Soul of Stars

by Ashley Poston

  Viera nodded. “Yes.”

  “Good. Lenda, you’ll stay with the captain and Talle.”

  Lenda nodded. “Right.”

  “Jax, you’ll be our getaway driver”—to that his partner gave a half bow—“Ana, you’ll make your grand entrance like we proposed, and Di, you’ll watch her from the shadows.”

  “I can’t go into the garden?” Di argued. He’d borrowed one of Jax’s ties to pull half of his hair back in a desperate attempt to get it out of his face.

  “You might not be HIVE’d now, but it might take you again,” the captain said in Robb’s stead. She tapped her finger against the table. “We can’t let you.”

  For a moment, Di looked like he was about to fight her, but then his fingers curled around the fork loosened. “Very well. I understand.”

  “Good,” the captain agreed, spearing an egg.

  “Meanwhile, Elara and Xu, you two keep a lookout for any sign of the HIVE. We know Mellifare’s bound to make her appearance, and if things don’t turn out the way we want, we need someone who can throw some communication to Siege’s debtors waiting in Nevaeh.”

  To that, Elara saluted. “Xu and I’ll be happy to camp out far away from the masses. Although I hate that I’m going to miss the party, Smolder.”

  “We can throw our own party,” Xu resolved.

  “Party for two, please!” Elara threw up two fingers, as if ordering from a waiter, and grinned. “I don’t mind. And what’ll you do, Smolder?”

  “I will take those Resonance files and find that heart,” Robb concluded.

  Siege ate a piece of egg and reached for the hot sauce. “To be fair, Robb, you probably shouldn’t be going at all.”

  The Ironblood choked on his coffee. “What?”

  “You were disowned, then dead—you’ll be the talk of the party.”

  Viera said dryly, “Oh, Goddess forbid that.”

  Jax agreed, “He does like attention,” at which Robb turned a bright red.

  “I do not!”

  Everyone laughed—even Di. Ana tried to, but it felt like her stomach was full of live worms. She anxiously picked at her sausage and eggs, knowing she had to eat, but she wasn’t hungry. At least she wasn’t the only one not eating—Viera wasn’t, either, and she seemed oddly stoic. They still hadn’t found the spy, and that made her almost sick with worry. What if we fail? What if I fail? she thought. What if—

  Di noticed her frown and asked in a quiet voice, only to her, “Is everything okay?”

  “Yes—yeah, fine,” she replied automatically, but when he gave her a long blink, she wilted. “What if we can’t find the heart? What if we don’t get to it first? Or what if we do, and it doesn’t matter? What if . . .”

  The table had gone quiet, even the clank of utensils on metal plates, and Ana quickly realized that she had been too loud. She stared down at her untouched plate self-consciously.

  “I mean, it’s probably going to be fine,” she amended.

  “Of course it’ll be fine,” replied Lenda, setting down her fork. She was already dressed for Nevaeh in a rough-spun shirt and trousers, her dishwater-blond hair slicked back, to blend in with the crowds. The faintest hint of a mercenary brand peeked out from beneath her collar. She looked around the table. “You know, I’ve never been one for sentimental stuff, but I trust everyone here with my life. And I know they trust me with theirs. I never thought I fit in anywhere until I came here. To this crew—you’re like a family to me. The only one I’ve got. And if some Great Dark wants to try to destroy that, I’ll fight with everything I’ve got.”

  “I’ll toast to that,” Jax added, and raised his glass of juice. “To family.”

  The rest of the crew raised their cups in toast to her. “To family,” they echoed, as if it would protect them against bullets and blades, but Ana knew deep down that it wouldn’t. It hadn’t protected Wick or Riggs or the Grand Duchess or Lady Valerio. It hadn’t protected Di, even though he’d come back. Death had more often than not been a specter that came when you least expected it and stole you away before you could say no.

  She didn’t want anyone else to die, because as with Lenda, this was the only place she belonged, and she had fought so hard to get here. She wanted them to stay like this forever, gathered around in the galley, enjoying Talle’s good cooking and each other’s company, everyone happy and alive and here.

