Beneath the Guarding Stars

by Everly Frost

  I glanced in the direction of the gully but the wreckage was between the coffin and where she pointed, so I guessed her staff couldn’t see anything unless they approached.

  Her hand brushed mine and paused there a moment, her eyes finally studying my face. She took a moment, frowning. “You look…” She swallowed, her eyes filling. “You remind me of someone I used to look after…”

  She shook her head and looked away.

  “Where are we?”

  “Less than two hours from the northernmost tower. Zachary and Peter will meet us there. Everyone thinks we’re taking you north to tip your coffin into the ocean.”

  She still hadn’t mentioned Seth and I couldn’t understand why. I forced his name from my mouth. “Seth?”

  “He’s alive.”

  Relief slammed through me. I sucked in a breath, hardly believing it. “But—”

  “I don’t know what you did to him, Ava.” Her expression was guarded. “I didn’t see what happened between you, and there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to know, but his body’s shut down into an incredibly deep sleep. It’s as if he was touched by a slumber leaf. Yet it’s not so much sleep as … hibernation.”

  Hibernation. Like a bear in winter.

  “He’s chained now. Even if he does wake up he can’t escape.”

  Bears wake up. Eventually. “Keep him cold,” I said.

  She gave me an odd look, as though my comment made sense but she didn’t quite know why. “My tower in the north is situated on the highest peak of Starsgard. There’s no spring there, only an eternal winter. We’ll keep him in an underground cavern filled with stalactites. Cold enough do you think?”

  I nodded and sank against the coffin.

  I didn’t kill him. Michael’s dad was wrong. But … there was no doubt that I’d hurt Seth. I’d sent him into a coma and I had no idea whether he’d ever come out of it.

  Naomi sighed, drawing my focus back to her. “You must think it strange that a Seversandian who grew up playing in the hot sand dunes with her sisters would revel in this icy kingdom. But I do.”

  “You migrated here.”

  “Right after the end of the world war. I was ten years old but I already knew I belonged somewhere else. We are all immigrants here.” Her eyes became bright with long-remembered hope. “Starsgard is the place where all the cultures converge and live in peace. Evereach is mostly peaceful too, I’ll give you that, but no Seversandian is welcome there. Just as no Evereacher will ever be welcome in Seversand.

  “The world war might have ended long ago but tensions turned cold over time and became a game of threats and counter-threats with everyone hoping the other won’t act on them. Starsgard recognizes all points of view but aligns with none. That’s how we survive.” She patted the flowers, arranging them just so. “Well, that and an elaborate defense system.”

  “He got the tranqs from a fallen drone. One of them crashed inside the border.”

  “Ah.” She rocked back on her heels for a moment. “That means he was acting alone. That’s good news.” But her smile became sad. “Unfortunately, his actions are an indication of what others could feel about you.”

  I nodded, thinking about survival. “Were you the one who took my parents?”

  She stopped, a thorn pricking her finger.

  I said, “I saw a flash of gold when I woke up the night they left. I think it was your bracelet. The one with the scorpion.”

  Her eyes became wide pools. “I’m sorry, Ava. Ruth said we should send our undercover operatives, but I knew your parents would never agree to leave you unless I convinced them. Even when I told them that Josh had arranged it, they didn’t want to go.” She smoothed the hair from my face. “We never stop trying to protect our children.”

  There was a thud from the nearby wreckage as if an object had fallen on it. There were more thuds, like stomping footsteps, beating against what remained of the train.

  Naomi spun to the sound. “What now?”

  I clutched the edge of the coffin, fighting the impulse to leap out of it.

  Recognition dawned across Naomi’s eyes and she gave an exasperated sigh. “Now he arrives.” She planted her hands on her hips, waiting. When there was silence, she called out, her voice a soft but odd combination of stern and welcoming. “We’re over here.”

  Michael.

  My heart leaped into my throat. How he could have got there I didn’t know, but he’d found out I was alive. He must have heard the call for help and come for me. Relief coursed through me—and joy to see him.

