“Don’t do this!”
My plea goes ignored as a couple of Lodestars cuff my wrists and forcefully march me up to Hysan. “Time to deliver on all your promises,” he whispers as he leisurely runs a finger along my jawline. “You wanted to die for the Zodiac, didn’t you? I’m happy to report that after so many failed suicide missions, the stars have finally judged you worthy of a martyr’s death.”
Our faces are inches apart, and yet I feel no warmth radiating from his golden skin. His sunny glow never looked so artificial.
“Congratulations, my lady,” he huskily breathes into my lips. “You earned it.”
Mathias comes up beside us, and Hysan turns to him. “After all she put you through, you deserve this more than I do.”
“Thank you,” says Mathias, bowing his head, “but this is your right as much as mine.”
Hysan unsheathes his ceremonial dagger. “Together then?”
Mathias nods and holds up Corinthe’s bloodied blade—then they turn and plunge their weapons into me.
“NO!”
I blink, and Hysan and Mathias are gone.
I’m still tied to the chair.
“Welcome back,” croaks Corinthe. Her savage and unhinged smile comes into focus, and I look down to see she’s slicing lines across my abdomen.
My shredded white gown is patterned with splotches of red blood. “What’s happening to me?” I manage to ask, my voice barely more than a breath.
“What do you think?” she asks. “You failed. And now you’re dying.”
Her blade digs in too far, and my eyes roll back, only this time I don’t lose consciousness—I feel my soul floating up from my body and rising to the astral plane, like I’m deeply Centered.
The molecules of air around me transform into the slipstream where I first met Ochus, and I feel a wintry wind of warning before his monstrous form materializes.
I endured torture for an eternity, he booms, hurling his words like hailstones, and you can’t even handle a few nightmares? You are weak—no wonder you failed the Houses.
I—I don’t understand what’s happening, I stammer, his frigid Psynergy burning against my open wounds. Help me, please! I need to get out of here. I need to get back to where my friends are, I have to rescue Nishi—
You are not listening—you are too late, crab! he thunders at me. The Zodiac is gone.
It—it can’t be—
What do you think is happening to you? he demands, his Psynergy wrapping around me like a hurricane, sending chills through my body. You have joined me in the astral plane. Our destinies were always linked, child, and now we are doomed to face forever what we destroyed.
But I—I didn’t do anything—
You played right into the master’s hands. The right leader would have stopped him, but you are rash, foolish, fearful—what hope was there ever that you could go up against a star and win?
His icy hands close around my throat, and I’m infected with winter. Please! I beg him. Don’t—
But my veins ice over, freezing my blood, and I can’t suck in any oxygen. Spots obscure my vision as I suffocate, and I’m not sure if I’m horrified or relieved that it’s all ending.
I’m so tired of dying and reviving, dying and reviving, dying and reviving. . . . I’m ready for it to be over.
“Oh, but I’m not,” croaks Corinthe in my ear.
The pressure around my neck vanishes, as does the cold weather, and I blink my eyes open to find I’m back in my body. Only now I’m lying flat on my stomach.
My back is in scorching pain, like there are live flames licking my skin. “I can’t let you die before showing you how great these scars are turning out,” says Corinthe as she carves across my shoulder blades. Her breath burns my raw skin.
“Please,” I whisper, the fire in my body overwhelming. Water wells in my eyes, and pain presses into my mind. “Just . . . finish.”
She laughs softly, but there’s no mirth in the mousy sound. “I’ll never be finished,” she rasps in my ear. “You’ll never escape this place. You’ll always be here with me.”
Her blade stabs into my lower spine, and I arch up in a piercing scream. She pulls the knife out and stabs me with it again and again and again, until I can’t make any more sounds.
Then I hear a loud knocking.
My eyes fly open, and I gasp to find I’m no longer lying down. I’m standing upright in my dorm-pod on Elara and wearing my blue Acolyte uniform.
“WHAT THE HELIOS IS HAPPENING TO ME?!” I shout to the room.
The place looks exactly as it did when I saw it last—my bed is unmade, my desk is riddled with clothes I meant to put away, and a uniform identical to the one I’m wearing is draped across my chair from when I changed into my black space suit for our Drowning Diamonds concert.
Someone knocks on my door again.
I yank it open to find a trembling teen girl in a tattered blue uniform. Her knees are slightly bent, shoulders curved in, unkempt dark hair curtaining her features. She looks like she hasn’t bathed in months.
First I think she’s a new monster I’ve dreamt up.
Then I glimpse hints of her cinnamon face, and all my other fears fade from mattering.
“Nishi?”
3
FASTER THAN A BREATH, NISHI unsheathes a dagger and shoves me against the wall, pressing the blade under my chin.
“I’m not scared of you, demon,” she says in a guttural predator’s voice. “So do your worst.”
Since speaking means slitting my own throat, I stay completely still, not daring to even swallow. I just stare at the flickers of amber that shine through her matted clumps of black hair.
The terror in her eyes is so primal that she feels realer than the Hysan and Mathias I met in the hospital.
“Say something,” she suddenly commands, pulling the knife back slightly.
“I’m going to find you,” I say, my voice tight. “Imogen and Blaze took you away from me, but I swear I won’t rest until I—”
“Right, you’re risking your life to save mine, and now you’re going to make me feel like scum for the horrible things I said to you on Aquarius,” she says sharply, the dagger in her hand trembling. “And for joining the Tomorrow Party. And for getting Deke killed.”
A sob slips through her sharp-edged voice when she says his name. “Aren’t you going to tell me again how he—he was free, and his back was only turned because he was freeing me? How I should have been looking out for him—should have warned him—should have taken his place—”
“Nish—stop! I never said any of that because it’s not true!” Tears leak from my eyes, and I wish my subconscious had generated a monstrous version of Nishi—like it did with Hysan and Mathias—instead of this broken, beaten girl.
“None of this is your fault,” I insist, and I don’t care if she stabs me with that blade anymore. I just can’t stand seeing her this way. “Please don’t think those things, Nish. I love you and will never stop searching for you—”
“Rho?”