Inherit the Stars Page 10

  I sidestep to the door. “I’ll get Eagle.”

  “Yes.” The Lady rests a hand on my shoulder, drawing out the word. “Do. In fact, why don’t you run up and kiss him?”

  “What?”

  “Mekenna is a romantic, as much as she tries to bury the fact. She’ll never forgive your father for Orrin—and has transferred much of that resentment to us—but you? You circumvented an inter-House blood bond to be with a scarred cadet. It’s a beautiful day. Your much loved sister is here, whom you’ve begged to come with you to your concert, and she’s agreed. What else would you do, but run out to him in excitement? Not to mention it’s your first outing beyond the complex. Yes, I do think you would.” She pats my cheek and turns me to the door.

  I dig my heels in. “My Lady—”

  “Mekenna has come specifically for an update on the husband who had no difficulty forgetting her after two years, when she’s been steadfast thirteen. That is not a conversation that bodes well for this House, nor one I can long hedge off. Be a dear and convince her that not all of Fane is evil incarnate.” She opens the door and pushes me through.

  Everyone looks up.

  There’s no time.

  I run.

  “Eagle!” Bright excitement and pure panic.

  He turns, barely fast enough to catch me as I lock my arms around his waist and bury my face in his shirt. His chest presses solid against my every scattered heartbeat.

  “Asa?”

  The story. Remember the story.

  Except his arm curls warmth around my side and his palm curls light around my head, and the only story that matters is the one where he doesn’t let go.

  “What’s wrong?” he asks, and I can feel them. The words. On his lips, in my hair.

  “Everything,” I whisper.

  He shifts, hand skimming feathers down my neck.

  “Excuse us,” he says, louder now and half distracted, walking us forward. I unwind my arms but his doesn’t move, tucked tightly and rippled under his sleeve. His right arm. His left hand opens the door.

  Lady Westlet waits.

  Eagle nods but doesn’t stop. “Mother.”

  “That was brilliant.” She presses the door shut and gently shifts the curtain. “Even better than a kiss. Look at her face.”

  Eagle freezes and my soul cracks.

  “Maybe,” sighs the Lady, age and exhaustion and hope, “just maybe, we’ll pull this off.” She rubs Eagle’s shoulder and flicks my hair. “Oh, my beautiful children. Well done.”

  Then she skips from the room.

  Slowly, Eagle pulls his arm from my waist. Steps away.

  “So you’re fine,” he says.

  I am empty and untethered and not even here.

  But that’s not the right story. I don’t think. My heart is bound in wire and beating blood and I can’t remember.

  He stares into empty shadows his mother left, lips parted on a word he doesn’t say.

  Until he does.

  “Well done.”

  “Eagle—” I step forward, reach out.

  “What?” Taut as the fists at his sides, he doesn’t turn. “Can’t we call it done for today?”

  My hand drops and I pull it tight behind my back so it doesn’t crack with the rest of me. “Yes. Of course.”

  And he’s gone.

  THE CLUB LIGHTS TURN EMMIE’S JACKET RED AS IT swirls around her hips. Glowing wires spiral over the walls and crisscross the thrumming ceiling. Sound-to-hue translators weave every note into color over endless dancers who jump and shake and scream. The main act isn’t even on yet.

  Emmie flew us in. Eagle used up his rations going to Malsa, and Emmie’s flightwing runs on ecoflux, so she’d have flown even if he was with us.

  Which he isn’t.

  Someone rams my shoulder. I stumble and my drink sloshes over the girl ahead, turning her shirt alcohol sticky.

  “Hey!” The girl whips around, hair flying. “What the—”

  Emmie slides between us. “Stuff it.”

  The girl huffs away as the band screams and the walls pulse red.

  “If I get you another drink,” Emmie half yells, “can you not douse the natives?”

  I shake my head. I don’t want a drink. I don’t want to be here; I want Eagle.

  Wren. I mean Wren.

  Emmie grabs my shoulders, stands on tiptoe to yell in my ear. “Lady Westlet wants us happy, so be frickin’ happy.” She shakes me a little, out of time with the pounding beat. “Seriously, cheer up.”