  Someone jumped from the broken roof of the train. I leaned forward, half out of the coffin, half in it. The boy stalking toward us through the snow was not Michael.

  Like the antithesis of the boy I loved, this boy’s pale hair sported a single long plait, ending below his shoulder; the rest of his hair so short and white that it appeared shaved. He bore no weapons, just his hands and his body poised to fight. Despite the cold, he was naked to the waist. As he stalked toward the coffin, warmth radiated from his skin. I inhaled it like the sun, sucking the sensation into my frozen lungs, sensing them thaw for the first time since I’d eaten the petals.

  As welcome as the warm sensation was, I drew back, fear lancing through me.

  There was a glow about him, a glimmer, like the streak of light I’d seen seconds before he rammed a syringe full of nectar into my thigh.

  When Naomi didn’t challenge him, he strode right up to her, standing an arm’s length away from me. He was close enough to touch. I searched for his heart glow—the pulse of energy that I would use if I had to—but I must have exhausted most of the nectar, because I couldn’t see it. Not in his chest or throat or head.

  “We could’ve used your help an hour ago,” Naomi said.

  He didn’t acknowledge her or look at me. He spoke to the space above her head, his back straight, his voice a raspy threat.

  “You have one who belongs to us.”

  Naomi’s smile faded and her expression filled with a mixture of sadness and determination. She drew herself up to her full height. With a twist of her lips and her head held high, she opened her arms wide as though introducing old friends.

  Her eyes met mine. “Ava Holland, meet the Snowboy.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  SNOWBOY? THIS boy was supposed to be a myth.

  “I believe Snowboy has come to take you the rest of the way to Tower 177.”

  When he gave her a curt nod, a short moment of agreement, Naomi leaned forward, her gold jewelry clinking. “You may have what you think belongs to you. But I assure you, although I will allow her to go, she will decide with whom she belongs.”

  For once, Naomi brought a smile to my lips. I scrutinized the boy and all his glowing-ness, wondering at the glimmer and the way even his shape seemed to blur at the edges like moving light.

  Unsmiling, Snowboy swiveled and caught me in his gaze. Up close, I finally got to see the color of his eyes: a very pale blue like a washed-out sky. Not ugly. Just … different.

  Who was this guy? Or maybe the question was what was this guy? And how could I ever belong with him? If he was there to take me the rest of the way to the tower, I wondered if that meant I was going to live with him. He’d said that Naomi had something that belonged to “us” as though there were more like him, but that seemed even more unbelievable.

  “You need to leave right away,” Naomi said, as though I would have no objection. “Ava’s dead and we want to keep it that way.”

  My voice stuck in my throat as the boy glared me down with his pale eyes. I wondered how much he knew about me and whether he knew about Michael. I’d seen him that one time when I sat beneath the cherry blossoms outside Tower Seventeen. Then again when he stuck a syringe into me. What I knew about him was that he was fast and powerful, that he’d appeared on stage without seeming to even touch the wooden boards and had stuck a full dose of nectar into me without hesitation.

  He’d saved my life and ruined
it, both at the same time.

  If he was reckless enough to cause that kind of damage, I wondered what other damage he could cause.

  I knew without a doubt that he wasn’t going to give me a choice—or maybe he wouldn’t understand how I could possibly not want to go with him. I scrambled from the coffin, warding him away when he looked as if he was about to help me. He assessed me, lingering on the still-blue veins in the backs of my hands.

  I didn’t care anymore if Naomi’s people saw me get out of the coffin.

  “Why should I go with you?”

  The boy moved to block my view of Naomi, stepping between us, cutting me off, filling my vision with only him. Turned at an angle, his expression changed. The mask dropped for a moment and his eyes filled with a strange kind of regret, an unexpected compassion.

  “Who is it?”

  “What do mean?”

  “The person you love. The one you’ve left behind.”

  I sucked in a deep breath, wondering if my fear and confusion showed. “You’ll hurt him.”

