by Alexia Purdy
“How do I know you both won’t lie to me again? You lied about who you were. You were both at the coupling ball and never told me. You got involved with me when you knew about the other.”
“I’m so sorry, Star. I never meant for any of this to happen,” Gideon admitted.
“I didn’t know how to tell you. Gideon and I are not exactly on speaking terms,” Clyde stated, his face darkening even more.
I madly wiped away the tears, not caring how I looked at that moment. “You both break my heart.”
Gideon jumped up, leaning on the table with his two hands gripping the sides of it. “I love you, Star. I’ll never hurt you. I was jealous of your feelings for Clyde, but I—I couldn’t tell you why at the time. I just… I’m afraid you might not be able to love me when you’re still in love with Clyde.”
“I can’t believe this.” I pressed my hands into my temples.
“Star?”
“What?” I couldn’t deal with anything more.
For the first time ever, Gideon looked apprehensive and afraid.
“Which one of us do you love?”
“Why would you ask me that?” I said. My emotions were so out of control, I felt on the verge of laughing. I jumped to my feet and backed away from the table, nearly tripping on the rolling chair. I couldn’t breathe. I could barely see where I was stepping. Nearly hysterical, I felt like my world was crashing down.
“Star, we need to know.” Clyde sat solemnly, hands folded together on the table.
“I—I don’t know who I love!” I cried out.
One moment I was standing before them, and the next, I was throwing the door open and running down the hall.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Star
I found myself in the geode room without memory of how I’d gotten there. My fingers ached, and my arms burned from the quick climb up the ropes to my private alcove. Breathing hard, I fell to my knees, crushing crystals under me. They dug into my flesh as I bent forward, sobbing. I had lost so much to this uprising. In the end, I’d gotten nowhere fast. I’d never felt emptier. Gideon and Clyde were just two more people I would lose in this battle.
I should have let my parents marry me off at the first coupling ball I attended. Hell, my life might have been fine if I had let them. Maybe things would’ve been different.
I shook my head and cried until I had no more tears. Rubbing my swollen eyes, I glanced around the geode room Megan had shown me my first day in the Glass Sky City. I missed her to my core. She’d been the only person who’d never lied to me. I couldn’t believe she was gone. I’d never mourned her properly. This wondrous cave was our secret, and she could’ve kept it from me, but she’d chosen to let me into her world. She’d left a gaping hole in my heart when she had died. She’d been my only true friend.
If only Clyde and Gideon had been more forthcoming, things wouldn’t have been so convoluted. Somehow, their revelations scared me. They’d both lied to me in a way, but I had kept things from them as well. I was afraid to let either of them go. I couldn’t trust my heart at all. I wanted to have my cake and eat it too, but it wasn’t possible. Could someone love two people at the same time? It wasn’t sustainable at all. I had to choose one of them or neither of them. It felt unbearable to let go of one. What if I didn’t survive it? I was tired of losing people in my life. I wanted everything, but I knew I couldn’t have it all.
No. I had to choose. Gideon’s face hovered in my mind, smiling, crinkling his eyes as he touched his forehead to mine. He made my insides flutter and had a dark side that intrigued me. Then Clyde’s face took his place. I saw him saving me from the rubble of the governor’s mansion. He’d taken me to the Glass Sky City, showed me its wonders and secrets. That had allowed me to do as I’d always dreamed, become a mechanic working with gadgetry and machines. This wreck of things had somehow brought me to my dream life, but even that was slipping through my fingers like sand.
They were as different as black and white, light and dark. I couldn’t live without either one. It would be like dying. One could not live without air or water, day or night. Anything less would never be enough.
“I need to get out of here,” I whispered to the crystals watching my despair, their facets glimmering. A breeze fluttered through the cavern, whispering as though responding to my words. I looked up, my swollen eyes burning from crying. My body shook as I stood, brushing off the shards of crystals from my pants and hands. Tiny scrapes lined my palms, stinging, but I didn’t care. My heartache blunted the pain of the cuts.
