Wandering Star: A Zodiac Novel (16 page)

EVERYONE APPLAUDS IN ASSENT, AND
soon the whole place is getting ready to go out and revel. My face has gone slack with disbelief, but Deke bounds over to me happily. “That’s why I love her!”

“She’s not serious—”

“Why not? Let people have some fun before the sea rises.”
Before the sea rises
is a Cancrian expression that means before things go bad. “It’ll feel good to celebrate after so much tension.”

The word
celebrate
triggers flashbacks to the last celebration I attended, the night of Helios’s Halo. I flash not to the celebration itself, but to days later, when the new friends I made turned on me on the village streets, their love contorted to hate, their cheers twisted to jeers. The day the Zodiac abandoned me.

What if the Sagittarians lose their faith in me, too?

What if Nishi and Deke do?

“Rho, are you okay? We don’t have to do this if you think it’s a bad idea,” says Deke, his grin falling off. He slings a comforting arm around my shoulder and narrows his gaze on my face.

I shake my head dismissively. “No, no, you guys are right. We all deserve a night off.”

His roguish smile resurfaces. “Excellent.” Then he scans the room, and from the excitement on his face, I can tell he’s searching for Nishi in the crowd.

“I love seeing you this way,” I tell him. Most Cancrians love openly, their hearts on full display. But Deke and I have always had thicker shells than others. . . . I think that’s partly why we understand each other so well. I knew why my walls were up, but until recently, I’d only ever suspected Deke’s reasoning.

There’s no easy path to falling in love with someone from another House.

“Thanks. And what about you, Rho Rho?” His turquoise eyes glint with playful mysteriousness. “Now you
know
I would
never
intrude on your private life . . .”

“Oh, of
course
not.”

“. . . however, the other night, when I was on my way to the kitchen for some refreshments, I happened to notice a certain
gentleman
slipping inside a
gentlelady’s
room. . . .”

“Deke!” I punch his arm, and he starts laughing.

“
What?
I’m happy for you! This is good news all around—you’re getting some, I’m getting some, Nishi’s getting some—”

“Listen up!” shouts Nishi, quieting the room and saving Deke from my fists. “The Capital is shut down, so we’re going to Starry City. Most people there didn’t evacuate.”

“The Aleph!” shouts Ezra excitedly, and someone whoops with glee.

“How are we getting there?” I ask tentatively.

Deke’s fingers close preemptively around my arm. “The cannon is even more fun the second time around, I
promise
.”

Nishi makes me go first again.

I curl my body into a tight ball inside the echoing chamber, and then a blast of energy shoots me into the air. I keep my head down and eyes squeezed shut for what feels like hours, until I sense myself starting to descend. This time, I loosen my neck just the tiniest bit, and I look down at the rapidly swelling Starry City.

The city has five points, like a geometric star, and unlike the loud, mismatched buildings of the Capital, the structures are all made out of frosted glass. It looks like an ice world, like the Piscene planet Icthys, where
Firebird
crashed.

A shiver of sadness echoes through me, but soon my heart is pounding in my ears as I plummet toward the ice below. I close my eyes and brace myself for the crash—

But the ground is soft, like freshly fallen snow, and it cradles my body securely when I land. A tall Sagittarian offers me his hand, and I rise to see Hysan, Nishi, Deke, Aryll, Gyzer, Ezra, and all the others dropping down behind me.

“Here you go,” says the same Sagittarian who helped me up, holding out two steel blades to me.

“Um . . . what—?”

“Like this, Rho,” says Nishi, attaching similar blades to the bottoms of her boots. Then she helps me do the same with mine.

“My lady,” says Hysan, offering me his arm when he sees me wobbling.

“Thank you,” I say with relief, resting most of my weight on him. “Let me guess—you’ve done this before?”

Hysan draws out his dimples, as Nishi leads us out of the landing pad and onto the icy pathways of Starry City. The landing pad is the largest and highest structure here—everything else is low to the ground, with semitransparent walls and ceilings. The pathways around the homes and businesses in this city are just as intricate as they are at the Capital, and there are also souvenir stations everywhere.

