Beneath the Guarding Stars

by Everly Frost

  Within minutes, the light around my coffin changed and the rhythm of being carried stopped. I guessed I was finally on the train. Soon, the train whistle blew and the clack of its wheels lulled me. To my surprise, it wasn’t long before the coffin lid opened again and light flooded in.

  “Right.” Naomi’s voice was all business but I couldn’t sense anyone else in the car whom she might be talking to. “I can do this.”

  The flowers rustled and moved, and she patted my arm, talking to herself. “Tight around the arm, choose the biggest vein.” She huffed. “Oh, Ruth, you said this would be easy.”

  A sharp pain bit the back of my hand for a second and then the pain stopped. The light flickered and she seemed to reach over me as something sloshed. The faint sound continued in rhythm to the movement of the train, coming from the coffin lid above me.

  She exhaled. “There. At least you won’t starve for the next two days.” There was a pause and she lifted my hand as though peering at it. “That’s if I’ve done it properly. Oh, who knows? Heaven help me if I have to wake you up to feed you.”

  I almost felt sorry for her. She left the lid open for another moment and her voice remained close by, as though she’d sat down as near to me as she could. Her next words traveled on a sigh. “How did it come to this?”

  Then she was quiet for a very long time and I could only imagine her staring out the window as the train streamed along the track.

  Eventually she closed the lid and I was consumed in the darkness by the scent of roses and my own incapacity to move. At some point I fell asleep—a real sleep—but woke again to the strange state of being paralyzed and only half-aware, half able to discern what was going on around me. I didn’t know how late in the day it was, whether my funeral had been held in the morning or the afternoon, whether it was nighttime or still day. The light beyond my eyelids was brighter and made me think I’d slept the night and now it was morning.

  I tried to rest, filling my head with dreams of Michael’s kisses, his hand in mine, his fierce determination that there would be a future for us. But my future wouldn’t be with him anymore, and what his mother said about his state of mind brought fear to my heart. I wondered what would happen to him, whether he would choose to move forward or live in the past. The boy I’d first met had lived for the fight and nothing else. I didn’t want him to shut life out because of me. He still had his brother and his mother, and I could only hope they would help him get through it.

  A tear trickled down my cheek and I swiped it away, surprised to find there was enough room in the coffin to move my arm.

  Oh, wait…

  I’d moved my arm.

  I could move!

  I tested my legs. They were slow and cumbersome, but not paralyzed like before. Lurching upward, I groped along the top of the box, reaching the bag of fluid that was connected to the back of my hand. I felt sick at the thought of pulling the needle out, but the bag was attached to the top of the coffin and the line was attached to me.

  Grimacing, I found the corner of the plaster holding it in place and peeled it off. I didn’t have a spare hand to press on top of the needle at the same time as I eased it out. I winced as it slid free, pressing on the wound for a moment in case it bled. I hoped it would close up soon. I pushed the needle down inside the coffin, wedging it into the gap between the side and the mattress. No point accidentally impaling myself with it.

  Finally disconnected from the bag, I pushed on the lid, easing it up far enough to peer through the crack. There could be a staff member standing watch and I had to be careful. I waited, listening, all my senses telling me that I was alone, but not wanting to take the chance I was wrong.

  After an agonizing few minutes, my arms started to shake. I had to either close the lid or get out, and there was no way I was going back in the coffin.

  Heaving at the lid, I scanned the room, expecting to hear a shout, to see horrified staff staring at the girl who’d come back to life. I wondered why the sleep had worn off. My parents had never woken up, so why had I?

  As I climbed from the box, several flowers scattered around me. My attempt at catching them failed and I decided I’d just have to clean them up later. I jumped the distance to the floor and dropped into a defensive crouch, discovering that the coffin rested on a pallet anchored to the floor of what looked like a freight car—sparsely furnished, with one long bench covered in plush material built along the right-hand side of what was otherwise empty floor space.