I paused as the crystals softly chimed all around me, like a gentle song filling my head with their magical tune. The longer I stood in the room, the more I could feel the crystals vibrate until my skin was buzzing with their reverberation. I closed my eyes, letting their notes fill me with their magic. It was unearthly and haunting, as though they wanted to let me know they heard me and felt my pain. A warmth filled my insides as I breathed out slowly. Euphoria flooded my senses, numbing my thoughts.
The calm numbed my head from the pain in my soul, and a feeling of blissful peace filled me. The chimes were sweet melodies reaching out to soothe me. I welcomed it without thinking. I blinked my eyes open and sucked in a breath.
A silhouette of a person wavered on the other side of the geode room, and I rubbed my eyes in disbelief. Not too far from me in the distance, a dark crystal prism gleamed, reflecting the light of my headlamp, and casting a large shadow behind it. I’d mistaken it for a person. That was all. But the feeling of being watched didn’t recede. I scanned the entire cavern, watching the crystals flash, casting more shadows across the walls. They were alive, whispering into my head as though they were saying words I couldn’t decipher. Spinning around in place, I shuddered in fear.
A hand clasped onto my shoulder, and I screamed.
“Star, it’s me, Clyde.”
I clamped my hand over my mouth and pressed the other to my chest as my heart nearly thumped out of my ribcage. Breathing hard, I had never felt more relived to see him.
“Clyde!” I threw my arms around him, hiding my face in his chest until his shirt was soaked from my tears and snot. He stroked my hair as he held me tightly, comforting me with words I barely heard.
“What’s the matter, Star?” he asked, holding me out at arm’s length, his eyes scanning my face. “Did something happen to you here?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered. “I’m afraid, and I don’t know why. Something was watching me here, but it didn’t seem like it wanted to hurt me. It just felt… different.”
He pulled me back to his chest, holding me tenderly. His scent surrounded me. This was where I’d wanted to be for months, and yet it’d taken so long to get back. I didn’t want to let go, ever. I forgot all the past hurts in one second.
His warmth embraced me, shielding my body from the chill of the cavern. For a second, I could believe nothing bad had happened between us and that we still belonged to one another. It was easy to pretend, to believe the past didn’t exist, that we were meant for this. It was living through the real world that was the hard part.
Clyde pulled away softly, looking at my face as he cupped my chin, his blue eyes glistening like the rest of the crystals. “Oh, Star, I’ve missed you so much. I can’t stand it anymore. I never meant to hurt you in any way. If I could do it all again, nothing would tear us apart ever. You know that, right? I love you more than anything. I need to know you understand.”
I looked at him dreamily, intoxicated with his body so close. “Yes,” I whispered, my hooded eyes taking him in. He took one more longing look at me before bending down and pressing his lips to mine, softly at first and then hastily, desperate for more. I wanted to pull away at first, but there was no way to deny what I felt. My lips responded to his with a fury locked up inside me for far too long. His warm lips moved from my mouth to kiss my salty tears from my cheeks, trailing across my eyelids and back down to my lips. I couldn’t get enough. I was breathing again after
holding it in for far too long.
“Star?” Gideon’s voice brought my senses back to the geode room. I stepped away from Clyde, my eyes darting back and forth between the two men.
The pain in Gideon’s face stabbed at my heart as much as Clyde’s pain had. I gasped, pulling away and shaking my head. “No, Gideon, it’s not what you think. I was upset and—”
“You don’t have to say anything, Star.” He backed away, hurt bleeding from his eyes as he glared at Clyde. “You don’t have to say a thing. You always win, Clyde. You always get what you want. Always the one with all the love, all your heart could ever desire, and nothing is ever left for me.” He took another step back, and I reached out for him, stopping midstep as he shook his head at me.
“Gideon,” I choked out, dropping my arms. “Please….”
He glanced toward me, his mouth opening just a little, as though he wanted to say something to me but had decided against it. He spun around, rushing out of the room as quickly as he could, not hearing my calls.
“Gideon! Wait!” I screamed, attempting to get around Clyde. He grabbed my arms and held me back. “Let me go! Let me go!”
