It’s a miracle that he can see demons, plain as day, and that he can cast them out with the force of his will. It’s a miracle that he’s friends with Pico della Mirandola, the Count of Concordia. It’s a miracle that when Girolamo visits the deathbed of Lorenzo “the Magnificent,” the dying Medici is wreathed in celestial light, a surprise to everyone, Lorenzo included. It’s a miracle that when Charles VIII of France invades northern Italy, Girolamo meets him in the field, and convinces him to not only spare Florence but also protect it. It’s a miracle than whenever Girolamo preaches, crowds swoon. It’s a miracle that, despite the Pope’s determination to bring young Girolamo to heel, he’s still on the loose…and, now, running Florence in all but name.

That’s only the beginning. Because Girolamo Savanarola is not who—or what—he thinks he is. He will discover the truth about himself at the most startling possible time. And this will be only the beginning of his many lives.

Available May 28th from Tor Books, Jo Walton’s Lent is a magical re-imagining of the man who remade fifteenth-century Florence—in all its astonishing strangeness.

CHAPTER 1

Thy kingdom come.

APRIL 3RD, 1492

Have the Gates of Hell been opened? Shrieking demons are swarming all over the outside walls of the convent of Santa Lucia, everywhere the light of their lanterns reaches. It’s unusual to find so many demons gathered in one place. They are grotesque and misshapen, like all the demons Brother Girolamo has ever seen. Stories abound about demons that can take beautiful human forms for the purposes of seduction and deceit, but if there is truth in them, God has never revealed it to him. He sees only the monstrous and misshapen. Some are almost human, others seem twisted out of animal forms. One, swinging from an unlit sconce beside the doorway, has an eagle’s head in place of a phallus—both mouth and beak are open, emitting howls of mocking laughter. Others flaunt all-too-human genitals, of both genders. One, perched above the door, is pulling open the lips of its vagina with both hands. Hands, head, and vagina, are huge, while the legs, arms, and body are tiny. Taken together, the demons remind Girolamo of the gargoyles serving as waterspouts on Milan cathedral, except that those are the colour of innocent stone, while these are the colours of all-too-guilty flesh.

He glances at the two monks flanking him. There is an old pun on the word Dominicani where, instead of its true meaning, “follower of the rule of St Dominic,” the word is split into two in Latin, “Domini cani,” the hounds of God. Brother Silvestro, short and swarthy, the greying hair around his tonsure tightly curled, is like an old grizzled guard dog, and Brother Domenico, tall, broad shouldered, with the pink cheeks of youth, is like an overenthusiastic puppy. Brother Girolamo sometimes sees himself, with his long nose and his ability to sniff out demons, as a Pointer in God’s service. “Anything?” he asks.

Brother Domenico frowns, holding his own lantern high. The swinging light and shadows ripple over demon wings, scales, and fur. “I think I can hear something—it sounds like distant laughter. It’s very unsettling. I can see why the nuns might be disturbed.” A demon with stub-wings and a snake’s tail hanging from the eaves pulls open its beak with both hands and roars close by Domenico’s head. His peaceful countenance remains unchanged. Another, scaled all over, nips at him with its dog’s head. Girolamo makes an irritated gesture towards them, and they shrink away. Good, they still fear him.

Brother Silvestro is gazing intently down at one that is fondling itself with one hand as it tweaks at the edge of Silvestro’s black robe with the other. “I don’t see or hear anything, but I feel an evil presence here,” he says.

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The convent echoes with the demonic laughter. Girolamo is more inclined to cry. Domenico and Silvestro are the best of his brothers, the most sensitive to such things. The fiends are all around them, visibly, audibly, palpably present, and Domenico could perhaps hear something, while Silvestro could almost feel a presence. No wonder the forces of Hell gain ground so rapidly in the world when they can do so unobserved. He himself had dismissed the rumours from Santa Lucia at first. Hysteria among nuns is much more common in the world than demonic incursions. He is only here now because the First Sister was so persistent. Why are the forces of Hell unleashed here? Why is this little Dominican convent on the south bank of the Arno of such interest to demons at this time? It’s true that the little commonwealth of Florence is home to many sinners, but he has never seen so many demons gathered anywhere. If he banishes them immediately, he will never know. Better to let them rampage just a little longer while he investigates.

“Is there something here?” Silvestro asks.

“Yes. Just as the First Sister told me, it’s full of demons,” Girolamo says. He rings the bell, which cuts clearly through the renewed demonic bellowing. “God is truly guiding your senses.” If feebly, he does not add. Few people seem aware of the presence of demons at all. Silvestro and Domenico at least feel something. He looks at them as encouragingly as he can, his good honest brothers, each with a lantern in one hand and a flask of holy water clutched tight in the other. They look back at Girolamo with identical expressions of expectant trust.

With a grating sound that rises above the clamour of the demons, a nun draws back bars inside and opens the door a crack. “Thanks be to God. Who’s there so late?” she asks, and then recognizes him. “Oh, Brother Girolamo!” She opens the door wide. “Please come in, Brothers.”

He strides in, passing under the demon over the door, who leers down at him. Inside is a cloister, stone arches supporting a covered walkway running around a central garden square. It must be pleasant enough ordinarily, but right now it is as demon-infested as the rest of the place. He takes a step to the right, stops, and takes a step to the left. The wardress stares.

“What are you doing?” Domenico asks, his voice full of trust in Girolamo. Domenico is intelligent, if young and overenthusiastic. He is also deeply devout. And he has seen enough to make him believe utterly in Girolamo’s powers. Domenico’s unswerving faith in him can at times exceed his own faith in himself. He looks into that deep reservoir of faith and trust in his brother’s eyes and doubts for a moment—is it right for a man to trust anything human that much? Well, he would with God’s aid endeavour to be worthy of Domenico’s trust.

“I’m hoping they’ll try to prevent me going in one direction, so I’ll know where they don’t want me to go,” he explains. “But they don’t seem eager to cooperate. We’ll just have to search the place.” He turns to the wardress. “Can you take us to the First Sister? I don’t want to cause a panic among the nuns by going among the cells unheralded.”

“Wait here, I’ll wake her,” the wardress says, bustling off. He can barely hear her answer over the racket the demons are making. There is clearly something here they don’t want him to find. Interesting.

Girolamo sits on the wall of the cloister and folds his hands in his sleeves. The clean green scent of medicinal and culinary herbs rises up around him from the garden behind. His brother monks sit down beside him. The sobbing laughs of the demons rise all around, but they keep away now, scuttling from shadow to shadow catching the lantern-light along the edges of his vision. He ignores them as best he can and waits with what patience he can muster. Patience is not one of the gifts God has granted him. Rather the opposite. He has always burned, as long as he can remember. He burned as a child in Ferrara, wanting answers to questions his father and mother could not answer, and his grandfather only sometimes. Then he burned for education, for a girl once, which he does not like to remember, and then for God and the life of dedication and worship his parents refused him. He fled towards God. But even after he became a Dominican he burned, not so much the hard battle with lust, but with ambition. Pride. The everyday reality of the monastery was a disappointment. He burned then for more purity, more severity, more preaching, more rigor. He burned always with a desire to be closer to God.

He breathes deeply, and tries to identify the scents. Rosemary, com-frey, melissa, something sharp—a little bat-eared demon interrupts him by bellowing in his ear, and he banishes it impatiently with a gesture, drawing it through his fingers back into Hell where it belongs.

The wardress comes scurrying back, the First Sister following behind. He stands up. “It is very late, what brings you now?” the First Sister asks grumpily. Her headgear is a little askew. They keep the divine office properly here. She would have gone to bed after the Night Office at midnight, to sleep until Dawn Praise at three.

“You asked me to come across the river to exorcise your demons,” he says, trying to make his voice soft and gentle. He knows his Fer-rarese accent sounds always harsh to the Florentines, so sometimes they hear his most ordinary speech as roughly intended. “You told me they plagued you after dark. I am here to rid you of them.”

“Brother Girolamo can see demons,” Silvestro puts in.

“Do you see them here?” the First Sister asks. “You said it was imagination, hysteria, as if I can’t tell the difference after all these years.”

“I was mistaken, Mother.” He bows his head in humility. “I did trust your belief and experience enough to come to see for myself. You’re right. You have an infestation of demons. I could hardly avoid seeing them, they are so many.” He points at a dog-faced one with spikes on its back that is peering at the First Sister from behind a pillar. It darts away from his pointing finger. “There is one, and there—” A snaking shape, vanishing as he points at it. “And there, and there.” His finger stabs at them as they disappear into the shadows. “I am not surprised your sisters heard them, for they are shrieking and yammering so that my ears ring with their jeering. What puzzles me is why they are here, what’s drawing them, or who.”

“I’m sure all my girls are well behaved,” the First Sister says, drawing herself up.

“It needn’t be misbehaviour. They sometimes bother the especially holy, because they hate them more,” Girolamo says. “Something must be attracting them here. It may be one of your nuns, or something else. Do you have any new sisters?”

“Not very new—we have four novices, but the newest had been here for months before this began.”

“I’d like to walk through the convent before I banish the demons, to see if I can learn why they came,” he says.

“It’s true that you can banish them?” she asks, relief visible in the sudden relaxation of her shoulders. She isn’t an old woman, Girolamo realises, perhaps no older than his own forty years. It was anxiety that had lined her face.

“God has given that power to me,” he says, stiffly.

“What do you want to do? Sister Clarice said you wanted to search?” She spares half a glance for the wardress. Girolamo does not.

“I want to find what attracts them. Come with me—we will all search together.”

“I cannot see the demons,” she says, uncertainly.

“No, but you can see that I and my brothers do nothing wrong,” he explains. “Show us the place.”

She begins to lead the way along the walkway of the cloister. “This is the chapel,” she says, at the first doorway. He holds his lantern high and looks inside. There is an altar, with a single wax candle burning before a plain wooden crucifix. On the wall is a fresco he cannot make out in the wavering light. The floor is tiled in red and black, a repeating pattern. The room smells of the candle, with a faint undertone of incense. There are no demons.

“That’s one place clear at least,” he says.

“I never feared them in the chapel,” the First Sister says, and the wardress nods.

“You need not fear now. They will not harm you when I am with you,” he says. Earlier the First Sister had told him a tale of overturned inkpots, spoiled bread, spilled soup, and similar little misfortunes. He felt compassion for her, doing her best to keep her little realm together, as he did his at San Marco, but without his resources.

“Some of the girls have been pinched black and blue, and when I came back from visiting you this afternoon, I was told that Sister Vaggia heard a trumpet blow in her ear as she was coming down the stairs, and tumbled,” she says.

“I am with you now,” he says, calmly. “Was Sister Vaggia badly hurt?”

The First Sister shakes her head. “Bruises and scrapes. But she could have been killed.”

“Not likely,” he says. “God does not seem to allow demons power to do true harm.” She leads on again. “We don’t know why God permits them into the world at all.” At the end of the cloister is a set of stone stairs leading upwards, probably the stairs down which the sister had fallen. The foot of the stairs is barred with demons, one like a skeleton, another with one long arm and one short one, another covered with multiple breasts everywhere beneath the chin. They scatter as he advances on them. “But their power to harm seems limited, unless they have human help. Then they can be truly dangerous.”

“If they possess someone, you mean?” the First Sister inquires as she leads them up the stairs.

“Yes, or if someone enters into a compact with them.”

“Surely no one would do such a thing?” she asks, sounding shocked at the idea.

The demons set up their screeching again, perhaps trying to drown out what he is saying. He raises his voice a little, though he knows none of the others can hear the demonic screams and laughter that hang behind his words. “Strange as it is to think, some will risk eternity for Earthly power.”

“And can the demons give such power?” she asks. They follow the First Sister down a corridor lined with cells. He can smell tallow candles, though none are lit now. She opens each door as they come to it, and he looks in. Each one holds a handful of demons, darting away from his light, and a single sleeping nun, on a straw mattress beneath a devotional painting. Some of them sleep quietly, others move restlessly in their sleep.

“They promise it, and sometimes it seems they fulfil those promises,” he says, quietly, so as not to wake the sleeping sisters. “You only have to look about you at the world and see who has the earthly power to know that such compacts do occur.”

“But God—” Silvestro protests.

“God allows us free will, and allows the demons to work in the world. We have to make an active choice to seek God and what is good, and we have to repeat that choice over and over. If the temptations weren’t actually tempting, it wouldn’t be much of a choice, would it? The vanities of this world are empty, we know that, but we also know how hard it is to fast when a feast is spread before us. God put Adam in a garden where everything was fitting and there was only a single wrong choice, and still he was tempted and fell. Since then, we have lived in a world where we are surrounded by temptations and there are more wrong choices than right. But we can still win through to God, through his own grace and sacrifice.”

Silvestro does not answer. He is looking, as far as Girolamo can tell, at the bare arm of a young nun, flung out in her innocent sleep. The First Sister closes the door and they move on. The demons are everywhere, lurking along the edges of the light, but they seem to pay no more attention to one nun than to another.

“Is there nothing we can do against them?” the First Sister asks, as they come to the end of the corridor.

“Prayer,” says Domenico, confidently.

“Prayer works if we are firm in our faith and hold tightly to it,” Girolamo clarifies. “If we fear, or waver, as is so easy to do, then they can find a way past. But they hate prayer, and the name of our Saviour.”

She opens the door to her own rooms. He notes a writing desk, a prie-dieu, her hastily disturbed bed, and the scent of lavender. The next door is to the novice dormitory, where four girls lie sleeping. “That’s Sister Vaggia,” the First Sister whispers, gesturing to a big-boned girl with a bruise visible down the side of her face. A demon is sitting boldly on her feet. It has a man’s face with a pointed beard, but the breasts of a woman. Everything beneath its waist is covered in scales. It shrieks piercingly and then laughs in Girolamo’s face as the girl wakes, terrified.

“Begone,” Girolamo says to it. The girl screams then, and the others, less sensitive to demons, wake and scream with her.

“Hush, girls, hush,” the First Sister says, uselessly.

The demon slides between Vaggia’s lips and speaks with her mouth. “Mock monk, false friar, hell sunk, hell fire, so high, fly free, hell’s gate, see be, other brother, burn and smother—”

As soon as he sees the demon disappear into the girl, Girolamo hands his lantern to the wardress and steps forward into the room. His shadow falling before him in the light of the three lanterns looks as monstrous in shape as the demons. His flapping sleeves look like bat wings spread out at his sides as he raises his arms to take hold of the nun’s shoulders. He is uncomfortably aware of her young body beneath the thin nightgown covering it. She struggles and strikes out at the crucifix around his neck. “Friar Agira!” she shouts. “Friar Giraaffe, Giraffo! Gyra-tion! Friar Agitator!” She strikes him hard in the chest as she deforms his name over and over.

“Come out of her,” he says, more for the comfort of the shrieking nuns than because he needs the words. “Begone, and let Vaggia be, in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” The demon is peeping out from between Vaggia’s lips, and he is about to banish it when Domenico throws his holy water, soaking both Girolamo and Vaggia. He shudders at the cold shock, and the girl shudders too, and the demon bursts from her mouth as if she were vomiting it. It cowers away from Girolamo now that it no longer has the protection of the girl’s flesh. He lets Vaggia fall back onto her bed and makes a circle between thumb and forefinger of his left hand. “Back you go, in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord,” he says. He feels the power of the holy name thrilling through him. He always feels that power, and so he is sparing of its use and never speaks it lightly. The demon is drawn towards him, compelled. It passes through the gap in his fingers and is utterly gone. The other demons flee the room, but he can hear them still rampaging through the monastery.

“Was that it? Was it Vaggia drawing them?” the First Sister asks, her voice shaking as she speaks. He wonders what she saw. The only things visible to worldly eyes would have been him leaning over Vaggia amid her babbling and the screaming of the other girls, and then Domenico throwing the water.

“No. Though she is especially sensitive and holy and should make a fine sister,” Girolamo says. He does not know if the sobbing girl can register what he is saying, but he knows the First Sister will, and the other novices, who are all staring at him wide-eyed. “It used her fear and pain, nothing more. There is something else. Let us go on. Domenico, next time wait until I call for the water. There was no need.”

Domenico looks abashed. “I feared for you,” he says. “And it worked.”

“It drove the demon out of her, yes, but I could have done that without a soaking.” He takes his lantern back from the wardress. “Let us move on.”

“Stay to comfort the novices and get everyone quiet and back in bed, Clarice,” the First Sister instructs the wardress. Doors are open all along the corridor and nuns are peering curiously out. It is probably the most exciting thing that has happened in Santa Lucia for years.

The First Sister leads them in the other direction, down a flight of stairs, through the kitchen, where bread is rising with a strong yeasty smell, then through storerooms, laundries, with a faint scent of harsh soap, and finally through the refectory, where the aroma of last night’s bean soup lingers. His sandals squelch as he walks. He sees no more demons, but he hears them still.

“Is that everywhere?” he asks, disappointed, as they come back out into the cloister.

“Everywhere but the library,” the First Sister says.

“You have a library,” Silvestro asks, surprised. Any Dominican monastery should have a library, but many women’s houses do not.

“We each read a book every year, as the Rule of St Benedict dictates,” she replies. “We recently had a bequest of additional books from the King of Hungary.”

“Show me,” he says, excited. He has always loved books, though like his namesake saint, Jerome, he has had to teach himself to hunger only for those that were wholesome.

The library is dark now, but he can see by the shapes of the windows that it would be well lit in daylight. It is not a proper scriptorium such as they have in San Marco, but it is a good room. It smells of leather and good wax candles. The demons completely fill all the space in the room, and the sound they make is deafening, louder than the streets of Florence at the end of Carnival. Whatever is drawing them, it is here. “Stay back,” he says to the others. “And no more water unless I call for it.” He takes a step inside. The demons withdraw reluctantly, making a clear space around him. He moves to where they are thickest, holding the lantern high on one hand and searching with the other hand outstretched until he touches it. He finds himself reluctant to grasp it, though it seems to be just an ordinary brown-covered book. He draws it forward, ignoring the howls of the demons. They can not speak proper words unless they are encased in flesh, but they keep up their endless gibbering and laughter. He turns the book so he can read the title in the lamplight. Pliny. Strange. He was a secular author, a Roman, a nobody. Not the kind of book you’d expect demons to be drawn to. He opens the cover, and sees that the pages have been hollowed out in the centre to make the book almost a box. In the gap is a flat green stone, about the length of his palm, and as thick as his thumb, with a shallow depression in the centre.

“Now I have you,” he says, conversationally. He sets the lantern down on the writing table and moves the book to his right hand. With his left, he makes the circle again. “Begone, you legions of Hell, begone all of you foul fiends, in the name of Jesus Christ!” Rapidly, but one by one, the demons stream through the space between his fingers and vanish. The silence that replaces their clamour beats on his ears. “Thank you, Lord,” he says, and wipes his empty hand on his robe before taking up the lantern again.

“Are they gone?” Silvestro asks.

“Yes, all gone. Can you tell?” he asks, hopefully.

“I think so,” Silvestro answers. “I sensed some change, as if the wind had changed and blown a more wholesome air.”

“And it’s quiet now, isn’t it?” Domenico asks shyly.

“Yes, yes, it’s quiet.”

“Thank you, Brother Girolamo,” the First Sister says. “Thank you for believing me, thank you for coming here.”

“God has given me these gifts, I must use them for the good of all,” he says, in complete sincerity. “I will keep this book, if I may, or it will draw them here again. Them, or worse things.”

She nods emphatically. “Please take it. And anything we can do for you.”

He smiles. “There will be work enough. Meanwhile, it must be almost time for Dawn Praise. Wake all your sisters up early and gather everyone in your domain into the chapel to give thanks to God for this deliverance. We will do the same when we get back to San Marco. Prayer will help us all.” It would steady him, certainly, as the prayers and rituals always did.

“Is it true that Magnificent Lorenzo is dying?” she asks.

“Yes, everyone is saying his death will be on him soon.”

“And is it true that you foretold it?”

“Yes,” he says, baldly. It annoys him that she asks, treating him as a kind of oracle. It annoys him too that God had vouchsafed to him such a worldly prophecy, such a petty matter as the death of a gouty merchant prince. Girolamo has never met Lorenzo de’ Medici. He has in fact avoided him, for reasons that are partly pride and partly a confirmed distaste for hobnobbing with the rich. Easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, after all.

“God be with you,” she says.

“And with all of you here.”

Excerpted from Lent, copyright © 2019 by Jo Walton.
Book cover: Tor Books; Background image: Public Domain

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Prologue: To Pretend

Seven Years Ago

Of course the Parshendi wanted to play their drums.

Of course Gavilar had told them they could.

And of course he hadn’t thought to warn Navani.

“Have you seen the size of those instruments?” Maratham said‚ running her hands through her black hair. “Where will we put them? And we’re already at capacity after your husband invited all the foreign dignitaries. We can’t—”

“We’ll set up a more exclusive feast in the upper ballroom,” Navani said, maintaining a calm demeanor, “and put the drums there, with the king’s table.”

Everyone else in the kitchens was close to panicking, assistant cooks running one direction or another, pots banging, anticipationspren shooting up from the ground like streamers. Gavilar had invited not only the highprinces, but their relatives. And every highlord in the city. And he wanted a double-sized Beggar’s Feast. And now… drums?

“We’ve already put everyone to work in the lower feast hall!” Maratham cried. “I don’t have the staff to set up—”

“There are twice as many soldiers as usual loitering around the palace tonight,” Navani said. “We’ll have them help you set up.” Posting extra guards, making a show of force? Gavilar could always be counted on to do that.

For everything else, he had Navani.

“Could work, yes,” Maratham said. “Good to put the louts to work rather than having them underfoot. We have two main feasts, then? All right. Deep breaths.” The short palace organizer scuttled away, narrowly avoiding an apprentice cook carrying a large bowl of steaming shellfish.

Navani stepped aside to let the cook pass. The man nodded in thanks; the staff had long since stopped being nervous when she entered the kitchens. She’d made it clear to them that doing their jobs efficiently was recognition enough.

Despite the underlying tension, they seemed to have things well in hand now—though there had been a scare earlier when they’d found worms in three barrels of grain. Thankfully, Brightlord Amaram had stores for his men, and Navani had been able to pry them out of his grip. For now, with the extra cooks they’d borrowed from the monastery, they might actually be able to feed all the people Gavilar had invited.

I’ll have to give instructions on who is to be seated in which feast room, she thought, slipping out of the kitchens and into the palace gardens. And leave some extra space in both. Who knows who else might show up with an invitation?

She hiked up through the gardens toward the side doors of the palace. She’d be less in the way—and wouldn’t have to dodge servants—if she took this path. As she walked, she scanned to make certain all the lanterns were in place. Though the sun hadn’t yet set, she wanted the Kholinar palace to shine brightly tonight.

Wait. Was that Aesudan—her daughter-in-law, Elhokar’s wife—standing near the fountains? She was supposed to be greeting guests inside. The slender woman wore her long hair in a bun lit by a gemstone of each shade. All those colors were gaudy together—Navani preferred a few simple stones themed to one color—but it did make Aesudan stand out as she chatted with two elderly ardents.

Storms bright and brash… that was Rushur Kris, the artist and master artifabrian. When had he arrived? Who had invited him? He was holding a small box with a flower painted on it. Could that be… one of his new fabrials?

Navani felt drawn toward the group, all other thoughts fleeing her mind. How had he made the heating fabrial, making the temperature vary? She’d seen drawings, but to talk to the master artist himself…

Aesudan saw Navani and smiled brightly. The joy seemed genuine, which was unusual—at least when directed at Navani. She tried not to take Aesudan’s general sourness toward her as a personal affront; it was the prerogative of every woman to feel threatened by her mother-inlaw. Particularly when the girl was so obviously lacking in talents.

Navani smiled at her in turn, trying to enter the conversation and get a better look at that box. Aesudan, however, took Navani by the arm. “Mother! I had completely forgotten about our appointment. I’m so fickle sometimes. Terribly sorry, Ardent Kris, but I must make a hasty exit.”

Aesudan tugged Navani—forcefully—back through the gardens toward the kitchens. “Thank Kelek you showed up, Mother. That man is the most dreadful bore.”

“Bore?” Navani said, twisting to gaze over her shoulder. “He was talking about…”

“Gemstones. And other gemstones. And spren and boxes of spren, and storms! You’d think he would understand. I have important people to meet. The wives of highprinces, the best generals in the land, all come to gawk at the wild parshmen. Then I get stuck in the gardens talking to ardents? Your son abandoned me there, I’ll have you know. When I find that man…”

Navani extricated herself from Aesudan’s grip. “Someone should entertain those ardents. Why are they here?”

“Don’t ask me,” Aesudan said. “Gavilar wanted them for something, but he made Elhokar entertain them. Poor manners, that is. Honestly!”

Gavilar had invited one of the world’s most prominent artifabrians to visit Kholinar, and he hadn’t bothered to tell Navani? Emotion stirred deep inside her, a fury she kept carefully penned and locked away. That man. That storming man. How… how could he…

Angerspren, like boiling blood, began to well up in a small pool at her feet. Calm, Navani, the rational side of her mind said. Maybe he intends to introduce the ardent to you as a gift. She banished the anger with effort.