  The windows looked out onto the rushing landscape. We were traveling beside a mountain, rock face on one side and open blue sky on the other. Sunlight streamed in. Not for the first time I wondered how the Starsgardians had ever built such a track. As far as I could see, we weren’t near any towers and there weren’t any in the distance. I couldn’t tell how far north we were or how far east. We must have traveled all night. Naomi had said the journey would take two days, so I assumed that meant we were halfway there.

  Bending to pick up the flowers, I stifled a gasp as a thorn pricked me. I’d also crushed a couple under my boots and they released their perfume into the air, but that wasn’t all they released. I bent to the one I’d stepped on, bringing it close, studying the pinprick of what looked like black liquid oozing from where my heel had broken the stem. I dabbed my finger to it and pressed it to my tongue.

  It was bitter and sweet at the same time.

  My head buzzed. I felt light.

  It couldn’t be nectar…

  I breathed into the silence around me, pressing my fingers across the petals, smoothing them out and staring at them so hard that my eyes watered. The inky lines were there, barely visible, but there all the same.

  There was only one way to know for sure.

  I found the sharpest thorn in the coffin and picked a spot on my arm that wouldn’t bother me if it didn’t heal. Well, not too much anyway. Gritting my teeth, I drew the thorn across my skin, cutting a shallow wound about a half an inch long—long enough to properly test my theory. I let it bleed a moment to make sure it was deep enough and wasn’t going to close up anytime soon on its own.

  Satisfied, I drew the crushed rose petal across the cut.

  It left the faintest of black smudges, mixing for a second with the blood I’d drawn.

  I waited, but nothing happened.

  Silly, stupid…

  The roses were just crushed and bruised from traveling with me. To think I’d actually believed they had nectar in them and now I had a cut to prove how wrong I was. I rifled through the contents of the coffin, looking for the discarded piece of plaster I’d taken from my hand and found it. I grabbed the bottom of my shirt and blotted at the wound, wiping away the blood so the plaster would stick better.

  I blinked at it. My skin had healed.

  I stumbled back, snatching up the rose petals again. My brother had told me to find a source of nectar. Well, now I had. Except that it was everywhere. I’d seen the black veins in almost all the plant life in Starsgard’s south—except the bioluminescent plants within the tower itself; I’d never noticed the black veins in those. I thought back to the first day we’d arrived and tried to remember whether I’d seen anything in the moss, but I couldn’t recall. It would explain why Jonah had been so upset at the time that the moss hadn’t worked like it should have. I hadn’t noticed any black veins in the purple leaf Jonah had first carried with him then, but I hadn’t exactly been looking at the time.

  I’d definitely seen them in the one he’d used on me the day before. So if the purple leaves somehow contained nectar, and the nectar was interfering with how the leaves worked, then that meant…

  There was a distant crash. My heart pounded and my blood froze.

  Seth was awake too.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  NAOMI BURST through the door and shrieked when she saw me. “It’s true!”

  I lifted my hands. “I know what’s happening.”

  She rushed at me, babbling. “The sleep hasn’t work
ed. You have to get out.”

  “Yes, but I know why.” I lifted the petals, trying to show her, but she grabbed my arm, hauling me through the car to the other side. At the other end was another door, which appeared to lead to the last car.

  “There’s no time for why. You have to run, Ava. Seth’s on his way back here, and if he sees you’re alive he won’t stop until he kills you.”

  “No.” I dug in my heels. “I’m not running. And anyway, where will I run to? It’s either stay on the train or jump off the cliff, and that’s not a good option either.”

  “We can disconnect the final car and leave it behind. It will give you time to escape into the mountains.”

  “You’ve seen these mountains?” I gestured at the soaring cliff face. “I’m more likely to die trying to climb them.”

  “You have to go. He’ll kill you.”

  “No, he won’t.” I snatched up a handful of rose petals. It was a gamble but I figured roses were as edible as vegetables. I’d eaten maple tree sap in a bio-engineered tree. This couldn’t be any worse.