“Let him go, Star. He’s angry, and it won’t do any good to talk to him now. I should know. He’s been angry at me more times than I can count.”
My sobs shook my body, and if it hadn’t been for Clyde, I would have fallen to the ground, where the crystals would have cut me up all over again. I wanted to fling myself onto them and let their sharp edges pierce my flesh until my blood ran cold. My heart was in pieces, and it had just gotten worse.
“Clyde,” I cried. “Please, just leave me alone.”
“I won’t. I won’t walk away again. I promise, Star.”
There was nothing that could comfort me now, but I cried until the tears ran out, and my heart calmed into a slow, peaceful beat.
“Star,” Clyde whispered, guiding me down to sit on a clear spot on the ground. “I’m sorry about all of this. I never meant for anyone to get hurt.”
“Not even Gideon?” I asked, my voice flat, unemotional.
Clyde didn’t respond.
Staring at the crack in the cavern wall where Gideon had departed, the part of me which wanted to chase after him calmed. I couldn’t help but feel nothing. Only numbness and desolation.
Crystals didn’t have hearts or emotions. How lovely it must be.
“Star?” Clyde’s voice felt so far away, so unreal, I thought maybe he was just a figment of my imagination until he spoke again. “Star, let’s get you back down to your room. You need to rest.”
“No.” I shook my head, my eyes fixed on the crevasse.
“Come on, Star. You’re shaking. It’s freezing in here.”
“Just go away,” I demanded.
I shoved past him toward the waterfall room. Slipping through the crack in the cavern wall, I forbade Clyde to follow me. Fortunately, he didn’t. Inside, I sat by the water’s edge, watching my reflection rippling across the surface. I wanted to dive into the clear water and sink until I became one of the gems at the bottom which Megan used to scoop up and fashion into necklaces.
I clasped my fingers around the ruby pendant hanging around my neck. She’d given it to me the first day we’d met. Closing my eyes, I could almost hear her inside my head.
It could be our own little community here. Yours and mine.
I sighed, feeling exhausted to the core. It was a deep, bone-penetrating fatigue I didn’t want to fight anymore. I lay down on a patch of soft moss and watched the mist of water swirl around me, embracing my pain. Somehow, this place was cathartic, and the energy kept me from the dangerous parts of my mind. Closing my eyes, I let my dreams take me away from all my pain and confusion.
Chapter Twenty-eight
Star
“Here’s all the equipment we’ll be taking with us. These gauntlets are designed to keep the prisoners obedient. We each have to carry two pairs in case any of us loses their packs. They will shock the prisoners if they get out of control or violent. We will each have remotes to the gauntlets in case we get separated.” Gideon handed out three small rectangular fobs with two buttons on them. “Make sure you don’t press the button on the fobs for longer than three seconds. Any longer, you’ll disable the prisoner. We’ll also have sedatives to give them if they become difficult.”
I scooped up the key fob and turned it around in my fingers. It contained another button, with a screen between the two buttons. I wondered what it was for but decided to put it away into the pocket on the outside of my jacket, where it would be easily accessed. I waited silently for the next gadget Gideon and Clyde were presenting for our mission.
Neither attempted to squeeze any conversation out of me, knowing full well I wasn’t in the mood to do any chatting. I was grateful they didn’t. I didn’t know if I could stand speaking to either of them about anything other than the mission. I wanted to focus on that instead of trivial things, like the mess we’d made between us.
“Star, do you have my totem? I need you to wear it from now on.”
I looked up and stared at Gideon. I produced it out of my pants pocket and studied its tarnished curves. I curled my fingers around it, my face darkening. I took my ruby pendant off, untied the leather twine, and slipped his pendant on, sliding it next to mine. Retying it around my neck, I looked up at him, expressionless.
“This silent treatment isn’t going to fly down in the deeper caverns, Star. We’re going to be treading through dangerous tunnels and near creatures we don’t ever encounter here. And there are also the Others. Not all of them have good intentions. We’ll need to communicate.”