  He drew back his shoulders, taller than me, as tall as Michael. “Maybe.” He didn’t move his hands, didn’t touch me, but it felt as if he’d taken hold of me and I couldn’t move. He said, “Maybe you’ll hurt him more.”

  I sucked in a breath, knowing it was true, but as I studied Snowboy’s eyes I realized that wasn’t what he meant. He didn’t mean that I could hurt Michael’s body, but his heart. I’d hurt him more in death than I ever could in life. I found myself studying the boy, wondering how he saw through my thoughts.

  A glimmer of a smirk returned to Snowboy’s face and a part of the mask came back. “If he’s worthy of you, he’ll follow you.”

  “He thinks I’m dead. He doesn’t know that he can.”

  He thought a moment. “And they forbid you to tell him, am I correct? I’m surprised you haven’t been able to change their minds. Unless…” He turned his blue-white eyes on Naomi. “She doesn’t know, does she? You haven’t told her?”

  Naomi became defensive. “The less we speak of it, the more we can keep it a secret.”

  He shook his head with a sigh. “Secrets. Myths. They become the same thing.” His eyes narrowed. “I tell you what, Councilor. How about you find a way to let Michael know she’s alive and in return I won’t wander over to the group of anxious people milling about at the end of the gully and introduce myself.”

  She sucked in a breath. “You wouldn’t.”

  He smiled, but it was an odd, mirthless grin, as though he was spoiling for a fight. “Why not? What do I have to lose that I haven’t already lost?”

  She poised as if she was in mid-flight, mid-thought, caught between the two. “Fine,” she said between grinding teeth. “I’ll try to find a way, but I’m not promising anything.”

  He inclined his head with an exhaled breath. “And there you have it,” he said in a low voice. “I am the worse secret, am I not?”

  Her stony face was the only answer.

  Snowboy took my hand. “I’m sorry, you’ll have to wait for your Michael. Maybe even a long time. But you aren’t homeless. From this moment on, you belong with us in the abandoned tower.”

  With gentle hands, he turned mine over and discovered that I was clutching a single rose. He took it from me, held it to his nose and inhaled, still holding my hand.

  As the flower brushed his cheek, I was transported back to when I sat beneath the cherry blossoms outside Tower Seventeen, bathed in sunlight, the delicate blossoms forming a canopy overhead. The final, dying words from the data storage area had sprung across my vision, as though even the data knew I didn’t belong where I was.

  It had said:

  Home is this way.

  And when I’d looked up, Snowboy had been there, right in front of me.

  I took another deep breath as the weight of it all crushed me and suddenly the breath that was supposed to calm me and help me keep going threatened to choke me instead. I clenched my teeth together, swallowing down the hurt that was pushing up from my heart.

  He sensed it and took my hand again and I realized how strange it was that I’d let him do that a number of times already. I didn’t want to pull away, because for a moment it was like having a brother again, someone to tell me it was going to be okay.

  He enfolded the rose in my hand and glared at Naomi. “Remember the deal. Remember what happens if you try to encroach our territory. Don’t put up cameras again. We’ll break them. You know what will happen if we decide to walk out of the quarantine area one day, if we let people see us. Don’t come near us.”

  “Like you encroached on our territory,” Naomi spat. “Coming to the south and hurting her!”

  “To save her life I’d do it again. She’s too important.” He dismissed Naomi, tugging my hand. “We have to go. The others are getting restless. They’re sending someone over.” To Naomi, he said, “Remember to weight the coffin or they’ll know it’s empty. Here, I’ll help you.” He hefted a broken plank and Naomi lifted the coffin lid so he could place it inside.

  She reached for me and I couldn’t hate her, even if she’d refused to tell Michael I was alive. “Be safe, Ava. And always … be who you are.”

  As Snowboy pulled me away, toward the far side of the wreckage and in the opposite direction to where the others waited, the sound of hammering followed us. Naomi nailed the coffin shut, each strike echoing in the new breeze. The beat sealed my death.