  Without hesitation, I shoved a handful of leaves into my mouth and chewed.

  Naomi looked at me as though I’d gone mad.

  I conceded that I probably had. All of it was madness. Leaving Michael behind was madness. Going to live in a broken tower was madness. My existence was madness. By all accounts I should’ve died long ago and never made it to sixteen but I’d survived, and that thought gave me courage.

  There was another crash. Naomi whirled as the door slid open between the cars. Seth loomed in the doorway, a knife in one hand. The passenger car behind him was littered with broken furniture and several gray-clad bodies—none of them moving.

  Naomi looked on her staff with alarm, positioning herself directly in front of me. “What have you done to them?”

  “Evereach produces excellent tranquillizer.” He advanced on us. “You should search people before putting them to sleep.”

  Her response was a disappointed murmur. “We never needed to before.”

  For the first time, I felt uncertain. Treble had subdued me at the Terminal with paralytic tranqs the last time I was pumped full of nectar. Aside from the slumber plant Jonah had used on me, it was the only thing that seemed to work. Sure, they’d had to shoot me three times—a massive dose by anyone’s standards—but if Seth had enough darts, I wasn’t going to be moving for long. I shuddered to think what he’d do to me while I was paralyzed.

  I leaned around Naomi, attempting to assess where he was hiding the tranqs. He wasn’t holding a dart gun, so it didn’t look like he could shoot them from a distance. He certainly didn’t have a drone to do his bidding. His method of distribution could be as crude as a syringe, and if that was the case he’d need to get close.

  Disgust dripped from Naomi. “How did you get that barbaric stuff across our borders?”

  He bristled. If he realized she was stalling him, he took the bait. “Barbaric is what I call eternal sleep. Barbaric is moss that strips flesh from bone and blocks pain inhibitors while it carries out its task.” His voice lowered. “Barbaric is harboring death itself and parading it around like it’s a girl.”

  “She is a girl and you will not harm her.”

  He patted his pocket. “I don’t feel like wasting these on you. I think you should step aside and let me deal with death myself.”

  The tranqs were in his pocket, which meant he’d have to be in close range to get me. I took a step back, buying distance. It’d been two minutes since I’d eaten the rose petals and so far … nothing. I didn’t feel any different. No crazy pyrokinesis. No burning skin. I needed to either wrench the tranqs from him or destroy them before he could use them, and neither of those things was going to happen without some sort of major freaking miracle.

  Outside, the train continued to speed along the track. We were ascending beside the mountain. In the distance there were icy peaks, a perfect, gleaming white that matched the fear forming in my heart.

  “I’m wasting your time, am I?” Naomi’s voice was a barb, dripping with sarcasm and doused with a threat I hadn’t heard before. Suddenly, she wasn’t the picture of subtle intrigue or quiet manipulation, but had morphed into a sharp implement about to slice through its target.

  Seth reassessed her, pausing as though he was calculating everything he knew about her and discovering that his knowledge came up short. He lowered his voice to a purr as if he was attempting to connect dots. “You have Seversandian heritage, don’t you?”

  “I do.”

  “But you left your people.”

  “To be part of a country whose ideals you will not destroy. I vowed to guard every star, mortal or immortal both.”

  As she spoke, she removed her bracelet, the one with the scorpion on the end, twisting it in the middle and flicking it out so that it straightened into a short spear. The scorpion formed a handle that fit neatly into her hand.

  He sucked in a breath, his nostrils flaring. Without another word, he descended on her, knife raised. She pushed me backward out of the way so hard I collided with the back door. She deflected his first blow, returning one of her own with her bare hands, followed by a lunge at his heart with the spear. She was quick and nimble, grazing his chest as he lurched to the side.

  I jumped to my feet, seeking anything I could use to defend myself. The door behind me was wooden, not glass, so there was no opportunity to form a makeshift weapon by breaking it. Unless I could splinter it, but that seemed unlikely. There was the coffin, around which Seth and Naomi moved as deftly as if they were dancing, exchanging blows and cuts that healed in an instant. It had metal handles, but again, only strength beyond my own could break them off.