“Brightness!” a voice called from the kitchens. “Brightness Navani! Oh, please! We have a problem.”

“Aesudan,” Navani said, her eyes still on the ardent, who was now slowly walking toward the monastery. “Could you help the kitchens with whatever they need? I’d like to…”

But Aesudan was already hurrying off toward another group in the gardens, one attended by several powerful highlord generals. Navani took a deep breath and shoved down another stab of frustration. Aesudan claimed to care about propriety and manners, but she’d insert herself into a conversation between men without bringing her husband along as an excuse.

“Brightness!” the cook called again, waving to her.

Navani took one last look at the ardent, then set her jaw and hurried to the kitchens, careful not to catch her skirt on the ornamental shalebark. “What now?”

“Wine,” the cook said. “We’re out of both the Clavendah and the Ruby Bench.”

“How?” she said. “We have reserves…” She shared a glance with the cook, and the answer was evident. Dalinar had found their wine store again. He’d grown quite ingenious at secretly draining the barrels for him and his friends. She wished he’d dedicate half as much attention to the kingdom’s needs.

“I have a private store,” Navani said, pulling her notebook from her pocket. She gripped it in her safehand through her sleeve as she scribbled a note. “I keep it in the monastery with Sister Talanah. Show her this and she’ll give you access.”

“Thank you, Brightness,” the cook said, taking the note. Before the man was out the door, Navani spotted the house steward—a white-bearded man with too many rings on his fingers—hovering in the stairwell to the palace proper. He was fidgeting with the rings on his left hand. Bother.

“What is it?” she asked, striding over.

“Highlord Rine Hatham has arrived, and is asking about his audience with the king. You remember, His Majesty promised to talk with Rine tonight about—”

“About the border dispute and the misdrawn maps, yes,” Navani said, sighing. “And where is my husband?”

“Unclear, Brightness,” the steward said. “He was last seen with Brightlord Amaram and some of those… uncommon figures.”

That was the term the palace staff used for Gavilar’s new friends, the ones who seemed to arrive without warning or announcement, and who rarely gave their names.

Navani ground her teeth, thinking through the places Gavilar might have gone. He would be angry if she interrupted him. Well, good. He should be seeing to his guests, rather than assuming she’d handle everything and everyone.

Unfortunately, at the moment she… well, she would have to handle everything and everyone.

She let the anxious steward lead her up to the grand entryway, where guests were being entertained with music, drink, and poetry while the feast was prepared. Others were escorted by master-servants to view the Parshendi, the night’s true novelty. It wasn’t every day the king of Alethkar signed a treaty with a group of mysterious parshmen who could talk.

She extended her apologies to Highlord Rine for Gavilar’s absence, offering to review the maps herself. After that, she was stopped by a line of impatient men and women brought to the palace by the promise of an audience with the king.

Navani assured the lighteyes their concerns were being heard. She promised to look into injustices. She soothed the crumpled feelings of those who thought a personal invitation from the king meant they’d actually get to see him—a rare privilege these days, unless you were one of the “uncommon figures.”

Guests were still showing up, of course. Ones who weren’t on the updated list an annoyed Gavilar had provided for her earlier that day.

Vev’s golden keys! Navani forcibly painted on an amicable face for the guests. She smiled, she laughed, she waved. Using the reminders and lists she kept in her notebook, she asked after families, new births, and favorite axehounds. She inquired about trade situations, took notes on which lighteyes seemed to be avoiding others. In short, she acted like a queen.

It was emotionally taxing work, but it was her duty. Perhaps someday she’d be able to spend her days tinkering with fabrials and pretending she was a scholar. Today, she’d do her job—though a part of her felt like an impostor. However prestigious her ancient lineage might be, her anxiety whispered that she was really just a backwater country girl wearing someone else’s clothing.

Those insecurities had grown stronger lately. Calm. Calm. There was no room for that sort of thinking. She rounded the room, pleased to note that Aesudan had found Elhokar and was chatting with him for once—rather than other men. Elhokar did look happy presiding over the pre-feast in his father’s absence. Adolin and Renarin were there in stiff uniforms—the former delighting a small group of young women, the latter appearing gangly and awkward as he stood by his brother.

And… there was Dalinar. Standing tall. Somehow taller than any man in the room. He wasn’t drunk yet, and people orbited him like they might a fire on a cold night—needing to be close, but fearing the true heat of his presence. Those haunted eyes of his, simmering with passion.

Storms alight. She excused herself and made a brief exit up the steps to where she wouldn’t feel so warm. It was a bad idea to leave; they were lacking a king, and questions were bound to arise if the queen vanished too. Yet surely everyone could get on without her for a short time. Besides, up here she could check one of Gavilar’s hiding places.

She wound her way through the dungeonlike hallways, passing Parshendi carrying drums nearby, speaking a language she did not understand. Why couldn’t this place have a little more natural light up here, a few more windows? She’d brought the matter up with Gavilar, but he liked it this way. It gave him more places to hide.

There, she thought, stopping at an intersection. Voices.

“…Being able to bring them back and forth from Braize doesn’t mean anything,” one said. “It’s too close to be a relevant distance.”

“It was impossible only a few short years ago,” said a deep, powerful voice. Gavilar. “This is proof. The Connection is not severed, and the box allows for travel. Not yet as far as you’d like, but we must start the journey somewhere.”

Navani peered around the corner. She could see a door at the end of the short hallway ahead, cracked open, letting the voices leak out. Yes, Gavilar was having a meeting right where she’d expected: in her study. It was a cozy little room with a nice window, tucked away in the corner of the second floor. A place she rarely had time to visit, but where people were unlikely to search for Gavilar.

She inched up to peek in through the cracked door. Gavilar Kholin had a presence big enough to fill a room all by himself. He wore a beard, but instead of being unfashionable on him, it was… classic. Like a painting come to life, a representation of old Alethkar. Some had thought he might start a trend, but few were able to pull off the look.

Beyond that, there was an air of… distortion around Gavilar. Nothing supernatural or nonsensical. It was just that… well, you accepted that Gavilar could do whatever he wanted, in defiance of any tradition or logic. For him, it would work out. It always did.

The king was speaking with two men that Navani vaguely recognized. A tall Makabaki man with a birthmark on his cheek and a shorter Vorin man with a round face and a small nose. They’d been called ambassadors from the West, but no kingdom had been given for their home.

The Makabaki one leaned against the bookcase, his arms folded, his face completely expressionless. The Vorin man wrung his hands, reminding Navani of the palace steward, though this man seemed much younger. Somewhere… in his twenties? Maybe his thirties? No, he could be older.

On the table between Gavilar and the men lay a group of spheres. Navani’s breath caught as she saw them. They were arrayed in a variety of colors and brightness, but several seemed strangely off. They glowed with an inverse of light, as if they were little pits of violet darkness, sucking in the color around them.

She’d never seen anything like them before, but gemstones with spren trapped inside could have all kinds of odd appearances and effects. Those spheres… they must be meant for fabrials. What was Gavilar doing with spheres, strange light, and distinguished artifabrians? And why wouldn’t he talk to her about—

Gavilar suddenly stood up straight and glanced toward the doorway, though Navani hadn’t made any sound. Their eyes met. So she pushed open the door as if she had been on her way in. She wasn’t spying; she was queen of this palace. She could go where she wished, particularly her own study.

“Husband,” she said. “There are guests missing you at the gathering. You seem to have lost track of time.”

“Gentlemen,” Gavilar said to the two ambassadors, “I will need to excuse myself.”

The nervous Vorin man ran his hand through his wispy hair. “I want to know more of the project, Gavilar. Plus, you need to know that another of us is here tonight. I spotted her handiwork earlier.”

“I have a meeting shortly with Meridas and the others,” Gavilar said. “They should have more information for me. We can speak again after that.”

“No,” the Makabaki man said, his voice sharp. “I doubt we shall.”

“There’s more here, Nale!” the Vorin man said, though he followed as his friend left. “This is important! I want out. This is the only way…”

“What was that about?” Navani asked as Gavilar closed the door. “Those are no ambassadors. Who are they really?”

Gavilar did not answer. With deliberate motions, he began plucking the spheres off the table and placing them into a pouch.

Navani darted forward and snatched one. “What are these? How did you get spheres that glow like this? Does this have to do with the artifabrians you’ve invited here?” She looked to him, waiting for some kind of answer, some explanation.

Instead, he held out his hand for her sphere. “This does not concern you, Navani. Return to the feast.”

She closed her hand around the sphere. “So I can continue to cover for you? Did you promise Highlord Rine you’d mediate his dispute tonight of all times? Do you know how many people are expecting you? And did you say you have another meeting to go to now, before the feast begins? Are you simply going to ignore our guests?”

“Do you know,” he said softly, “how tired I grow of your constant questions, woman?”

“Perhaps try answering one or two, then. It’d be a novel experience, treating your wife like a human being—rather than like a machine built to count the days of the week for you.”

He wagged his hand, demanding the sphere.

Instinctively she gripped it tighter. “Why? Why do you continue to shut me out? Please, just tell me.”

“I deal in secrets you could not handle, Navani. If you knew the scope of what I’ve begun…”

She frowned. The scope of what? He’d already conquered Alethkar. He’d united the highprinces. Was this about how he had turned his eyes toward the Unclaimed Hills? Surely settling a patch of wildlands—populated by nothing more than the odd tribe of parshmen—was nothing compared to what he’d already accomplished.

He took her hand, forced apart her fingers, and removed the sphere. She didn’t fight him; he would not react well. He had never used his strength against her, not in that way, but there had been words. Comments. Threats.

He took the strange transfixing sphere and stashed it in the pouch with the others. He pulled the pouch tight with a taut snap of finality, then tucked it into his pocket.

“You’re punishing me, aren’t you?” Navani demanded. “You know my love of fabrials. You taunt me specifically because you know it will hurt.”

“Perhaps,” Gavilar said, “you will learn to consider before you speak, Navani. Perhaps you will learn the dangerous price of rumors.”

This again? she thought. “Nothing happened, Gavilar.”

“Do you think I care?” Gavilar said. “Do you think the court cares? To them, lies are as good as facts.”

That was true, she realized. Gavilar didn’t care if she’d been unfaithful to him—and she hadn’t. But the things she’d said had started rumors, difficult to smother.

All Gavilar cared about was his legacy. He wanted to be known as a great king, a great leader. That drive had always pushed him, but it was growing into something else lately. He kept asking: Would he be remembered as Alethkar’s greatest king? Could he compete with his ancestors, men such as the Sunmaker?

If a king’s court thought he couldn’t control his own wife, wouldn’t that stain his legacy? What good was a kingdom if Gavilar knew that his wife secretly loved his brother? In this, Navani represented a chip in the marble of his all-important legacy.

“Speak to your daughter,” Gavilar said, turning toward the door. “I believe I have managed to soothe Amaram’s pride. He might take her back, and her time is running out. Few other suitors will consider her; I’ll likely need to pay half the kingdom to get rid of the girl if she denies Meridas again.”

Navani sniffed. “You speak to her. If what you want is so important, maybe you could do it yourself for once. Besides, I don’t care for Amaram. Jasnah can do better.”

He froze, then looked back and spoke in a low, quiet voice. “Jasnah will marry Amaram, as I have instructed her. She will put aside this fancy of becoming famous by denying the church. Her arrogance stains the reputation of the entire family.”

Navani stepped forward and let her voice grow as cold as his. “You realize that girl still loves you, Gavilar. They all do. Elhokar, Dalinar, the boys… they worship you. Are you sure you want to reveal to them what you truly are? They are your legacy. Treat them with care. They will define how you are remembered.”

“Greatness will define me, Navani. No mediocre effort by someone like Dalinar or my son could undermine that—and I personally doubt Elhokar could rise to even mediocre.”

“And what about me?” she said. “I could write your history. Your life. Whatever you think you’ve done, whatever you think you’ve accomplished… that’s ephemeral, Gavilar. Words on the page define men to future generations. You spurn me, but I have a grip on what you cherish most. Push me too far, and I will start squeezing.”

He didn’t respond with shouts or rage, but the cold void in his eyes could have consumed continents and left only blackness. He raised his hand to her chin and gently cupped it, a mockery of a once-passionate gesture.

It was more painful than a slap.

“You know why I don’t involve you, Navani?” he said softly. “Do you think you can take the truth?”

“Try for once. It would be refreshing.”

“You aren’t worthy, Navani. You claim to be a scholar, but where are your discoveries? You study light, but you are its opposite. A thing that destroys light. You spend your time wallowing in the muck of the kitchens and obsessing about whether or not some insignificant lighteyes recognizes the right lines on a map.

“These are not the actions of greatness. You are no scholar. You merely like being near them. You are no artifabrian. You are merely a woman who likes trinkets. You have no fame, accomplishment, or capacity of your own. Everything distinctive about you came from someone else. You have no power—you merely like to marry men who have it.”

“How dare you—”

“Deny it, Navani,” he snapped. “Deny that you loved one brother, but married the other. You pretended to adore a man you detested—all because you knew he would be king.”

She recoiled from him, pulling out of his grip and turning her head to the side. She closed her eyes and felt tears on her cheeks. It was more complicated than he implied, as she had loved both of them—and Dalinar’s intensity had frightened her, so Gavilar had seemed the safer choice.

But there was a truth to Gavilar’s accusation. She could lie to herself and say she’d seriously considered Dalinar, but they’d all known she’d eventually choose Gavilar. And she had. He was the more influential of the two.

“You went where the money and power would be greatest,” Gavilar said. “Like any common whore. Write whatever you want about me. Say it, shout it, proclaim it. I will outlive your accusations, and my legacy will persist. I have discovered the entrance to the realm of gods and legends, and once I join them, my kingdom will never end. I will never end.”

He left then, closing the door behind him with a quiet click. Even in an argument he controlled the situation.

Trembling, Navani fumbled her way to a seat by the desk, which boiled over with angerspren. And shamespren, which fluttered around her like white and red petals.

Fury made her shake. Fury at him. At herself for not fighting back. At the world, because she knew what he said was at least partially true.

No. Don’t let his lies become your truth. Fight it. Teeth gritted, she opened her eyes and began rummaging in her desk for some oil paint and paper.

She began painting, taking care with each calligraphic line. Pride—as if proof to him— compelled her to be meticulous and perfect. The act usually soothed her. The way that neat, orderly lines became words, the way that paint and paper transformed into meaning.

In the end, she had one of the finest glyphwards she’d ever created. It read, simply, Death. Gift. Death. She’d drawn each glyph in the shapes of Gavilar’s tower or sword heraldry.

The prayer burned eagerly in the lamp flame, flaring bright—and as it did, her catharsis turned to shame. What was she doing? Praying for her husband’s death? The shamespren returned in a burst.

How had it come to this? Their arguments grew worse and worse. She knew he was not this man, the one he showed her lately. He wasn’t like this when he spoke to Dalinar, or to Sadeas, or even—usually—to Jasnah.

Gavilar was better than this. She suspected he knew it too. Tomorrow she would receive flowers. No apology to accompany them, but a gift, usually a bracelet.

Yes, he knew he should be something more. But… somehow she brought out the monster in him. And he somehow brought out the weakness in her. She slammed her safehand palm against the table, rubbing her forehead with her other hand.

Storms. It seemed not so long ago that they’d sat conspiring together about the kingdom they would forge. Now they barely spoke without reaching for their sharpest knives—stabbing them right into the most painful spots with an accuracy gained only through longtime familiarity.

She composed herself with effort, redoing her makeup, touching up her hair. She might be the things he said, but he was no more than a backwater thug with too much luck and a knack for fooling good men into following him.

If a man like that could pretend to be a king, she could pretend to be a queen. At any rate, they had a kingdom.

At least one of them should try to run it.

***

Navani didn’t hear of the assassination until it had been accomplished.

At the feast, they’d been the model of perfect royalty, cordial to one another, leading their respective meals. Then Gavilar had left, fleeing as soon as he could find an excuse. At least he’d waited until the dining was finished.

Navani had gone down to bid farewell to the guests. She had implied that Gavilar wasn’t deliberately snubbing anyone. He was merely exhausted from his extensive touring. Yes, she was certain he’d be holding audience soon. They’d love to visit once the next storm passed…

On and on she went, until each smile made her face feel as if it would crack. She was relieved when a messenger girl came running for her. She stepped away from the departing guests, expecting to hear that an expensive vase had shattered, or that Dalinar was snoring at his table.

Instead, the messenger girl brought Navani over to the palace steward, his face a mask of grief. Eyes reddened, hands shaking, the aged man reached out for her and took her arm—as if for stability. Tears ran down his face, getting caught in his wispy beard.

Seeing his emotion, she realized she rarely thought of the man by his name, rarely thought of him as a person. She’d often treated him like a fixture of the palace, much as one might the statues out front. Much as Gavilar treated her.

“Gereh,” she said, taking his hand, embarrassed. “What happened? Are you well? Have we been working you too hard without—”

“The king,” the elderly man choked out. “Oh, Brightness, they’ve taken our king! Those parshmen. Those barbarians. Those… those monsters.”

Her immediate suspicion was that Gavilar had found some way to escape the palace, and everyone thought he’d been kidnapped. That man… she thought, imagining him out in the city with his uncommon visitors, discussing secrets in a dark room.

Gereh held to her tighter. “Brightness, they’ve killed him. King Gavilar is dead.”

“Impossible,” she said. “He’s the most powerful man in the land, perhaps the world. Surrounded by Shardbearers. You are mistaken, Gereh. He’s…”

He’s as enduring as the storms. But of course that wasn’t true—it was merely what he wished people to think. I will never end… When he said things like that, it was hard to disbelieve him.

She had to see the body before the truth started to seep in at last, chilling her like a winter rain. Gavilar, broken and bloody, lay on a table in the larder—with guards forcibly turning aside the frightened house staff when they asked for explanations.

Navani stood over him. Even with the blood in his beard, the shattered Shardplate, his lack of breath and the gaping wounds in his flesh… even then she wondered if it was a trick. What lay before her was an impossibility. Gavilar Kholin couldn’t simply die like other men.

She had them show her the fallen balcony, where Gavilar had been found lifeless after dropping from above. Jasnah had witnessed it, they said. The normally unflappable girl sat in the corner, her fisted safehand to her mouth as she cried.

Only then did the shockspren begin to appear around Navani, like triangles of breaking light. Only then did she believe.

Gavilar Kholin was dead.

Sadeas pulled Navani aside and, with genuine sorrow, explained his role in the events. She listened in a numb sense of disconnect. She had been so busy, she hadn’t realized that most of the Parshendi had left the palace in secret—fleeing into the darkness moments before their minion attacked. Their leaders had stayed behind to cover up the withdrawal.

In a trance, Navani walked back to the larder and the cold husk of Gavilar Kholin. His discarded shell. From the looks of the attending servants and surgeons, they anticipated grief from her. Wailing perhaps. Certainly there were painspren appearing in droves in the room, even a few rare anguishspren, like teeth growing from the walls.

She felt something akin to those emotions. Sorrow? No, not exactly. Regret. If he truly was dead, then… that was it. Their last real conversation had been another argument. There was no going back. Always before, she’d been able to tell herself that they’d reconcile. That they’d hunt through the thorns and find a path to return to what they’d been. If not loving, then at least aligned.

Now that would never be. It was over. He was dead, she was a widow, and… storms, she’d prayed for this. That knowledge stabbed her straight through. She had to hope the Almighty hadn’t listened to her foolish pleas written in a moment of fury. Although a part of her had grown to hate Gavilar, she didn’t truly want him dead. Did she?

No. No, this was not how it should have ended. And so she felt another emotion. Pity.

Lying there, blood pooling on the tabletop around him, Gavilar Kholin’s corpse seemed the ultimate insult to his grand plans. He thought he was eternal, did he? He thought to reach for some grand vision, too important to share with her? Well, the Father of Storms and the Mother of the World ignored the desires of men, no matter how grand.

What she didn’t feel was grief. His death was meaningful, but it didn’t mean anything to her. Other than perhaps a way for her children to never have to learn what he’d become.

I will be the better person, Gavilar, she thought, closing his eyes. For what you once were, I’ll let the world pretend. I’ll give you your legacy.

Then she paused. His Shardplate—well, the Plate he was wearing—had broken near the waist. She reached her fingers into his pocket and brushed hogshide leather. She eased out the pouch of spheres he’d been showing off earlier, but found it empty.

Storms. Where had he put them?

Someone in the room coughed, and she became suddenly cognizant of how it looked for her to be rifling through his pockets. Navani took the spheres from her hair, put them into the pouch, then folded it into his hand before resting her forehead on his broken chest. That would appear as if she were returning gifts to him, symbolizing her light becoming his as he died.

Then, with his blood on her face, she stood up and made a show of composing herself. Over the next hours, organizing the chaos of a city turned upside down, she worried she’d get a reputation for callousness. Instead, people seemed to find her sturdiness comforting.

The king was gone, but the kingdom lived on. Gavilar had left this life as he’d lived it: with grand drama that afterward required Navani to pick up the pieces.

Part One

Kaladin * Shallan * Navani * Venli * Lirin

Chapter 1
Calluses

First, you must get a spren to approach.

The type of gemstone is relevant; some spren are naturally more intrigued by certain gemstones. In addition, it is essential to calm the spren with something it knows and loves. A good fire for a flamespren, for example, is a must.

—Lecture on fabrial mechanics presented by Navani Kholin to the coalition of monarchs, Urithiru, Jesevan, 1175

Lirin was impressed at how calm he felt as he checked the child’s gums for scurvy. Years of training as a surgeon served him well today. Breathing exercises—intended to keep his hands steady—worked as well during espionage as they did during surgery.

“Here,” he said to the child’s mother, digging a small carved carapace chit from his pocket. “Show this to the woman at the dining pavilion. She’ll get some juice for your son. Make certain he drinks it all, each morning.”

“Very thank you,” the woman said in a thick Herdazian accent. She gathered her son close, then looked to Lirin with haunted eyes. “If… if child… found…”

“I will make certain you’re notified if we hear of your other children,” Lirin promised. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

She nodded, wiped her cheeks, and carried the child to the watchpost outside of town. Here, a group of armed parshmen lifted her hood and compared her face to drawings sent by the Fused. Hesina, Lirin’s wife, stood nearby to read the descriptions as required.

Behind them, the morning fog obscured Hearthstone. It seemed to be a group of dark, shadowy lumps. Like tumors. Lirin could barely make out tarps stretched between buildings, offering meager shelter for the many refugees pouring out of Herdaz. Entire streets were closed off, and phantom sounds—plates clinking, people talking—rose through the fog.

Those shanties would never last a storm, of course, but they could be quickly torn down and stowed. There simply wasn’t enough housing otherwise. People could pack into stormshelters for a few hours, but couldn’t live like that.

He turned and glanced at the line of those waiting for admittance today. It vanished into the fog, attended by swirling insectile hungerspren and exhaustionspren like jets of dust. Storms. How many more people could the town hold? The villages closer to the border must be filled to capacity, if so many were making their way this far inward.

It had been over a year since the coming of the Everstorm and the fall of Alethkar. A year during which the country of Herdaz—Alethkar’s smaller neighbor to the northwest—had somehow kept fighting. Two months ago, the enemy had finally decided to crush the kingdom for good. Refugee numbers had increased soon after. As usual, the soldiers fought while the common people—their fields trampled—starved and were forced out of their homes.

Hearthstone did what it could. Aric and the other men—once guards at Roshone’s manor, now forbidden weapons—organized the line and kept anyone from sneaking into town before Lirin saw them. He had persuaded Brightness Abiajan that it was essential he inspect each individual. She worried about plague; he just wanted to intercept those who might need treatment.

Her soldiers moved down the line, alert. Parshmen carrying swords. Learning to read, insisting they be called “singers.” A year after their awakening, Lirin still found the notions odd. But really, what was it to him? In some ways, little had changed. The same old conflicts consumed the parshmen as easily as they had the Alethi brightlords. People who got a taste of power wanted more, then sought it with the sword. Ordinary people bled, and Lirin was left to stitch them up.

He returned to his work. Lirin had at least a hundred more refugees to see today. Hiding somewhere among them was a man who had authored much of this suffering. He was the reason Lirin was so nervous today. The next person in line was not him, however, but was instead a ragged Alethi man who had lost an arm in battle. Lirin inspected the refugee’s wound, but it was a few months old at this point, and there was nothing Lirin could do about the extensive scarring.

Lirin moved his finger back and forth before the man’s face, watching his eyes track it. Shock, Lirin thought. “Have you suffered recent wounds you’re not telling me about?”

“No wounds,” the man whispered. “But brigands… they took my wife, good surgeon. Took her… left me tied to a tree. Just walked off laughing…”

Bother. Mental shock wasn’t something Lirin could cut out with a scalpel. “Once you enter the town,” he said, “look for tent fourteen. Tell the women there I sent you.”

The man nodded dully, his stare hollow. Had he registered the words? Memorizing the man’s features—greying hair with a cowlick in the back, three large moles on the upper left cheek, and of course the missing arm—Lirin made a note to check that tent for him tonight. Assistants there watched refugees who might turn suicidal. It was, with so many to care for, the best Lirin could manage.