  But nothing stayed forever.

  She had raised her cup and echoed, “To family.”

  Now as Jax eased the skysailer up toward the Valerios’ floating estate, she wished she had spent more time playing Wicked Luck in the galley, and she wished she had enjoyed Talle’s food more often, and spent more time listening to Di read his books aloud and Lenda recount her tales of being a mercenary and Wick’s and Riggs’s songs that still sometimes echoed through the ship like ghostly melodies.

  They were about to try to defeat a monster who had every advantage, who had an ear in on their every plan. No one had stopped the Great Dark yet—in this galaxy or any other. Why were they foolish enough to believe that they could?

  That’s why we mislead it, the captain had said in the safety of the meeting yesterday, after everyone else had gone, when it had just been the captain and Talle and Di and Jax and herself.

  But what if Mellifare had heard that too?

  Ana sat in the back of the skysailer, beside Erik in his finest gray coat and frivolous ascot, his legs spread wide across the seat, taking up most of her space. She couldn’t stand him. Jax and Robb sat up front, disguised as Valerio militiamen. The crimson of their uniforms reminded her of the coat she had once seen in a shop window. For some odd reason the memory of it tugged on her like an errant kite string. Perhaps because the coat was long gone by now, or perhaps because it represented a future she’d never have.

  Or maybe she just really, really hated being in Valerio militia colors. The jacket was too tight, the pants too long, and it itched everywhere. She had been more comfortable in some of the dresses she was shoved into at the Iron Palace—and Ana never thought she’d ever feel that way.

  “Receiving the docking codes,” Jax said, swiping up two notifications on his dash before he eased up through the lines of traffic toward the Valerios’ floating estate. “They definitely stepped up security since we last popped in. Sir Erik, would you like to be dropped off at the front or on the side?”

  Erik Valerio glowered at him. He wasn’t detained anymore—he’d agreed to help them, after some cajoling—but they were definitely not seeing eye to eye. Erik wanted to kill Di—blaming him for Lady Valerio’s murder. That was one of the reasons Di had opted to go with Wynn and Viera instead, so that he could stay as far away from Erik as possible. It’d been easy enough to keep them separated on the Dossier, but here it would be a little more difficult.

  Jax tapped his fingers on the helm and glanced over his shoulder. “Well, Ironblood?”

  Erik Valerio pulled himself to sit as tall as he could and said, “The side is for paupers and Ironbloods too stingy to hire their own drivers.”

  “The side it is,” Jax replied, much to Erik’s disgust, and eased into the docking canal in the marina underneath the garden.

  “It took months to renovate this place after you heathens trashed it,” Erik was saying as Jax parked in one of the docking stations. Mechanical arms came out and hooked onto the bottom of the ship to steady it. “Do you know how many good ships were destroyed?”

  “Hopefully plenty,” replied Jax. “Now out.”

  Gathering her Metroid and lightsword—which, ha, Ana used about as much as a comb at this point—she hopped out of the skysailer and reached a hand back for Erik. He took it, leering at her, and stepped down off the skysailer, followed by Robb.

  “Hey, Jax?” Ana turned back to him as the docking latches unhooked from the skysailer.

  “Yes, my love?”

  “Be careful.”

  He smirked and gave her a salute, and the skysailer dropped from the mari
na and disappeared into the steady stream of traffic below.

  “I really should have killed him when I had the chance,” Erik mumbled, earning a look from Robb that could have melted the sun.

  She took a deep, calm breath. She just had to keep Robb from kicking Erik off the garden for a little while longer.

  “You know, this party is going to go so different from what I imagined,” Erik Valerio went on, and started down the docks. The last time they’d been in the belly of the Valerios’ floating estate, she’d been a much different person, chasing wide-eyed after a rumor.

  She wasn’t chasing things anymore but coming to meet them.

  And oh, the image of that red coat burned in her brain.

