The holographic map is shaking, like the very galaxy is becoming unstable, and it seems like what happened at the Piscene Cathedral is about to take place, as lighting streaks across the galaxy. Only instead of uncovering the Ophiuchan constellation, the Dark Matter begins to drift away until it’s at the edge of our solar system, just beyond Pisces.
When it’s over, everyone slumps forward, unconscious. But Aquarius rises. He eagerly looks around the room, like he’s expecting to see someone, and then he stares up at the stars—and cries out in horror.
He rushes to the place where the Dark Matter has strayed, at the very edge of our universe. “I’m so sorry,” he whispers to the stars, tears rolling down his cheeks. “I thought I could bring you back to have a life together . . . but I have to wait for the portal. There’s no other way.”
I watch Aquarius’s grieving face until the emotion recedes from his eyes, and I realize he probably designed this particular body for this life cycle because he thought he’d be reunited with Ophiuchus.
He wanted to wear his original eyes.
Watching him I understand what’s happening: His window for love has just passed. The next time he sees Ophiuchus will be to kill him so he can open the portal. I see the emotions sliding down until they’re so deep within him that he can only access his mind, not his heart.
I know the look.
It’s the face of letting go.
32
WHEN THE MEMORY IS OVER, it takes me a moment to readjust to the Mothership’s crystal-walled reading room.
By now the sky has cooled to a dusky violet, and silver stars are starting to peek out overhead. Panic snakes through my insides as I realize too much time has passed. Hysan must have taken off by now.
I turn to Ophiuchus in alarm—and I gasp.
The Thirteenth Guardian is curled into himself on the floor, looking ancient and near death, like his lifeforce was just sucked out of him.
No, not sucked.
Psyphoned.
Aquarius didn’t pull on the Unity Talisman’s Psynergy, or even his own, to play us these memories. He distracted us with the past so he could steal Ophiuchus’s power in the present.
Life is a dance of illusions, he said to me at the Cathedral. With the right distraction, you can make a person believe anything. It’s always the same trick, and we’re always falling for it.
I glower at Aquarius, only he’s also looking down at Ophiuchus, and something in his face has shifted. Seeing the Thirteenth Guardian reduced to this half-dead state, and knowing he’s the one who’s caused his condition . . . He’s not as indifferent as he’d like to think.
I decide to drop all the acts I’ve been balancing and just go back to what I know best—honesty.
“Please don’t do this to him,” I say softly. “Hasn’t he been through enough?”
“I told myself I wouldn’t go through with this plan if humanity proved itself worthy,” says Aquarius, still staring at Ophiuchus while speaking to me. “If you evolved, if you were a species worth saving . . . But I’ve watched you since the beginning, and you’re not.
“Just like your predecessors, you can’t come together for the greater good. Even in your ancestors’ world, humans have always needed tragedy and violence to learn their lessons. Your species doesn’t do subtle.”
“Please,” I beg, moving closer to him. “I know you want to see what’s beyond that portal, but how much more do you need? You’ve been a star in the sky. You’ve been immortal for millennia. Please don’t take more from us. We can be better, I know we can.”
He finally looks at me, and I notice the star-kissed glow of his skin has dampened. He looks less like Aquarius and more like Crompton. “You still don’t understand,” he says sadly. “I’m not doing this for myself anymore. . . . I’m doing it for you.”
His eyes beam at me, cutting a pink path through the darkening air. “This whole time you’ve managed to see how special everyone around you is, but the only person you’ve never seen is yourself. Do you know how many events had to play out just so for you to be here, before me, burning brightly despite everything?”
“You’re right,” I say, once I manage to find my voice again. “I don’t understand.”
He walks up to the crystal wall and stares out at the purpling horizon. “I found you the first time you Saw Dark Matter. I felt it. At the time you didn’t know you were Seeing it, but I’ve been using much of my Psynergy to veil the Thirteenth House from the Psy, so when you Saw through it . . . I couldn’t believe a human was capable of that.”
He turns to me with a warm smile, and he seems like a proud parent. “When I looked into you, I learned that you were different. You didn’t show your work at the Academy when you made your predictions. Your mediocre instructors faulted you for this, but they were the ones in the wrong.”
I can’t help flashing to one of Mom’s favorite phrases from my childhood—Your teachers are wrong.
“In fact,” he goes on, “you’ve always been the perfect student: You learn from everyone and every situation. You remember things because you’re paying attention. You strive to be better because you respect the people and the world around you.”
He starts striding toward me, his eyes bright and his voice gentle. “In a school that was almost entirely Cancrian, you chose a Sagittarian for your best friend. Of all the potential love interests available, you chose the top-ranked university student to admire and live up to.” His voice dips with heaviness as he says, “I felt you through the Psy when you fought with your friends on Elara and nearly suffocated on the moon’s surface minutes before curfew. I was moved by your resourcefulness and heart and drive to survive.”
Once he’s standing right in front of me he says, “I protected the crystal dome from the power outage when your House fell so that your story wouldn’t end on Elara. I have always been with you, Rho.”
I can’t even blink. Or breathe. Or think.
“I now see that your Cancrian and Ophiuchan heritage—Unity through Nurture—made you uniquely qualified to bind us together,” he goes on, not realizing that I’m barely digesting any of this. “But ultimately, it was your choices that cemented your worthiness. You’re not the first person to have a militant mom—but rather than rebel, you opted to excel at her teachings, and later you continued your own training. When you faced Ophiuchus and he threatened to kill you if you spoke of him, you chose to warn the other Houses anyway. When the Plenum laughed in your face, you chose to go before them again. And again. And again. And now, when the Zodiac has shunned you, when you’ve lost everything that matters to you and I offer to take you to a new universe and give you a supreme amount of power no man has ever had—you choose to save everyone else rather than seize it.”
“I . . . I can’t,” I sputter, only now fully appreciating how insane Aquarius is.