“On with you,” Lirin said, gently pushing the man toward the town. “Tent fourteen. Don’t forget. I’m sorry for your loss.”

The man walked off.

“You say it so easily, surgeon,” a voice said from behind.

Lirin spun, then immediately bowed in respect. Abiajan, the new citylady, was a parshwoman with stark white skin and fine red marbling on her cheeks.

“Brightness,” Lirin said. “What was that?”

“You told that man you were sorry for his loss,” Abiajan said. “You say it so readily to each of them—but you seem to have the compassion of a stone. Do you feel nothing for these people?”

“I feel, Brightness,” Lirin said, “but I must be careful not to be overwhelmed by their pain. It’s one of the first rules of becoming a surgeon.”

“Curious.” The parshwoman raised her safehand, which was shrouded in the sleeve of a havah. “Do you remember setting my arm when I was a child?”

“I do.” Abiajan had returned—with a new name and a new commission from the Fused—after fleeing with the others following the Everstorm. She had brought many parshmen with her, all from this region, but of those from Hearthstone only Abiajan had returned. She remained closed-lipped about what she had experienced in the intervening months.

“Such a curious memory,” she said. “That life feels like a dream now. I remember pain. Confusion. A stern figure bringing me more pain—though I now recognize you were seeking to heal me. So much trouble to go through for a slave child.”

“I have never cared who I heal, Brightness. Slave or king.”

“I’m sure the fact that Wistiow had paid good money for me had nothing to do with it.” She narrowed her eyes at Lirin, and when she next spoke there was a cadence to her words, as if she were speaking the words to a song. “Did you feel for me, the poor confused slave child whose mind had been stolen from her? Did you weep for us, surgeon, and the life we led?”

“A surgeon must not weep,” Lirin said softly. “A surgeon cannot afford to weep.”

“Like a stone,” she said again, then shook her head. “Have you seen any plaguespren on these refugees? If those spren get into the city, it could kill everyone.”

“Disease isn’t caused by spren,” Lirin said. “It is spread by contaminated water, improper sanitation, or sometimes by the breath of those who bear it.”

“Superstition,” she said.

“The wisdom of the Heralds,” Lirin replied. “We should be careful.” Fragments of old manuscripts—translations of translations of translations—mentioned quick-spreading diseases that had killed tens of thousands. Such things hadn’t been recorded in any modern texts he’d been read, but he had heard rumors of something strange to the west—a new plague, they were calling it. Details were sparse.

Abiajan moved on without further comment. Her attendants—a group of elevated parshmen and parshwomen—joined her. Though their clothing was of Alethi cut and fashion, the colors were lighter, more muted. The Fused had explained that singers in the past eschewed bright colors, preferring to highlight their skin patterns instead.

Lirin sensed a search for identity in the way Abiajan and the other parshmen acted. Their accents, their dress, their mannerisms—they were all distinctly Alethi. But they grew transfixed whenever the Fused spoke of their ancestors, and they sought ways to emulate those long-dead parshmen.

Lirin turned to the next group of refugees—a complete family for once. Though he should have been happy, he couldn’t help wondering how difficult it was going to be to feed five children and parents who were all flagging from poor nutrition.

As he sent them on, a familiar figure moved along the line toward him, shooing away hungerspren. Laral wore a simple servant’s dress now, with a gloved hand instead of a sleeve, and she carried a water bucket to the waiting refugees. Laral didn’t walk like a servant though. There was a certain… determination about the young woman that no forced subservience could smother. The end of the world seemed roughly as bothersome to her as a poor harvest once had.

She paused by Lirin and offered him a drink—taken from her waterskin and poured into a fresh cup as he insisted, rather than ladled straight from the bucket.

“He’s three down,” Laral whispered as Lirin sipped.

Lirin grunted.

“Shorter than I expected him to be,” Laral noted. “He’s supposed to be a great general, leader of the Herdazian resistance. He looks more like a traveling merchant.”

“Genius comes in all shapes, Laral,” Lirin said, waving for her to refill his cup to give an excuse for them to keep talking.

“Still…” she said, then fell silent as Durnash passed by, a tall parshman with marbled black and red skin, a sword on his back. Once he was well on his way, she continued softly, “I’m honestly surprised at you, Lirin. Not once have you suggested we turn in this hidden general.”

“He’d be executed,” Lirin said.

“You think of him as a criminal though, don’t you?”

“He bears a terrible responsibility; he perpetuated a war against an overwhelming enemy force. He threw away the lives of his men in a hopeless battle.”

“Some would call that heroism.”

“Heroism is a myth you tell idealistic young people—specifically when you want them to go bleed for you. It got one of my sons killed and another taken from me. You can keep your heroism and return to me the lives of those wasted on foolish conflicts.”

At least it seemed to almost be over. Now that the resistance in Herdaz had finally collapsed, hopefully the refugee flood would slow.

Laral watched him with pale green eyes. She was a keen one. How he wished life had gone in another direction, that old Wistiow had held on a few more years. Lirin might call this woman daughter, and might have both Tien and Kaladin beside him now, working as surgeons.

“I won’t turn in the Herdazian general,” Lirin said. “Stop looking at me like that. I hate war, but I won’t condemn your hero.”

“And your son will come fetch him soon?”

“We’ve sent Kal word. That should be enough. Make sure your husband is ready with his distraction.”

She nodded and moved on to offer water to the parshman guards at the town entrance. Lirin got through the next few refugees quickly, then reached a group of cloaked figures. He calmed himself with the quick breathing exercise his master had taught him in the surgery room all those years ago. Although his insides were a storm, Lirin’s hands didn’t shake as he waved forward the cloaked figures.

“I will need to do an examination,” Lirin said softly, “so it doesn’t seem unusual when I pull you out of the line.”

“Begin with me,” said the shortest of the men. The other four shifted their positions, placing themselves carefully around him.

“Don’t look so much like you’re guarding him, you sodden fools,” Lirin hissed. “Here, sit down on the ground. Maybe you’ll seem less like a gang of thugs that way.”

They did as requested, and Lirin pulled over his stool beside the apparent leader. He bore a thin, silvered mustache on his upper lip, and was perhaps in his fifties. His sun-leathered skin was darker than most Herdazians’; he could almost have passed for Azish. His eyes were a deep dark brown.

“You’re him?” Lirin whispered as he put his ear to the man’s chest to check his heartbeat.

“I am,” the man said.

Dieno enne Calah. Dieno “the Mink” in Old Herdazian. Hesina had explained that enne was an honorific that implied greatness.

One might have expected the Mink—as Laral apparently had—to be a brutal warrior forged on the same anvil as men like Dalinar Kholin or Meridas Amaram. Lirin, however, knew that killers came in all kinds of packages. The Mink might be short and missing a tooth, but there was a power to his lean build, and Lirin spotted not a few scars in his examination. Those around the wrists, in fact… those were the scars manacles made on the skin of slaves.

“Thank you,” Dieno whispered, “for offering us refuge.”

“It wasn’t my choice,” Lirin said.

“Still, you ensure that the resistance will escape to live on. Heralds bless you, surgeon.” Lirin dug out a bandage, then began wrapping a wound on the man’s arm that hadn’t been seen to properly. “The Heralds bless us with a quick end to this conflict.”

“Yes, with the invaders sent running all the way back to Damnation from which they were spawned.”

Lirin continued his work.

“You… disagree, surgeon?”

“Your resistance has failed, General,” Lirin said, pulling the bandage tight. “Your kingdom has fallen like my own. Further conflict will only leave more men dead.”

“Surely you don’t intend to obey these monsters.”

“I obey the person who holds the sword to my neck, General,” Lirin said. “Same as I always have.”

He finished his work, then gave the general’s four companions cursory examinations. No women. How would the general read messages sent to him?

Lirin made a show of discovering a wound on one man’s leg, and—with a little coaching—the man limped on it properly, then let out a painful howl. A poke of a needle made painspren claw up from the ground, shaped like little orange hands.

“That will need surgery,” Lirin said loudly. “Or you might lose the leg. No, no complaints. We’re going to see to that right away.”

He had Aric fetch a litter. Positioning the other four soldiers—the general included—as bearers for that litter gave Lirin an excuse to pull them all out of line.

Now they just needed the distraction. It came in the form of Toralin Roshone: Laral’s husband, former citylord. He stumbled out of the fog-shrouded town, wobbling and walking unsteadily.

Lirin waved to the Mink and his soldiers, slowly leading them toward the inspection post. “You aren’t armed, are you?” he hissed under his breath.

“We left obvious weapons behind,” the Mink replied, “but it will be my face—and not our arms—that betrays us.”

“We’ve prepared for that.” Pray to the Almighty it works.

As Lirin drew near, he could better make out Roshone. The former citylord’s cheeks hung in deflated jowls, still reflecting the weight he’d lost following his son’s death seven years ago. Roshone had been ordered to shave his beard, perhaps because he’d been fond of it, and he no longer wore his proud warrior’s takama. That had been replaced by the kneepads and short trousers of a crem scraper.

He carried a stool under one arm and muttered in a slurred voice, his wooden peg of a foot scraping stone as he walked. Lirin honestly couldn’t tell if Roshone had gotten drunk for the display, or if he was faking. The man drew attention either way. The parshmen manning the inspection post nudged one another, and one hummed to an upbeat rhythm—something they often did when amused.

Roshone picked a building nearby and set down his stool, then—to the delight of the watching parshmen—tried stepping up on it, but missed and stumbled, teetering on his peg, nearly falling.

They loved watching him. Every one of these newly born singers had been owned by one wealthy lighteyes or another. Watching a former citylord reduced to a stumbling drunk who spent his days doing the most menial of jobs? To them it was more captivating than any storyteller’s performance.

Lirin stepped up to the guard post. “This one needs immediate surgery,” he said, gesturing to the man in the litter. “If I don’t get to him now, he might lose a limb. My wife will have the rest of the refugees sit and wait for my return.”

Of the three parshmen assigned as inspectors, only Dor bothered to check the “wounded” man’s face against the drawings. The Mink was top of the list of dangerous refugees, but Dor didn’t spare a glance for the litter bearers. Lirin had noticed the oddity a few days earlier: when he used refugees from the line as labor, the inspectors often fixated solely on the person in the litter.

He’d hoped that with Roshone to provide entertainment, the parshmen would be even more lax. Still, Lirin felt himself sweating as Dor hesitated on one of the pictures. Lirin’s letter— returned with the scout who had arrived begging for asylum—had warned the Mink to bring only low-level guards who wouldn’t be on the lists. Could it—

The other two parshmen laughed at Roshone, who was trying—despite his drunkenness—to reach the roof of the building and scrape away the crem buildup there. Dor turned and joined them, absently waving Lirin forward.

Lirin shared a brief glance with his wife, who waited nearby. It was a good thing none of the parshmen were facing her, because she was pale as a Shin woman. Lirin probably didn’t look much better, but he held in his sigh of relief as he led the Mink and his soldiers forward. He could sequester them in the surgery room, away from the public eye until—

“Everyone stop what you’re doing!” a female voice shouted from behind. “Prepare to give deference!”

Lirin felt an immediate urge to bolt. He almost did, but the soldiers simply kept walking at a regular pace. Yes. Pretend that you hadn’t heard.

“You, surgeon!” the voice shouted at him. It was Abiajan. Reluctantly Lirin halted, excuses running through his mind. Would she believe he hadn’t recognized the Mink? Lirin was already in rough winds with the citylady after insisting on treating Jeber’s wounds after the fool had gotten himself strung up and whipped.

Lirin turned around, trying hard to calm his nerves. Abiajan hurried up, and although singers didn’t blush, she was clearly flustered. When she spoke, her words had adopted a staccato cadence. “Attend me. We have a visitor.”

It took Lirin a moment to process the words. She wasn’t demanding an explanation. This was about… something else?

“What’s wrong, Brightness?” he asked.

Nearby, the Mink and his soldiers stopped, but Lirin could see their arms shifting beneath their cloaks. They’d said they’d left behind “obvious” weapons. Almighty help him, if this turned bloody…

“Nothing’s wrong,” Abiajan said, speaking quickly. “We’ve been blessed. Attend me.” She looked to Dor and the inspectors. “Pass the word. Nobody is to enter or leave the town until I give word otherwise.”

“Brightness,” Lirin said, gesturing toward the man in the litter. “This man’s wound may not appear dire, but I’m certain that if I don’t tend to it immediately, he—”

“It will wait.” She pointed to the Mink and his men. “You five, wait. Everyone just wait. All right. Wait and… and you, surgeon, come with me.”

She strode away, expecting Lirin to follow. He met the Mink’s eyes and nodded for him to wait, then hurried after the citylady. What could have put her so out of sorts? She’d been practicing a regal air, but had now abandoned it completely.

Lirin crossed the field outside of town, walking alongside the line of refugees, and soon found his answer. A hulking figure easily seven feet tall emerged from the fog, accompanied by a small squad of parshmen with weapons. The dreadful creature had a beard and long hair the color of dried blood, and it seemed to meld with his simple wrap of clothing—as if he wore his hair itself for a covering. He had a pure black skin coloring, with lines of marbled red under his eyes.

Most importantly, he had a jagged carapace unlike any Lirin had seen, with a strange pair of carapace fins—or horns—rising above his ears.

The creature’s eyes glowed a soft red. One of the Fused. Here in Hearthstone.

It had been months since Lirin had seen one—and that had been only in passing as a small group had stopped on the way to the battlefront in Herdaz. That group had soared through the air in breezy robes, bearing long spears. They had evoked an ethereal beauty, but the carapace on this creature looked far more wicked—like something one might expect to have come from Damnation.

The Fused spoke in a rhythmic language to a smaller figure at his side, a warform parshwoman. Singer, Lirin told himself. Not parshwoman. Use the right term even in your head, so you don’t slip when speaking.

The warform stepped forward to translate for the Fused. From what Lirin had heard, even those Fused who spoke Alethi often used interpreters, as if speaking human tongues were beneath them.

“You,” the interpreter said to Lirin, “are the surgeon? You’ve been inspecting the people today?”

“Yes,” Lirin said.

The Fused replied, and again the interpreter translated. “We are searching for a spy. He might be hidden among these refugees.”

Lirin felt his mouth go dry. The thing standing above him was a nightmare that should have remained a legend, a demon whispered of around the midnight fire. When Lirin tried to speak, the words wouldn’t come out, and he had to cough to clear his throat.

At a barked order from the Fused, the soldiers with him spread out to the waiting line. The refugees backed away, and several tried to run, but the parshmen—though small beside the Fused—were warforms, with powerful strength and terrible speed. They caught runners while others began searching through the line, throwing back hoods and inspecting faces.

Don’t look behind you at the Mink, Lirin. Don’t seem nervous.

“We…” Lirin said. “We inspect each person, comparing them to the drawings given us. I promise you. We’ve been watchful! No need to terrorize these poor refugees.”

The interpreter didn’t translate Lirin’s words for the Fused, but the creature spoke immediately in its own language.

“The one we seek is not on those lists,” the interpreter said. “He is a young man, a spy of the most dangerous kind. He would be fit and strong compared to these refugees, though he might have feigned weakness.”

“That… that could describe any number of people,” Lirin said. Could he be in luck? Could this be a coincidence? It might not be about the Mink at all. Lirin felt a moment of hope, like sunlight peeking through stormclouds.

“You would remember this man,” the interpreter continued. “Tall for a human, with wavy black hair worn to the shoulders. Clean shaven, he has a slave’s brand on his forehead. Including the glyph shash.”

Slave’s brand.

Shash. Dangerous.

Oh no…

Nearby, one of the Fused’s soldiers threw back the hood of another cloaked refugee— revealing a face that should have been intimately familiar to Lirin. Yet the harsh man Kaladin had become looked like a crude drawing of the sensitive youth Lirin remembered.

Kaladin immediately burst alight with power. Death had come to visit Hearthstone today, despite Lirin’s every effort.

Excerpted from Rhythm of War, copyright ©2020 Dragonsteel Entertainment.

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The post Read Rhythm of War by Brandon Sanderson: Prologue and Chapter One appeared first on Reactor.

We’re excited to share an excerpt from Every Bone a Prayer, the debut novel from Ashley Blooms—available August 4th with Sourcebooks.

Misty’s holler looks like any of the thousands of hollers that fork through the Appalachian Mountains. But Misty knows her home is different. She may be only ten, but she hears things. Even the crawdads in the creek have something to say, if you listen.

All that Misty’s sister Penny wants to talk about are the strange objects that start appearing outside their trailer. The grown-ups mutter about sins and punishment, but that doesn’t scare Misty. Not like the hurtful thing that’s been happening to her, the hurtful thing that is becoming part of her. Ever since her neighbor William cornered her in the barn, she must figure out how to get back to the Misty she was before—the Misty who wasn’t afraid to listen.

This is the story of one tough-as-nails girl whose choices are few but whose fight is boundless, as her coping becomes a battle cry for everyone around her. Written by a survivor of sexual abuse, Every Bone a Prayer is a beautifully honest exploration of healing and of hope.

Shift

Before a crawdad can grow, it must shed the hard shell of its body.
First, a new skin forms beneath the shell. This skin is soft, but grows stronger.
It is a process of separation, of letting go of the old shape.
A slow goodbye to the body that existed before.

One

Everything that Misty needed was behind her bedroom door, but she couldn’t open it. She planted her toes into the carpet and leaned her full weight against the wood, twisting the knob back and forth. For a moment, the door slipped open, revealing a sliver of darkness about an inch wide. Somewhere inside that darkness was her bed piled high with pillows, her favorite T-shirt, and her box of treasures. Misty stretched her fingers, hoping to slide them through to grab the door, but it slammed shut before she could.

“Penny, let me in,” Misty said.

A muffled “no” came from the other side.

Misty tried again, but her sister was too strong, no doubt digging her heels into the same carpet, her sister two years older and three inches taller, her sister a weight Misty could not move. It would be so much easier if Misty could talk to Penny the way she talked to everything else, so much better without words.

“You can’t keep me out of my own room,” Misty said.

She pushed again, and again the door jerked forward an inch, a space just big enough for Penny’s voice to slip through: “Then go tell Mom on me.”

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Misty let go of the door and it slammed back into place. “I can’t.”

On the other side of the trailer, her parents’ voices rose and fell in argument. Misty could only make out every tenth word from behind their closed bedroom door, and those words didn’t make sense alone—won’t, should, really, right, leave. They needed everything in the middle to be complete, all the parts that Misty was missing. Her mother’s voice stood out the most, a sharp spike against the dull rumble of her father’s voice, and together they made a slow, slack creature whose fists pounded against the trailer as it dragged itself closer and closer to Misty.

She slid to the floor and pressed her knees to her chest. Muffled sounds came from behind her, too—Penny crying alone in their room. It would normally hurt Misty to know that her sister was sad, but it only made her angry this time. She pounded her fist against the door, trying to jar Penny’s head. Trying to punish her for shutting Misty out.

But Penny just balled her fist together and punched back, and the wood reverberated between them, their spines pressed to the same spot on the door, and together they made their own strange creature with its own strange heart pounding and pounding.

Misty didn’t stop punching until her father walked out of the bedroom with one hand held in the air and the other empty by his side.

“I’m done talking about this,” he yelled.

Misty’s mother followed him. Her ponytail slumped against her shoulders, little baby hairs catching the light around her face, making her glow. “You don’t get to decide everything on your own, you know that? You’re married. You’re a father.”

“I don’t need you telling me who I am.”

“Apparently you do. You sure seem to have forgot awful quick.”

He snatched his keys from the coffee table and turned toward the door. “Like you’d ever let me forget a damn thing.”

Panic rose in Misty’s chest at the sight of her father leaving. She looked for something to distract her parents with. She’d done it before, stepping between them when they started to argue, holding up her art project or reciting the Bible verses she’d memorized from Sunday school, and the sight of her was often enough to startle them out of their fight. Misty became a blush rising to her mother’s cheek, the spasm of her father’s hand clenching tight and then releasing—a freckled truce with her father’s wide nose and her mother’s brown eyes.

But then her father opened the front door and light flooded the room so quickly that Misty and her mother winced against it. Misty’s father turned to say something else until he spotted Misty sitting on the floor at the end of the narrow hallway. He stopped.

Her parents stared at her and Misty stared back at them.

This was usually the part where they would stop fighting. Her mother’s voice would lift to a false high, her father hugging Misty even though he rarely showed affection. Even their attempts at happiness felt wrong.

But this time Misty’s father looked away from her without smiling. He looked at her mother and said, “This is what you wanted, Beth. You’re the one who has to tell them,” then slammed the door hard enough to rattle the glass in the windows.

Misty’s mother stood with her arms crossed over her chest. She stared not at Misty but through her to some far and foggy place that Misty had never seen. She went there often enough that Misty knew how to handle it, how to be patient, to wait for her mother to come back to herself. Back to Misty. But this time, her mother touched her fingers to her mouth, walked back across the trailer, and disappeared into her bedroom.

The trailer was quiet without her parents’ noise. There were so many small and empty spaces in need of filling.

Misty dug her heels into the carpet one last time. She pressed her full weight against her bedroom door so fast that her sister didn’t have time to prepare. Something thudded behind her and the door jerked back a few inches, the dark space of their room yawning by Misty’s side until her sister growled and pushed back even harder. Misty’s feet burned as she lurched across the carpet, and she fell to the floor on the outside of everything she wanted.

Two

After Misty cried and the tears dried on her cheeks and left her skin feeling tacky and brittle, after it was obvious that neither her mother nor her sister were coming to check on her, Misty walked through the same door where her father had left. Her body carried her to the creek by muscle memory, back to the place she always went when she was sad or lonely.

She climbed down the steep embankment before the creek using a chain that was sunk into the ground with concrete. The chain was old and thick and rusted. Her mother told her it had been part of a swinging bridge once that spanned the width of the creek and connected this ground to the road above. It used to be the only way to get to their holler until the new bridge had been built. Earl had the swinging bridge torn down when he bought the land and cleared the trees to make room for his trailers. It always made Misty sad to see the chain all by itself, torn away from what it used to be.

She stood with her toes on the edge of the place where the sand gave way to the water. The sun was warm on her shoulders, but she didn’t feel warmed by it. She rolled the hem of her shorts up until the denim cut into her thighs and walked barefoot into the water, careful for broken glass that sometimes shifted loose from the sand and craved something soft to tear into.

The water inched higher as she walked, wetting ankle, shin, and knee. It settled at her midthigh, just below the line of her shorts as Misty stood in the deepest part of the creek. She waited, listening for the slam of a screen door or the call of her mother. When nothing came for her, Misty bent at the waist until her back was parallel to the water. She closed her eyes.

Beneath her were minnows and crawdads and tadpoles. There were copperheads and cottonmouths slicking along the grass on the bank. There were bluegill not far away, small for their age because the creek was a small place and it was hard for any creature to outgrow its home. The fish stayed small because they had no room to get bigger, and because they were small, there was always just enough to go around—enough food, enough light, enough water—and they all got to go on living, if not growing.

But it was the crawdads that Misty came for, the crawdads that kept her coming back. They seemed small and murky brown at first, but up close the crawdads were a wash of colors, their arms stained woodsmoke blue with a muddy green along their eight trembling legs, their backs speckled with small dots the color of old lace, a yellow that still remembered what it felt like to be white. They were small enough to fit inside Misty’s palm. Most of them four or five inches long with thin legs and two large claws at the end, which always seemed to be opening and closing, always searching for something to hold on to.

Misty spoke to the crawdads as she stood in the creek, though she never opened her mouth. Some words weren’t made for speaking, not by tongues like hers, so small and flat. So she called out from inside herself instead.

It was easy. Her mother had taught her how to pray when she was five years old. She knelt beside Misty on the threadbare carpet and said, “Now open up your heart. It’s more listening than saying anything, but you can ask for things, too. You open up and wait for God to speak to you. Close your eyes now. Close your eyes.” So Misty listened to her mother and she listened for God—her chest a door flung wide open; her heart the golden light spilling onto the floor, eating the darkness whole. She invited everything inside.

But instead of God, Misty heard the mouse living in the walls of their trailer.

The mouse showed Misty the tangled nest she’d made for her children from the torn scraps of the science folder Penny had lost the week before. The mouse filled Misty’s nose with the scent of mothballs and her bones with the hum of the pipes in the walls. The mouse showed Misty what it felt like to be a mouse, furred and quick and small.

Eventually, with practice, Misty got better at reaching out to the world. She learned that everything had a name. Not the name that most people knew them by, but something different, an underneath name made of sounds and memories and feelings, a name that shifted and grew and evolved. Some things had many names, and some had only one. Some things had names that she couldn’t speak inside herself, they were so long with age, so heavy with time.

Misty had a name, too, that lived beneath and beside her other name all the time, and this name was long and twisting, filled with memory and sound. She could choose parts of her name, selecting the memories or moments she held closest, but other parts were beyond her control. The crawdads had tried to explain it to her once—how names were made from things remembered and lost, things passed down from generations before, and things that the body knew that the mind forgot. Sometimes she understood how names worked, but sometimes she still wasn’t sure.

