I SPEND THE REST OF the day repeating everything I learned from both Ophiuchus and Aquarius over and over and over again.
Hysan creates a fake hologram of Imogen to field any incoming calls from Blaze or Aquarius. Funny how identity forgery used to be our greatest threat, and now it’s a survival strategy. The five of us spend the rest of the day in meetings with the Zodai teams on Phaet, and the other Guardians drop in holographically at various times, until everyone has been filled in.
The plan is for a small team to fly to Artistry on ’Nox and rescue Ophiuchus and Mom and Gamba before Aquarius returns from Black Moon—which means we have to go immediately.
It turns out Ezra already sent Hysan the blueprints for the black bullet-ships, and he upgraded ’Nox’s engine to equal their speed—plus, given that the Libran Talisman is built into its brain, Equinox has the only Psy shield that stands a chance against Aquarius. Hysan shared the master’s engine designs with every House, so hopefully our whole fleet will be able to match the Marad’s speed. Once we have Ophiuchus, we’ll Veil from the Psy and hide him on Equinox until the Zodai have defeated Aquarius.
Hysan, Mathias, Nishi, Pandora, Skarlet, Ezra, Gyzer, and I board ’Nox. Since we’ll be leaving Leo with three more people onboard, we’re pushing ’Nox’s oxygen limits, but Hysan assured us that it would be okay. I go straight to my usual cabin, but I stop before turning the handle. Last time I slept in there, Stan was with me.
I look down the hall to see that Nishi is doing the same thing. Her old room is haunted by Deke’s holo-ghost.
Mathias and Hysan are watching us.
“Why don’t you both take my cabin?” says Hysan, and without waiting for our answer, he carries his things into the last and smallest room, the one near the storage hold, and shuts his door.
Nishi and I look at each other, and we wordlessly slip inside the main cabin. When we’re alone, she just stares at me. Even though she’s furious, I can’t help feeling relieved that she looks so much more like herself now than she did on Leo.
“You Cancrians will be the end of me.”
“I’m sorry, Nish.”
She shakes her head and exhales. “The Marad soldiers let me call my parents from the ship, as long as I didn’t disclose any details of what had happened. I figured they must have been going through their own nightmares over my disappearance. But when my mom answered, she and my dad were wasted at some party on Taurus. They thought I was traveling and had no idea anything was wrong.”
She rests a hand on my shoulder and squeezes me hard. “I hate what you did, Rho. But I love why you did it.”
I pull her into a hug, and as I hold her tightly to me, I’m just happy for this moment to be with her. I have no idea what will happen when we try to break out Ophiuchus. Nor do I know how we’re going to keep him hidden from Aquarius now that I’ve given up the only secret location in the Zodiac. But I can’t take another breath without her forgiveness.
“I’m so sorry, Nishi,” I repeat.
“I know,” she says as we pull away, and our fingers link together. “But I almost lost you.”
“I almost lost me, too.”
The ship begins its ascent, and we lie back on the bed, still holding hands, and stare up at the ceiling as we exit Phaet’s atmosphere. From our silence and labored breathing, I know we’re both thinking of the last time we did this, with Deke, right after he asked Nishi to marry him.
“I miss him, Rho.”
“Me too.” I squeeze her hand, and we don’t say anything for a long time.
Unsurprisingly, Nishi breaks the silence with an annoying question. “So what’s going on with you and Hysan?”
“Nothing.”
“He seems heartbroken.”
Skarlet’s face flashes in my mind, and I wonder if even now, in a different cabin, she’s making her move. “He’ll find someone new.”
“So you’re over him?” She rolls onto her side to face me, and half her face is buried in the mattress. All I can see is one slanted amber eye and strands of dark hair.
“I can’t think about him right now,” I say, rolling to my side to face her, too. “I just want to focus on saving the universe.”
Her lips curl into a smirk, and her eye grows smaller. “That should be your anthem. Introducing the Zodiac’s Wandering Star”—her voice goes higher and becomes musical—“She’s not here to date, she’s here to save the Zod-i-ac!”
I shrug. “I kind of prefer Trust in Guardian Rho.”
Her gaze is glassy and her smile wilts. “I wrote the new lyrics the same night you took off to Gemini to warn them about Ophiuchus, right after that meeting with your Advisors.”
“What happened afterwards?” I whisper.
“A lot seemed to happen simultaneously. As soon as the song and your story got out, we received requests from schools everywhere asking us to come perform. We jumped on the chance to take a chartered trip to the Zodai University on Capricorn because its students have the highest test scores of any school in the Zodiac, so I figured they’d lend us the most credibility.”
“I remember seeing something about it in the newsfeeds on Virgo.”
Nishi smiles again, but this time the good humor doesn’t reach her eyes. “Drowning Diamonds’ first and last tour.”
“And you went without your drummer,” I say, trying to lighten the mood.
Her gaze is distant, like she’s reliving the trip, and she says, “That was when Deke finally confessed his feelings.”
“Tell me about it,” I say softly.
“After playing the song onstage, I told the students the lyrics were real. I warned what happened to Cancer would spread unless we came together now, behind you and House Cancer, and united as one Zodiac. The school administration ushered us off the stage pretty fast after that.”
Her voice is low and musical. “Kai went to bed early, but Deke and I decided to explore Tierre’s terrain, and we hiked up a mountain peak where we could see the most varied tapestry of topographies we’d ever seen. The whole horizon was silver, and we took turns pointing out volcanoes and jungles and oceans. Then we lay back and stared up at the stars, and I just knew we were going to sleep out there and not go back to the room, and in that moment I decided that if he didn’t finally own his feelings, I would just kiss him and see what happened. That’s when he said, I’m in love with you, Nish.”
“What?” I ask, my eyes going wide.
“It gets better. Then, he told me that when he watched me speaking in defense of Cancer onstage, he realized how ridiculous he’d been to ever care about our Houses. He said even though we’d been born on different planets, the stars had always meant for us to find each other—that was why they’d given us each one half of the same soul.”
She can’t speak for a while, and neither can I. “I just remember this amazing rush of happiness,” she whispers, “like every House in the Zodiac could explode, and the darkness still wouldn’t be able to touch me. And the thing that scares me most now is never feeling that way again.”