  It was the path not taken. The life not lived. When Di had pushed that lightsword through her stomach, she could have faded away. She had died in the kingdom’s eyes. All her threads had been severed, her obligations cut. She could have been whoever she wanted. She could have been a girl of the stars—a nameless ghost on a ship of black and chrome. There could have been stories about her, or no stories at all.

  But the thought had never crossed her mind. Not once.

  Was that a testament to her character or her stubbornness? The more she thought about it, the less she was sure of anything. Other people would surely have stepped up to defeat the Great Dark. Other people might have succeeded far quicker and lost far less. Perhaps she never gave up because of Di, because she loved Di more than her heart could hold, but . . .

  But there was another reason, needling in the back of her thoughts—

  Because she did not know how not to try. She could have flown away, she could have turned her back, but every particle of stardust inside her would have rebelled until she had come back.

  And that made her feel a little better.

  Ana followed Robb and his brother up the stairs to the underbelly of the garden, where irrigation pipes hummed in the ceiling, rattling with the rush of water to all the different areas of the garden. It all looked the same, from the darkened hallways to the kitchen teeming with waiters and waitresses.

  Robb took out his holo-pad and pulled up the Resonance files again. “It should be in the garden,” he said, tugging at the collar of his too-tight uniform. “I don’t see any Messiers. . . .”

  “So Mellifare doesn’t know yet,” Ana finished.

  “Are you coming up with me or staying down here?” called Erik ahead of them. He tugged at his cuff links, looking bored and unhappy. “I hardly need a bodyguard for—what are you doing?”

  Robb unbuttoned his jacket and pulled it off to reveal a smock coat underneath, the color of crushed marigolds, and tossed the uniform jacket to Ana. He retied his white ascot and tucked it in again. “What, did you really think you’d go up there alone?”

  “You are disowned—”

  “I’m not going as a Valerio,” he corrected.

  “Then what are you?”

  “Who, actually.” Robb tapped the crest on his lapel. Ana had seen the crest a few times before, in passing at the palace. Her eyebrows knit together. It was the late Grand Duchess’s crest.

  Erik’s face pinched. “Aragon. There aren’t any family left. The old dame was murdered and her daughter went missing. How do you have that crest?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

  “Fine—it doesn’t matter, you’ll always be filth.”

  “And you’re still as pleasant as ever,” Robb replied, but Ana couldn’t pry her eyes from the raven crest pinned to his coat. Because she remembered it from somewhere else entirely—in her captain’s study. “Well, we shouldn’t keep the public waiting,” he added, and hugged her tightly. “Good luck, cousin,” he whispered, so low Erik couldn’t hear, and then departed with his brother up the steps, through the honeysuckle vines, and into the waiting crowd.

  She pushed the thought of the Raven Crest to the back of her mind. She couldn’t get distracted now.

  Ana stood at the bottom of the stairs, wringing her fingers.

  Misdirection is key, the captain had said. Make a show of one hand while the other takes the winning card from a pocket. Always suspect that someone is watching you. A few waiters passed her with delicate food on silver trays, and for an instant it felt like déjà vu, because she had been here before, dressed in an ill-fitting uniform at an Ironblood party. She felt like a different person now, even though she had been here just six short months ago.

  It might as well have been an eternity.

  Quietly, she crept up the steps and peered through the honeysuckle vines.

  The garden was filled with extravagantly clad men and women in their finest dressing robes. The colors for the season had changed from frothy pastels to nebulas—pinks and purples, greens and blues, melding together like star-stuff. Of course colors she liked better would be in season after the kingdom thought her dead.

  Just her luck.

  The Ironbloods ambled around drinking rose champagne and the best brandy on this side of the kingdom, laughing and flirting in the way only Ironbloods knew how. She watched as Robb and his brother sank deeper into the crowd, Robb in his marigold yellow, Erik in bloodred. Her palms grew sweaty the longer she watched.

  The orchestra began to play the royal march.