  Snowboy steered me to the corner of the wreckage, guiding me through the shallow drifts. The cliff face was twenty feet away and he paused at the open space between the wreckage and the rock. He didn’t stop checking our surroundings as he moved, and to my surprise I realized that at some point I’d stopped doing that myself. I shivered, not sure when I’d stopped being on guard.

  I needed to be the person I was before I came to Starsgard: aware of everything around me and ready for the next threat.

  “Quickly, before they see.” He urged me toward a fissure in the rock that appeared to be no more than a shallow indent, and pulled me into the shadows. “We need to go through the mountains. There are pathways, but they aren’t easy.”

  Inside, I discovered that the fissure was the opening to a tunnel of sorts, a rough hewing through the rock that looked as if a giant caterpillar had chewed its way through. I swerved away from the jagged edges and followed him into the darkness, surprised to find the light filtering through. Above us, the opening stretched right up to the sky, forming a narrow gap hundreds of feet above. It was sheltered from the snowdrifts but wide enough to cast pale light across the path.

  “She won’t tell him.” I was tired of false hope, and no matter what Snowboy had threatened, Naomi was serious about not letting anyone know about me.

  “Maybe. Maybe not. But her conscience will prick her for a really long time and one day she’ll wake up and decide it’s worth the risk.”

  “Do you really believe that?”

  “I’m a myth.” He smiled. “I’m the very thing that hopes and dreams are made of.” He winked, a smile on his face that lit up the encroaching darkness around us.

  Before I could say anything else, he took my hand again, the only part of my body other than my face that was visible outside my clothing. He lifted it, brushing his thumb across the icy markers on my skin. “How did this happen?”

  I wrenched away from him, but I couldn’t deny that the warmth of his hand was like ointment on my tortured skin. I breathed out, my heart cracking in my chest. “What are you? Are you some kind of experiment gone wrong? Some kind of weapon they tried to create? They don’t want people to know about you, obviously, but why?”

  He gestured at the snowfall and cliffs ahead of us. “I’ll tell you everything you want to know, but I need you to keep moving. We have to be far away from here before help arrives.”

  My feet were heavy as I moved in the direction he indicated, further into the tunnel, where the pathway sloped upward. I hoped we would head up and out into th
e light. Although that would bring other challenges. Inside the rock we wouldn’t be seen, and neither did we have to trudge through the snow. At some point, whatever remained of the nectar would be gone and then I’d feel things again. The ice for starters. And hunger too.

  At every bend he paused to check what was ahead, but seemed familiar enough with our surroundings that I guessed he’d traveled this way before.

  He said, “They don’t have surveillance in these cliffs, which is good because there can’t be any trace of my existence.” He frowned. “When I’m around people I try to move fast enough that they don’t see me. I keep to the gusty corridors, preferably in the sunlight where they won’t notice a shift in the air or a ray of light, but I’m pretty sure a girl saw me a while back.”

  I’d seen how fast he moved, felt his presence like a cool breeze on my skin and a mere glimmer at the corner of my eye that I’d dismissed as sunlight. “That was Clara.” She’d laughed with Luke about glimpsing the Snowboy. I wouldn’t see either of them again. “I’m walking, so how about my answers?”

  Without hesitation he said, “You blew open a terrible truth the night you watched your brother die.”

  “You know about my brother?” I sucked in a breath, wondering if Josh had known about Snowboy.

  “Why are you surprised?”

  “I guess I figured if you live in a broken tower you’d never hear about this stuff.”

  “Actually I hear pretty well … like there’s a train on the way and your heart’s beating really fast but you’re trying not to cry.”

  I glared at him. “What makes you so sure?”

  “I can hear it in your breathing.” He stopped so fast that I bumped into him. “It’s okay to feel what you feel. Those people out there…” He shook his head. “I don’t understand them. I don’t understand how they think or what they feel. There’s something missing and I can’t put my finger on it. But what I do know is that when you’re with me, you don’t have to hide who you are.”