But she knew that in order to speak to the world, she had to offer her name, like holding out her hand, one half of a bridge built between her and everything else. The crawdads could respond with their name and join Misty, sharing thoughts and memories and feelings. Misty knew what it felt like to be small and clawed and slick. She knew the safest places to hide during squalls when the creek swelled with water and the current threatened to tear the crawdads away. She had seen the pictures the crawdads etched into the sand with their tails in the deepest parts of the creek, messages like prayers that the minnows carried downstream. She could smell an oil spill in an eddy and she had felt the weight of eggs gathered on her belly and she had molted with the crawdads a hundred, hundred times. And she knew all of this because the crawdads knew and they shared it with her. They shared themselves.

Misty conjured her name as she stood in the creek with her nose hovering inches above the cool water. The name bubbled inside of her, dozens of images and feelings connected by the thinnest of strands—her hand reaching out for her grandmother’s when Misty was barely old enough to walk, the paper-thin feeling of the older woman’s skin inside Misty’s palm; the rattle of her mother’s breathing when she and Misty were both sick and her mother carried Misty from room to room, rocking her, shushing her, begging her to sleep; the first time Misty had ever tasted snow, bright and shivering cold; her father’s voice from a different room, muffled and rumbling; a doe in the woods, blood on its hip and pain in Misty’s leg, pain in her chest; Penny standing beside her in church and singing along to a song she didn’t know, making up the words until Misty’s sides ached from trying not to laugh; the feeling of a crawdad skittering over her shoulder, tangling in her hair; her mother sitting on the couch with her head in her hands; her father’s truck peeling out of the driveway, gravel pinging against the metal sides of the trailer; her mother’s arms crossed over her chest that morning, the faraway look in her eyes, a feeling of sadness like many small stones stacked inside her stomach, weighing Misty down, down, down.

Misty’s chest ached with the memories and she almost pulled away, almost ended her name before it ended itself, but she held on. Names were honest things. They didn’t hide. They didn’t lie. They couldn’t, as far as Misty knew, and the only way to speak to the world was to be true.

But it was getting harder to be honest with the world as her name gathered sadness and heartache and weight. Her name growing heavier by the day.

Then the crawdads answered with their name—a stirring in the dark, a rustling, deep-blue something. The crawdads were silt running between her fingers, the hushed crinkle of a morning glory closing its petals for the day, the pop of a bone from its socket, and they were there, in Misty’s head, in her chest, in her legs. They shared her body with her and they helped her carry the weight of her thoughts, her memories.

“Come see me,” she said.

And though she only meant to speak to the crawdads, the light Misty shone into the world attracted all sorts of things and they called out to her with their own voices.

A black snake shared the crunch of a field mouse’s neck, a bright bubble of blood bursting in the center of Misty’s chest.

The minnows shone silver flashes against the backs of her eyes, and the force of the water against their scales as they swam against the current, the dim green taste of the deepest water filled her mouth until her tongue was mossy and thick.

Her fingers spasmed with the flutter of a bluegill’s tail a few feet away.

But it wasn’t just Misty that got a sense of the other creatures’ bodies; they got a sense of hers, too. They were always shocked at first. She knew them as a little weight that perched along her spine, looking up at her like someone walking into a cavern and finding that it was a cathedral. They marveled at the space of her, the strange proportions of her body. They rocked with the rhythm of her lungs and curled against the hollow of her clavicle, but all of them eventually settled in her legs. They begged her to walk, to carry them a while. They asked her to wiggle her toes, to jump, to kneel. They crowded in her joints, their minds like a hive of bees, their excitement pumping Misty’s heart faster, faster. They’d never felt anything like her before, never known a body so small but so great at the same time, and they filled Misty, however briefly, with a love of herself as a strange thing, marvelous and new.

And though she couldn’t see it with her eyes closed, all around her, a circle formed. All manner of things that lived in the creek swam closer. The air itself rippled with a faint heat as Misty called the crawdads near. Even the birds felt a certain pull, a shift in the wind that drew them to the trees that lined the creek, and they looked down with small, black eyes at the little girl standing below.

The crawdads hurried through the water and grabbed hold of the bend in Misty’s knees, pulled themselves up in pinches and stutters. They clung to the hem of her shorts and crawled over one another’s backs, grasping for purchase.

Misty opened her eyes and ended her call. She swayed to the side, part of her still convinced she was the water. She took a deep breath and wiggled her fingers. She pressed her tongue against the roof of her mouth and swallowed just to feel the muscles in her throat contract. The door inside her chest was heavier now, harder to close, and a little piece of her remained open as she straightened her back and waited for the dizziness to pass.

It was hard to share her body with something like the creek that believed absolutely the truth of its existence when she didn’t believe the same of herself. It was hard to convince her body to return to her when it longed to be clawed and slick or hard and slithering or winged and feathered and gone, gone, gone.

But it was a girl body instead.

It was small and pale-skinned and freckled with squat calves that were bruised from falling. It was a here-and-now body with a sore spot on her tongue from eating corn bread straight out of the oven last night and an ache behind her eyes from crying that morning. It was still a short body, a good-at-hiding body that fit into the dark corner by her parents’ bedroom door and listened to the things they said to each other when they thought no one was listening. Dark-haired and dark-eyed and at least three inches shorter than she wanted it to be, it was her body and it was impossible to ignore.

Misty stood up slowly and walked even more slowly in the direction she had come. The crawdads clung to the sleeves of her T-shirt. They tangled themselves inside her hair and swayed with her as she walked through the water. Her body felt wrung out, emptied of everything she had brought—every need, every worry, every fear. When she reached the creek bank, she dropped to her knees on the soft sand. She rested her forehead against the ground and closed her eyes. She heard, in the distance, the familiar grind of her mother’s car engine. Misty was supposed to go grocery shopping with her this time since it was Misty’s turn to pick out the ice cream, but the tires crunched over the driveway and were gone without her. A pang of sadness rippled through Misty and the crawdads felt it, too, as they fell from Misty’s clothes one at a time. They gathered around her, worried. They searched for wounds on her body, murmuring back and forth, and the sound of their shared conversation was like leaves crunching inside her head.

“I’m okay,” Misty said as the crawdads worked at the hem of her T-shirt, trying to find a way beneath.

They didn’t believe her. They shared images of small things—acorns and newly laid eggs and the round blue pebbles buried beneath the creek bed. This was how the crawdads, how everything, spoke to her. Not with language that she understood, but with a mix of images and sensations that Misty translated. Sometimes it was hard to interpret what the crawdads meant, and even harder to make herself clear to them. But Misty knew what they meant when they shared these images with her. They were telling her that Misty was like the acorn, the egg, the pebbles. She felt small that day, and the crawdads wanted to know why.

Misty turned her head so she could see a half dozen of the crawdads keeping watch over her. “I’m just tired. I don’t want to go back home.”

And at once the sensation of fifteen small hands holding her in place, asking her to stay.

“I can’t.” Misty held out a finger and the crawdads crowded around it, touching the tips of their claws to her skin. “I have to go back. My bed is there. And my mom. She’d be sad without me.”

The crawdads sent her a fuzzy feeling in her lips and the image of a night sky, which had always been their way of asking why or telling her that they didn’t understand.

Misty sighed. “I don’t know. I don’t think my family is happy.” She shared a rush of images. Her mother standing by the front door with her head in her hands. A window in an empty house that they passed every Sunday on the way to church that made Misty feel lonely. Penny slamming a door in her face. The little lines of light that etched across her favorite quilt when she hid beneath it, the light tracing the seams, the light pointing out all the places that were worn and frayed and falling apart.

The crawdads gathered nearer.

“I wish I could talk to them like I talk to you,” Misty said. “They don’t listen to me much when I do talk, but if I was in their heads, then they couldn’t ignore me.”

Misty laid her cheek against the sand. She’d thought of telling her family about how she could speak to the world but she wasn’t sure how they’d react. They might not believe her at all. She had no way to explain what she did, no proof besides a few crawdads crawling over her skin. Or worse, if they believed her, they might also believe she was bad. Her aunt Jem told stories sometimes about strange people and strange things that had happened in their family, and Misty’s mother hated the stories. She never wanted to listen. If she found out that Misty was a strange thing, too, then she might hate her or turn her away, might never trust her again.

After a while, some of the crawdads returned to the creek. Some started to burrow beneath the ground, digging narrow tunnels where they could hide, until only one crawdad remained before her. It was almost impossible to tell them apart, and even if she could, it was impossible to give the crawdads names of their own. She had tried before, but the crawdads rejected them. They knew themselves as crawdad and nothing else. They were a collective, a group. When she called, they answered together, and when they left, they left together. They didn’t want to be known apart.

A crawdad returned from the creek with a shed crawdad skin in its claws. The crawdads had shared their memories of molting with Misty, the way they shed their old bodies so they could keep growing. She’d felt the itch of a too-tight skin, the fevered panic of shedding, the need to be released. She knew what it was like to expand, to grow, and she loved to look at the shed skins, to touch them, gently, and feel the way they gave beneath her, like she was holding light inside her hands. The crawdads shared them with her, and Misty collected them in a box under her bed. Looking at them made her feel steady, like there was nothing in the world that couldn’t be undone or redone.

Misty stroked her finger along the back of the molted skin. It was only partially intact—the tail and one claw had been torn away, leaving a fragment of the crawdad who had shed its body. A bell chimed nearby and Misty jumped. She kicked her feet out of the water and scrambled to her knees. She’d hung a string of bells in the bushes weeks before to warn her when someone came too close. The only person who came looking for her these days was her neighbor, William. She hadn’t known him before they moved into Earl’s trailer, but now he was the closest thing to a best friend that Misty had ever had. He was the same age as her, but a grade behind because he’d missed too much school last year. William could tie knots and spit, and he cursed when no one was around to hear. He listened to her when she complained about Penny and he was nice enough, but she didn’t trust him with her crawdads. His BB gun had been taken away for shooting at robins from his back porch. Without the gun, she worried he might turn his attention on the crawdads. They were so easy to corner, to catch.

So Misty pounded her fist against the ground three times. With every blow, a jolt shot through the air, something like a shout, like thunder. The crawdads skittered back to the creek or crawled into their burrows. As William crashed through the underbrush on the hill above the creek, the last crawdad’s tail swished into the water and disappeared.

“Hey!” he called. “What’re you doing?”

“Playing,” Misty said.

“Is them your bells back there?”

She nodded. “That’s my alarm.”

“That’s pretty smart,” he said. “Have you thought about adding something? Like some spikes. Or maybe digging a pit or something for people to fall into. The bells is good but they won’t stop nobody from coming down here.”

“It ain’t supposed to stop nobody. It’s just got to tell me they’re coming.”

William shrugged. “Let me know if you change your mind. I could draw something up for you and show you how it’d work. If you’re interested.”

“Yeah,” Misty said. “What’re you doing anyway?”

William smiled. “Going to the barn. All of us are.”

“Who’s us?” Misty asked.

“Me and Penny and you.”

“Why?”

He grinned. “I got a game for us to play.”

“What kind?”

“You have to come and see. I bet you ain’t never played it before though.”

“What is it?”

William turned and ran through the high weeds without answering. He sent the bells ringing again, louder this time than before, and Misty felt the pluck of his fingers against the string inside her chest, her own ribs fluttering with the sound.

She dipped her hand into the creek before she left, searching for any crawdads that might have lingered. The slow current altered the image of her hand, making it appear as though her finger crooked away at the knuckle, like somewhere beneath the surface of the water her hand was broken and she just hadn’t felt the pain yet.

Excerpted from Every Bone a Prayer, copyright © 2020 by Ashley Blooms

The post Read an Excerpt From Every Bone a Prayer appeared first on Reactor.

Hall of Smoke publishes with Titan on January 19 2021.

Hessa is an Eangi: a warrior priestess of the Goddess of War, with the power to turn an enemy’s bones to dust with a scream. Banished for disobeying her goddess’s command to murder a traveller, she prays for forgiveness alone on a mountainside.

While she is gone, raiders raze her village and obliterate the Eangi priesthood. Grieving and alone, Hessa—the last Eangi—must find the traveller and atone for her weakness and secure her place with her loved ones in the High Halls. As clans from the north and legionaries from the south tear through her homeland, slaughtering everyone in their path, Hessa strives to win back her goddess’ favour.

Beset by zealot soldiers, deceitful gods, and newly-awakened demons at every turn, Hessa burns her path towards redemption and revenge. But her journey reveals a harrowing truth: the gods are dying and the High Halls of the afterlife are fading. Soon Hessa’s trust in her goddess weakens with every unheeded prayer.

Thrust into a battle between the gods of the Old World and the New, Hessa realizes there is far more on the line than securing a life beyond her own death. Bigger, older powers slumber beneath the surface of her world. And they’re about to wake up.

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Hall of Smoke

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H. M. Long is a Canadian writer who loves history, hiking, and exploring the world. She lives in Ontario, but can often be spotted snooping about European museums or wandering the Alps with her German husband. She tweets @hannah_m_long.

Finally, he had a name. Ashaklon. But it meant nothing to me. Was this one of the Arpa gods or… No. A God of the Old World, he’d called himself. One of the divinities Eang had bound, long ago?

As my mind raced, my knees dug into bloody rock and the old priestess struggling for breath, that Oulden appeared.

The God of the Soulderni was a middle-aged man with wild hair, his body clothed in a tunic of the finest weave and his muscular thighs bare. He wore a pelt over his shoulders and bore a herder’s staff. Everywhere his feet fell, the flowers transformed to brilliant Soulderni red, shedding Ashaklon’s darkness in a fine mist.

At the same time, a great crash of water sent me reeling into the altar. Deafened and half-drowned in spray, I had just enough time to realize that the waterfall had reawakened before my senses were overridden by Ashaklon’s delighted, gut-melting laughter.

The Soulderni priestess, huddled behind the altar beside me, reached up to clutch my arm. Her voice gurgled with blood and grey rimmed her eyes. “Where is Eang?”

The question rung in my ears, more meaningful than the priestess knew. Where was Eang? Where was she when Albor fell, when the Algatt poured out of the mountains, and when I knelt here on the ground of a foreign land?

I had no answer, except that my goddess was too far away right now, and I was an exile. But I bowed my head onto the stone slab all the same, still slick with blood and spray, and prayed to the star-cast sky.

The waterfall continued to roar, Oulden and the formless god raged and the old priestess choked, but my prayers met nothing but silence. Eang would not or could not hear, even on Oulden’s holy ground, where the High Halls bled into the Waking World.

But Eang had to hear me, here as I faced down an unknown deity – it was her duty, her role as my goddess and as an ally of Oulden. And I’d spent enough time at Svala’s feet to know what the High Priestess would do now.

My fear faded into a grim, blinding brand of indignation, and there in the warm blood on the altar, I began to draw runes. Eight symbols, at eight points; symbols of opening and tearing, of the human world and the divine, and of Eang. Brave. Watchful. Vengeful. Swift.

I did not know what to expect. But as my finger left the blood of the final rune, languid and nearly black in the waning light, Eang rushed into my lungs like the flurry of wings. There was no time to be afraid, no time to remember the Eangi girl I had once seen possessed and die in the Hall of Smoke.

My self, my thoughts, all that I considered my own, stepped back through a veil. And then… there was Eang.

She tasted like iron on my lips. She was the coldest hour of a winter night and the brazen heat of the summer sun. She overwhelmed me, roaring through muscle and veins, marrow and bone until that fire, that presence, was all I knew.

My vision sparked with a golden-amber haze, and I stood. My cuts and scraps closed over and I watched Ashaklon tear the earth from under Oulden with a drop of his chin. Oulden leapt, his staff transforming into a spear as he charged. One slash. The haft shattered. Three of the tall standing stones around us exploded in plumes of dust and shrilling fragments.

In the debris, Oulden hurled himself into Ashaklon’s chest. The two went down, humanesque god entwining his spectral fellow in arms of corded muscle. Beneath them, the flowers turned from grey to red in a path of divine rancor.

I – Eang – left Nisien’s knife on the altar and began a slow approach. With every step she sunk deeper into my limbs and I into her mind, her thoughts and instincts laid out before me like the valley before my eyes. There was will, hard and unyielding. Anger and frustration.

And fear. True, fluttering fear.

The feeling was there and gone, hidden away from me, but not before I’d sensed its direction. It wasn’t fear of Ashaklon, but fear of something greater, something vaguer – something he heralded.

Still, Eang strode forward. Amid the stones Oulden and Ashaklon struck one another, the shadow deity’s darkness slipping seamlessly between anthropomorphic blows and spectral retreats. Oulden came back at him with earth and stone, the very ground itself moaning and bowing, bending and cracking at his whim. More standing stones, sacred and riddled with magic as they were, burst. The grass, dirt and rock beneath my strides shuddered, the air in my lungs thinned and the water of the pool behind me trembled, every element reacting to the clash of gods.

I stopped to pick up the remnants of Oulden’s staff. The wood felt as solid as rock, but the break was total; a hundred splintered ends gaped at me, refusing to meet again.

I took one end in each hand and crept after the thundering gods. My wrist protested, tendons straining, barely healed bones grinding. But this was Eang working, not me, and the goddess did not blink at suffering.

Ashaklon backed away from Oulden, his hidden muscles roiling, building for a ferocious charge. I circled to the side, my eyes lingering on his exposed back.

“Oulden,” I called with the voice of Eang, and my throat burned.

Oulden looked up, the flowers beneath his feet shuddering black, then bursting into a brilliant, violent red. I hurled him half of the staff and bolted, rounding Ashaklon just as the being lashed out at me.

I drove my half into his spine. At the same instant, Oulden sprung, his half of the staff meeting mine in Ashaklon’s stomach.

Ashaklon shrieked. Eang’s presence or no, my flesh was still human; the sound blasted me backwards in a blur of sight and sound. I struck a standing stone and my world fractured into blackness.

The next thing I knew, I was coughing. Dust rained around me, choking and obscuring. Beneath my bruised ribs, Eang’s Fire had gone out. The goddess had left me. Dizzying, cloying exhaustion came in her place and I trembled as I pushed myself upright.

Through a veil of dust, I saw Oulden heft Ashaklon like a skewered rabbit and plunge one end of the staff down into the earth. The crook had grown significantly, thickening and extending, wrapping snaking roots around Ashaklon’s writhing form and creeping into the earth like the roots of a tree. At last, the God of the Old World folded from sight, and stilled.

Relief gushed through me. The threat was gone, Eang was gone, and I was still drawing ragged breaths into my lungs.

But something of the goddess remained, curling in the back of my mind. It was that fear I’d sensed, that vague and fleeting dread that Eang had tried – and failed – to keep from me. It was so genuine, so human, that it left me disarmed. I knew, in that moment, that I’d learned something of my goddess that I was never intended to know.

The Goddess of War was afraid.

Distantly, I heard the Soulderni erupt in a wave of lamenting, tremulous cheers. “Oulden! Our god! Oulden!”

I let my head droop onto the mossy earth and closed my eyes.

Excerpted from Hall of Smoke, copyright © 2020 by Hannah M. Long

The post Revealing Hall of Smoke, the Epic Fantasy Debut From H.M. Long appeared first on Reactor.

Meet Mat, a tortured mercenary who has become the perfect shot, and Silvia, an idealistic woman genetically engineered to murder you to death.

Together they run for the shadiest corporation in the world…and realize their messed-up brain chemistry cannot overpower their very real chemistry.

Now, St. Louis is a fine town—big enough to enjoy the benefits of living in the big city, without that “packed in like cockroaches” feeling you get from New York or Chicago—but the reason I’m so darned eager to skip past customs has nothing to do with my hometown love.

It’s because the perfect mission waits in my workshop.

To you, dear reader, me making the right on-field calls to save Onyeka Njeze’s life (if not her well-being) was the exciting part. But knowing one wrong decision could cost a young girl her life is exhausting, panic-inducing, demoralizing—the furthest thing from “exciting” there is.

“Exciting” would be entering a mission with all decisions made in advance, and exiting without a single thing happening outside mission parameters.

So as I booked the first flight out of Lagos, I was pondering ways to safeguard people in future missions—I’d mentioned Isaac’s Facebook account when I didn’t have to, so I’ll prepare scripts to handle future situations where I’ll need to masquerade as someone. I didn’t have my GPS traces default-configured to provide altitude; a few lines of code will correct that. I’d relied on tasers and goopcuffs for close-combat hostage situations; I’ve been relying too much on firearms, neglecting my hand-to-hand combat routines.

On the flight back home, I listed every error I made that endangered an innocent. Those mistakes were scars; I could never remove them, but their pain goaded me to improvement. I vowed to replay my mission logs until I discovered the ideal approach that would have preserved both Onyeka’s life and her innocence.

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Automatic Reload

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If I ever carry out a mission where no one is injured but the enemy, that unblemished combat will be born in Yoyodyne Labs, my private workshop in the Olivette suburbs.

I snag a cab back home, thumbing extra cash to St. Louis’s networked driver-AIs so I can legally run a few red lights. My mind races with weaponry loadouts that might have disarmed her assailant without traumatizing Onyeka, and the only place to test them is in the lab, so…

Yoyodyne Labs—bonus points if you get the reference—is an unassuming loft stashed in a secure apartment complex where the successful bohemian artists live. My neighbors below are a pleasant gay poly triad who run a home data-analysis lab. If they find my habit of showing up with different limbs at every condo meeting unsettling, well, they’re well versed in gossiping discreetly.

My biometrics unlock the door to my private space. As I walk in, eye-easy lights glow on to illuminate the spacious loft before me—revealing the neat racks of local servers with their blinking lights, the medical whitebays where I swap and fine-tune my limbs, the acoustic-foam-swaddled firing range at the far end, the cubbies of spare parts tagged with RFID chips so I can track down any of my personal inventory instantly.

My limbs are programmed to keep me standing in perfect posture, yet I feel an urge to straighten with pride. Yoyodyne Labs looks like a showroom waiting for a big brass inspection—each repair station has every tool I’d need within arm’s reach.

I’m the only one who works here. That makes me the big brass. I like how this place has been customized to fit me; I like how it’s been customized to impress me.

Haptic sensors register something snuffling at my ankles.

I lean down to pet Opposite Cat.

Opposite Cat purrs—well, its internal vacuum systems clicking on is purr-like as its carbon-whiskered geometric face plucks the dirt from my lower extremities. Its angled limbs are shaped from Stormtrooper-white plastic, its quickstrap artificial musculature designed to leap with greater agility than any feline.

The few friends I have told me I should get a pet. But a pet would seed my clean room with loose hair that would infect my muscle-knitting factories. So I built a pet that would not add mess, but subtract it—a tiny bot patrolling my workspace to remove dirt.

Hence: an Opposite Cat.

My friends now tell me I should get a life.

Speaking of my friends, my message lights are blinking—I forgot to put my accounts into stealth mode, and so my social networks have pinged people to inform them I’m back. My local social crew is an uneasy network of novice body-hackers who want to hang with me to feel tough, do-gooder veterans asking me to donate free security to their anti-war protests, lovers who fetishize the attachments more than the man, and a handful of people I actually trust.

I put them all on hold with a single message: brb saving the world.

Everybody knows that means “Two weeks minimum until I poke my head out again.”

So I settle into my changing station with a grunt as my servos start the elaborate dance of decoupling Butch and Sundance to swap them out with Scotty and Geordie, my maintenance armatures. As I download the massive dump of mission data to my local servers for MapReduce and reprocessing—no way I was streaming that precious combat data over a porous internet—I instruct my massive-screen movie theater to queue up To Kill a Mockingbird for what it informs me is the forty-seventh time.

And as my stations ready me for repairs, I remember what my Air Force therapist told me about my love of old movies:

You watch old movies to experience a time when men mattered, she’d told me. You like High Noon because there were no automated gun turrets who could outshoot any human. You like There Will Be Blood because back then, a clever man didn’t have to outrace satellite data to find oil deposits. You like The Terminator because back then, people thought they could escape a tracker machine.

So why do I like old movies? I’d asked her. New movies still pretend like we humans are better at things.

Because old movies had to do it without CGI, she’d replied. You want to live in a time when computers didn’t exist.

I told her she was wrong, of course. As a drone pilot, my job was to meld myself with computers, to fuse complex AI with human judgment to create moral and ethical outcomes that would protect the United States. How could I hate computers?

I told her I liked old movies because back then, the good guys won.

Do Fargo or There Will Be Blood have happy endings? she asked.

And then Scotty and Geordie are attached, these great spidery rotating tool armatures that snap in and out of position, and I put Scylla and Charybdis on the stand as I fieldstrip them, inspecting every artificial muscle strand and gearbox and timing pulley.

I fall into a meditative trance, as I always do, hunting for potential failure points. I’m quoting movies under my breath as I disassemble my prosthetics, because I need to hear human voices when I’m elbow-deep in tech. I listen to Gregory Peck telling Jem, There’s a lot of ugly things in this world, son. I wish I could keep them all away from you. That’s never possible, and he helps me remember why I’m trying to make a difference.

Sure enough, an anchor-point popped on Charybdis when I hauled up the trapdoor; my rerouting modules kept her operating at 93.6 percent efficiency, but that’ll require replacing the drive schemata.

