THE BLOODY POINT OF BLAZE’S sword slides under my chin and tips my face up. “On your feet,” he commands, and I rest Mom on the ground and rise.
I can barely see Blaze through the field of red that fills my vision. He’s murdered my mother and Nishi. I don’t care what Hysan would say—Blaze doesn’t deserve my mercy.
He deserves death.
“I’m not sure what I want to do with you,” he says, tilting his head, the cold metal still touching my chin. “You monopolized Aquarius’s attention. You impeded my plans to leave this universe. And now you’ve stolen my power.”
“Sounds to me like you’re a sore loser.”
“Well I’m still standing, so it sounds to me like the game isn’t over.”
“Put down your sword, Blaze.”
Hysan’s voice is void of light. He strides over to us and stands beside me, equally covered in blood and dirt and gashes. “It’s over.”
Mathias comes, too, Pandora propping him up since he’s injured. Sirna also approaches, and then Eurek and Gyzer and Skarlet and Engle, and other Zodai I don’t know. They all form a circle around Blaze, whose sword is still touching my chin.
In the distance, I hear a girl’s voice calling out for her mother, but I ignore it.
“Put down your sword,” commands Eurek.
Blaze looks desperate but unwilling to submit.
“You’re all fools! You know the Zodiac won’t change. It’ll be just like after the Trinary Axis—this will be another war for the history texts that will start out as a cautionary tale until someone gets the itch for some excitement and starts riling people up again. Aquarius was a visionary—he understood that we need to start anew! You’re just recycling the same bad foundation—”
“Drop your weapon,” Hysan repeats, and there’s so much strength and power in his voice that Blaze stops speaking.
His head hinges down, and to my surprise he drops the sword tip to the ground. And I hear the girl again, calling my mom’s name.
I start to turn to go to her, right as Blaze raises the sword again and moves in to drive it into my heart. I have no time to run or defend myself as the blade flies toward me—
A metal dart shoots into Blaze’s throat.
Beside me, Hysan is holding the small golden gun he used to stop Neith on Pisces. Blood fountains from the Leonine’s neck as he falls facedown on the ground, the sword still in his hand.
It’s finished.
“MOM!” calls Gamba for the third time, and I turn to see her flipping over bodies, searching for our mother’s face. She’s probably already glanced this way and seen that Mom isn’t one of the people standing here—what she can’t see is her body because it’s lying on the floor beside Blaze, inside the circle.
I move toward her, and when Gamba sees me, she freezes.
“No,” she says, stepping back from the truth she reads on my face. “No, she can’t—she’s not—”
She tries fighting me off, but I pull her to my chest and hold her there as she breaks down into sobs. We cry together, both of us sisters, both of us orphans, and we don’t stop until hands pull us apart. Hysan helps me to my feet, and I see that the Zodai have started gathering all those who have fallen on both sides.
The Dark Matter has thinned even more, and the sky looks like a gray dusk. More silver stars are visible as the hole in the blanket of blackness expands. We carry as many corpses between us as we can to the ships, where we find the rest of the Zodai survivors.
“Gy!”
Ezra comes running, and Gyzer drops the body he’s carrying to catch her as she leaps into his arms. When he sets her down, she turns to all of us, and without anyone having to ask she says, “Once the portal closed, those Ophiuchan creatures slipped away, and most of the Marad went with them. They just . . . stopped fighting us.”
We regroup with the rest of our fleet—which has been cut in half—and we begin to sort through the fallen bodies as every House claims their dead to send to Empyrean through their own customs. We position the fallen Marad soldiers against the tree line so their brethren can decide how to lay them to rest.
Every Tomorrow Party member Blaze brought with him died in battle. My gaze lingers on Mallie, and for some reason I think of the young girl in the pink spacesuit who froze to death on Elara. Both senseless deaths, yet the Cancrian has been cast as a victim and Mallie a villain. But Mallie was a victim, too.
Suddenly the whole camp falls silent, and I look up from Mallie’s pallid face to a solitary Marad soldier who’s just stepped out of the swamp.
The Zodai point their weapons, but since she’s not holding a Murmur, nobody shoots. Then she rips off her mask, revealing a snakeskin face and lime-green eyes that are looking right at me.
“We outnumber you,” she says in a raspy voice. “You either agree to leave this planet and never return, or we’ll finish off what’s left of you.”
I step forward. “We’re sorry for the way Risers have been treated, and we want to offer you a place in the Zodiac.”
“You may feel that way, but the rest of the universe doesn’t. We don’t want your help. And we never want you coming back.”
“You have the technology to reach us if you ever need anything,” I say. “We will come if you call.”
She nods and retreats into the swamp. After a moment’s delay, activity resumes, and I hear a familiar voice that makes me ache with relief.
“You’re not touching me with that needle!”
I jog over to the makeshift medical area, where Brynda is sitting on a fallen tree trunk and being treated by an Ariean healer. “Don’t be a baby,” says the fiery-haired woman.
“You have a great bedside manner,” snarls Brynda. “I bet everyone raves about it.”
“No one’s complained about my manners in bed before,” says Kenza, shrugging. I recognize her from when I awoke from the Sumber.
“That’s not what I said, Red.”
Since Brynda’s expression is looking lethal, I jump in and say, “Hey, Brynda! You okay?”
“Rho!” she immediately turns away from Kenza and surveys me with her amber eyes, and once she’s sure I’m unharmed, she smiles. “I’m glad you’re okay. I’d be much better off if I had a proper healer—OW!”
Kenza used my distraction to stab Brynda’s arm with a needle, and as the Sagittarian Guardian raises her wrist like she’s going to fire a bullet from her Arclight, the Ariean flashes her an annoyingly antagonizing smile and darts off.
“You’re totally marrying her,” I say, and Brynda shoots me a glacial glare that has me walking my words back. “Sorry,” I say quickly, and I sit down beside her on the log.
“Hysan told me about your mom,” she says, her face and voice softening. “I’m sorry, Rho.”
“We’ve all lost people,” I murmur. I’m not ready to process it yet.
“I know . . . but sometimes it feels like the stars are picking on you the most. You’ve given up so much more than the rest of us.”
Home. Dad. Deke. Stan. Nishi. Mom. It’s hard to argue with her, so I don’t. “I’m sorry about Rubi. I know you two were close.”