  She rubbed her sweaty hands on her jacket and took a deep breath—

  At the bottom of the stairwell, she heard the sound of footsteps and quickly turned, reaching for her Metroid, knowing that the HIVE would show up at some point—

  The boy was not a Messier, though. In the faint golden light through the honeysuckle vines, strands of his red hair flickered orange—like a blazing fire. He wore his midnight cloak from the shrine and a freshly pressed evening coat borrowed from Jax, so he cut a stark and tall figure even in the shadows. On his head was the Iron Crown. He looked every bit an Emperor as he had before, except when he looked up at her, his eyes were moonlit; he didn’t dampen or darken them anymore, a deafening tell that he wasn’t human, but he wasn’t other either.

  He was both.

  He looked as though he wanted to say something, but then a strange pink tinge rose on his cheeks, and he quickly looked away. Goddess, it felt like centuries ago when they’d last stood here, looking out at the garden. What she wouldn’t have given to be that girl again.

  She quickly took her hand off her pistol. “Anything?”

  He shook his head and climbed the dozen steps to stand beside her, peering out of the vines into the garden. The way the dusky sunlight fell through the curtain of honeysuckle upon his face reminded her of a far-off fairy tale. “Viera is posing as Wynn’s personal guard. There are no Messiers on the north side, or the east. I cannot sense any on the garden at all.”

  “That’s not good, is it?”

  “No, it is not.”

  A cold chill raced up her spine. “You think it’s a trap.” He nodded slowly, and the orchestra quieted its royal march. Ana brushed back the vines. “It’s almost your cue.”

  “I know,” he replied. “You should go.”

  “I feel like I should be the one going out there—to show the kingdom that I’m fighting for them. That I’m still here.”

  He touched her arm gently, comfortingly. “You will. When this is all over, you will be the Empress they need.”

  “And what about you?”

  He gave a one-shoulder shrug. “It will not be that hard to kill me off.”

  “Di!”

  “I am joking.” He laughed, and then added, “Mostly—ow!” She punched him in the arm, and he hissed in pain. “That hurt.”

  “Did not— It’s Mellifare!” she gasped, spying her through the crowd of Ironbloods. She stood near one of the extravagant topiaries, dressed in a beauitful sage-colored gown, her flaxen hair pulled back into a refined bun. She had a glass of rose champagne in her hands, speaking with—

  With Erik Valerio.

  “There really is a spy,” she added morosely. “Mellifare’s here because she thinks the heart
is here in the garden.”

  “Well, at least we know we tricked her.”

  She hesitated, wishing that Mellifare wasn’t here at all. “Do you . . . do you think you can face her? After what she did to you?”

  “I do not know, Ana.” There was a thoughtful, distant look in his eyes. “But I am not afraid.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  He shook his head and then turned his moonlit eyes to her. There was a sadness there that sank down to her toes. “If I die, at least I got the chance to see you again.”

  “But . . . that’s not good enough.”

  His eyebrows furrowed.

  “It’s not good enough because—” And she took a deep breath, pushing away the cowardly part of her that told her Later, you can tell him later, when there might never be a later. “—I don’t think I could love anyone the way I love you, and I don’t want you to die, Dmitri Rasovant, because I am the moon and you are the sun and I shine so much brighter with you beside me.”

  “But I am . . . but I . . .”

  She reached up on her toes and pressed her forehead against his. “You are mine and I am yours, until the end of time.”

  Then, with all the strength she had, she turned away from the honeysuckle vines and left down the stairs again. She didn’t look back. She was afraid that if she did, it would be the last time she’d ever see him, and she refused to think about that.

  She took the stairs down to the bottom of the gardens two at a time, nodding to Ironblood servants as she passed them, hoping they didn’t recognize her. Most of them were too flustered, attending to their duties, to pay attention, and when someone finally recognized her, she was already at the docks again and heading for a skysailer.

  Nevaeh looked so small from up here, a tiny city filled with tiny ants, and once she had thought that was how the Goddess saw them. But now she was sure the Goddess wouldn’t have looked down, but up from the ground.

  You are not the Goddess, Koren Vey had said.

  No, but she was Captain Siege and Talle Fior’s daughter, and somehow that felt all the more powerful.