I check warranties. Nobody in the old cyberpunk movies mentions warranties, but the fact that the anchor-point is still service-friendly just saved me $1,600.

Gregory Peck’s magnificent speeches end as the film switches to Singin’ in the Rain, all frothy musical numbers, and the camaraderie between Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor is so intense I feel like I’m friends with them, except I don’t have to interact with them—which is good when I’m head-down in the schemata.

Sure enough, the alignment is off again in Scylla’s lateral gun-actuators—she’s been pulling left for months—so that needs to be retooled, and the rust flakes kicked up from the trapdoor got sucked in when the anchor-point popped and must be edged out before they cause short circuits. Some of the microbatteries have reached their end of use-life and must be swapped out before their effective power potential drops below combat standards.

Your profile shows you never watched movies, let alone old ones, before your honorable discharge, my therapist had said. You played video games. Why did you stop?

The theater auto-switches to The Terminator. Which is a movie about a killer death robot, and most people think it’s an action adventure, but to me it’s a comedy. Because I always imagine how trivial it’d be to destroy a real-life Terminator—these great military kill-machines running on magical nuclear batteries that never required coolant. Their drivetrains were covered in gooey meat; those delicate finger-armatures would clog long before they pulled a trigger.

I laugh. I’m the only one who gets my jokes.

Hell, I’m the only who hears them.

With each repair, the tally goes up: each deep-well battery another $600 sourced in bulk from the manufacturer, each gun realignment requiring delicate microfibers that are $3,359 on sale from CircuitCo. Each expense a tempting shortcut until you realize someone’s life—often my own—depends on it.

The NNPC has dropped $250,000 into my account, pre-tax— and by the time I’ve refurbished Scylla, Charybdis, Butch, Sundance, and my legs, the post-mission maintenance has already chewed up $43,589. I think I’ve been awake for days. It doesn’t matter; I have stims for that, and when I tire I do endless sit-ups, upgrading the slim core of organic muscle I still have available.

I have to be perfect, or other people will get hurt.

And then I’m rushing to the firing range, setting a printed-meat pseudo-dummy coursing with gelblood beneath an automated human arm simulacra wielding a knife. Good nonlethal weapons always cost ten times as much as a bullet to the brain. Still, the expensive sample prototypes of yank-tasers and splatter guards and dazzlers tell me which tools might have saved Onyeka from her kidnapper.

(I binge-watch Arsenic and Old Lace over and over again as I fight the pseudo-dummy, because it’s a dark comedy where Cary Grant discovers his favorite aunts are serial killers, and I need black humor to cope when I’m endlessly reenacting Onyeka’s throat-slashing.)

And I’m battling replicas of the best martial artists, tweaking my hand-to-hand routines to ensure I can take down world-class knife fighters, which reminds me I’m running out of memory for reaction packages again and so I spend $1,400 to upgrade to another googolplex of combat-shielded RAM.

(The martial arts makes me pull up Seven Samurai—good warriors dying fast by the sword, and their battle-born closeness makes me feel less like I’m swinging at combat dummies and more like I’m testing my skills against a stalwart comrade.)

And I’m tweaking my gun-targeting routines, because I’ve had nightmares about Scylla and Charybdis accidentally firing on some poor old man walking out into the marketplace, and I can’t stop thinking how easy a false positive would have been in that crowded rush, and so I compensate for this new environment while pondering how many probability percentages I can shave off before someone splatters my skull due to a false negative.

(And as I panic thinking about the innocents I’ve hurt, I put on Léon: The Professional to see an assassin who’s done much worse things redeem himself by rescuing a small girl.)

And then the combat sims ping me to inform me I can replay the missions now, with predicted behavior scraped from the incapacitated kidnappers’ social media, and I’m glad to hear the extra time I could have spent scouting the area would have gotten me caught. I’m listening to my subvocalized, real-time mission recording, my constant narration allowing me to replay my line of thought as I made my worst decisions—a combat habit I’ve carried into my civilian life.

You use movies like addicts use methadone, my therapist had told me, just before I stopped seeing her. They’ve become your replacement for human interaction.

My in-in-box flashes red—my real in-box. My second- and third-tier buddies get filtered out until I have the energy to deal with them. What’s left are the people I call my actual friends, and paying employers.

It’s Trish, who best exemplifies a mixture of the two—she gets me jobs because she likes me. She’s a veteran who somehow makes friends with people she’s shot at, and she does her best to steer me towards riskier, high-yield employment activities. Sometimes I’m tempted. I’ve burned through $115,000 in eight days’ worth of frantic deconstruction, reconstruction, and knife-wielder’s destruction, and if you’re starting to see why I can’t afford to pass up a good job, well, now you understand why most body-hackers get into the security business.

We have to talk, Trish says. That sounds uncomfortably relationshippy to me. It shouldn’t be—we’re not compatible.

I’m making the world a better place, I shoot back. Catch you when I’m done?

3:2, Trish says.

That’s . . . not a real number.

She senses my hesitation, then types it again to confirm: 3:2. What she’s typing is a code we share to obscure the money a potential job might bring in.

The code for the Nigerian job, for example, would have been “25:96.” As in “$250,000 for an estimated ninety-six hours of work, including travel time and prep.” Considering I spent seventy-two hours sifting through the NNPC’s data to prep the right mission approach, that was a conservative estimate.

“3:2” means “$3 million for two hours of work.”

If it was anybody but Trish telling me this, I’d assume it was either a rip-off or a suicide mission. Yet if Trish is pinging me during maintenance time, she thinks this is a genuine offer.

I’m listening, I type.

Be at the Express Mart in ten hours and I’ll shoot you coordinates from there, she says. Look passing. I will. But come hot.

Which is her code for “wear Thelma and Louise, my arms that can pass for human in a crowd if I wear long sleeves and no one looks close.” The fact that she’s sending me coordinates once I’ve arrived at a downtown location means she doesn’t want anyone intercepting this communication to know where we’ll be; an hour’s drive from the Express Mart could put me anywhere in St. Louis.

If Trish is going to the effort of passing, well, she’s serious. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her shaved.

Yet that final phrase—“come hot”—means to arrive armed, just in case. Which I don’t like. Thelma and Louise have no internal loadouts, which makes them legal anywhere—but if their sensors spot trouble, I have the second-plus delay of them unholstering a gun from my waist and drawing across a much greater range of motion.

But $3 million?

That’d buy me months’ worth of maintenance time. Maybe a whole year.

I tell the lab to prep my nice arms.

Excerpted from Automatic Reload, copyright 2020 by Ferrett Steinmetz.

The post Read an Excerpt From Ferrett Steinmetz’s Automatic Reload appeared first on Reactor.

Manuela Azul has been crammed into an existence that feels too small for her. As an undocumented immigrant who’s on the run from her father’s Argentine crime-family, Manu is confined to a small apartment and a small life in Miami, Florida.

Until Manu’s protective bubble is shattered.

Her surrogate grandmother is attacked, lifelong lies are exposed, and her mother is arrested by ICE. Without a home, without answers, and finally without shackles, Manu investigates the only clue she has about her past—a mysterious “Z” emblem—which leads her to a secret world buried within our own. A world connected to her dead father and his criminal past. A world straight out of Argentine folklore, where the seventh consecutive daughter is born a bruja and the seventh consecutive son is a lobizón, a werewolf. A world where her unusual eyes allow her to belong.

As Manu uncovers her own story and traces her real heritage all the way back to a cursed city in Argentina, she learns it’s not just her U.S. residency that’s illegal… it’s her entire existence.

I approach the glass slowly, in a trance. There are two grave-faced women inside waiting to be serviced, but no one is working the front desk or any of the four stations.

I pull open the door, and a too-loud bell jangles through the space, prompting the women to look up.

One of them is clutching a bundle of fabric to her chest, and when a small foot kicks out, I realize it’s a baby. The sound must’ve roused it, and as the baby starts fussing, its mom and the elderly lady beside her make soothing sounds to calm it down.

A middle-aged woman with a pink streak in her hair darts out from a back door and strides up to me, examining me through kindly brown eyes.

“Hola, señorita. ¿Tiene cita para hoy?” Her articulated Spanish is fluid, and her neutral dialect gives every syllable space, so she’s definitely not Argentine… Maybe Peruvian?

I answer, “No, I don’t have an appointment.”

“¿Qué estilo de servicio busca?”

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As I consider her question—which service am I interested in?—it hits me that the women waiting look too anxious to be here for personal grooming.

The knot in my stomach may have formed before I walked in, but it’s the tension inside this place that’s tightened it. Something’s not right.

A scream rings out from the back of the parlor, and this time I recognize the voice intimately.

“¡MA!”

I push past Pink Streak and shove through the door she came in from, my pulse in my throat—

Two women whirl away in surprise from a small television where a fútbol match is being broadcast. The older woman is in a white lab coat and the younger one is… Ma.

“Manu?” She rushes over, wearing blue scrubs I’ve never seen before. “¿Qué pasó?” she asks, her concern so consuming that she doesn’t consider the scene from my perspective.

Pink Streak bursts through the door behind me as the words spill out: “Perla fell! I think. I heard her scream, and she was bleeding from the head when I found her, and I called an ambulance, but she wouldn’t let me stay—”

A sob chokes me, and I swallow it down, blinking quickly behind my sunglasses to stave off tears.

Ma’s hand covers her mouth, her own eyes glassy and round and unblinking. “Dios mío,” she whispers. The woman in the white coat squeezes her arm, and Pink Streak takes Ma’s other hand.

“Dime el hospital más cercano a tu hogar y yo te averiguo lo que está pasando,” she says. Tell me the hospital closest to you, and I’ll track down an update. The three of them speak in hushed tones as they form a plan of action, and I look around, surveying my surroundings…

I’m not in a beauty salon anymore.

This back area is twice as large as the front, and judging by the privacy curtains to my left and the medicine-lined walls to my right—not to mention the general antiseptic smell—I know it’s some kind of medical office. The privacy curtains are bunched up, revealing a couple of empty patient beds, and all around me is strange equipment I only recognize from television dramas—IV drips, needles, glass tubes, and a chest-high machine that rolls on wheels. There’s a hallway in the back corner, but from here I can’t make out where it leads.

The only thing that looks familiar is the small television. It’s Perla’s old set.

Shock burns off quickly, exposing a heavier emotion simmering just beneath my surface. Ma isn’t a maid. She’s a nurse again.

At an underground clinic.

Pink Streak suddenly kisses my cheek. “Hola, Manu, soy Julieta. Tu mamá se la pasa hablando de lo inteligente que eres.” Hi, Manu, I’m Julieta. Your mom is always going on about how smart you are.

The fact that Ma has been praising my intellect even as she’s been manipulating me for years only accelerates the fire scalding my chest, bringing the flames closer to my throat and dangerously near my mouth.

“No te enfades con ella,” says Julieta, reading my face and coming to Ma’s defense. Don’t be mad at her.

“None of our families know.” Julieta sounds less confident as she switches into an accented English, like a person venturing across an untested bridge. “It’s a promise we make… so if we’re caught, the people we love can’t get blamed.”

I want to understand, but I can’t. These other families might operate on secrets, but the only thing Ma and I have is our trust in each other.

Had.

I guess Ma’s constant refrain is right: Our trust in each other is the only thing they can’t take from us. They didn’t take it—Ma did.

My mouth fills with all the hurtful words I want to hurl her way, but when our gazes lock, I swallow them.

I’ve never seen Ma cry. Not even when we lived in a shelter. “I’m sorry, Manu,” she says as tears roll down, and Julieta backs away to give us space. “This was the only way I could… take care of you.”

It’s the pause in her words that tips me off. Like she was going to say something more specific but caught herself.

I scrutinize the room again for a clue, and somehow I know where to look. Scanning the wall of medicines, I spot the telltale blue bottle.

This is how Ma really gets me the Septis pills. It’s not through Perla’s insurance. Ma’s working here, risking everything again, for me.

Julieta cups my shoulder with her hand, and the woman in the lab coat offers Ma a tissue. She blows her nose.

“How about you get some rest on the couch in the office?” Julieta asks me. “We just finished lunch, and there are only two patients waiting. Let your mom work, and I’ll find out about Perla. Okay?”

I nod because it’s as much as I can manage. “Are you hungry?”

“No, thanks.”

“Is it really so sunny in here?” She adopts a lighter tone, trying to crack the tension. “Would you like some sunscreen too?”

Before I can even consider the possibility of taking off my sunglasses, Ma’s fingers coil around my wrist, and she pulls me away from Julieta. “I’ll take her,” she says, dragging me down the back hallway, deeper into the space.

I’ve barely glimpsed a small kitchen/lounge to my right when Ma pulls me through a door to my left and locks it behind us. I slide my sunglasses onto my head.

“I know you’re upset with me, and you have every right to be,” she says, and since I can’t stand to look at her yet, I scan the office. Black synthetic leather couch, L-shaped wooden desk, ominous six-foot safe in the corner.

“I will answer your questions, I promise.”

I glower at her. She looks like a stranger in those scrubs, and I can’t tell if her skin is paling, or if the blue is washing her out.

“But right now, I need you to stay here and wait for me.” She strides up to the huge safe and punches a code to unlock it.

I blink.

“What the fuck is going on?”

The words explode out of me, and I brace myself for Ma’s reaction.

“We can’t go back to Perla’s,” she says as she reaches into the safe and pulls out a duffel bag. “We’ll tell the others we’re spending the night on the couch.”

When she doesn’t yell at me for my language, fear frays the hard edges of my rage.

She sets the bag on the desk and rifles through its contents. “Then once they head home, we’ll go.” Ma zips the duffel shut again and pins me with one of her no-nonsense stares. “Everything we have left is in that bag. Stay in this room and guard it with your life. Do not leave this clinic for any reason. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

My breathing shallows as I try to process the speed at which everything in my life is changing. I feel like this morning I woke from a dream into a nightmare.

Ma reaches for the door, and I make to follow her out. “But we don’t even know how Perla is—”

She whirls to face me, blocking the exit with her body. “Let me finish with my patients, and I’ll figure out a plan. Don’t let anyone see you without your glasses.”

“Ma!”

I grab her arm, and I’m chilled by the terror glazing her eyes. Trying to infuse my voice with as much hope as I can muster, I say, “Maybe—maybe Perla’s fine by now—”

“Perla was attacked, Manu!” she shout-whispers.

I inhale sharply. “What do you—”

“Your father’s family found me.” Her voice is faint and fragile and foreign from the Ma I know. “Now we need to run, before they find out about you.”

The door slams in my face, narrowly missing my nose.

Ma left the office five hundred and thirty-three seconds ago. I know because there’s a loud clock over the couch, and I’ve been counting off its every tick.

Tick.

Ma thinks Perla was attacked.

Tick.

Ma works at an underground clinic.

Tick.

Ma thinks my dad’s people found us.

Tick.

We can never go home again.

Tick.

What happens if they catch us?

A tendril of red smoke floats across my field of vision, but I blink and it’s gone. This hallucination is really starting to get on my nerves. I leap off the couch and start pacing up and down the office.

To tune out the deafening ticking of time, I try to make sense of a senseless situation. It’s just like playing chinchón, I tell myself as I deepen my breathing. I’ve been dealt a hand of unrelated cards, and now I have to discern a pattern and sort them into groups.

I think of Leather Jacket and the woman on the rooftop. Maybe they were there looking for Ma. The woman sounded Argentine—she could be a scout sent by my dad’s family.

What if his people really did hurt Perla?

What if they followed me here?

My heart vaults into my throat, and I reach for the door— but I stop myself before opening it. Ma might not be thinking clearly right now, which means it’s important that I be the rational one. I have to consider the facts objectively, for both of us.

Perla is a ninety-year-old woman whose health is starting to fail, and it’s perfectly logical that she could have fallen on her own. Ma has been running from my father’s family my whole life, so it’s natural for her to be paranoid.

I sigh and bury my face in my hands. I can’t even trust what I know to be true anymore. Until ten minutes ago, I was beyond certain there were no secrets between Ma and me, and now it turns out all we’ve ever had are secrets.

If Doña Rosa isn’t real, Ma’s anecdotes about her multi-story house and snotty little kids have all been fabrications. My entire life is made up of dreams and superstitions and lies—even the real parts aren’t real.

Tick.

So what if Ma’s lying about the only thing that matters?

The question surges up my throat like bile. Ma wouldn’t betray me like this. She knows our only chance of survival is with legal residency. She knows we desperately need a real home. She knows the hope of our papers coming through is all that’s keeping me going.

My eyes latch onto the duffel bag she left on the desk. I’ve searched Perla’s whole apartment for copies of the paperwork Ma filed, just to touch proof of that hope, to know it’s real, but I’ve yet to find it. I always assumed Ma must have a really good hiding place because I never found anything else either, like our savings or my birth certificate.

I dive for the bag.

Sitting at the desk, I rummage through wads of cash, new clothing, unopened toothbrushes and toiletries, a flashlight, power bars, water bottles… and at the very bottom, a pile of paperwork.

I pull out the stack and push the duffel away, resting the documents on the desktop to flip through them. The first thing I come across are sketches and photographs of a symbol that looks like a fancy Z and reminds me of an old television series Perla loves called El Zorro.

I recognize it as the same symbol etched onto the blue pills.

Next, there are maps of different sectors of Argentina. The city names have all been crossed out, like Ma’s searching for something. Or someone.

Behind the diagrams is a manila folder, and on the cover is a name, written in Ma’s slanted handwriting: Manuela Azul.

Me.

I open it up to find a series of magnified photographs of my eyeballs.

I can’t help cringing. Having never seen a photograph of myself, it’s jarring to be confronted with close-ups of my mosthated feature. I don’t remember posing for these, so they must have been taken when I was very young. The five-point stars of my pupils look like graphite, and my irises aren’t at all what I expected.

Woven into the yellow are flecks of copper and amber and burnt gold, and the longer I stare, the more shades I see. Flipping from one photo to the next, I notice the particles of color keep shifting shape and location, like my eyes are golden galaxies orbiting silver stars.

There’s text bleeding through the back of the last picture, and I turn it over to read what Ma wrote. One word, in Spanish.

Anormal.

Abnormal. Aberrant. Wrong.

I ignore the stab in my chest, and I shove the file aside to finish reading later. I keep digging through Ma’s papers, but all I find are newspaper clippings and pages filled with unintelligible scribbles that could be notes on anything from Ma’s patients to the blue pills she’s investigating to the location she’s trying to track down. By the time I reach the last page, there’s nothing at all about our visa application.

Tick.

Because Ma never filed for it.

The answer is so suddenly and strikingly obvious that I feel foolish for even daring to hope. Ma works at an underground clinic. She obviously has no employer sponsoring her. If anything, she’s just doubled down on our outlaw status.

A numbness seeps into my skin that makes it hard to access my thoughts or outrage or anything else. It’s like a vacuum of air building in my head, making the office blur out of focus and filling my mind with a white noise that’s intensifying into a full-body buzzing, until I can’t stay here anymore.

If I do, I’ll have to process that after all these years of waiting, I’m never going to belong here.

I’m never going to go to school.

I’m never going to be rid of these stupid fucking sunglasses.

The realization snaps shackles I’ve placed on my body my whole life. Hide, be invisible, take up as little space as possible— share a small bed, in a small room, in a small apartment, in a small corner of the world, limited to a small routine and a small life.

I’ve always felt cramped because I’ve been crammed into an existence too small for me. That’s why the only friends I have are fictional. Why the only world I know is within El Retiro’s walls. Why the only time I feel free is in my dreams.

But today, my body has outgrown its constraints.

And whatever the consequences, I’m not going back.

I shove my sunglasses back on—not for Ma, but for me, to avoid stares—and storm out of the office, knocking someone over.

The teen girl gasps as she tumbles to the floor, her auburn hair fanning around her stunned face. For some reason, her frightened reaction infuriates me, so I glare back and do something I’ve never done before—I growl.

At first, I think I’m going to belch. But instead, this deep, sonorous sound comes out of my mouth that doesn’t sound human.

I’m mortified. My cheeks burn like they’re pressed to a hot stove, and for a moment the girl and I just stare at each other. Then, without apologizing or helping her up, I run.

I’m going so fast, everything is a blur. Julieta dives out of my way as I reach the door that leads into the beauty salon, and even though I hear my name being shouted, I keep going until I’ve burst onto the street.

This time, pedestrians have to dodge me. My feet are locked into a powerful rhythm, and I don’t know how to slow down. The run is a catharsis, and as tears stream down my face, I realize it’s the first time since racing home from Ariana’s pool party that I’ve let my body go.

Running awake is different from running in my dreams: weightier, harder, more thrilling. My body has changed from what it was just months ago, my muscles somehow stronger despite my lack of exercise. It’s like I’ve been transforming moon by moon, becoming something new, someone new… But what? And whom?

I’m crying hard enough that I can barely see, until I lose track of the blocks, and I don’t know where I am. I have no idea where my life goes from here.

I don’t know if things with Ma can ever get back to normal. Can I stay in hiding with her if it’s forever? And where will we go now?

I only stop moving when I run out of land. As my sneakers hit sand, the impact on my body is instant: My knees wobble from the exertion, my muscles sting, and my breaths come in tidal waves. I must have covered four or five miles. I hinge my hands on my thighs and bend my spine, as I wait for my heart to slow down.

The beach is packed. Parents with children splash in the ocean’s shallows, and all along the shore people are lying out or playing volleyball or eating food, everyone basking and baking in the sun’s rays.

But the warmth won’t penetrate my skin.

My damp shirt clings to me, and the roots of my hair are itchy with sweat. The world grew deafening overnight; as a symphony of brassy conversations and stringy seagulls and crashing waves blares in my ears, I stare off into the sparkly blue Atlantic, yearning for a home that’s as elusive as the horizon. And I’m tempted to slip into the sea’s womblike embrace and drown out all the noise.

I suck in a deep inhale of briny air to snap out of it.

For a moment, I consider what it would mean if my father’s family really found us. Ma’s right that we couldn’t stick around, waiting to be captured. Especially not if they hurt Perla just for being in their way.

But if I’m going to agree to run, then Ma needs to agree to file an asylum claim with the US government. I don’t want to hear her excuses that the accusation might tip off my dad’s people to my existence and our whereabouts—because if they’re already onto us, we have nothing to lose.

I should have researched this residency stuff for myself instead of trusting her to handle it. She’s obviously been keeping me in the dark for a reason.

The only thing I’m sure of anymore is I can’t go back to how things were. I’ve already spent too many years fast-forwarding through a series of identical days, self-medicating every full moon, living a lonely and friendless existence. But at least then I had hope. I can’t do this without it.

Stepping back onto the hard concrete of reality, I retrace my steps to Doña Rosa, only this time I’m not running. As I cut through the city blocks in a clipped and determined gait, something starts to unsettle me.

At first, I think it’s the calm hollowness emanating from my decision. Then I register how much the sidewalks have emptied. Earlier, they were swarming with foot traffic, and now, I could be one of the last people left in the city.

Like the street is playing dead.

My heart stalls, and I’m back with Ma under Perla’s bed.

Waiting for agents to storm in and take us away.

I don’t know when I make the decision to run. All I know is I’m rocketing through the empty streets, moving faster than I’ve ever moved, each desperate second echoing in my head.

Tick.

I see the blue lights first.

Tick.

Flashing atop a black SUV.

Tick.

ICE is at Doña Rosa.

Excerpted from Lobizona, copyright 2020 by Romina Garber.

The post Read an Excerpt From Lobizona appeared first on Reactor.

Now she’s awakened a nightmare.

During a routine survey mission on an uncolonized planet, Kira finds an alien relic. At first she’s delighted, but elation turns to terror when the ancient dust around her begins to move.

As war erupts among the stars, Kira is launched into a galaxy-spanning odyssey of discovery and transformation. First contact isn’t at all what she imagined, and events push her to the very limits of what it means to be human.

Read To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, a brand new epic novel from New York Times bestselling author Christopher Paolini, out September 15, 2020 from Tor Books.

New chapters on Tor.com every Monday.

Chapter 6

***

Shouts & Echoes

1.

Dr. Carr stared down at her with cold disapproval. “Resume position, Navárez.”

Kira gave him the finger and walked over to the wall beneath the mirrorwindow, where he couldn’t see, and sat. As always, the spotlight followed her.

Again, Carr spoke: “Goddammit, this isn’t a game.”

She lifted her finger over her head. “I’m not working with you if you won’t listen when I say stop.”

“We don’t have time for this, Navárez. Resume position.”

“Want me to break the other S-PAC? Because I will.”

“Last warning. If you don’t—”

“Fuck off.”

Kira could almost hear the doctor fuming in the pause that followed. Then a square of reflected light appeared on the wall opposite her as the mirrorwindow clouded over.

She released the breath she’d been holding.

Stellar security be damned. The UMC couldn’t do whatever they wanted with her! It was her body, not theirs. And yet—as Carr had shown—she was at their mercy.

Kira rubbed her forearm, still in shock. She hated feeling so helpless.

After a moment, she stood and nudged the crumpled S-PAC with her foot. The xeno must have augmented her strength, same as an exoskeleton or a soldier’s battle armor. It was the only explanation for how she could have torn apart the machine.

