She looked down at her red coat. It was the color of a renegade, the cut of a rogue. It was not a coat for an Empress but for the captain of a ship.
Perhaps, in a different life.
“You should go with the captain and Talle,” she said, and she didn’t hear the words until after they were spoken. “Find a place to hide the heart. Go on a few more grand adventures.”
Di hesitated.
“Go,” she said, kissing his cheek. “I will always love you, Dmitri Rasovant, wherever in the universe you are.”
Then she turned away from him because she could not watch him leave, like the captain left, like Talle left, and she exited the room with E0S at her side. She had kept the funeral waiting long enough.
She didn’t look back.
Robb
The room quieted as the steward announced in his nasal voice, “I present the Royal Empress of the Iron Kingdom, Ananke Armorov!”
The doors at the top of the ballroom steps opened, and a woman in a coat as red as blood stepped into the room. For a moment, Robb thought it was Siege—the way she held herself, how every eye in the room turned to look because she demanded it—but then he noticed Ana’s short hair and the scars across her face, and his heart lurched.
However much of Armorov or Valerio flowed in her veins, she was the daughter of a starship captain and there was stardust in her blood.
She commanded the attention of everyone in the room without even saying a word, their gazes following her as she motioned to one of the servants at the bottom of the stairs, and they brought her a shot glass on a tray with a dark liquor.
“Thank you for coming to share this evening with us,” she said loudly, and proceeded to the middle of the ballroom. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the waitstaff bring out shots for everyone. Jax got two for them, and he sniffed his. Oh, that was some strong whiskey—the same kind he’d drunk on the Dossier when the captain had toasted to Barger and D09.
“Please, everyone take one,” Ana urged, and waited for most everyone to before she began. “I will be the first to admit that I haven’t attended many funerals. I’m lucky, I realize. When I was orphaned, I could have been found by a hundred different ships. By Captain Redbeard.” She turned and toasted to him, and he returned the gesture. “Or the Red Dawn.” Again, she acknowledged them. “Or Captain Cullen’s crew, or a passing merchant ship. Or I could not have been found at all.”
Robb scanned the crowd. “Where’s Di?” he whispered to Jax.
The Solani only shook his head.
He didn’t come, he realized. Or—worse still—he left.
“But I was found,” Ana went on, “and I was home.”
“And so I want to make a toast to Erik Mercer Valerio. He might not have been the kindest individual, or the most magnanimous, and some of you might just be here for the food”—to that a few outlaws raised their glasses quietly—“but he was my cousin, and he was a Valerio—and above that . . .”
“Above that,” added Robb, stepping up into the center of the ballroom and locking eyes with Ana. They raised their glasses together. His brother might never have gotten the chance to live in the palace, or sit on the throne, or command the kingdom, but at least he would have the kind of funeral provided for laying royals to rest. He wasn’t sure if his brother deserved it, but he, and Ana, and Jax, and all the people who surrounded him, were better than his brother. And even so, in a small part of his heart, he would miss Erik, even if he didn’t deserve to be missed. Love was strange that way, and complicated. He repeated, “Above that . . . he helped bring us all home. To those who set sail into the night—may the stars keep them steady,” he toasted.
A hundred glasses rose up, and a hundred people said in unison, “And the iron keep them safe.”
They downed the liquor and smashed the shot glasses against the floor, and the crowd followed suit. Glass scattered across the floor like glittering stars, reflecting the lantern lights above. Then Ana, without a moment’s hesitance, turned and left the ballroom.
Jax
A twenty-piece orchestra struck up a tired tune in a minor key, and it made the air shiver with mourning. A strange feeling vibrated through him, the light under his skin shifting, whispering to him. Robb would turn to him, ask him to dance, and—
“Would you care to dance, ma’alor?”
And then, out in the garden—
“Please,” he said under his breath, hopeful, and grabbed his partner by the arm and dragged him over to the ballroom’s grand windows that stretched from the floor to the ceiling, overlooking the royal garden beneath. Moonlilies were just beginning to open, unfurling in bursts of white. The light inside him swayed and shimmered, and he was heady with the possibility.
Please.
A figure materialized out of the darkness of one of the arches. It was Ana, the brassy buttons on her red coat catching the moonlight like flares.
“Are we spying on her now?” Robb joked, glancing between him and Ana down in the garden. “Is that E0S?”
“We’re just looking,” he said, but when his partner raised an eyebrow he added, “And yes, that’s E0S.”
“You’ve seen this before.”
“I hope so.”
There was a shadow on the other side of the garden. It materialized out of an archway, a stranger in a billowing half cape. He crossed the garden in long strides. His hair was half pulled back into a bloodred knot, and the was unmistakable in the way you always knew the color of the sun, and following like a trail of suns were countless palace lanterns.
And although Jax couldn’t hear him through the window and the noise of the funeral, he read Ana’s name on his lips.
