi or her staff to revive and help me—how long before someone discovered that I was still alive and how long before Seth managed to free himself.

  He pressed up against me while our arms knotted, attempting to shift my weight. His voice was a rasp and his teeth were bared at me, chattering with cold. “You’re going to kill us all.”

  He was afraid of me, terrified of my mortality. It was the reason for everything he’d done. I was the end of everything he knew. Just like the people in Evereach, fear had spread.

  I tried to focus beyond his eyes, beyond the icy chill that beat out from my body and swirled across his neck and face. A light at the base of his neck throbbed in my line of vision. It was soft, flickering, not blazing like the light I’d seen coming from Michael’s heart when I’d stood on the stage surrounded by fire. Seth’s was much weaker but, if I stared hard enough, I could make out the rhythm of it, the pulse of his life force, his regeneration.

  Ruth had described a normal person’s cells as magnetic and said that there was electricity flowing around them. She’d told me that the slumber plant was designed to slow a person’s electrical impulses to mimic a resting state—sleeping death.

  As ripples of ice-blue fire washed out from my hand across his skin, I realized that every time I pressed my cold hand against him—every time the burning energy touched him—the pulse of light in his throat slowed. If I could just disrupt it … if I could somehow slow the electricity pulsing through him, then maybe he would sleep, maybe I could do what the slumber plant had done.

  I couldn’t hold my grip on the knife any longer. What I was about to try could fail, and if it did I’d be lost. “Maybe I will. Maybe I’ll start with you.”

  It was an empty threat, but uncertainty raged in his eyes. His eyes narrowed, arms shaking with strain, breathing ragged as I crushed his lungs.

  I was cold. Colder than I’d ever been. I would never be warm again. I would never again hope for things I couldn’t have.

  As fast as I could, I released him and threw the knife into the snow. Drawing backward onto my knees, I tried not to black out as the blood rushed back into my arms. As soon as my weight lifted, he saw his chance to struggle upward while his eyes followed the knife to where it landed a few feet away.

  As he began to rise, twisting in the direction of the knife and reaching for it, I aimed my hand at the base of his throat and connected, using his own momentum against him.

  I focused every ounce of icy energy into the flickering light that pulsed at his throat, sensing the energy of the nectar build and surge inside me, tingling through my chest and arm and into my fingertips. For once I was in control of it.

  Like a live wire touching an electrical circuit, I shot the energy into him.

  At the last moment, he froze. He stopped grasping for the knife and his eyes met mine. He jolted, just once, as though his reflexes triggered and told him to get away. But the impulse was a moment too late. The skin around his neck turned pale and he drew in a breath, eyes wide. He tried to speak but his lips were blue and his face reminded me of Josh right before he died.

  He swayed, flailed, and blinked. Open and closed. Open…

  … and closed.

  His head tipped forward and he slumped to the snow, sliding out of my reach.

  He lay still.

  I drew a ragged breath and hurried to push him over onto his back, touching him only where he was clothed, afraid to touch his skin again in case it was too much. I lowered my cheek close to his face and held it there, waiting for the warm breath that would tell me he was still alive. Alive, but not awake.

  Please be asleep.

  Because I couldn’t hurt anyone else. I wouldn’t be the cause of people’s fear.

  Everything was quiet around me. There was no moment of warmth, no breath. Sorrow rose inside me like a swelling tide. I’d gone too far. Whatever gave me the ability to see the energy flowing through his body, I’d used it to break him. I’d wanted to disrupt his regeneration, to slow it down, not destroy it.

  Tears froze on my cheeks.

  I’d killed him.

  I’d taken nectar and touched him and killed him.

  That’s what Michael’s dad was afraid I’d do.

  I choked as raging pain rushed through me. That’s why he’d re-engineered the bug to relay Michael’s life signs. That’s why Ruth had looked so worried when she’d told us about it. They both knew it was possible that I could kill when I took nectar. Despite everything they’d told me, they knew it could happen.

  I could kill Michael. With my bare hands if I wanted to, just by taking nectar and touching him with the force of the explosion it created inside me.

  I’d almost touched him when I’d stood on the stage. I could have killed him already. The boy I’d die to protect, the boy I could never stand to hurt, who loved me despite what I was.