As for the burns on her arm, only a faint ache remained to remind her of their existence. It occurred to Kira that the xeno had done everything it could to protect her throughout the tests. Lasers, acids, flames, and more—the parasite had deflected nearly everything Carr had thrown at her.

For the first time, she felt a sense of… not gratitude, but perhaps, appreciation. Whatever the suit might be, and as much as she hated it for causing the deaths of Alan and her other teammates, it was useful. In its own way, it was displaying more care for her than the UMC.

It wasn’t long before the hologram popped into existence. Kira saw the same grey room with the same grey desk, and standing at attention before it, Major Tschetter in her grey uniform. A colorless woman in a colorless room.

Before the major could speak, Kira said, “I want a lawyer.”

“The League hasn’t charged you with a criminal offense. Until such time as it does, you don’t need a lawyer.”

“Maybe not, but I want one anyway.”

The woman stared at her the way Kira imagined she would stare at a fleck of dirt on her otherwise immaculate shoes. She was from Sol, Kira felt sure of it. “Listen to me, Navárez. You’re wasting minutes that might mean the difference in lives. Maybe no one else is infected. Maybe only one other person is infected. Maybe all of us are. The point is, we have no way to tell. So stop stalling and get back to work.”

Kira made a dismissive noise. “You’re not going to figure out anything about the xeno in the next few hours, and you know it.”

Tschetter pressed her palms against the table, fingers stretched wide like talons. “I know nothing of the sort. Now be reasonable and cooperate with Doctor Carr.”

“No.”

The major tapped her fingernails against the desk. Once, twice, three times, and then no more. “Noncompliance with the Stellar Security Act is a crime, Navárez.”

“Yeah? What are you going to do, throw me in jail?”

If possible, Tschetter’s gaze grew even sharper. “You don’t want to go down this path.”

“Uh-huh.” Kira crossed her arms. “I’m a member of the League, and I have corporate citizenship through the Lapsang Trading Corporation. I have certain rights. You want to keep studying the xeno? Great, then I want some form of computer access, and I want to talk with a company rep. Send a flash back to Sixty-One Cygni. Now.”

“We can’t do that, and you know it.”

“Tough. That’s my price. And if I tell Carr to back off, then he backs off. Otherwise, you can all go jump out an airlock for all I care.”

A silence, and then Tschetter’s lips twitched and the hologram vanished.

Kira released her breath in a gust, spun around, and started to pace. Had she gone too far? She didn’t think so. Now it was up to the captain to decide whether to grant her requests.… Henriksen, that was his name. She hoped he was more fair-minded than Tschetter. A captain ought to be.

“How the hell did I end up here?” she muttered.

The ship’s hum was her only answer.

2.

Not five minutes later, the two-way mirror cleared. To Kira’s dismay, Carr was the only person standing in the observation bay. He eyed her with a sour expression.

Kira stared back, defiant.

The doctor pressed a button, and the hated spotlight reappeared. “Alright, Navárez. Enough of this. We—”

Kira turned her back on him. “Go away.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“Well I’m not going to help you until I get what I asked for. Simple as that.”

A sound made her turn. The doctor had planted both fists on the console in front of him. “Get back into position, Navárez, or else—”

“Or else what?” She snorted.

Carr’s scowl deepened, his eyes two gleaming dots buried above his fleshy cheeks. “Fine,” he snapped.

The comm clicked off, and the two S-PACs again emerged from their slots in the ceiling. The one she’d damaged had been repaired; its manipulator looked good as new.

Apprehensive, Kira dropped into a crouch as the machines moved toward her, like spider legs extending. She batted at the near one, and it dodged so fast it seemed to teleport. There was no matching the speed of a robot.

The two arms closed in at the same time. One caught her by the jaw with its cold, hard manipulators, while the other robot dove in with a syringe. Kira felt a spot of pressure behind her ear, and then the needle on the syringe snapped.

The S-PAC released her, and Kira scrambled into the center of the cell, panting. The hell? In the mirror-window, the doctor was frowning and staring at something on his overlays.

Kira felt behind her ear. What had been bare skin just hours before was now covered by a thin layer of the suit’s material. Her scalp tingled; the skin along the edges of her neck and face felt as if it were crawling. The sensation intensified—becoming a cold fire that pricked and stung—as if the xeno were struggling to move. But it didn’t.

Once again the creature had protected her.

Kira looked up at Carr. He was leaning against the equipment in front of him, staring down at her with a heavy frown, his forehead shiny with sweat.

Then he turned and left the mirror-window.

Kira released a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Adrenaline was still coursing through her.

A loud thud sounded outside the pressure door.

3.

Kira froze. What now?

Somewhere a bolt snapped open and atmospheric pumps whined. Then a row of lights across the center of the door flashed yellow, and the lock rotated and decoupled from the wall.

Kira swallowed hard. Surely Carr wasn’t going to send someone in there with her!

Metal scraped against metal as the door slid open.

Beyond it was a small decon chamber, still hazy with mist from the chemical spray. In the haze stood two hulking shadows, backlit by blue warning lights mounted on the ceiling.

The shadows moved: loader bots, covered from top to bottom in blast armor, black and massive and scarred from use. No weapons, but between them sat a wheeled exam table with racks of medical equipment mounted underneath the mattress. Shackles hung at each of the four corners of the bed, and straps too: restraints for unruly patients.

Like her.

Kira recoiled. “No!” She glanced at the two-way mirror. “You can’t do this!”

The bots’ heavy feet clanked as they stepped into the cell, pushing the exam table before them. The wheels squealed with protest.

In the periphery of her vision, Kira saw the S-PAC machines approaching from either side, manipulators spread wide.

Her pulse spiked.

“Citizen Navárez,” said the rightmost bot. Its voice was staticky out of the cheap speaker embedded in its torso. “Turn around and put your hands on the wall.”

“No.”

“If you resist, we are authorized to use force. You have five seconds to comply. Turn around and put your hands on the wall.”

“Go jump out an airlock.”

The two bots stopped the exam table in the middle of the room. Then they started toward her while, at the same time, the S-PACs darted in from the sides.

Kira did the only thing she could think of: she dropped into a sitting fetal position, arms wrapped around her legs, forehead buried against her knees. The suit had hardened in response to the scalpel; maybe it could harden again and keep the machines from strapping her to the table. Please, please, please…

At first it seemed her prayer would go unanswered.

Then, as the grippers at the end of the S-PACs touched her sides, her skin stiffened and constricted. Yes! A brief moment of relief as Kira felt herself locking into position, the fibers twining together in places where flesh touched flesh, welding her into a single, solid piece.

The S-PACs snapped against her sides, unable to find purchase against the now slick, shell-like veneer of the suit. Her breath came in short, gasping gulps, stifling hot in the pocket of space between her mouth and legs.

Then the battle bots were upon her. Their giant metal fingers clamped down on her arms, and she felt them lift her off the floor and carry her toward the exam table.

“Let me go!” Kira shouted, not breaking position. The frantic tempo of her pulse outraced her thoughts, filled her ears with a sound like a roaring waterfall.

Cold plastic touched her ass as the bots lowered her onto the exam table.

Curled as she was, none of the shackles could be secured around her wrists or ankles. Nor would any of the straps work. They were meant to be used on a person lying down, not sitting up.

“Citizen Navárez, noncompliance is a criminal offense. Cooperate now, or—”

“No!!!”

The bots pulled on her arms and legs, trying to stretch her out. The suit refused to give. Two hundred–some kilos of powered metal for each machine, and they couldn’t break the fibers that bound her in place.

The S-PACs made a futile attempt to help, their manipulators scrabbling against her neck and back—oil-slick fingers attempting to grasp hold of greased glass.

Kira felt as if she were trapped in a tiny box, the soft walls pressing in on her, suffocating. But she stayed curled up, refusing to budge. It was her only way of fighting back, and she’d sooner pass out than give Carr the satisfaction of victory.

The machines retreated for a moment, and then the four of them began to bustle about her in an organized fashion: removing equipment from the racks underneath the mattress, adjusting a diagnostic scanner to accommodate her fetal position, laying out tools on a tray by her feet… With a sense of anger, Kira realized Carr was going to continue with his tests and there was nothing she could do about it. The S-PACs she might have been able to break, but not the loader bots; they were too big, and if she tried, they’d just lock her to the table and then she’d be even more at their mercy.

So Kira didn’t move, although sometimes the machines repositioned her for their own reasons. She couldn’t see what they were doing, but she could hear, and she could feel. Every few seconds an instrument of some kind touched her back or sides, scraping, pushing, drilling, or otherwise attacking the skin of the suit. Liquids poured across her head and neck, much to her annoyance. Once she heard the clicks of a Geiger counter. Another time she felt a cutting disk make contact with her arm, and her skin grew warm while the strobelike flash of flying sparks illuminated the dark crannies around her face. And all the while, the scanner arm kept moving around her—whirring, beeping, humming—moving in perfect coordination with the loader bots and the two S-PACs.

Kira yelped as a laser blast drilled into her thigh. No.… More blasts followed, on different parts of her body, and each blast was a burning jab of pain. The smell of burnt flesh and burnt xeno filled the air, acrid and unpleasant.

She bit her tongue to keep from crying out again, but the pain was pervasive and overwhelming. The constant bzzt of the discharging laser accompanied each pulse. Soon just hearing the sound was enough to make her flinch. Sometimes the xeno would protect her and she’d hear a piece of the table or the floor or the walls vaporize. But the S-PACs kept rotating the wavelength of the laser, avoiding the suit’s adaptations.

It was like a tattoo machine from hell.

Then the pulses grew faster as the robots fired in bursts that allowed for continuous cutting, the bzzts forming a single jagged tone that vibrated in her teeth. Kira screamed as the flickering beam carved down her side, attempting to slice away the xeno, force it to retreat. Her blood sputtered and hissed as it evaporated.

Kira refused to break form. But she kept screaming until her throat was raw and slick with blood. She couldn’t help it. The pain was too great.

As the laser burned another track, her pride fled. She no longer cared about appearing weak; escaping the pain had become the sole focus of her existence. She begged Carr to stop, begged and begged and begged, to no effect. He didn’t even respond.

Between the lashings of agony, fragments of memories passed through Kira’s mind… Alan; her father tending his Midnight Constellations; her sister, Isthah, chasing her through the racks in the storage room; Alan laughing; the weight of the ring sliding onto her finger; the loneliness of her first posting; a comet streaking across the face of a nebula. And more she failed to recognize.

How long it went on, Kira didn’t know. She retreated deep into the core of herself and clung to one thought above all else: this too shall pass.

…

The machines stopped.

Kira remained frozen where she was, sobbing and barely conscious. At any moment, she expected the laser to hit her again.

“Stay where you are, Citizen,” said one of the loader bots. “Any attempt to escape will be met with lethal force.” There was a whine of motors as the S-PACs retreated into the ceiling, and a heavy series of steps as the two loader bots moved away from the exam table. But they didn’t return the way they’d come.

Instead, Kira heard them trundle over to the airlock. It clanked open. Her gut went ice-cold as fear flooded her. What were they doing? Surely they weren’t going to vent the cell? They wouldn’t. They couldn’t…

The loader bots entered the airlock, and to Kira’s relief, the door closed after them, although it did nothing to lessen her confusion.

And then… silence. The airlock didn’t cycle. The intercom didn’t turn on. The only sounds were of her breathing and the fans circulating the atmosphere and the distant rumble of the ship’s engines.

4.

Kira’s sobs slowly ran out. The pain was fading to a dull ache as the suit bandaged and healed her wounds. She stayed curled into a ball, though, halfconvinced that Carr was pulling a trick on her.

For a long, empty while she waited, listening to the ambient sounds of the Extenuating Circumstances for any hint she might be attacked again.

In time, she began to relax. The xeno relaxed with her, allowing the different parts of her body to unstick from one another.

Lifting her head, Kira looked around.

Aside from the exam table and a few new scorch marks, the cell appeared the same as before… as if Carr hadn’t just spent the last few hours (or however long it had been) torturing her. Through the airlock window, she could see the loader bots standing one next to the other, locked into hard points along the curving wall. Standing. Waiting. Watching.

She understood now. The UMC didn’t want to allow the bots back into the main area of the ship. Not when they were worried about contamination. But they also didn’t want to leave the bots where she could access them.

Kira shivered. She swung her legs over the side of the table and slid to the floor. Her knees were stiff, and she felt sick and shaky, as if she’d just finished a set of sprints.

No evidence of her injuries remained; the surface of the xeno looked the same as before. Kira pressed her hand against her side, where the laser had cut deepest. A sudden throb of pain caused her to suck in her breath. So she wasn’t entirely healed.

She sent a hate-filled glance toward the mirror.

How far would Captain Henriksen allow Carr to go? What were their limits? If they were truly scared of the xeno, was any measure too far? Kira knew how the politicians would spin it: “In order to protect the League of Worlds, extraordinary measures had to be taken.”

…had to be taken. They always used the passive voice when acknowledging a mistake.

She didn’t know exactly what time it was, but she knew they were getting close to their final deadline. Was that why Carr had left off tormenting her? Because more xenos were emerging among the crew of the Extenuating Circumstances?

Kira eyed the closed pressure door. If so, it would be chaos throughout the ship. She couldn’t hear anything, though: no screams, no alarms, no pressure breaches.

She rubbed her arms, feeling cold as she remembered the breach on Serris, during her third mission out of Weyland’s system. A pressure dome on the mining outpost had failed, nearly killing her and everyone else.… The whistle of escaping air still gave her nightmares.

The cold was spreading throughout her body. It felt as if her blood pressure was dropping, a horrible, doom-laden sensation. In a detached way, Kira realized the ordeal had left her in shock. Her teeth chattered, and she hugged herself.

Maybe something on the exam table could help.

Kira went to examine it.

Scanner, oxygen mask, tissue regenerator, chip-lab, and more besides. Nothing overtly dangerous, and nothing to help her with the shock. Mounted at one end of the bed was a bank of vials containing various drugs. The vials were sealed with molecular locks; she wouldn’t be opening them any time soon. Underneath the mattress hung a canister of liquid nitrogen, beaded with condensation.

Feeling suddenly weak and light-headed, Kira sank to the floor, keeping a hand on the wall for balance. How long had it been since she’d had any sort of food? Too long. Surely the UMC wouldn’t let her starve. At some point Carr would feed her.

He’d just have to, right?

5.

Kira kept expecting Carr to reappear, but he didn’t. Nor did anyone else come to talk with her. That was just fine, as far as she was concerned. Right then, she just wanted to be left alone.

Still, without her overlays, being alone was its own special form of torture. All she had were her thoughts and memories, and neither of those were particularly pleasant at the moment.

She tried closing her eyes. It didn’t work. She kept seeing the loader bots. Or if not them, the last, horrifying moments on Adra, and each time, her heart rate spiked and she broke into a hot sweat.

“Dammit,” she muttered. Then, “Bishop, you there?”

The ship mind didn’t answer. She wasn’t even sure he heard, or if he did, if he was allowed to answer.

Desperate for a distraction, and with nothing else to do, Kira decided to run an experiment of her own. The suit could harden in response to threat/pressure/stimuli. Okay. How did it decide what constituted a threat? And was that something she could influence?

Ducking her head between her arms, where no one else could see, Kira concentrated on the inner part of her elbow. Then she imagined the tip of a knife pressing into her arm, breaking the skin… pushing into the muscles and tendons beneath.

No change.

She tried twice more, struggling to make her imagining as real as possible. She used the memory of past pains to help, and on the third attempt, she felt the crease of her elbow harden, a scar-like pucker drawing together her skin.

After that, it got easier. With each attempt, the suit became more responsive, as if it were learning. Interpreting. Understanding. A frightening prospect.

At the thought, the thing constricted across the whole of her body.

Kira sucked in her breath, caught by surprise.

A deep sense of unease formed in her as she sat staring at the weave of fused fibers on her palms. She’d been concerned, and the suit had reacted to that concern. It had read her emotions without her making any attempt to impose them on the organism.

The unease turned to poison in her veins. That last day on Adra, she’d been so upset and out of sorts, and then during the night, when Neghar had started vomiting blood, she’d been so afraid, so incredibly afraid.… No! Kira recoiled from the thought. It was the UMC’s fault that Alan had died. Dr. Carr had failed, and because of his failure, the xeno had emerged the way it had. He was the one to blame, not… not…

Kira hopped to her feet and started pacing: four steps in one direction, four steps in the other.

Moving helped shift her thoughts from the horror of Adra to things more familiar, more comforting. She remembered sitting with her father on the bank of the stream by their house and listening to his stories of life on Stewart’s World. She remembered Neghar jumping up and hooting after beating Yugo at a racing game, and long days working with Marie-Élise under Adra’s sulfurous sky.

And she remembered lying with Alan and talking, talking, talking about life and the universe and all the things they wanted to do.

“Someday,” he said, “when I’m old and rich, I’ll have my own spaceship. Just you wait.”

“What would you do with your own spaceship?”

He looked at her, serious as could be. “I’d make a long jump. As long as I could. Out toward the far rim of the galaxy.”

“Why?” she’d whispered.

“To see what’s out there. To fly into the deep depths and carve my name on an empty planet. To know. To understand. The same reason I came to Adra. Why else?”

The thought had scared and excited Kira, and she’d snuggled closer to him, the warmth of their bodies banishing the empty reaches of space from her mind.

6.

BOOM.

The deck shuddered, and Kira’s eyes snapped open, adrenaline pumping through her. She was lying against the curve of the wall. The dull red glow of ship-night permeated the holding cell. Late or early, she couldn’t tell.

Another tremor jolted the ship. She heard screeches and bangs and what sounded like alarms. Goosebumps crawled across her skin, and the suit stiffened. Their worst fears had come true; more xenos were emerging. How many of the crew were affected?

She pushed herself into a sitting position, and a veil of dust fell from her skin. The thing’s skin.

Startled, Kira froze. The powder was grey and fine and smooth as silk. Spores? She immediately wished for a respirator. Not that it would do any good.

Then she noticed she was sitting in a shallow depression that perfectly matched the shape of her sleeping body. Somehow she’d sunk several millimeters into the deck, as if the black substance coating her were corrosive. The sight both puzzled her and increased her revulsion. Now the thing had turned her into a toxic object. Was it even safe for someone to touch her? If the—

The cell tilted around her and she flew across the room and slammed into the wall along with the dust, which poofed out in a cloud. The impact knocked the breath out of her. The exam table crashed next to her, parts flying loose.

An emergency burn. But why? The thrust grew stronger… stronger… It felt like two g’s. Then three. Then four. Her cheeks pulled against her skull, stretching, and a lead blanket seemed to weigh her down.

A strange vibration passed through the wall, as if a giant drum had been struck, and the thrust vanished.

Kira fell on all fours and gasped for breath.

Somewhere nearby, something banged against the hull of the ship, and she heard the pop and rattle of what sounded like… gunfire?

And then Kira felt it: an aching summons, tugging her toward a place outside the ship, tugging on her like a string anchored in her chest.

At first, disbelief. It had been so long since the summons had been laid upon her, so very long since she had been called to perform her sacred duty. Then exultation at the much-delayed return. Now the pattern could be fulfilled, as once before.

A disjunction, and she stood in familiar flesh upon a now-vanished cliff, at the moment when she had first felt the compulsion that could be resisted but never ignored. She turned, following it, and saw in the gradient sky a ruddy star wink and waver, and she knew it was the signal’s source.

And she obeyed, as was only right. For hers was to serve, and serve she would.

Kira gasped as she returned to herself. And she knew. They weren’t facing an infestation. They were facing an invasion.

The owners of the suit had come to claim her.

Excerpted from To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, copyright © 2020 by Christopher Paolini.

The post Read To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini: Chapter 6: “Shouts & Echoes” appeared first on Reactor.

This is the absolutely true account of how Lansburg, Pennsylvania was invaded by aliens and the weeks of chaos that followed. There were sightings of UFOs, close encounters, and even abductions. There were believers, Truth Seekers, and, above all, people who looked to the sky and hoped for more.

Only…there were no aliens.

Gideon Hofstadt knows what really happened. When one of his science experiments went wrong, he and his older brother blamed the resulting explosion on extraterrestrial activity. And their lie was not only believed by their town―it was embraced. As the brothers go to increasingly greater lengths to keep up the ruse and avoid getting caught, the hoax flourishes. But Gideon’s obsession with their tale threatened his whole world. Can he find a way to banish the aliens before Lansburg, and his life, are changed forever?

To Whom It May Concern:

My name is Gideon P. Hofstadt and this is the 100 percent authentic, truthful, nothing-held-back account of what happened this past autumn. It’s the story of how extraterrestrials came to Lansburg, Pennsylvania, and the chaos that followed.

There were sightings of unidentified flying objects.

There were close encounters of the fourth kind.

And, of course, there was The Incident, which you may have already heard about.

It’s only right to begin this manuscript by clarifying one significant detail: there were never really aliens.

In the beginning— before the Seekers, before the media circus, before the promise of an extraterrestrial fountain of youth— there was only me and my brother.

Gideon and Ishmael Hofstadt, ages sixteen and seventeen, respectively.

Just us and an abandoned field.

And a mishap that became a lie.

And a lie that became the greatest hoax the world has ever seen.

* * *

EVENT: Inception
DATE: SEPT. 7 (THURS.)

It began with an explosion.

The explosion was intentional. The events that followed were not.

On the evening in question, I was in my lab—a converted outbuilding in a field on my parents’ farm.

I’d been given permission to use it two years earlier, when I was a freshman in high school. I could’ve taken over the spacious barn instead but was deterred by its proximity to the house. Besides, even though animals hadn’t been kept there for decades, the smell of horses lingered.

I didn’t enjoy the smell of horses. I didn’t enjoy horses in general. The only animal I routinely tolerated was my cat, Kepler. Unlike most four-legged creatures, Kepler wasn’t loud or dirty, and he shared my distrust of most people.

But I digress.

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It Came From the Sky

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It Came From the Sky

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To prepare for that evening’s experiment, I’d calculated the expected force of the explosion versus the distance from the blast site to the house, where my parents were engrossed in Pitch, Please, a reality show where contestants pitched ideas for America’s next reality show. From their spot in the living room, they’d be oblivious to the blast. While Mother and Father were usually lenient about my science experiments, I imagined their tolerance didn’t extend to bombs.

I gazed lovingly at my newly built seismograph, which was inspired by the online geodynamics course I was taking. Tonight’s explosion would allow me to test the seismograph’s sensitivity. As an added bonus, the blast might be large enough to register on other, nearby seismographs as well. Some of those seismographs, like the one at The Ohio State University, had publicly available data.

After doing my own reading, I could compare data from OSU’s seismograph and…

Well, I didn’t know, exactly. I supposed it would seem like an achievement to look at professional data and see a registered quake event I’d designed.

I opened a document on my laptop, noted the time, and observed that the seismograph seemed to be running properly. The explosion would be the final test, proof that my build was successful. And as soon as Ishmael returned, the detonation would commence.

But where was he? I’d sent my brother to double-check the explosives we’d set up in a field at the edge of the farm. It should have only taken a minute, but he still hadn’t come back. It would be typical of him to lose interest in the experiment at the most pivotal moment.

I now realize I shouldn’t have let him get involved in the first place. I should’ve wondered why he even wanted to be involved. But I ignored the warning signs, because I enjoyed having an assistant. And yes, I also enjoyed having someone to lecture about science, even if he wasn’t paying attention 82 percent of the time.

I paced back and forth—as much as one can pace in a twelve-by-fifteen-foot shed—getting increasingly anxious. I cleaned the lens of my telescope. I straightened bins of electronic components and checked the soldering I’d recently done on my Arduino. For a long moment, I gazed at my poster of the Andromeda galaxy.

I’d just decided to go looking for Ishmael when the door flew open and he waltzed in, as if time was not, and had never been, of the essence.

He was eating an ice cream cone.

“You got ice cream? I told you to hurry, and you got ice cream?”

“Chill,” Ishmael said. “It’s from the house. It’s not like I drove to Super Scoop or something.”

“You know the rule about food and drink in the lab.”

“Oh, come on,” he said.

In my lifetime of being Ishmael’s brother, I’d learned to pick and choose my battles. Food in the lab was a battle I always chose. I crossed my arms and waited.

“Seriously?” he whined. I watched strawberry ice cream drip down the side of the cone and threaten to fall on the clean floor.

Finally, he sighed. “Okay, fine.”

He turned back to the open door and tossed his ice cream cone into the field. I watched its trajectory with a scowl. “Was that necessary?”

“What?” Ishmael asked. “It’s degradable, right?”

“You mean biodegradable.”

“Whatever.”

My blood pressure was rising. I just wanted to test my seismograph. “Can we get started now?”

Ishmael grinned, the ice cream already forgotten. “Let’s do this.”

I moved toward my equipment.

“Oh, wait!” Ishmael said. I turned back to him. With a dramatic flourish, he fastened the topmost button on his Hawaiian shirt— even in the chill of the September evening, Ishmael’s personal style trended toward ’80s beach movie. “All right. I feel professional now.”

