This book is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2019 by Heidi J. Leavitt
ISBN 978-1070144900
Cover & interior design by Looseleaf Editorial & Production.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles and reviews.
Learn more about the book and the author at www.heidijleavitt.blogspot.com
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Prologue
1. Corizen Bound
2. Roma
3. Orientation
4. The International University
5. A Favor from Bren
6. Fingers of the Brotherhood
7. A Dubious Excursion
8. Friendship and Friction
9. Deepening Gloom
10. Spring Fever
11. Plans in Motion
12. Chemistry
13. The Inaugural Ball
14. Invaded
15. In the Palace Gardens
16. Hospital Vigil
17. Sneaking Away
18. Stasis Dreams
19. The Roran Curse
Preview of Shadows of Zenith
The Roran Curse Novels
About the Author
For Brianna and Kendra, sunshine and starlight.
Prologue
The day Kendra Forrest lost her friends, her family, and her home started like any other summer day. The weather was miserable, hotter and more humid than normal. The air was still and heavy—not even a breath of a breeze from the harbor offered any relief. When her best friend, Travin, commed and suggested a trip to the cove, she jumped at the opportunity. Erik demanded to go with her, and her mother insisted that one of the family’s bodyguards accompany them, but Kendra figured any chance to get into the water and out of the heat was worth a couple of minor annoyances like that.
Luckily, when Dale escorted Kendra and her younger brother through the fortified security gate that walled off her home from the rest of the booming logging town, she saw that Travin had his younger brother tagging along with him also. Jesse was the same age as Erik; as soon as they started down the road to the harbor, Jesse and Erik moved ahead of the group, chatting animatedly about some role playing game they were both obsessed with.
The walk down to the harbor had been cheerful; later Kendra couldn’t remember what they talked about, but she did remember the dimples in Travin’s cheeks showing whenever he smiled. She envied him the dimples; her father had them too, and her mother said that was why her father had always gotten his way.
You always get your way too, Dina said. You don’t need any dimples for that.
Kendra huffed. I do not always get my way!
Dina, the alien life force who had shared a connection to Kendra ever since she was born, only laughed. Humans just love to lie to themselves.
And isithunzi don’t?
We don’t need to, Dina said smugly.
Whatever. Kendra turned her attention to Travin’s jokes and ignored the voice in her head for the rest of the walk down to the beach.
The cove was a small, sheltered finger of the bay with a stretch of rocky shore. It wasn’t the best beach—most people preferred the sandy strip on the other side of the point—so the local teenagers pretty much had it to themselves that day.
Every kid at the cove was in the water; it was too hot to stay on shore. Dale stood back under the shade of some of the small trees, a vantage point where he could stay cooler and still keep an eye on both Kendra and Erik. Kendra wasn’t even bothered by the hawk-faced man who was always watching; after so many years, even Travin was used to the bodyguards who trailed her family everywhere. Kendra, her mother, her siblings, and their housekeeper had been kidnapped when she was seven, and ever since, the family had employed at least two full-time bodyguards. With one grandfather an Armada admiral and the other an ultrawealthy businessman, there would always be a risk of it happening again.
Kendra dropped her bag and towel on the rocks, far from the edge of the tiny waves that lapped up on the rocks, and waded into the water. It was blissfully cool, and she dunked her head in, slicking her long blonde hair back from her face. A group of kids about their age from town were already playing tag, and Travin waved at them. One of Travin’s close friends, a tall gangly boy named Aman, made his way toward them. He lunged at Travin and slapped him on the arm.
“You’re it!” he shouted. The kids around immediately dashed away, and Kendra squealed as Travin lunged for her. She dove into the water and kicked away, staying just out of his reach. He darted to his left and managed to tag one of the other girls before she could swim away. She screeched and splashed at him before darting toward another one of the kids. Kendra tried to swim back toward Travin and lost track of who was it.
Behind you! warned Dina, just as one of the kids nearly tagged her. She threw herself forward and under the water just in time.
Thanks, Dina! One of the best advantages of having a shadow like Dina was that it was kind of like having a set of eyes in the back of her head. Dina couldn’t see anything that Kendra couldn’t, but she could sense energy well enough to know exactly what was going on. It gave Kendra such an advantage that she managed to keep herself from getting tagged once.
They had been playing water tag for a while before Dale interrupted them.
“Kendra!”
She turned just enough to acknowledge Dale’s shout from the edge of the water. She could barely hear him over the other kids. “Erik disappeared again. I’m heading to the point to look for him.” Kendra waved in response and then turned to Travin with a grimace. He waded toward her.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Erik and his stupid games.”
“Games?”
“He’s always trying to see if he can slip away without Dale noticing. Wonder how he managed it this time. Probably by swimming underwater.”
Aman belly flopped right beside her, sending a wall of water over both of them. Travin turned, trying to dunk Aman in retaliation, but Aman was slippery. He ducked out of the way and hit Travin with another splash that left him dripping seawater out of his nose. Kendra laughed, while at the same time backing away from Aman. “I thought we were playing tag!”