  I shake her off and tug her away from the worst of the crowd, where the colored lights swirl less. Then I round on her. “Why didn’t Dad send the schematics?”

  He should have, he absolutely should have. He gave his word as Fane.

  Her jaw tightens. “Because they’re the only hold we have. We need those shipments.”

  “I know. You think I don’t know? All I’ve done is—”

  “What? Measure up to the great Lord’s standards? You?” She smiles. Nothing hidden, no subtle cut, only truth. The kind that just is. She sighs. “Look, I’m sure you’re trying, but this is too important to screw up.” Her arm snakes around my waist and she squeezes. “Okay?”

  Onstage, the music spikes and something stringed dies.

  “Come on.” She drags me forward, through people pressed arm to arm, back to chest. Legs and bodies and laughter. A stranger’s hand brushes my neck, another rubs sweat against my skin, and I can’t. I just—

  Can’t.

  I back away from Emmie. The crowd swarms our link. Her bracelet glitters. “Asa, come on.”

  But if measuring up is impossible, I’ll be faithless somewhere else.

  I twist free, back up into people who growl but have no problem taking my place. Until Emmie disappears and I’m alone in the flow, fighting momentum to reach the crowd’s edge.

  Onstage, the drums explode, pulsing the walls’ translators a deep, vibrant red. I shut my eyes and soak them in.

  With any luck, they’ll swallow me whole.

  Another hand settles on my arm and stays there, as if my standing against the wall somehow gave them the right.

  “Go away.” I spin and almost smack into a green jacket. Which slides all the way up into a hood that’s too close to hide anything. The color translators bounce light everywhere and reflect in his eyes. Black, brown, and even green on the high notes.

  His hand falls.

  The drums pound under my skin. “Eagle?”

  He says something, a string of somethings, and I don’t catch any of it.

  “What?” I stand on tiptoe, try to reach his words without leaning in.

  But he does. Lean. Palm on my shoulder as my heels sink to the floor, and his lips find my ear, “Mother sent me.”

  Oh.

  I nod. Don’t hunch or choke.

  Inside, everything chokes.

  I point at the crowd, and yell, “Emmie’s probably by the stage.”

  He nods. I wait for him to go after her. Appease the Lady. Dance with the bride he should have had.

  “Father’s on a tirade,” he says, and I swear I feel his lips. “Fane didn’t send the schematics?”

  He pulls back enough to meet my eyes. Our noses almost touch.

  “How mad?” I ask.

  “What?” he says. Or rather mouths, for all I can hear him.

  I hold the loose edge of his jacket for balance, my cheek brushing his as I stand on tiptoe. “How mad is he?”

  Eagle doesn’t answer. Or move.

  I pull back and tug his jacket, before the panic screams out. “How mad?”

  Nothing. At all.

  I drop his jacket before I scream or bawl or both.

  “I have trouble,” he says, so close my skin maps all the places we almost touch. “Hearing. On that side. What did you say?”

  “What?!” I pull back.

  He shrugs, hands finding pockets.

  I regrab his jacket and reach up, double-check I’m on his left side, t
hen ask, “Why are you here? Doesn’t it hurt? Do we need to leave?”

  He bends close. “It’s fine. What did you say?”

  “Really? Because I’ll get Emmie and—”

  “Positive.” Sharp, even over the speakers’ wail. “How what? What did you say?”

  I’m not sure I want to know anymore. “How mad is Lord Westlet?”

  “Very. I think he meant to send the initial shipment back with Emmaline. He was yelling over his flipcom to unload the transport.”

  My legs disappear and I sink.

  Eagle catches me before the floor does.

  “Steady,” he says against my temple. Lips featherlight and reverberating—outflanking the music’s rhythm until my heart can’t keep time.

  But that’s the wrong story. A lie, like Dad’s promises and everything else.

  “Don’t.” I push away and he stumbles back. “The Lady isn’t here, nobody’s looking. You don’t have to—” But the band screams and the crowd answers and I brush past to find Emmie.

  EMMIE WANTS TO EAT, BUT NOTHING’S OPEN. THE whole district is powered down—curved skytowers dark against the rising moon, scattered trees smothering the streetlights.

