“I abandoned Nishi,” I choke out. I lost my brother and my sister, the only family I had left, my best friends and the best people I’ve ever known. Everything in me has shattered, and just gasping for breath scrapes my throat.
I can barely see through my puffy eyes, and the knot in my chest won’t loosen, until my heart feels like it will give out and my limbs start shivering uncontrollably. “I c—can’t stop shaking,” I stammer, and Hysan rubs my back and arms to generate heat.
“It’s okay, Rho,” he says soothingly. “You’ve never abandoned anyone.”
“I—I became a monster,” I say, fighting down more sobs. “I’m no better than Aquarius. When I had to, I betrayed Risers. I turned over Gamba, I tortured Corinthe—”
“Shhh,” says Hysan, and he takes my chin in his hands to look at me. My eyes are so weighed down with tears that his face looks like a low-resolution hologram. “You’re not perfect. None of us are. But you have to forgive yourself right now because you’re our leader, and we’ll follow your example. If you hold back, so will we.”
“Hysan—I’ve just lost my family,” I say, scowling at him. “I can’t lead this army.”
He wipes the wetness off my face with his fingers. “You’re this army’s leader whether you acknowledge it or not. Even if you stand in the background, every Zodai here will still look to you for their cues. You’ve been a leader from the moment you left the Crab constellation against your Advisors’ wishes, so forget the titles you’ve worn; they’re just words. Whatever you call yourself, it will never change what you are.”
I shake my head in defeat. “And what am I?”
He plants a soft kiss on my cheek, near my ear. “You’re the brightest star in the Zodiac. Hope.”
? ? ?
My eyes are still red and puffy when we board Equinox just a couple of hours later, and then our army of over twelve thousand Zodai takes off for House Ophiuchus.
’Nox is in the lead, and behind us flies the rest of our fleet. Most of the Tomorrow Party members aren’t fighters, so we’re counting on them being busy boarding the ships on Black Moon in anticipation of going through the portal. But the Marad was promised their planet back, and they’re not going to want us anywhere near it.
After everything the Zodai have put Risers through, this is their chance to make us feel as homeless and desperate and unwanted as they’ve felt for three millennia. And from the intelligence the Zodai gathered on Phaet, there are at least a hundred thousand soldiers.
Our only advantage is that imbalanced Risers can’t Center themselves. They won’t be able to sense the Psynergy, so they won’t know what part of the planet to protect. Whereas we have Ophiuchus, and his close connection to his home should enable him to pick up on that Psynergy so we can land in the general vicinity of what’s left of his Star Stone.
Our army will have to fend off the Marad while Ophiuchus and I go seal the portal.
I spend my first day on ’Nox training with Mathias in the storage hold, the largest private space on the ship, so that I can learn to shield myself from the Murmur with my Barer. The Zodai believe these shields are our best chance against the Marad since they render the Murmurs useless.
“The trick is coating the blue energy with Psynergy and bonding both elements,” he says in a deep, meditative voice, our eyes closed as we slowly cycle through Yarrot. “Let the electric tingling in your skin match the buzzing of your blood, until there’s a balance between your inner and outer selves, your physical and metaphysical states. . . .”
By our second day of training, I can shield myself at a moment’s notice, and we turn the room over to Ezra and Gyzer, who have also been using it to train, while Mathias goes to take his turn at the helm.
I dart to the main cabin, which I’m sharing with Hysan, to avoid running into anyone; Ophiuchus, Gamba, Pandora, and my mother have taken over the front of the ship, where they’re meditating and trying to locate the Talisman.
“Why am I here?”
Skarlet’s statuesque figure steps into my path right before I reach my room, her arms crossed and brow puckered.
“You’ll have to ask your parents—”
“Answer me, crab,” she demands, blocking my body with hers as I try to go around.
“Don’t you want to be here?” I snap, frowning up at her. “You’re the one who’s always going on about how you’re a leader and deserve to be treated as one.”
“I could be on General Eurek’s ship.”
“Then why aren’t you?”
Her shoulders pull back with a pride she can’t repress. “Hysan said you invited me to be in your party.”
“And you accepted. So what’s the problem, ram?”
She swallows down her attitude and says in a slightly less entitled tone, “I just want to know why.”
Since she’s trying to be sincere, I decide to answer with the truth. “Because you’re one of the most physically powerful warriors in our army, yet your weapon of choice is your voice.” My face heating up a little, I add, “And for the record, if I were Hysan, I would have picked you.”
I leave her standing dumbstruck in the hallway and slip inside the cabin. But as soon as I do, I see Nishi again. She’s all I ever see in here.
I approach the bed slowly, looking at the space where her body lay beside mine as we slept, hands clasped together. For all my pain, I know her death hasn’t fully hit me yet. Nor has Stan’s. I haven’t had the luxury to grieve them right.
And I’m not sure if I’m more afraid of feeling those feelings or dying.
I get the sense the experiences won’t be very different.
I switch on the black opal and try to push those emotions back so I can See. The room is drowned in stars, and I orbit the lights, searching for a sign of what’s coming. Since I let the Zodai down on Libra, I want to at least be useful in some way. And contributing from in here, alone, is far preferable to doing so out there, with the others.
Though I know I should be focusing on the Dark Matter by the Thirteenth House, I suddenly feel a pull toward Cancer that I can’t ignore. The beautiful blue of our world is barely visible through the belt of broken moons that engulfs it, and I long to see it again the way it looked in Aquarius’s memories.
A bright light abruptly blazes above the Crab constellation, and I feel a familiar presence in the Psy.
I know it’s crazy and it can’t be real, but I think my brother is trying to talk to me.
I close my eyes to tunnel deeper into my Center—and as soon as the holographic stars disappear, there he is.
Stanton stands before me in a Cancrian blue uniform, like a vision that’s been waiting just behind my eyelids.
His pale green eyes are luminous, his curls are bouncy, and his aura is glowing. Stan?
Hey, sis.
At the sound of his comforting voice, every other concern in the Zodiac melts away. But—how? Is this real?
I leap up to hug him, but my hands go right through his body, like he’s a hologram.
You’ll have to redefine real, he says with his goofy grin. But I think so.
Are you in Empyrean?