  I fell back into the snow, clutching my heart, unable to cry or breath. My frozen, broken heart…

  Someone latched onto me and jerked me upright. There was a grunt and in the next instant I was dumped on the ground outside, deep in the snow.

  Naomi dragged me to my feet. I tried to pull away from her, pulling back in the snow, afraid of hurting her, until I realized that I hadn’t done anything to Seth by touch alone. I’d only hurt him when I unleashed what was inside me, deliberately transferring the energy into him as if I was some kind of electrical conduit between the two.

  “In!” she hissed.

  It took me a moment to understand that she meant the coffin. “No … what…?”

  “The others are coming!”

  A glance at the wreckage told me that people were reviving. One of her staff lurched past the remains of the doorframe, clutching his head, wobbling on unsteady legs, sinking in the snow. In another second he’d turn and see me.

  I dove for the coffin, seeing at last that it was cracked down one side where it sported a hole about the size of a book. Some of the flowers had spilled out into the snow. Hefting the lid, I threw myself in among roses, lavender, and thorns, sensing them dig in but not feeling much at all. I was too numb to feel anything. I shoved my hands underneath me and turned my face away before she saw them.

  She was focused on the hole in the side as she closed the lid and I heard her call out. “Get Seth before he regenerates. I want him secured. Now! And I want a piece of wood and nails to fix this coffin.”

  He isn’t going to regenerate. But I couldn’t call out and I wondered what would happen when Naomi saw what I’d done.

  Something swished in the snow. Chains clinked. The inside of the coffin turned to ice as my breath formed frozen droplets on the inside of the lid. I sensed Naomi’s presence next to the coffin, guarding it, pressing against the hole in the side so nobody could see in.

  Someone—one of her staff?—said, “Councilor, you have our sincere apologies. We were taken unawares.”

  “We all were. He’s subdued for now, but I suspect he’ll revive in a matter of minutes. Don’t take any chances.” There was more clinking of chains and it sounded as though they were dragging him through the snow. Naomi’s form next to the coffin twisted as if she was watching them drag him away.

  Inside the coffin, my body continued to drop the temperature inside the box, but my hands were no longer burning blue.

  The lid began to rise, and a hand that wasn’t Naomi’s appeared in the gap. I closed my eyes and held my breath.

  Naomi’s jewelry jangled. “No! Let her be.”

  The lid hovered and Naomi’s hand
descended to push it back down.

  “Yes, Councilor, but I thought we should check…”

  “I already have. The coffin’s damaged at the side and must be fixed immediately. Luckily, she remained inside it during the fall.”

  “That is lucky,” he said, not sounding convinced. “Well, if you’re sure everything’s okay.”

  “I’m sure.” Her voice softened. “She’s suffered enough. Leave all the memories inside that box where they should be. They need to be buried with her.”

  “Can I help you fix the coffin?”

  “No.” I pictured her shaking her head, a tired sigh in her voice. “Just get me the wood and nails and let me do it. I should be the one to put it back the way it was. It has to be done right.”

  The lid was down and I was back in my prison. I heard him move away, and for the next five minutes there was silence. Then the same man said, “Wood, nails, and a hammer, Councilor.”

  “Thank you. That will be all.”

  There was a pause and I guessed she was waiting for him to leave. Finally, she knelt down to the gap. “You’d better move to the other side of the coffin. Stay away from the nails. Then you’ll need to wait. We have to signal for assistance and new transport. It could take a while. Are you warm enough?”

  I choked. I’ll never be warm again. “Yes, I’m fine.”

  I moved away from the broken side as she set about fixing the damage, hammering where the nails wouldn’t hurt me. When she was finished, she said, “The others are setting up at the end of the gully. I’ll go to them now but I’ll be back as soon as I can. Be patient, okay?”

  I couldn’t answer. More time passed. She was right about the waiting. I fidgeted, trying not to knock my knees against the lid, attempting to soothe my mind and warm my thoughts. I had no idea what my body was doing now, but it was a while before my breath stopped freezing the air.

  An hour later, the lid opened and afternoon light filled the box around me.

  Naomi reached for my hair, smoothing it out and making a show of putting things straight. Nestled in the crook of her arm were a few of the scattered flowers. She placed them around me with slow, deliberate movements.