  Emmie stands in the middle of the empty street and glances from the pulsing club a block down, to the high-rise docking bay just ahead. “Lord Westlet sets curfews?”

  Even at our absolute worst, right before the final ecoflux breakthrough, Dad never set curfews.

  He just handed out ration tokens and made people set their own.

  Eagle shrugs. “It conserves energy.”

  “And you’re obviously in desperate need of conservation.” Emmie waves at the club that Dad wouldn’t even bother regulating tokens to.

  And maybe the Westlets wouldn’t, either, if they weren’t trying to stave off the Electorate.

  “Let it go, Emmie,” I say.

  She places her hands on her hips, prepping for the fight she’s been burning for all evening. As if the club’s pulsing red pumped into her soul.

  “Please,” I say. Not tonight. “Dad lied about the schematics. Isn’t that enough?”

  She looks down the street. Over at the darkened tower shop fronts. Back toward the club.

  Everywhere but at me.

  “Emmie,” I say, slow. “Dad did lie, didn’t he? He didn’t send the schematics with you. You don’t have them, right?”

  “Of course not.” Her laugh bounces high, and she cuts it off the next second. “Why would I?”

  “Because they’re our only real bargaining chip. Because if Lord Westlet has the schematics, you think we’ll have no leverage to get the food. Because this is too important and you think I’ll screw it up.”

  Eagle shifts beside me.

  “Give them back,” I say. “Just give them back, and—”

  Emmie’s face shuts down and she becomes power. Her heel slides back a step. “You’re talking nonsense.”

  “Emmie.” I step forward.

  She bolts for the docking bay. I make three steps to follow before Eagle snags the back of my shirt.

  “There’s people. That bay was packed coming in. We’ll stop her in the air.” His free hand pulls a flipcom from his pocket and snaps it open.

  “No!” I swipe it away. “No. She’s protecting us—Fane—don’t you see? She doesn’t think I’ll measure up, she doesn’t think I can. And once I fail and your dad has the schematics, then we’ll never get the food because we’ll have nothing else to offer.”

  “Then she’s an idiot. Give me the com.” Eagle reaches out but I jump back and stumble off the curb.

  “You don’t understand.” I shake my head, still backing up. “Dad will kill her, he won’t forgive that. He can’t. It’ll be Mom all over again.”

  Especially if Emmie goes home and acts like everything’s fine. She’s probably already asked Dad to let her handle communications with Westlet—so she can step up, do her part. And Dad would agree because it’s the kind of thing Wren would do. Then Emmie will hold the schematics hostage for the food, thinking Lord Westlet will cave first, except he won’t. He’ll pay back in kind, Dad will find out, and Wren won’t be the only one in a coma.

  “I will fix this, okay? Give me a week, just a week, and I will fix this I swear. Please. Don’t tell your dad.”

  “Okay,” says Eagle.

  “He’ll tell my dad, and Dad can’t know, not ever.”

  “Okay.”

  “And I know you don’t believe me, but I will make this right I swear.”

  “I know.” And the certainty echoes in his watching frame.

  “You know?” I ask.

  “She’s your sister, Asa. Of course you’ll get them.”

  FAITHLESS

  “I’VE INVITED COUSIN EVIE TO JOIN US TOMORROW,” says Elona, midway through breakfast. “I do hope that’s all right.”

  Lord Westlet’s knife pauses over the butter, and the Lady’s spoon clinks in her bowl.

  “From my mother’s side, you know.” Elona’s hair is piled high on her head and bubbles with her voice. “She flew in last night, if you can believe it, and while I hate taking liberties I would so love to spend some quality time with her before she’s off again. I hardly ever get to see her anymore.” Elona flashes me a small cat smile. “And I think she would love to see the way our little family has grown.”

  My retribution.

  Electorate names speed through my head, but I can’t find an Evie. Which isn’t surprising because it’s next to impossible to pin them all down.

  I can’t see Eagle. He’s lost behind Charles’s gelled spikes.

  “Of course,” says Lord Westlet, slicing the butter. “Always pleased to entertain family.”