Aman turned on her. He pushed her shoulders down until her nose dipped beneath the salty water. She came up spluttering. “We are—now it’s dunk tag and you’re it!”
“Hey!” she shouted, but he had already dashed away. She turned on Travin, her nearest victim. Travin splashed at her, trying to keep her away, and she shrieked but didn’t give up. She retaliated by grabbing his shoulders and trying to dunk him. Instead of trying to back away, though, his arms came around her back and pulled her close. She gasped when she found herself staring right into Travin’s eyes. They were almost exactly the same height right now, and his warm brown eyes stared directly into her startled blue ones.
Then quickly, before she even had time to react, he kissed her.
It was just a quick kiss, a gentle one right on the lips, but she felt like the moment lasted an eternity. She caught her breath. It had never occurred to her in a million years that Travin might like her like that.
She wasn’t even sure what she thought about it. She had no idea how she was supposed to react.
Suddenly, Dina’s urgent call distracted her from Travin and his inexplicable behavior.<
br />
Kendra! Get out of the water!
♦
Travin stared down at the water lapping around his waist, too embarrassed to look Kendra in the face. He had never kissed a girl before, and he wasn’t sure what had possessed him to do it now. He knew Kendra’s attitude toward “romance,” and he had carefully kept his hopeless crush hidden from her for more than a year. What in the name of the stars had he been thinking? But she hadn’t pulled away from him, so he finally gathered his courage enough to look up and meet her eyes. Only she wasn’t looking at him at all. She was staring blankly over his shoulder. “Kendra?” Travin asked worriedly. She didn’t respond. Travin glanced backward but he couldn’t see anything unusual. Just some of the other kids swimming around.
“Kendra?” Travin repeated. She was still standing with her hands on his shoulders, though her fingers had gone slack. Then, just as he was starting to get frightened, her eyes snapped back into focus.
“Get everyone out of the water,” she ordered, all playfulness gone from her tone. “Now!” She dropped her hands and turned around.
“Everyone out of the water!” she shouted, her voice determined. Travin stared at her, dumbfounded. She seemed to have transformed from the laughing fourteen-year-old he knew into a stranger, one who acted like an adult. He was about to protest, but then he saw her hands shaking. She was afraid.
“Come on!” he yelled, trusting her without argument. “Everyone get on shore!” The other kids swiveled around, wondering what the problem was.
Kendra pointed toward the far side of the cove. “Oxyrhina,” she explained tersely. Travin blanched and put on a burst of speed.
“It’s an oxyrhina!” he shouted.
Everyone started scrambling for the shore in a panic. Several of the girls screamed. Oxyrhina sharks were rare—Travin had never seen one in the cove—but they weren’t unheard of, and if Kendra had spotted something with enormous razor-sharp teeth in the water, no one wanted to meet it face to face. As soon as they reached the small rattling rocks that blanketed the shoreline, Kendra turned back to the water, staring blankly again. Travin scanned the water as well. Where did she see it? She wasn’t even looking at the water!
Suddenly, she gasped. “Erik!”
Travin looked around wildly, not seeing Jesse either. He panicked, wondering if the shark had attacked unnoticed, pulling the boys down under the water. Kendra leaped away from him, stumbling over the rocks toward the northern side of the cove, the opposite direction from where Dale had gone to look for Erik earlier. He bolted after her, hoping that she knew where the boys might be. He easily caught up to her, and she turned her face to his. “They’re in the cave,” she gasped breathlessly. Travin’s eyes widened. There was a cave on the far side of the cove, cut into the sandstone cliffs that created the point and provided the cove with one side of its shelter. At high tide it was almost completely underwater, though Travin knew from previous foolhardy escapades that at midtide (like now) it was possible to hold his breath long enough to swim inside and reach the shelf. It was dangerous and dark, but not impossible for a couple of reckless boys to reach.
“Well, an oxyrhina can’t fit in that cave, unless it’s a baby,” Travin pointed out.
“It’s . . . not . . . a . . . baby,” Kendra panted, stumbling forward on the rocks.
Then Travin spotted the tail swishing through the water—a tail nearly two and a half meters long. It would disappear for a few seconds and then reappear. It was unbelievable that something that huge had made its way into the shallow water of the cove in the first place. He wanted to grab Kendra’s arm and yank her farther up the beach. No, an oxyrhina couldn’t reach them on land. But he didn’t even want to be within an arm’s length of the water with such a vicious predator nearby.
However, Kendra planted herself right at the water’s edge closest to the cave opening and stared at the sweeping tail as if she were contemplating how to drive it off herself.
“Kendra, what are you doing?” he hissed. He didn’t know how well oxyrhinas could hear, but he didn’t want to risk attracting its attention. He looked nervously at the submerged cave mouth. There was no sign of Erik and Jesse, though. How did Kendra even know they were in there? Had she seen them go in?
“They can’t get out,” Kendra murmured, as if talking to herself. “It’s seen them, and it is staking out the cave entrance. But the tide is coming in, and their air pocket is getting smaller.”