“This is awesome,” says Aryll, coming up on my other side. His wide blue eye reflects the frost surrounding us, and he reminds me of a young Cancrian wading into the Cancer Sea for the first time.

“Follow meeeee,” sings Nishi, skating past us hand-in-hand with Deke. We all follow, and soon Hysan and I fall behind everyone else.

“I’m sorry,” I huff, trying to stay balanced and also make forward progress.

“For what?” he asks pleasantly, holding both of our weights and seeming undisturbed by having to stop again and again for me to catch my breath or untwist my ankle.

I stare through the walls of a frosted house where two small children and their parents are eating dinner at a large table. And a memory stirs . . . I’ve heard of this city before. “It’s like everyone here is on display,” I say, trying to remember.

“This is one of the most ancient cities on House Sagittarius,” says Hysan, filling in my mind’s blanks. “It’s said that Sagittarius himself, the original Guardian, founded this city, and he designed it to look like his home among the stars. In Space, there’s no such thing as privacy, so those who live here don’t have the same inhibitions as you and I do. It’s very liberating.”

I can tell from his voice that he really likes it here. Every time we talk, I discover something unexpected about Hysan, something that makes me want to learn more. He’s as ever-expanding as Space itself, and I can’t help wondering if I’ll ever fully know him, or if he’ll forever remain just as unknowable.

“We’re here!” announces Nishi when we reach the city limit. She starts removing the blades from the bottoms of her boots. All I see in front of us is a sea of snow.
This
is the Aleph?

Suddenly a periscope pops up from the blanket of white beside us, and Nishi presses her thumb against its glass. The rest of us take turns doing the same thing until we all have identified ourselves. The powder surrounding us starts to rise up like a tidal wave about to swallow us—but we’re actually
descending underground, into a round room surrounded by a dozen closed doors.

“Welcome to the Aleph,” says a metallic-bodied android standing in the center of the empty space, holding a silver tray. “Would you like any Abyssthe before entering?”

“No thanks,” says Nishi. Then she turns to me in excitement. “Pick a door, Rho.”

“Which one?”

She shrugs mysteriously, and I roll my eyes and walk forward to the one directly across from me. When I open it, the room is dark with pulsing holographic lights, and it’s packed with people dancing. But I can’t hear anything.

Curious, I cross the threshold, and as soon as I step through, the sound blasts on. A percussion-heavy song beats through the room and once everyone else is inside, we thread through the crowd toward the stage, where a tattooed band is performing a high-energy number. Nishi, Deke, and the Sagittarians immediately start moving to the music, and suddenly I find myself next to Hysan, and we’re the only two people standing still.

He takes my hand, and we drift to a corner of the room near the back bar, where it’s quieter. Neither of us says anything, but there’s a new energy between us. It’s the first time we’ve hung out like this, overtly together, in public. His eyes drop to my lips, and tonight, I’m willing to give in to our feelings even here, in front of everyone. It’s like Nishi said—if everything ends tomorrow, let’s live today.

My lips are centimeters from Hysan’s when I hear the voice of a demanding girl.

“I want to talk to you.”

Annoyed, I turn to see Ezra, with her hundreds of braids spilling over her mahogany face and her arms crossed over her chest.

“I’ll get us drinks,” says Hysan, pulling away from me and leaving us alone.

“What’s up?” I ask Ezra.

“I want to go with you tomorrow. And don’t say I’m too young—you were only sixteen the first time you took on Ophius.”

“Ezra, I’ve already chosen my crew. You know I’m not going to change my mind.”

“I won’t get in your way.”

“I know that, but I said no.”

“I’ll follow orders, and I can help—”

I clench my hands at my sides but try to keep the anger out of my voice. “
I said no.
Now please drop it.” I relax my fingers and reach out to rest a reassuring hand on her arm.

She shoves my touch away and snaps, “Why not?”

“Because this is life and death, Ezra, and I won’t have your death on my hands!”