  Elona beams. “Excellent.”

  I beam right back. Smooth my crinkled napkin into thin, crisp folds under the table.

  Maybe Evie lost her family in the lockdown. Maybe her sole goal in life is to see Fane fall. Maybe she knew Eagle.

  Maybe he loved her.

  Maybe he still does.

  Lady Westlet lays down her spoon and lifts her glass. “Asa, dear, how would you like to go shopping?”

  SINCE URNATH, EMMIE SAYS I LOOK LIKE A BOY. THIS dress proves her wrong. The lace shimmers silver, balances my skin and shows most of it. As in cleavage. I don’t have much, but the dress doesn’t seem to care.

  I am very pretty in the mirror. Soft edges and static hair that flies every which way without seeming too messy.

  I am nothing like Evelyn Tress, who is strength and energy and looked like she could jump off the screen—the digislate was too small to hold her. Elona has several cousins, and several more who might be cousins, including at least three Evie’s.

  But only one is training for the Special Guard.

  “No, no, absolutely not.” Lady Westlet walks around me as I stand before the curved fitting room mirror. “I said elegance and power, Martina. These sleeves are puffed.”

  Evelyn Tress is nothing but power. In one of the news articles, she was leaning against a skidcycle.

  “Yes, but it suits her, my Lady,” Martina nearly whines, a mere shell of the regal matron who greeted us when we entered her boutique.

  Four hours and thirty-two dresses ago.

  She waves at me, her hair now almost as wispy as mine. “My lady Asa simply hasn’t the figure for—”

  Lady Westlet finds Martina’s eyes in the mirror.

  “Yes?” purrs the Lady. “Pray continue.”

  Martina doesn’t, cheeks pale as her blonde bun.

  “For that,” I finish. I wave at the far wall, with its floor-to-ceiling embedded screens featuring beautiful models in beautiful clothes who twist for inspection. “I’m not elegance or power and she can’t create what isn’t here.”

  The closest wall-screen model raises a slender, seductive arm and says, “Regal Reflections by Desvoni, because you are the core the world reflects.”

  The Lady is a regal reflection. “Martina, might we have a moment?
”

  “Of course, my Lady.” Martina bows low and makes good her escape.

  The Lady doesn’t move or speak, rosewater perfume softening the boutique’s over-rich musk.

  I kick at the floor, what little isn’t covered in discarded shoes and head scarves. “It’s not her fault.”

  Lady Westlet doesn’t sag, I doubt she’s even capable, but all the threads holding her up dissolve into nothing. “I know. I can only imagine how difficult this must be.” She shakes her head as if to shed her thoughts. “We do not get to choose what we face, only how we face it. You have done well, Asa, and you will do this.”

  I DON’T KNOW THE STARS. THEY TANGLE BLUE WHITE in the black, and I can’t name any of them. I hug my knees, my sleep clothes no match for the wind. Beyond the balcony, the tiered shadows of the House block out the woods. Windows dark, everyone asleep. Or pretending to be.

  I’ll ask to go home. Say I need to get Wren’s scans for a new medichip. Which means throwing away the ones I have and the vials in case they search. I’ll just get more. Lord Westlet will think I’m worried for Wren and let me go, and once home I’ll access the End-Level network and get the schematics. Wren gave me access during quarantine so I could dig for the files and scans she needed instead of her. It should still be active unless Dad found out and revoked it. He never said he revoked it.

  But then, he wouldn’t.

  Someone screams.

  I flatten against the wall. Another cry—muffled and piercing. What Eagle would sound like if he raised his voice.

  I’m on my feet and through the glass doors. Long shadows huddle, but nothing moves.

  “Eagle?” He’s not on the couch or in the chairs, and his door is shut tight. Normal, just like when I went outside. I probably dreamed it. I’m probably just tired and—

  He screams again.

  It’s coming from his room.

  I yank his door open and snap on the lights. Eagle, in bed. Murmuring low, slippery things, blankets sliding to the floor as his body rocks in some invisible tide. The ridges of his face flow down his right side and arm, to the stump where his hand should be and isn’t.