“This is my choice,” she says, tears streaming down her cheeks. “You risked the Zodiac’s fate for me once already. Don’t put that on me again.”
“Nishi, please—I can’t live without you,” I say, yanking again on Ophiuchus’s arm. But he’s as immovable as stone.
“You’re better than this,” she says strongly, fighting against her tears. “I told the Zodiac to Trust in Guardian Rho. Don’t make me a liar.”
For a second that feels timeless, we watch each other, and deep down I know it’s the last time I’m seeing my sister. And I hate them all for making me choose a murderer over an angel. None of their souls are worth this price. She’s too good for us.
Though my throat’s shrinking, I get out my last words to her. “You’re my everything, Nish.”
And despite the terror in her amber eyes, she manages a small smile. “I’ll save you a seat in Empyrean.”
Then she spins around to face Blaze, who’s just realized what’s happening. He swings the Murmur from her to me, but before he can shoot, she tackles him.
“NISHI!” I scream, but the glass door is closing again on its own, and the capsule is rising once more.
I watch them struggle, but Blaze easily overpowers her, pinning her beneath him. Nishi knees him between the legs, and he cries out in pain and falls off her as she stumbles to her feet and starts racing out the hall.
But Blaze springs up too fast and aims the Murmur.
He fires.
She falls.
34
IT’S BEEN FIVE GALACTIC HOURS and three galactic minutes since we left House Leo. Since Aquarius activated the portal. Since Nishi—
I’m still in the escape pod, even though it’s docked on ’Nox. When the metal door to the ship slid open, I let the others remove Ophiuchus, and I told them the portal was triggered and will be active in seven days unless we can shut it down—and that the Thirteenth Guardian is the only one who can tell us how. “Hysan can figure out a plan,” was the last thing I said.
Then I shut the pod’s glass door and stayed inside.
Hysan deactivated all the controls so I can’t shoot myself away—not that I have anywhere to go. I’ve been watching the holographic numbers of the flight time ever since we left. My leg has a cramp, and I’ve had to pee for two hours and eighteen minutes, but I’m dreading going inside that ship.
I don’t want to lead anyone.
I don’t want to do anything.
At five hours and thirty-three minutes, the pain in my bladder becomes unbearable, and I finally follow the instructions Hysan gave me to open the door. I slip into the nearest lavatory, and when I’m back in the hallway, I hear Ophiuchus’s deep voice coming from the front of the ship.
“Without my Talisman, it will take more time to locate where I first crashed as a star, and Aquarius’s army will be waiting to stop you. They know they just have to hold us off until the seventh day.” I walk into the nose and find Ophiuchus sitting on the floor, facing an audience made up of Hysan, Mathias, Pandora, Skarlet, Gamba, and my mother.
Everyone turns to me at once, but I survey the Thirteenth Guardian. There’s something different about him. He’s still the same stature, but he seems diminished somehow.
“What’s happened to Ezra and Gyzer?” I ask, anticipating the worst.
“They took one of the Tomorrow Party’s ships and regrouped with the rest of our fleet,” says Hysan, rising from his pilot’s chair and offering it to me.
I don’t take it. “What’s the plan?”
“We’re meeting all the Guardians and our full Zodai army on Libra, where we’ll refuel before flying to the Thirteenth House,” he reports. “With all the travel time taken into account, we’ll have exactly two galactic days to close the portal once we land. Ophiuchus knows what to do, but first we need to find the place where he first landed as a star. Without his House’s Talisman, we’ll need to track the trail of Psynergy.”
I study Ophiuchus again, trying to pinpoint what’s different.
“The division of Psynergy between my Talisman and my soul is what made me unstable, giving me superstrength and superspeed part of the time, and weakening me the rest of the time,” he says, answering my unasked question. “Now I am . . . normal.”
It sounds like a joke, since there’s nothing normal about him, but I nod. “Sounds like you have everything covered. I’m going to sleep.”
No one objects as I turn and tunnel deeper into the ship, but after a few steps I realize I don’t know where to go. I can’t bear to return to the main cabin where Nishi and I spent her last night alive.
“You’re in the room to your right.”
I don’t turn around at the sound of my mother’s voice. I just open the door she referenced, and the first thing I see is my traveling bag on the floor. When I go to shut the door, she sticks her boot in the threshold and forces it open.
Reacting would be giving her what she wants, so I just cocoon myself inside the bed and stare up at the ceiling. In my periphery I see her pull down on the seat that hinges from the wall.
“I’m sorry, Rho,” she says, not sounding sorry at all.
I’m not sure I’m going to answer, but then I hear myself ask, “For abandoning me? Replacing me? Slapping me? You’ll have to be more specific.”
In a voice almost too low to hear, she says, “For everything.”
I roll my head to the side to see if the emotion in her words is real or fabricated, but her bottomless blue eyes look like they’ve hit bottom at last. She seems to have shed all her layers, and I’m staring at what’s left of her.
“I’m sorry about your friend.”
My insides harden, and I face the ceiling again.
My friend. She can’t even bring herself to use Nishi’s name. She never even met my best friend, I realize. My sister. She has no idea who I am. She may be my biological parent, but Aquarius knew me better and had more compassion toward me than she’s ever been able to show.
“I know you’re hurting, but you can’t fall apart.” Her voice grows familiarly businesslike. “You need to pull yourself together, because now is when the Zodiac needs you most—”
“Screw the Zodiac,” I say tonelessly, turning to look at her again. “And screw you.”
Her face becomes a military mask, only I realize now it’s not a mask—this is her real face. It takes more effort for her to show emotion than to conceal it. She really isn’t Cancrian at all. She never belonged on our House, just like she never belonged in our home. Our family was just one of her masks.
“Rho, this person you’re becoming,” she says, attempting a softer tone that doesn’t suit her, “she isn’t you.”
“How the hell would you know?”
“I know I’ve failed as your mother, but blaming me isn’t going to do anything for you.” An old darkness infects her words, the same iciness she would use to frighten me into cooperating when I was just a small child.
I unzip the cocoon because my body feels too hot, and I sit up and finally say the words I’ve always dreamt of saying to her.
“You’re a bitch.”
Without missing a beat, she retorts, “I guess that’s where you get it from.”