Everyone at the bar looks at us. Ezra’s chest is pulsing rapidly with her heavy breathing, as if there’s a wild bird in her rib cage.

“I-I’m sorry,” I stammer, “I didn’t mean to shout—”

She runs off before I can finish my apology, and Hysan returns to my side. “You okay?” His eyes glow in the semidark like the holograms that dance along the walls.

I shake my head, my cheeks burning with regret. “I just blew up at her—I don’t know what’s wrong with me—”

“Come on,” he says, leading us out of the loud room and into the quiet of the threshold.

Soon we’re back in the soundless, circular lobby with the android. When we cut across the room, it turns to us as though we just walked in for the first time and says, “Welcome to the Aleph. Would you like any Abyssthe before entering?”

“No thanks,” says Hysan. The robot seems satisfied with his answer and turns back around. I stare at it a moment longer, thinking of the sophistication of Lord Neith and Miss Trii. I’m not sure I’ve heard of an android anywhere in the universe as advanced as those two.

Hysan squeezes my hand, and I meet his gaze. “Rho, the past few months have tested you in ways few people could withstand. You’ve had to fight down so much—your fears, worries, wants—to do what’s best for everyone else. Who could blame you if some of those feelings break the surface every now and then?”

“I know, and you’re probably right, but Ezra still didn’t deserve that.”

“She’ll forgive you. She wasn’t at her best either—she kept pressing you even though she knows you made the right call. Speaking of . . . do you know what you’re going to do about Aryll?”

“Let’s not talk about that right now,” I say, dropping his hand. Revealing Aryll’s secret requires sharing truths about my own childhood, and this isn’t the place for that.

“Well, what
can
we talk about?” he asks, a trace of annoyance in his tone.

“Us.” The word falls from my lips before I can catch it.

Hysan’s expression suddenly relaxes, and I wonder if I’ve surprised him as much as I have myself. “Okay then,” he says, his voice now lower, huskier. “How do you feel about us?”

I inhale deeply, worried if I don’t get this out now, I never will. “I know I’ve been punishing myself. Not just for Mathias but also for breaking the Taboo.” Hysan nods along, as if he suspected as much. “But the truth is, I love you.”

He stops nodding. I say it just as simply as I feel it, like the inescapable truth it is and not a secret I had to mine the depths of my soul to unearth.

“I don’t want to keep running away from myself,” I press on. “Mathias is gone.” While the words cut me, the blade doesn’t dig as deep
anymore. “He can no longer be my excuse to stay stuck. I don’t think he’d like that.” I’m startled to find myself repeating not Nishi’s words but Deke’s.

Hysan looks like he’s going to speak, so I speed up to reach my point. “I’m telling you all of this in case this is my last chance to do it. So, I love you, but I can’t offer you anything more right now. My heart is in this war. If we survive it—”

“Rho, even if we weren’t at war, one of us could still die tomorrow,” says Hysan, taking my hand again. “My parents weren’t killed by Ophiuchus or his master or the Marad. A forecasted future can be every bit as hopeless as an invisible one.” He cups my face with his hand. “I know your head has to be elsewhere right now. But when we get back from this latest life-or-death adventure, I want something from you.”

“What?” I whisper.

“I would like to take you out on a real date, my lady.”

“
A date
,” I repeat, amused by the modesty of the request.

He smirks and pulls me in for a kiss, and every second I feel Mathias slipping further from me, but in a way that makes me feel lighter rather than heavier. Right now, with Hysan, I see the first hint of a brighter tomorrow, a chance for the happiness I thought I’d lost along with Dad and Mathias.

But only if we survive.

When we pull apart, Hysan’s centaur smile lights up the Aleph, and he takes me by the hand to try a new door. I gasp at what I see: a grand hall in which a full orchestra is performing for a packed house. The next room is by far the emptiest—there’s a lonely singer belting out what’s probably a ballad, and a few couples are swaying slowly to her song. Hysan turns to me, and I know what he’s going to ask, and I’m already crossing the threshold into the room when a voice calls out behind us.