  My breathing quickened as fast as the speeding landscape outside the train. My blood spiked, and for the first time I froze, not sure or certain of anything, suddenly considering Naomi’s plan to run to the back and attempt to disembark.

  I couldn’t do that at the speed the train was going. If anything, it was moving faster than it had been a few minutes ago.

  Naomi cornered Seth and made a final move, lashing out with the spear, aiming not for his heart but his throat.

  But Seth danced with knives. He knew how to snatch and throw them. With a sharp twist, he took hold of the spear and lunged forward with the knife. He darted so quickly I could hardly follow it. Naomi collapsed to the floor, a pool of elegant silks around her.

  He shoved her out of the way with his foot and I wondered how long it would take her to recover. Not long. Seconds. She was already coming back, pushing at the floor with her hands, shaking off the grogginess of regeneration.

  “Seversandian savage.” With an annoyed huff, Seth grabbed a gleaming dart from his pocket and drove it into the side of her neck. Judging by the contents of his pocket, it looked as if he only had one left, which gave me hope. That’s if the rose petals were having any effect at all, and I was beginning to doubt it.

  With a gasp, Naomi sank back to the ground, eyes wide.

  I knew only too well the powerless sensation of being paralyzed: awake and aware but unable to move, much like the sleep had left me—although that effect had been unintentional as far as the Councilors were concerned. The paralytic in Naomi’s blood would last at least ten minutes, possibly longer. More than long enough for bad things to happen.

  Seth dragged Naomi across the open door at the end of the car, grabbed her head in both his hands, and positioned her so she faced the rest of the car. “You may as well watch this.”

  She tried to speak but managed only a garbled moan.

  I drew to my feet. Seth advanced on me and stopped an arm’s length away, the knife in one hand and the golden spear in the other, close enough to touch.

  “I thought we’d danced our last dance together.”

  “You had the advantage last time,” I said. “But not now.”

  I was bluffing and he knew it. I had nothing. The nectar hadn’t worked and my fear had frozen me to the s
pot. I was as cold as if a wind had sped across the snowy mountains and straight into my heart.

  He studied me, his eyes running from the top of my head to my feet. “You look different. Older. Your hair grew again.” He placed the golden spear down on top of the coffin lid, resting the scorpion against the maple wood as though daring me to grab it, and ran his hand through my hair, tugging it. “So lovely.”

  I jerked away, but he drew closer, peering at me. “And your skin…” His free hand wafted to my cheek, grazing it, but only for a second before he withdrew with a wince. The look of surprise on his face told me he wouldn’t try it again. His other hand closed tighter around the knife. He frowned, perplexed, still staring. “You’re like ice.”

  I shivered, because ice was fragile. It could crack. I tried not to look at the spear, at how close yet how far away it was. I wondered if I could reach it before him.

  “How did you get the tranqs across the border?”

  “I didn’t. Evereach did. The day you arrived, one of the drones made it as far as the perimeter. I found it where it crashed and gave it to the cleanup crew but kept the darts.”

  Relief flooded me that at least he wasn’t in league with the Bashers or that they’d infiltrated Starsgard somehow. The sensation was like warm water across my shoulders, a trickle of heat through me. I stopped holding my breath and, as I exhaled, my breath misted.

  He was right. I was cold.

  I wondered if he’d broken a window in the struggle with Naomi’s staff, if gusts of cold were driving down from the frozen landscape. We were in the middle of nowhere. A no-man’s land between the north and the south. There was nothing but snow ahead of us and snow behind, and whatever heating system the train had, it wasn’t working.

  At least…

  I breathed out and again the air frosted.

  Seth continued to stare, sweat beading on his forehead, and that’s when I knew. The cold wasn’t coming from a broken window or the icy landscape. It was coming from me.

  It was a different kind of burn.

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