I ignored my brother’s theatrics, because the moment had finally arrived. I forgot about him showing up late, with ice cream. I forgot about the questions he’d asked in the past two weeks, an eager glint in his eyes: How big will this explosion be? Are you sure a bigger explosion wouldn’t be better for your research? But, if you did want to make it bigger, could you? I forgot everything except the task at hand.

I walked to the table where the equipment was set up and picked up the detonator.

“Dude,” Ishmael said, “this is just like a movie.”

It was not like a movie.

It was science.

“Are you sure I can’t go outside to watch the explosion?” Ishmael asked.

“My answer is the same as the other twelve times you asked.”

I wasn’t expecting a large blast, and the explosives were set up decently far from us, but safety came first in all scientific pursuits.

“Can I press the button at least?”

“Shut up, Ishmael,” I said.

I licked my lips. I took a deep breath. I looked affectionately at my seismograph, a machine I’d poured so much energy into.

Then I pressed the detonator.

The explosion rocked my lab. Shelves shook. A book fell off the table. Dust flew into the air.

And the sound.

It was loud.

Even after the noise subsided, my ears rang. A burnt smell filled my nostrils and dread twisted my stomach in knots. The explosion was larger than I’d anticipated. Much, much larger. How had my calculations been so inaccurate?

I looked at Ishmael. His eyes were wide, his face ashen.

“Shit,” he said.

We turned and jetted for the door.

Ishmael beat me outside. I followed, racing across the field, choking on dust and smoke. When Ishmael stopped short, we collided. I moved around him to see what had caused his sudden halt.

There was a crater. The explosion caused a crater.

My brother and I stood side by side, gazing at the new geological feature of our parents’ farm.

“Ishmael?” I said in an even tone that didn’t betray my rising panic.

“Yeah?”

“Can you explain this to me?”

He hesitated. “I… Well, I thought the explosion should be a little bigger. You know. To help with the sizeograph or whatever.”

“Goddammit, Ishmael.”

In front of us, a patch of dry grass burst into flame. Ishmael and I rushed over and frantically stomped the fire out. I was so focused, I didn’t see my parents running through the field toward us. It wasn’t until I heard their shouts that I looked up and saw their horrified expressions.

My father immediately joined the fire stomp. My mother gaped at the hole, one hand pressed to her chest. Across the field, I saw my sister, Maggie, also making her way over to us.

By the time the fire—and the smaller fires it spawned—were extinguished, I was panting from exertion. My brother and father were hardly winded.

As I watched, Father’s expression shifted from concern to rage. “What the hell happened here?”

“Vic—” Mother began.

“No,” Father stopped her. “I want to hear what the boys have to say.”

My heart sank. I was going to get my lab taken away. After the mishap last May, I was warned I was on my last chance before losing all out-of-school science privileges.

“Let me see if they’re okay first,” Mother replied.

“They look fine to me,” Maggie said, joining the rest of us. She nonchalantly pulled her brown ponytail through the back of her baseball cap, but there was no denying the gleam in her eyes. She was enjoying the spectacle.

Mother fussed over me, grabbing my chin and moving my face from side to side, as if making sure everything was still in place.

“Mother, really. I’m okay,” I said, ducking away.

“Someone better start talking,” Father ordered.

I opened my mouth to plead my case, but my brother beat me to it.

“We don’t know what happened!”

Father crossed his arms, covering the Pittsburgh Pirates logo stretched across his chest. “You don’t know?”

“Right,” Ishmael confirmed.

“There’s a hole the size of a pickup truck in our field, and you don’t know how it got here?”

“Well, see, we were in Gideon’s lab doing, you know, science. And then there was this sound. Out of nowhere, boom! So we ran outside and…” Ishmael gestured toward the crater. “I think it came from the sky.”

Mother gasped. Father narrowed his eyes. I silently pleaded for my brother to stop talking because I doubted there was even a 5 percent chance my parents would believe a mystery object had fallen from the sky.

“It came from the sky,” Father repeated evenly.

“Right,” Ishmael agreed.

“What came from the sky? I don’t see anything here but a hole.”

“Maybe it was, you know…” Ishmael floundered.

I wanted to make the situation go away. I needed to make the situation go away. Which meant, unfortunately, assisting my brother. I looked at my parents and said, “A meteor. It could have been a meteor.”

“Yeah, a meteor! It must have, like, fallen from the sky and exploded itself or something. That can happen with meteors, right?”

Technically, yes.

But before I could share that information, I saw a sight even more alarming than the crater: the chief of police walking across the field toward us.

COLLECTED DATA
INTERVIEW

ISHMAEL: When I saw Chief Kaufman I totally freaked, because, like, how did she even get there so fast? And I kept looking at you for—

INTERVIEWER: Do you remember what we talked about? About pretending I wasn’t there?

ISHMAEL: But you were there, dude. It’s super weird to pretend you weren’t.

INTERVIEWER: Ishmael. This is supposed to be impartial. If the readers of this account know the person conducting interviews was intimately involved in the situation, they’ll think the data is compromised.

ISHMAEL: But isn’t it compromised?

INTERVIEWER: Please just do this my way.

ISHMAEL: Also, can you not use the word “intimate”? It sounds sexual, which is pretty awkward.

INTERVIEWER: It has nothing to do with sex. Intimate means close. I was closely involved with the situation.

ISHMAEL: Then why can’t you just say closely? Why do you have to make it weird?

INTERVIEWER: Ishmael!

ISHMAEL: Okay, fine. Whatever. Should I start over?

INTERVIEWER: Just pick up where you left off.

ISHMAEL: There’s no reason to get upset, dude. Anyway, as I was saying… What was I saying? Oh yeah, I saw Chief Kaufman and was like, “Whoa, did you teleport here?” Then I realized she’d come over to see Dad and it was just, like, majorly bad timing that she got there during the explosion. I guess I wouldn’t have said something fell from the sky if I’d known the police were gonna get involved, but by that time it was too late to take it back. But, I mean… it wasn’t that bad of an excuse, was it?

Excerpted from It Came From the Sky, copyright 2020 by Chelsea Sedoti

The post Read an Excerpt From It Came From the Sky appeared first on Reactor.

When a deadly Fly Flu sweeps the globe, it leaves a shell of the world that once was. Among the survivors are eighteen-year-old Nico and her dog, on a voyage devised by Nico’s father to find a mythical portal; a young artist named Kit, raised in an old abandoned cinema; and the enigmatic Deliverer, who lives Life after Life in an attempt to put the world back together.

As swarms of infected Flies roam the earth, these few survivors navigate the woods of post-apocalyptic New England, meeting others along the way, each on their own quest to find life and light in a world gone dark. The Electric Kingdom is a sweeping exploration of love, art, storytelling, eternal life, and above all, a testament to the notion that even in an exterminated world, one person might find beauty in another.

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David Arnold lives in Lexington, Kentucky, with his (lovely) wife and (boisterous) son. He is the New York Times bestselling author of Kids of Appetite, Mosquitoland, and The Strange Fascinations of Noah Hypnotik. His books have been translated into a dozen languages.

NICO

Etymologies

Years ago, long before the narration of her father turned unreliable, dissolving like one of those Sweet’N Lows in his favorite stale black tea, Nico would climb into his armchair and sit in his lap as he read The Phantom Tollbooth or Tuck Everlasting or any one of the hundreds of books in the cozy-dank Farmhouse library, and even now, even here, she could smell her father’s beard, feel the glow of flames from the fireplace, hear the soothing salivary tones of his reading voice, and Nico wondered if perhaps that was life after life: not a physical place, but a loop of some former time in which a person, after death, was allowed to relive over and over again. There, in a story, in her father’s armchair—in her father’s arms—Nico hoped that was the afterlife.

She supposed she would know soon enough.

Constellations

Nico stared into fire. Beside her, Harry’s breathing had long ago fallen into time with hers, and she thought that one could hardly call them two separate entities, that at some point between yesterday and today, she and her dog had consolidated into a single, cosmically connected creature of survival. Maybe this telepathic bond had been there all along, lying dormant below the surface; maybe it took leaving the Farmhouse, entering the wild, to coax it out.

All around, the trees were thick: every few feet, the base of a trunk exploded from the earth, rose up into the sky where branches reached like arms to hold hands with other branches, tree-sisters and tree-brothers seeking touch, listening for words of comfort in the dark night. I am here. You are not alone.

The thought of trees talking to each other warmed Nico’s stomach.

She pulled a pen from her bag, held the back of her hand up to the firelight. There, in the space between her thumb and forefinger, was a single line in ink. Carefully, she drew a second line beside it. According to the map, the Merrimack River ran over a hundred miles from New Hampshire to Massachusetts before spilling into the Atlantic Ocean. It helped to think of the woods on a large scale; by contrast, their walk in them seemed minuscule, their destination much closer than it actually was.

She stared at the lines on her hand: two days down. At the rate they were going, she hoped to reach the river by the fourth tally, leaving her with four more to get to Manchester.

Not the Kingdom of Manchester. Just Manchester. She could still hear her father’s voice: The Waters of Kairos are real. Manchester is a real place…

She knew Manchester (or what was left of it) existed. Outside of that, she wasn’t sure what to believe. Her father had seemed lucid enough, though the line between lucidity and opacity had blurred considerably these past weeks. The problem was, there was no protocol in place, no books on the shelf, nobody in the wide empty world to help her answer this question: What do you do when the person you most trust hands you a fiction and calls it fact?

On her back now, tucked into the sleeping bag, Nico looked up at the stars and thought of her parents. How quickly her memories of them had come to resemble a place more than a person: a permanent imprint in the armchair, a dusty seat at the dinner table, the empty mantel by the fireplace, her mother’s dog-eared Bible. So long as they lived in the Farmhouse, the Farmhouse lived. It was the body and they were the heart. But it was quickly becoming a ghost, every nook and cranny a whispered reminder that her mother was gone, her father wasn’t far behind, the beating heart was winding down.

The fire popped; beside her, Harry shimmied in his sleep, his front and back haunches lurching in a running motion, chasing the squirrel or rabbit of his dreams.

Winters in the Farmhouse were cold, but Nico found comfort in them: cozy spots, always a fire, an extra blanket or two. It was late October now, what her mother called pre-winter, when the year skipped fall altogether and the sun went to bed early. Out here, she felt she was seeing the true nature of cold, a bitter-bleak affair. At least once, probably twice in the night, she would wake up freezing and add wood to the fire. Still, bitter-bleak or not, here was the truth: part of her—a small part, buried under the threat of woods and Flies, the loss of her mother, the fear of reaching Manchester to find nothing at all—down there, burrowed in, was a part of Nico that was glad to be out here. That she’d made the unknowable horizon known, reached out and grabbed it, turned it like a glass doll in her hands.

Around her, the sounds of the wild undulated, rolled in loudly, flowed out softly; a circular pattern took shape in the sky, the stars themselves a cosmic connect-the-dots. Soon she would be asleep in Harry’s musky scent, dreaming of herself in a little boat at sea, being pulled by an orca, guided by a large bright eye in the sky.

For now she looked to the stars for answers. “How can I fight this darkness?”

The stars were cold and uncaring as ever.

Furies

“What do you get when your dog makes you breakfast?”

Having finished his strawberry granola, Harry looked up at her expectantly.

“Pooched eggs,” said Nico.

A single tail wag; it was the best she could hope for.

Breakfast today was the same as it had been yesterday: one serving of strawberry granola crunch and a strip of rabbit jerky apiece. It would be lunch and dinner, too.

Blood was the stuff of lore. A long lineage of logic she would never understand, but which her parents had locked on to in the early days of the Flies, when she was still a baby. They maintained live traps along the Farmhouse perimeter, mostly for rabbits, the occasional gopher, but never doing the killing outside. The cellar was for slaughter, skinning, dressing.

Whatever the logic, it had apparently embedded itself in her.

She could not bring herself to hunt.

Luckily, her dad had been economical in his packing, raiding the food supply buckets for lightweight items. Most of the freeze-dried dinners were out; they required too much space, weight, preparation. There was no chili mac (her favorite), but plenty of strawberry granola (palatable), and a good amount of her dad’s homemade jerky. Aside from food, her backpack contained a water-filter bottle, sleeping bag and bedroll, two gallon-size ziplocks of lighters, a compass, folding knife, map, extra socks, a small first aid kit, and packs of ground cinnamon. So long as strict attention was paid to rations, their meals would be taken care of, and they had enough Fly repellent to last weeks.

Nico sat with her back against a tree, savoring the jerky. “Why aren’t koalas actual bears?”

Harry tilted his head as if to say, Go ahead then. It was a look inherited from his mother, Harriet, whose death would have been unbearable were it not for those same humanoid eyes she’d passed on to her pup. (As for the breed of Harry’s father, there was really no way to know, given Harriet’s propensity to disappear into the woods for days at a time.)

Harry was a medium-size two-year-old, perky ears, dark black fur. Like his mother, he was playful without being needy, more intuition than simple smarts.

“So now you say, ‘I don’t know, Nico, why aren’t koalas actual bears?’ And I say, ‘Because they don’t meet the koalafications.’”

Not even a wag this time.

Nico stood, kicked dirt on the remains of the fire. She wrapped herself in her coat, pulled on the backpack, and was about to set out when a deer appeared, and it began to snow, and it felt like the one had been waiting on the other.

Her mother had often complained how much of the wildlife had been wiped out by Flies. Squirrels had survived, and rabbits, all things rascally and quick, animals that knew how to live in claustrophobic places. Nico had seen a moose once: enormous, mythical, like something from a storybook. But that was years ago.

They stared at the deer, and it stared back, two dark orbs inside white eye rings, and time slowed to little wisps, gliding like one of these thousand snowflakes to the ground. Grayish-brown skin. Antlers. “A whitetail,” whispered Nico. A buck, though it had been in a fight or suffered some sickness, as the antlers on one side of its head were gone, and a back leg was bleeding.

Sunk in the animal’s glow, she didn’t hear it at first.

Then, in the distance, a low hum…

Swarms had a way of conjuring sounds she’d only imagined: a fleet of trains, a collapsing skyscraper from one of the old cities, the cyclone in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. From the Farmhouse cellar, it was hard to tell whether a swarm’s volume was due to size or proximity.

She put a hand on Harry’s head, felt him trembling. “Easy,” she whispered, scanning the area for places to hide. “Easy…”

The whitetail raised its lopsided head to the sky, its nostrils flared…

It happened fast: the humming burst from the trees, a deafening roar now, and the Flies came down like holy thunder, a celestial arm from the sky. She jumped behind a tree, yelled for Harry, but he’d run off somewhere, where, where, she couldn’t see him, and now she was on the ground, couldn’t remember falling, heart pounding against the quaking earth. From where she fell, she saw the whitetail covered in Flies, and for the first time in her life, she understood the fury of the swarm.

By the tens of thousands they worked as one until there was no visible grayish-brown fur, no broken antlers or red blood, no deer at all, only a deer-shaped thing, black and pulsing. The deer barked, a nightmarish screech, and as the Flies began lifting it off the ground, Nico buried her face, covered her ears, and did not move until she felt Harry’s warm breath and wet nose against the back of her neck. And even though it was quiet again, the thunder in her head lingered.

Excerpt from The Electric Kingdom, Viking Children’s Books, copyright © by David Arnold

The post Revealing David Arnold’s The Electric Kingdom appeared first on Reactor.

We’re excited to share an excerpt from Linden A. Lewis’ debut novel The First Sister, publishing August 4th with Skybound Books.

First Sister has no name and no voice. As a priestess of the Sisterhood, she travels the stars alongside the soldiers of Earth and Mars—the same ones who own the rights to her body and soul. When her former captain abandons her, First Sister’s hopes for freedom are dashed when she is forced to stay on her ship with no friends, no power, and a new captain—Saito Ren—whom she knows nothing about. She is commanded to spy on Captain Ren by the Sisterhood, but soon discovers that working for the war effort is so much harder to do when you’re falling in love.

Lito val Lucius climbed his way out of the slums to become an elite soldier of Venus, but was defeated in combat by none other than Saito Ren, resulting in the disappearance of his partner, Hiro. When Lito learns that Hiro is both alive and a traitor to the cause, he now has a shot at redemption: track down and kill his former partner. But when he discovers recordings that Hiro secretly made, Lito’s own allegiances are put to the test. Ultimately, he must decide between following orders and following his heart.

CHAPTER 1

[14] The men came unto Sister Marian and demanded of her the truth that belonged to her Captain. [15] But Sister Marian was a woman of the Goddess and refused them. [16] She said unto them, “By betraying my Captain, I betray myself.” [17] And she took the knife with which she prepared the supper for her Captain and cut out her tongue, so that no man might compel her to speak.

–The Canon, Works 3:14–17

The new fool captain arrives in two hours, so I sort my belongings and pack them into a small bag. Even with all of them together, I have plenty of room. Ringer offered me one of the military trunks that all Gean soldiers keep locked at the ends of their cots, but I refused him because there is nothing I can take that does not technically belong to the battleship ACS Juno, my gray uniforms included. My shoulder bag carries only three sets of underclothes and one pair of boots, but I hold tight to it regardless; just because these items are nothing important does not mean I will leave them behind for the next person who claims my title. What’s mine is mine, even if the room no longer will be. Today I am leaving this ship, and I refuse to come back.

Will I miss it? It’s not the bed, wide enough for two, or the immense size of the suite, nearly three times larger than the rooms the other Sisters share, that will carve this space into my mind; it’s the presence of memories here, haunting me like ghosts. I remember lying sprawled beneath the livecam screen, watching the stars streak past. The way the sheets brushed against my cheek, soft as silk, when I pressed my face into the pillows. How I would wake in the night and feel steady, recognizing even the shadows in the corners, instead of lost in an unfamiliar land.

I shouldn’t miss it, though. Soon I will have a whole house full of beautiful rooms like this one.

To think, I will own a house. Me, who has never owned anything substantial in her entire life. I shouldn’t care that Second Sister will move into this room when I leave, this place as close to a home as I have ever had; I will have so much more than her that I won’t even think of her again when I settle on Mars with Captain Deluca. With Arturo, I correct myself.

I wave my hand at the room as if to erase it from my mind, and let my eyes blur to take in the shapes instead of the actual furnishings. The spherical screen like a port window with its live view of the stars, the dresser and its three drawers, the sturdy square bed—all become vague hazes of colors instead of solid objects. I step into the hallway with my head held high and let the door slide closed behind me. I do not look back.

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Since the Juno is an Athena-class warship of Icarii make, seized a year ago in battle, the hallways are wide enough for two men to pass by without breaking stride. The oblong ship, black as space, is both stealthy and comfortable. My first ship assignment had been a small Gean pleasure liner, cylinder-shaped and constantly spinning to create gravity, and even as thin as I was, I had to shift sideways to walk down certain corridors. I never understood how the broad-shouldered soldiers made do, men like Ringer, who stands solid in his navy-blue Gean uniform at end of the hallway, waiting to see me off.

“First Sister.” Ringer bows his head to me, ever the faithful parishioner. His piousness is eclipsed only by the kindness in his silver eyes. If we were alone, he might pull me against his wide, muscular chest and hold me tightly, but that would be all he would do. His hands would not wander, his eyes would not burn with lust, unlike so many of his fellow soldiers’. “Are you ready?”

I put on the mask of happiness tinged with concern, a slight furrow of the brows mixed with a tentative smile. As a Little Sister at the Temple of Mars atop the glorious heights of Olympus Mons, I always pleased my Aunt Delilah with my animated expressions, with the way I imparted a mix of feelings with a simple adjustment of eye and mouth. She impressed what an exceedingly important skill communicating in subtle glances was for Sisters to learn. A necessity, once your voice has been taken.

“I know you’ll miss us here—and we’ll miss you—but you’ll adjust to your new life.” Ringer’s thin lips pull taut in a smile, but the rest of his expression remains static. His face is that of Mars stone, sharp and deeply pitted, an unfinished sculpture of a warrior at rest. “You deserve what happiness Captain Deluca can give you.”

My smile fades. I offer a solemn nod. I will soon be free of the Sisterhood’s politics—no more jealous Sisters, no more controlling Aunties—but I must not look too eager.

Another reason I maintain a steady friendship with Ringer: he intuits what I want to express. I wish to look like I will miss the Juno, like Arturo is taking me away from duty and home, instead of appearing excited and ready to abandon my post, and that is what Ringer sees. He may be one of the few from this ship I will think of fondly on Mars.

“Do you need an escort?”

I shake my head and clutch my bag to my chest. Ringer has been good to me on the Juno. In thanks, I hold out my hand, and Ringer, a head taller than me, kneels. I press my palm to his forehead between his blond hair and thick dark brows and close my eyes as if praying, offering him one last blessing. But the words running through my head are those that Arturo whispered to me, a description of my new house. A home in the gravity-controlled dunes with a little patio in the sun where you can grow pansies and honeysuckle…

“Thank you, First Sister,” he whispers.

My fingertips slide from his forehead to his cheek and trail down his stubbled chin. He watches my hand retreat to join the other gripping my bag. When Ringer stands, he offers me a traditional Gean salute, his right fist clenched over his chest, his arm parallel to the ground. The salute is meant for those higher ranking, usually officers, and while the Sisterhood is exempt from military hierarchy, his gesture is an honor. I am unaccustomed to being saluted, and pride swells within me.

I make sure to keep my smile bright as I part from Ringer and back into the elevator. Just as the door is closing, an arm snakes into the gap, and the door reopens fully lest it crush the slender limb. Second Sister steps inside, and Third Sister trails close behind, both dressed in the same gray as me, only without the white captain’s armband pinned about their right biceps. They smile like I do, but I can see through their expressions; the rest of the cosmos might be blind to our true meanings, but we Sisters know each other well.

Aunt Marshae comes floating after, prim face pinched into a smile that does not quite reach her eyes. I do my best not to let my frustration show; I had hoped to escape the Juno without facing her, cowardly as it might be. Our Aunties are charged with the task of speaking on behalf of the Sisterhood, and while Aunt Marshae has trained Little Sisters to hone their expressions, she rarely masters her own. But another reason for her sour look flowers in my mind.

She wants me to see her displeasure.

“You look lovely today, First Sister.” My Auntie sniffs pointedly. The door closes after her, trapping me in the circular elevator with the three of them. I am deeply aware of each sharp pair of eyes turned in my direction.

I tuck my bag beneath my arm and tangle my fingers in my skirt, purposefully keeping my hands still. Aunt Marshae straightens her uniform, the same gray as mine but more covering, with a scarf about her neck and a hemline that falls to the floor. “Perhaps leaving the Juno and its believers thrills you?”

I quickly put on the mask of hurt. Furrowed brows and a trembling lip. I’d cry if I could. Of course not, my face says. I would never want to leave my Sisters. At least, I hope it does, but my Auntie laughs.

“Your face does credit to your training,” she mutters, but she finally looks away from me. “If you girls have anything to say to First Sister, now is the time.”

Second Sister’s milky white fingers tuck inky black hair behind her ears in order to give her hands something to do while she considers what to say. I expect her to rebuke me or express her thankfulness at my leaving; Second Sister was Captain Deluca’s favorite companion on their previous ship, but as soon as we all moved to the Juno, Arturo promoted me over her. I suspect I will never be forgiven for that. But instead of the expected hatred, her hands move with grace and poise. Her smile is genuine, reflected in her amber eyes. Much luck in your future, she signs in the hand language reserved for the Sisterhood by law.

I’m so surprised by her gesture it takes me a moment to respond. Thank you, I sign at last.

This is our sole method of communication, we Sisters, for we are not allowed to write and we cannot speak.

Third Sister shoulders the smaller Second Sister aside on her way to me. If Second Sister has held a grudge against me, Third Sister outright hates me. She glares at me, her lip curled, fury radiating out of her green eyes. Her vibrant red hair looks like fire as she whips it over her shoulder. Her hands flash at me. Get out and good riddance, she says, ending with an offensive gesture that even the soldiers would understand. She flattens her hand like a blade and slaps it on her sternum, as if cutting her heart in two.

I straighten to my full height and look down on her. She is almost as tall as I am, but I have long been favored for my slender legs and golden hair, and I remain defiant even in the face of her anger. Second Sister seizes Third Sister’s biceps and digs her fingers into the soft flesh there, stopping the red-haired girl from doing anything more than signing. Aunt Marshae says nothing.

Long ago, when I was not a ranked Sister, just a girl first assigned to the small pleasure liner, Third Sister might have cornered me in the bunks where there were no cameras. She could have had others hold my limbs so that she could pull my hair or strike my body with the flat of her hand, avoiding my face and trying not to leave bruises.

But that is the way of being a Sister, and all of us have both endured these attacks and led them.

For now, I am lucky, and I have been so for a long time. With my excellent physical features, I became a ranked Sister quickly, and the Mother herself rewarded me with my posting on the Juno. From the moment I met Arturo, I received his favor, and he rewarded me with private quarters and the captain’s armband, allowing only him to call on me for anything more than confession. Third Sister has never been able to lay a hand on me. She is as powerless now as she has been since I was promoted above her.