Di
A glitch festered at the back of his mind, and all he wanted to do was pluck his memory core from his body and finally rest. But as he stood in the cockpit of the Dossier, about to break away from the moonbay and leave the Iron Palace forever—he remembered how Wick used to kick his feet up on the communications console, and how Riggs’s mechanical leg thunked up and down the hallway, the sound of Talle’s laughter rebounding from the galley, so full of mirth it made his soul ache a little less, and the glow of Captain Siege’s hair just before an adventure, and Ana’s eyes glimmering yellow-gold of suns and new hope and excitement, so bright it blinded his memories—
And Siege turned around in the pilot’s chair and gave him a knowing look. “You don’t want to be here, metalhead.”
Now he found himself standing in the middle of the palace’s dark garden, as the most beautiful person in the universe stared at him as if he was a comet that had passed long ago and was never expected to return.
E0S bleeped, narrowing its lens to see if it really was him.
“. . . Di?” she asked, his name barely more than a whisper. Her eyes were red as if she’d been crying, and she quickly wiped tears away with the sleeve of her new coat and sniffed.
An audience of lantern lights trailed out of the palace behind him, caught up in his magnetic pull like they had when he and Ana had waltzed what felt like centuries ago. He had been a different person then, and so had she.
Around them, the moonlilies began to bloom in the night, as they did every night.
“I am defective, but when I am with you I don’t feel broken at all. I love you.” He took a step toward her, and the lanterns followed, illuminating behind him like the dawning of a sun. “I am yours, Ana of the Dossier.”
Goddess, those words sounded so bright in his head. He loved her. He loved her to the moon and back. He loved her to the stars. He loved her beyond that, and he would love her for a thousand turns around the sun.
For a long moment, she didn’t move. Had he said the wrong thing? Had he not said enough? But there were no words left, even as he tried to find them to fill the silence of the garden. He was a jumble of someone who was and never would be, of misspent technology and second chances—and he was made from the parts of the universe that loved her.
“And I am yours
, Di,” she finally replied, and pulled him close to her. She kissed him on the lips, where their words still lingered, and the lanterns swirled around them, flickering like a thousand candles in a dark and empty shrine.
Acknowledgments
Just so we’re all clear: I’m writing these acknowledgments in Comic Sans, knowing that I’ll convert it to Something Less Goofy by the time I get to finishing it. I find Comic Sans (or Courier, or Papyrus) relaxing when I’m writing something hard to put into words.
You’ve come with me this far, so I know you haven’t set it down or forgotten it on a park bench somewhere, to which I say—thank you! If you want to skip all the random names of people you don’t know, just jump to the end. That part’s for you.
First, this book wouldn’t be possible without my editor, Kelsey Murphy. You helped me push my craft and become a better writer, and that I will forever keep with me. Thank you for believing in me.
I also want to thank Jordan Brown. Thank you for letting me go with my gut—it means everything.
And honestly, this book would never have been possible without my agent, Holly Root, who is a freaking superhuman. You saw my potential in Heart of Iron, and the end of Soul of Stars feels like the closing of a well-rounded chapter. Here’s to new stories, new characters, and midnight emails!
I also want to thank Renée Cafiero, the copyeditor and production editor for both Heart of Iron and Soul of Stars—thank you so much for your tireless work and for everything you have done for this novel. We’ve never met in person, but I want to thank you in the pages you helped bring to life. I can’t express how much it means to me.
To Nicole Brinkley, you are the reason everything in this book is so sad. And to Kaitlyn Sage Patterson and Katherine Locke, you are the reason everything in this book is kinda happy. To Savannah Apperson, you are the reason I never stopped writing. To Ada Starino, Eric Smith, Rae Huffaker Chang, CB Lee, Paul Kreuger, Julie Daly, Sara Taylor Woods, and, honestly, probably a lot of people who I have missed, thank you for always believing in me when I didn’t have the courage or the strength to believe in myself.
To my family, who finally stopped asking when I’m going to get a real job, thank god.
And lastly, I want to thank you, reader. I’m so happy that you went on this journey with me, about a girl raised in the stars, finding her home in the people around her. People who will never leave her—not really. I hope these characters will linger with you like they will me.
Sometimes the world sucks, and people suck, and life sucks, but with a few good friends, you are never truly alone. You will never be alone.
May the stars keep you steady, dear friend, and the iron keep you safe.
About the Author
COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR
ASHLEY POSTON loves dread pirates, moving castles, and starry night skies. When not lost in a book, she’s lost in real life, searching for her next great adventure. She is also the author of Geekerella, The Princess and the Fangirl, and Heart of Iron and can be found online at www.ashposton.com.
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Books by Ashley Poston
The Princess and the Fangirl
Geekerella
Heart of Iron
Soul of Stars
The Deep Heart
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Copyright
Balzer + Bray is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
SOUL OF STARS. Copyright © 2019 by Ashley Poston. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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COVER ART © 2019 BY JOHN DISMUKES
COVER DESIGN BY SARAH NICHOLE KAUFMAN
Digital Edition JULY 2019 ISBN: 978-0-06-284735-5
Print ISBN: 978-0-06-284733-1
1920212223PC/LSCH10987654321
FIRST EDITION
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Soul of Stars Page 30
