What course?
My hand falls off the tiller, and I let my body sag loose and weightless in the seat belt. Colors fade to gray. Losing consciousness would be a relief.
“Alert,” announces Lord Neith. “Psynergy attack incoming. Xitium, you’re the target.”
No.
Not Sirna, too.
I sight the Ariean ship through my scanner and see a burst of wreckage rising from the weapons array mounted on her hull. The destroyer’s engines fire.
She’s taking evasive action, and Equinox circles her like a tiny dune spider wrapping a fat beetle in silk. Xitium’s fast; they have a chance. They’re going into orbit, probably to gain more speed. As they dip behind the planet, I lose sight of them.
I draw a sharp intake of breath. “Hysan, stay with them,” I whisper.
“I will,” he says, his voice low and grave. “Are you all right?”
Am I all right?
Mathias’s baritone breathes through my memory. His words warn me to be cautious, to think my plans through, to gather more information before pushing ahead. “I’ve been so blind.”
The moment I say it, I’m reminded they’re the same words Moira spoke when Ochus attacked. Only in my case, it’s not stars I misread, but hearts. My own and Mathias’s.
We were too stubborn to give each other a chance, and now I’ll never know what that kiss truly meant . . . for either of us.
I slam the Wasp’s console with my fist. “Take me to the Sufianic Clouds. Maximum speed.”
Acceleration pushes me back in my seat, and I rocket out of the Kyros Belt toward the Thirteenth House. What’s my plan now? Shoot Ochus with my laser? Dive-bomb him like a suicide pilot?
Reckless adrenaline fuels me now, not logic—until another memory jerks my head around.
My Wave.
I unzip my compression suit and pull it out from my pocket. I call up the tutorial Ephemeris. The star map swells out of my palm-size screen, small and low resolution.
“Face me, coward!” I yell at the small flickering orb of starlight. “Come on!”
All I see is the clam in my hand, the whirling map, the chaos of overlapping patterns half-hidden in Dark Matter. In a fit of rage, I hurl the Wave against the side of the Wasp, cracking its golden shell.
I didn’t stand a chance anyway. I never got the Abyssthe from Hysan.
A prickle spreads through the back of my skull, and I know what’s happening before I hear him. Ochus is calling me.
I reach back to retrieve my Wave. Swelling from the cracked screen, the small holographic map stutters like a lopsided clock. My fit of temper broke it.
Vicious laughter grates my ears. How droll. You struggle with the most basic skills. I wonder, will you ever understand your own gift?
There he is, swelling out of the cracked Ephemeris. He looks different, grainier, like a blast of cold sleet. Ask me your questions, little girl. I know you’re dying to. How is Dark Matter ruled by Psynergy? Ask me.
I swipe at his eyes. This is for Mathias!
He shifts aside with ease. Keep trying. Everything is Psynergy. This universe is a figment. And I’m the supreme illusionist.
If I’m going to meet him on his plane, I need to Center myself. I stare at the faint lights of the Ephemeris and immediately find the one I’m looking for. The place that gives me peace and power, the home that will always be my soul.
I open myself up to Psynergy from Cancer, only instead of using it to read the stars, I pull on it to feed my presence on the astral plane. And as the star map swells in size, I feel my surroundings changing, until I’m no longer trapped within my body on the Wasp—rather, I’m facing Ochus in the wind tunnel where I first met him, the slipstream in Space where he’s been hiding.
That’s right, little crab . . . crawl out from your shell, he teases. Let’s see how strong that inner flame is.
I root myself more firmly in my Center—breathing deeper, feeling Cancer, tapping into my innermost voice. Ochus’s icy form swells before me, and I reach into my store of Psynergy. This time when I strike, my hands close on something solid.
He feels like icy bone, and he’s freezing my skin. My palms blister and blacken, but I know the pain isn’t real. Ochus tries to move away, but I grit my teeth and hold tighter. I’ve got him.
Then the bone melts in my hands, and I’m grasping empty air.
Behind you, he says, taunting me. Don’t give up yet. You’re doing so well. But you are going to have to be stronger than that.
The effort of Centering myself so deeply leaves me weaker than before. I see him rising over me, a gruesome carcass of ice, and I ask, Why are you doing this?
I was a healer once. I restored life with these hands. His fists grow to the size of small moons. I was beloved . . . and then I was punished for it.