“How do you know that?”
“I just do,” Kendra answered simply. But she was utterly confident. Travin could see no trace of insecurity or doubt in her face. Again, it made her look foreign—like an adult.
How well did he know her? He had lived next door to her all his life, but did he really know her at all?
“Maybe it will get bored and leave,” Travin suggested.
“They don’t have time to wait it out!” she said desperately. She was back to being a teenager again. She turned to him, her eyes wide. She bit her lip, searching his face, and then she turned back, staring at where the oxyrhina’s tail made just the tiniest ripples in the water. She held her hand out, palm down over the water, and closed her eyes. Travin watched her in bewilderment. Was she trying to be bait for the oxyrhina? Lure it to shore in the hope that the boys would be able to swim out before it noticed? That seemed unlikely to work. He tensed his muscles, ready to yank her backward should the giant shark approach.
Then he noticed the glow. Kendra’s skin seemed to brighten, and Travin squinted, wondering if the sun was playing tricks on his eyes. He shifted to the side, trying to change his angle, when a sudden wind gusted into him and he staggered a bit. It whipped through Kendra’s hair, lashing her across the face, but she still didn’t open her eyes. Next the water simply pulled back from Kendra’s feet. It swiftly retreated, as if he were watching a video of the tide going out played at ultrafast speed. The water clattered over the rocks on the cove floor, making a deafening crashing noise. Fish were left flopping on wet mud near the shore. In front of them, the retreating tide carried the giant oxyrhina with it for about a meter, and then the water was too shallow. It caught on some formerly submerged rocks and was left flailing, its sides heaving.
Travin’s mouth dropped open, staring at the oxyrhina in horror. It was even more terrifying now that he could see its full size. But in front of him, Kendra opened her eyes and darted forward, dodging the thrashing oxyrhina. Her feet squelched in the sucking mud, where only moments before the water had been deep enough to wade in. She reached the cave and ducked down, poking her head inside. “Hurry, Erik!” she called breathlessly. “I can’t hold it much longer!”
As Travin stood frozen, first Jesse and then Erik crawled from the cave opening. They looked around at the cove, the water gone, and stared at the stranded oxyrhina until Kendra plucked at both of their arms.
“Travin!” she gasped. “Help!”
Travin blinked, and then his legs were moving forward before his mind had caught up. He grabbed his brother with one arm and Erik with the other and started towing them back to where the shore was—or at least, where the shore had been just a few minutes before. Kendra tried to follow, but he turned just in time to see her stumble and drop to one knee. Suddenly, the water was rushing back into the cove with a roar again, covering up the flopping fish and freeing the oxyrhina from its perch in the rocks. The seawater lifted Kendra’s body and heaved her forward, and Travin waded back in to help. Grabbing her under her arms and locking his hands together, he dragged her back out of the water. He laid her on the beach, trying to be gentle with all the rocks under her. Her face was sickly pale, and her eyes were closed. Travin shook her, not sure what else to do. “Kendra!” he said urgently. “Kendra, wake up!” What had happened to her?
And how had she forced the water away from the cave like that?
All the other kids in the cove collected around them, though they
stood back, as if they were unsure of what they could do to help. Or maybe they were scared of Kendra. Dale the bodyguard pushed through them and dropped to his knees at Kendra’s side.
“What happened?” he growled. Travin just raised his shoulders. Dale’s furious face turned to Erik, who was hunched over and breathing heavily a couple paces away.
“Well?” Dale demanded.
Erik didn’t say anything at all. But his eyes met Dale’s for just a second and then shifted guiltily away.
Dale scooped Kendra’s limp form up as if she weighed no more than a toddler. Then he jerked his head at Erik and started back for the trail that led to the road.
“You kids get on home,” Dale said over his shoulder. Then he disappeared into the trees, Erik trudging in his wake.
Aman hurried over to Travin. “I’ve never seen anything like that!” he said. “That water pulling back and that oxyrhina just flopping on the sand, you and Kendra standing there completely calm, and then boom! Like a boss you pull your brother out of the cave. How did you do it?”
“It wasn’t me.” Travin stepped over to his brother and grabbed him around the shoulder.
“You OK?” he asked Jesse. His brother nodded.
“How did you know where we were?” Jesse’s voice was barely louder than a whisper.
“Kendra knew somehow.” Travin stared at the trees, tempted to run after Dale and make sure Kendra was going to be OK. Or at least demand some answers.
“I’m sure she’ll be fine,” Aman said, noticing the direction of Travin’s gaze. “Probably just fainted at the sight of that oxyrhina coming for her. I would have.”
Travin tried to shrug it off. “Yeah, she’s probably fine. I’ll go over tomorrow.”
He didn’t know that Kendra would disappear without even a goodbye comm. It would be five years before he saw her again.
1. Corizen Bound
“It’s not too late to change your mind.”
Kendra stared at the arched gateway, looming like a yawning mouth waiting to swallow her.
The Search for Ulyssa Page 1