I nodded but didn’t offer anything further. The corners of his mouth downturned as his eyes narrowed, as did Clyde’s. They both looked like they hadn’t slept all night. I couldn’t muster enough energy to care.
“This is our food ration for the week. If we have to share with the two prisoners, it’ll be cut down to three days’ worth. Do not eat more than half a bar for each meal. It’s concentrated to keep us full for hours. Drink a lot of water with it too.” Clyde doled out several packs of tightly bound rations and large canteens filled with water. I stuffed them into my backpack and took whatever else they handed me, filling up the pack in no time at all.
“Last but not least are the gadgets Star’s father had made for the three of us.” Gideon held out a small sack and shook the trinkets out of it. Three identical metal cuffs with shiny chrome clinked onto the table’s surface. “You’re going to have to show us what these can do, Star.” His dark eyes sharpened, waiting for me to begin my tutorial.
I could feel the weight of their gaze like an anchor dragging me down. My heart sped up more from anxiety than anything else. I hated being the center of attention, especially in front of them.
Clearing my throat, I reached out for one of the cuffs and slipped it on. The moment it touched my wrist, small strips of flexible metal extended from the ends, tightening the cuff’s circumference to fit better. The others copied my movements.
I slid a finger across the flat face of the cuff, and a compartment slid open. Inside were a variety of tools. One was a long, thin but sturdy staff, and as I took it out, it extended into a large pole, shifting panels of metal until it was as tall as I was and about an inch in diameter. It may have been thin, but it was made of the strongest metal known to man. It could be used as a walking stick or as a spear or pole weapon. The others held their poles with elated surprise. I slid a finger across the flat side of my cuff so the compartment would reopen. As it clicked open, the pole retracted into its tiny version once more. I replaced it into its slot and pulled out a stack of small discs. I held them out on my palm before picking one up, holding it by one edge. Blades turned as they grew out from the center of the disc, extending layer by layer until a five-sided throwing star had replaced the plain disc in my hand. I arced my arm back and flung it between the guys, where it slammed into the wall, sticking out from its point of contact.
The guys jumped to the side in surprise. They turned to stare in disbelief at the star stuck in the wall, glancing back my way cautiously. Had I meant to hit one of them? I kept my face neutral. Let them speculate whatever they wanted to.
Next, I pressed the ends of the cuff, and it released. I placed the cuff to my lips, and it began to meld over my nose and face like liquid metal, creating slits in the front to filter out water and create oxygen to breathe.
“Why would we need underwater masks?” Clyde asked, looking at his cuff and turning it over and over in his hands. I pressed my palm to the front, and the cuff peeled off my face, back into my hand as a solid cuff.
“There are many underground rivers and pools. We may run into a flooded tunnel that we might have to swim through to get to the other side. These will also protect us if we run into pockets of gas, and the air is dangerous to breathe.”
Clyde looked at me, confused. “What about the prisoners? How will they breathe if anything happens on the way back?”
“You said we won’t be going back the same way, right?”
They nodded.
“Then the prisoners won’t need a mask,” I affirmed.
They nodded again, studying the masks before we put them away.
“If you turn the cuff and draw this rune on the inside of the cuff, this releases three perforated discs with tiny spikes on the end of each one.” I held one up for the others to see. “Each one of these is a detonation device. When you press it to stone, it will grip onto it with thorny, tooth-like anchors. Afterwards, you’ll have ten seconds to get to a safe distance of six feet before it detonates. It can blow through thick stone and metal.”
“Why do we need explosives? The path we’re taking won’t be blocked,” Clyde asked, confused.
“When we get to the prison, we’re to place three of these on the wall near the power source of the prison. There is another tunnel running through there that will take us home, but it’s also one of the tunnels of the Others. It’s a faster route home. Unfortunately we can’t go in that way because we don’t know exactly where the prisoners are positioned within the chamber. Just blindly blowing our way in could kill them.” I looked up at the guys, knowing they didn’t know what I was going to say next. “Then we have to detonate the tunnel when we exit. To close off the area to the Others for good.”