“Walk with the Goddess in this new season of your life.” Aunt Marshae’s words are but an empty platitude from the Canon, the book that guides the Sisterhood. She also favored me until Arturo asked for me as a lifelong companion in his retirement. Since his request, she has made it clear that she had higher hopes for me. Your success is my success, niece, she used to say. Now she says little other than to shame me.

I will bloom in Her Garden as She commands, I sign in answer to Aunt Marshae, but my Auntie simply scoffs, clearly believing I am not blooming as I should be. Farewell, I sign to the others.

As soon as the elevator reaches the docking bay, we trail out—me first, as befits my rank, followed by amber-eyed Second Sister and red-haired Third Sister, whose bitterness somehow hasn’t put her at a disadvantage in life. Aunt Marshae comes last, herding the other two girls in the opposite direction from me.

I shouldn’t have expected heartfelt goodbyes from anyone on this ship, particularly when a large part of my reason for accepting Arturo’s offer was to escape people like them. On Mars, I’ll only have to care for and impress Arturo; how much easier it will be when I don’t have to worry after my fellow Sisters and Auntie too. My stomach unclenches as I enter the docking bay and cast my eyes about the various ships moored there. Which one will I be taking away from the Juno?

The side of the hangar gapes, open mouthed and beyond it the swallowing black of space and the light of a thousand burning stars. It looks like a window to the cosmos, a thick pane of faintly glowing glass between the outer vastness and the Juno’s interior, but it’s actually advanced Icarii tech that allows ships to launch and dock at will while keeping oxygen inside. The shield is created by the hermium engine, technology built with a substance specific to Mercury. Hermium is so influential to Icarii designs that it’s also the basis for the Juno’s gravity generators and power system. Most Geans will never experience technology like this in their lifetimes.

If only the Icarii would share their hermium. Doing so could save all of our planets. But the Icarii have forgotten their origins now that they live lavishly on Mercury and Venus, abandoning their humanity just as they abandoned Earth and Mars. We Geans remember; we have a long memory, and the Sisterhood’s is longer than that. We have been here since the beginning of it all.

We were the ones who worked on Earth against the pollution that tore apart the planet. We were the advisers to captains from the very first mission to colonize Mars. We preached against the excess of machinery, rightly predicting the Synthetic rebellion against humanity. And now we watch over both Earth and Mars as half of the Gean government, providing homes for the homeless, jobs for the jobless, and health centers for the sick. We exist to ensure no one repeats the mistakes of our past. As a species, we simply cannot afford another Dead Century War.

The ships moored in the docking bay vary in size from small cruisers, two-man craft used for errands, to military carriers that drop infantry planetside, a mix of Gean-made and those seized from the Icarii. I don’t see Arturo anywhere, but the bay is full of workers, as usual, men and women in jumpsuits unloading crates of rations, mechanics working under metal panels or on the humped backs of various craft. A group is gathered on the far side of the bay. Since Arturo was the Juno’s captain for its first year of service under the navy-and-gold Gean flag, he is sure to be in the middle of that crowd, receiving praise and saying his goodbyes. He’s had a home here on the Juno, one that I’ve helped to provide with my loyalty and love.

It is an odd sensation when no one looks at me as I approach; I am accustomed to attracting attention as if I were shouting aloud. But then, all at once, faces turn to me and blanch.

I keep my expression neutral. Unease ripples through the crowd as more people turn to me, as their voices quiet to murmurs, as someone points at me but says something only to their companion.

A fist tightens in my chest, holding my heart captive. Why is everyone acting like this? Where is Arturo?

The crowd steps back from me at my approach, creating a bubble around me, a liminal space they cannot—or will not—touch. The jovial chatter dims and dies, and only whispers remain. Eyes look anywhere but at me: at their formal uniforms, at the surrounding shuttles, at the glasses of sparkling water filled with strawberries as red as my lips from the hydroponic gardens.

But where is Arturo?

I look at the clock: 0900 hours, the time of his disembarkation. Yet I don’t see him or any members of his family come to retrieve him.

“You must be the First Sister,” a smoky voice says. Some girl in Gean uniform steps forward; it’s hard to tell her age, but I doubt she’s even a handful of years older than my twenty. As soon as she speaks, the crowd takes it as encouragement to resume their celebrations, chatter picking up as if, thank the Mother, someone put an end to the First Sister’s hysteria.

I clutch my bag tightly to keep my hands from shaking. I have eyes only for this soldier, her hair shaved on the sides but long on top, fluffed up like some greenboy’s. If I look anywhere other than her, I may wither, so I harden my face.

“Captain Deluca wanted me to personally offer his thanks for your year of service on the Juno,” she says, her voice low and heady. She places a hand on my shoulder and guides me to her side, turning my back to the crowd. She doesn’t want anyone else to hear what she has to say. Or, more likely, she doesn’t want anyone to see my naked reaction to her words.

She leads me deeper into the docking bay, back toward the elevator, ushering me away from where I should be. Where I need to be.

Where is Arturo?!

I cannot ignore my panic any longer. I ground myself and stop walking. She halts as well when she realizes I no longer intend to follow. “Do you know who I am?” she asks.

I shake my head. Perhaps because she was part of the celebration, her uniform is disheveled, her jacket unbuttoned, revealing a white tank top beneath. I cannot see her command rank. Besides, I don’t care. I shouldn’t be answering to anyone other than Arturo.

He promised me.

“I’m Saito Ren.” As soon as she says her name, I realize that I do know who she is. She’s the new captain of the Juno.

She’s Arturo’s replacement.

And if she’s already here, if she’s part of his farewell party, then he really is—

I spin back to the docking bay and look for his ship through the crowd of people. Where is it? Where is he? How could he—

He promised me.

Captain Saito seizes my shoulder and turns me toward her, quick and effortless. “I’m sorry you missed him. He wanted to say his farewells, but he didn’t want to miss his flight.”

But it was supposed to be at 0900 hours! That’s the time now! That’s the time he told me, and yet he’s already gone…

He left me.

The truth sinks bone-deep and leaves me shaking. The fist holding my heart squeezes until it pops. All of his promises whispered between white sheets meant nothing. The house he described is gone, the two bedrooms and the patio I could fill with flowers and the latest gadgets, the home he would visit twice a month when he could get away from his wife and children.

Did that house even exist? Why would he promise to take me with him and then abandon me as he left? Why would he promise me my freedom from the intricacies of the Sisterhood only to leave me in their clutches?

Certainly this is a mistake. He didn’t mean to leave me. Surely he’ll send for me when he gets settled, and this Captain Saito just hasn’t given me that part of his message yet.

I look at her, but…

“Should I call a medic?” Captain Saito’s voice is stern, almost disapproving. I realize how unsteady I must seem, and I quickly school my face into blankness. I press a hand to my stomach and count my breaths. Even if my heart races, I cannot outwardly show how utterly destroyed I am. How terrified I am.

Because if Arturo really left me—And he did, a little voice whispers—then I am stuck here as First Sister with a new captain who may promote someone more favored to my position. I am not free, and I am not safe. And if I cannot keep my position as First Sister?

I press my hand to the white captain’s band on my arm and remember Third Sister’s hateful gesture in the elevator. Back to the bunks, back to the beatings.

I need to leave—I need to return to my room and reassess before someone sees me so undone—

Aunt Marshae appears at our sides before I can extract myself from the conversation with Captain Saito. Goddess wither it, now I must deal with her as well.

“I just heard the news,” she says, and this time her smile radiates through her entirety—her lips, her eyes, even the roots of her sculpted auburn hair, hard as an Ironskin helmet. “What a blessing that you will continue to work alongside us, First Sister.” I clench my fists to hide their trembling as her deft hands strip the white band from my arm. “Though this belongs to you, Captain Saito, until you see fit to distribute it.”

“I suppose so.” Captain Saito takes the armband and rubs her thumb over the coarse fabric.

I look at my bare arm, and… I am as good as naked now.

I am again property of the soldiers. My body is their property.

“Aunt Marshae, I’d like to see all the highly ranked Sisters, and even some of your best unranked girls, in my quarters later. First Sister, will you come by?” Captain Saito calls my attention back to the docking bay. She makes it sound like a suggestion.

But it’s an order. With a captain, it’s always an order.

My Auntie nods encouragement, and I mimic her though my eyes burn. I want to retreat to a hidden room and cry—wordlessly.

“Then I will see you soon,” Captain Saito says. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a schedule I must keep.” She marches away without a second glance. I try to swallow, but my throat is too dry.

“May you bloom in Her Garden as She commands,” Aunt Marshae says in a sick parody of my earlier words. Second Sister and Third Sister start across the docking bay to join us, and I break away at their approach. I do not want them to see how shattered I am. I do not want to read their gloating words on their hands.

I start my long walk back to my quarters, my few belongings in the small bag clutched tightly to my chest. This is not the way a First Sister should act, but for the life of me, I cannot do anything other than run away like a fool.

At least I reach the elevator before the tears come. I try to blink them away, but then the intercom overhead clicks on in warning and Captain Saito’s voice fills the small space with me. Haunting me, even here.

“As of 0900 hours this morning, you are no longer under the command of Captain Arturo Deluca.”

The tears roll down my cheeks in thick tracks.

“I am Captain Saito Ren, and I am honored to be taking this journey alongside such a brave and diverse crew on the most advanced battleship in the Gean fleet. You are the pride of Earth and Mars, and together, we will more than fulfill our duty to protect Ceres and keep our newly claimed territory clear of Icarii ships.”

My nose runs. I do what Aunt Delilah told me never to do and rub my face; in this moment, it does not matter that I’m breaking the sensitive capillaries in my skin.

“I have one simple goal: to serve the Gean worlds.”

The elevator doors open, and I thank the Goddess that the hallway is empty except for a single Cousin with a broom. She turns her wrinkled face from me. The hard laborers of the Sisterhood and the only sect that accepts men, the Cousins are nothing more than servants—and a reminder of what happens to a Sister when she is no longer beautiful or wanted.

Is that what will become of me now that Arturo has left me behind?

“I will fight without mercy to keep the Gean people from perishing as our planets wither.”

Finally, finally, I come to my quarters and open the door with shaking hands.

“I will not allow for any distractions that interfere with our future.”

My knees give out beneath me before I can even reach the bed.

“This is no longer Captain Deluca’s ship. This is my ship. And you will find it a different place than before. A changed place.”

There is nowhere I can go that Captain Saito cannot follow. There is nowhere to hide that she might not snatch from me and award to someone else. I had thought I was safe with Arturo, but now I know: I am not safe anywhere.

“I expect absolute dedication and hard work. There will be no handouts here, no special treatment for anyone on board.”

I reach for my armband—only to remember Aunt Marshae has already taken it away. No special treatment, Captain Saito says. Not like Arturo and his playful eyes and wandering hands. At least I knew what he wanted. I could protect myself with that knowledge.

“Now all of you get to your stations,” she says over the intercom, and I think of my little chapel and its accompanying bed.

“Earth endures,” Captain Saito begins, and I hear other voices lift to join her in response, “Mars conquers.”

I drop my face into my hands and let the silent sobs break me apart at last.

CHAPTER 2

Like Icarus, our forefathers flew close to the sun. But unlike our mythological predecessor, the scientists aboard the Icarus who seeded Mercury and, eventually, Venus, were aware of their mortality and the necessity of a future protected by those who understood peace. It was peace that split us from Earth and Mars, and it is peace that will guide us on our path through the stars.

–First Icarii president Pablo val Cárcel,
address to the Venus Parliament

In the split second that Talon’s arm twists, his mercurial blade lengthens, and I hunch so that even with his extra distance, he cannot stab me in the stomach. He curses as his feet hit the ground. My movement has changed the diameter of battle, and he’ll have to recalculate the angle if he wants to pin me.

Students hate mathematics, but it’s integral to everything, even battle. Especially battle.

“You’re swinging wildly,” I tell him. “Your anger will get the better of you unless you do away with it.”

I hold my arm at a ninety-degree angle from my core, my blade’s point thrust at Talon’s face. This is the math of it: My arm is longer than his. My blade has more reach. There is a line between us, and the circle that eclipses that line is the diameter of battle. If he can shift that diameter in his favor, getting inside my long reach, he can win. Or so he thinks.

Then again, I have a decade more of experience than him.

I see him calm, his face blanking as his neural implant washes away his feelings. When I was a student like him, our old professor would hold my wrist in this very stance and provoke my opponents with taunts. Sol Lucius is the top of the class, which makes you, what? Space trash! I used my implant to erase any bitterness at his throwing my inferior name around, while my opponent would seethe. Math, like war, should be performed with a cool head.

I’ll give Talon this: he’s the best in his year. Throughout the week I’ve been training with his class as a mentor, he’s the only one who has come close to hitting me. But so far, the only things that have cut me are Talon’s geneassisted yellow eyes with irises that narrow like a cat’s.

“Again,” Talon says, a demand more than a question, and his mercurial blade ripples into silvery liquid, shortens, and hardens into his preferred form, a short sword that suits his growing limbs. In time, his blade will become standard length, but the benefit of a mercurial blade is that it can change with the flow of battle. Sometimes short’ll do it.

“You don’t have to ask, Talon, you can just attack.” Even after months of alternating classes, I’m still not used to being someone’s teacher and receiving an instructor’s respect, but I’ve been out of Icarii military rotation for so long that I’m itching to do something— anything—and that includes dueling with kids.

“Yes, sir. I mean… Lito.” My name is so soft, like he fears to say it aloud. I don’t know why. I’m no hero that kids look up to.

Not anymore. Not since Ceres.

He jumpjets forward, shortening the diameter. He wants, like so many others, to get inside my arm’s reach, and he hopes to do that by being quicker than me. It’s a solid plan, but in the same way that my arm length allows me to strike more easily, my leg length allows me to step and shift the geometry back in my favor.

I see what he’s doing and do the same—only successfully. My mercurial blade never changes form as I slide sideways on the balls of my feet and press the thick of my blade near the hilt against the tip of his. Even without my superior strength, leverage says I win.

Talon curses again, face going red with frustration; if I actually were a professor, I’d write him up for the loss of temper, especially after I already commanded him to watch it. But I’m not a professor, and I’m far more concerned with his foolishness than his bucking command. He grabs the base of his blade with his hand and twists it more like a wrench than a sword.

“Talon!” I snap.

His blade pivots around mine and liquefies as it prepares to lengthen—right toward me.

The scar between my shoulder and chest wakes and burns like a wildfire.

His blade is already forming, crawling toward my skin, and my instincts kick in like a primal scream in my gut—

Shift shoulder. Swing blade beneath his arm. Gut him.

For a moment, he is an Ironskin soldier on Ceres, and my arm is dripping blood—

But as my muscles twitch in response with the impulse to kill, I realize—he’s a damn kid, not an enemy. Through the haze of adrenaline pumping in my veins, I kick the jumpjets in the heels of my boots to life and bound away.

Mierda.

He’s breathing hard when he lands. I realize I am too.

Thousand gods. Did I almost kill a kid?

Worse: Why is the memory of Ceres haunting me now?

I force my implant to erase my anxiety, to slow the racing of my heart. I refuse to let Talon take even a peek at the shadow that war has left on me, at the machine it has made of me. I want to curse at him for being such an idiot, or praise him for coming so close to hitting me. Instead, I settle for instructing. “Talon, what’s the first rule of engagement?”

I send a thought command to my mercurial blade from my neural implant; the metal turns liquid and seeps back into the hilt. When the metal disappears, the blade’s gentle glow does too. I place the hilt on my belt as I meet Talon back in the middle of the sparring courtyard. It’s only now, as I take in the world around us, that I realize every uniformed kid in Talon’s class—and some in the classes above at the oblong windows—is staring wide-eyed and pale.

“Don’t lose control,” Talon recites, looking at his gloved hand that touched the blade. The fabric is burned through, the skin beneath a bright pink and bubbled with blisters.

“And what did you do?” I ask, straightening my spine.

His face is burning with humiliation when he responds, “Lost control.”

“It was a good strategy if this was a life-or-death situation,” I admit. “But this was not that. Now go see the medic.”

Talon tosses his wounded hand aside without care for his injury. “I don’t want to miss practice because of a damn doctor’s visit.”

I snort. I was like him at this age, begging for another fight even if I got my ass handed to me. It was the only way to get better.

No, a little part of me whispers. At his age, you were already kicking ass with Hiro at your side. And because of the strength that Hiro and I possessed as a pair, I was pulled into the grinding gears of military life, assigned to the dangerous planetoid Ceres, and battling Geans before I even turned nineteen, making me a legend at the Academy and causing boys like Talon to look up to me.

With the scar on my shoulder still aching and memories of Hiro too fresh to ignore, teaching is the last thing I want to do. “We’ll continue training tomorrow,” I tell him. “Now get to the damn medic.”

Talon’s a Rapier like me. A Righthand. His Lefthand, his Dagger, lurks nearby, and as soon as I dismiss Talon, the girl rushes toward him like a well-aimed shot. “Let me see,” Key says in a tone that clearly brooks no room for disagreement, her dark brown hands grasping for Talon’s.

Talon sighs and offers his Lefthand his literal left hand. “I’m all right, Key,” Talon whispers, but when their eyes meet, something passes between them in the silence.

This scene has played out time and again in this cobbled courtyard. How many times have teachers watched in wry amusement, surrounded by a blur of faces, at the connection between a partnered pair?

Even now, do Key and Talon speak without words? I remember the comforting feeling of Hiro on the other side of my neural implant, the two pieces of tech inserted in our brains programmed to link our thoughts and feelings. It wasn’t telepathy, or anything so invasive; it was something soft and soothing. The warm acknowledgment of an inside joke. A communion. A bond.

At last, Talon’s shoulders slump, and Key leads the way to the double doors that open into the school’s hallowed hallways. She’s clearly won whatever invisible battle waged between them—most likely convincing the stubborn Talon that he should listen to his elder and see a medic. It’s only as I watch them walking shoulder to shoulder that I realize how badly I miss my former partner. How long it’s been since I last saw them. How home isn’t home without Hiro.

“Lito val Lucius!”

My name rings over the courtyard, sending a wave of silence after it. The class turns toward me, even Talon and Key, who pause mid-stride. They watch me like they did during the duels, as if my name is a challenger’s call.

“Lito val Lucius?” A uniformed man strides into the courtyard, the wooden door surrounded by old stone falling closed behind him.

“It’s sol Lucius, actually,” I tell him, fighting the sinking feeling of my old friend inferiority.

To the class, I order loudly, “Get moving!” They shuffle twenty pairs of identical black boots into the looming Icarus Prime Military Academy, some groaning at the order. So much for having a teacher’s respect…

Even if this man is wearing military blacks, he’s not here to duel me. As much as the Academy prioritizes dueling in its curriculum, duels don’t just spontaneously occur. Especially once you’ve been assigned, as I have been.

And when you’ve been assigned a chump job like this, training various groups of kids as the months scrape by… you only have so much pride left.

Better than nothing, I remind myself. I could be rotting in the basement still. I repress a shudder at the thought of that dark and cold place, and my shoulder throbs.

“Lito sol Lucius,” the man says, correcting himself. He hands me a summons paper when he reaches me. His hair is the downy white of feathers, obviously geneassisted. The soldiers of Venus—especially those in Special Forces—trick themselves out as flamboyantly as they can—eyes, skin, hair—all to better stand out when wearing the plain, slim-cut military blacks. He’s a Dagger, I note from the pips on his shoulder.

The last time I saw my Dagger, Hiro’s hair had been rose red, a bright flower above a bloodstained bandage around their forehead, half their face the purple of a sick bruise. I try to imagine what color it is now before I remember that, since Hiro is on assignment, it’s likely a natural shade to help them blend in. Brown or black, something they wouldn’t like at all.

“Thank you.” I salute with two fingers to my temple. The Dagger salutes in return and heads back for the Academy proper, letting his eyes linger on the courtyard in remembrance. He too hears the ghosts of duels long ago, remembers training with his Rapier before he was assigned his place.

Once I’m alone in the courtyard, I open the summons, marked with Command’s blazing phoenix symbol. It’s from my commander, which I expected, but it doesn’t say anything close to what I’d imag-ine a summons from him to say. Four simple words, and within them a multitude of possible meanings:

Get here. New assignment.

I take the bullet train downtown, watching the Academy’s melted-wax spirals retreat into the distance. Its ancient, bonelike architecture is soon swallowed by the clustered gemstone skyscrapers of the floating city Cytherea. The sky is an autumnal tree, hung in reds and golds as the dome above simulates the sun’s descent to nighttime.

This city and its hermium-powered shell were created after scientists perfected the building technique on Mercury’s Spero. Hung as carefully as a cocoon on a leaf, Cytherea floats in what our scientists call the “sweet spot” of Venus’s atmosphere, a place with the perfect pressure and temperature for human life. Cytherean air filters turn Venus’s carbon dioxide into oxygen for breathing, and the basic genemodding we receive as children helps us with the variations in gravity. The domed cities are a marvel of science and proof that a government led by scientists works for the betterment of all mankind.

Not that there aren’t drawbacks to Cytherea, of course. They just won’t be found here on the uppermost layer.

Because of the evening hour, the train is packed with commuters, those who either can’t afford a podcar or don’t want one. Since the majority of those involved in science, industry, and commerce reside on Mercury, these travelers are probably low-level government employees or manual workers in Cytherea’s vast entertainment industry. There are definitely no factory workers on board. No one whose name bears my inferior title, sol.

I watch fingers dancing in the air as passengers engage with the images on their com-contact lenses, watching the news or reading the latest studies; kids in various school uniforms, absorbed in biobooks or sleek compads in order to finish their homework; and, oddly, a couple of Asters in sand-colored, bandage-like wraps that cover them from head to boot, save for the green goggles they wear over their eyes.

The scar on my shoulder aches—it was an Aster who shot me on Ceres, I recall all too vividly, before pushing those thoughts and the pain away. Why is my past so determined to haunt me today?

The Asters are… other. Humanoid, but not human. They have two arms and two legs, but they are tall and thin, stretched out with odd proportions. Few make Icarii planets their home. The gravity, the light, the pressure on Mercury and Venus—these are all things that Asters grew beyond with the help of those first ancient gene-assists on Earth who made them the perfect spacefarers but had no idea of the mutations their modifications would allow to take root. Centuries later, the Asters are their own people, living and working and breeding in the asteroid belt, deformed compared to the humans they used to be.

The Asters have a range of skin colors, but all of them are as translucent as long-dead bodies, like walking bruises in blue and purple and gray. Their hair is white, devoid of color like bleached bones, and beneath their goggles, their eyes are swallowing black and soulless. Their wraps keep sunlight from burning their sensitive skin, while their goggles allow them to see in our bright lights. But as secretive as they are, it’s no wonder the majority of people find them unnerving, even if the rumor that they carry disease is completely false.

Still, they usually live apart from humans. On Spero, they stick to the Under, a series of stone tunnels burrowed into the surface of Mercury, but here on Cytherea, they live on the lowest levels, where the pressure is higher, or even on the surface of Venus, where they oversee mining efforts. It’s rare they’re this far up, mixed with normal humans, and the unease in the air is palpable. A mother keeps her energetic child from venturing to their side of the car. Others clutch their bags to their chests protectively. Many eye the Asters with suspicion, while a group of teens glare with open hatred. Only once the toddler starts to cry do the teens lose their tempers.

“Ey, bruv!” A boy with a geneassisted white eye and the bright, choppy clothing favored on the higher levels of Cytherea calls out. “Cockroaches, I’m talking at you! What’re a couple of bugs doing off the surface?” When the Asters don’t answer, he leans across the aisle toward them. “Can’t you see you’re making people uncomfortable? You’re scaring children.”

The Asters do their best to ignore him, leaning as far into their seats as they can. I doubt they speak any of our human languages, but they understand the boy’s expression and body language clearly enough.

His daring seems to catch and inflame the others in his group. A girl with pink hair sings an off-key song about catching rats. A skinny kid with some sort of metal implant above his right eyebrow turns to me. “Bruv in black come down from his Spire to shit among the rest of us and don’t do a thing to protect the people from the real problems. That right, bruv?”

A few others look up at me expectantly. Even the Asters’ green goggles turn in my direction as if expecting me to intervene. But I’m not in the peacekeeping division, I’m a duelist, and patrolling trains isn’t even close to my job description.

“Fucking useless.” The kid spits at my feet.

As much as I want to mess up his geneassisted face, I calm myself with my implant and let my eyes wander to the windows and catch on the overflowing plants on apartment balconies, greens interspersed with a thousand jewel tones. Kids like him and his friends want to feel big, and any reaction I give them will just fuel them.

The Asters leave at the very next station, their heads bowed to avoid hitting the ceiling with their great height, their spindly limbs tucked tightly to their sides. The remaining passengers pointedly avert their eyes but immediately relax when they’re gone, slouching into their chairs, chatting with the person next to them, smiling at things other than their screens. The kids who’d hassled them slap shoulders, celebrating a job well done, and return to their inside jokes. The entire incident is forgotten.

I don’t feel bad for the Asters. I grew up in the lower levels of Cytherea, side by side with several of them, but I pulled myself out. I got my family out. I used my talents playing gladius, earned the Val Roux Scholarship to the Academy, and secured a future for my little sister so that she can involve herself wherever she wants in the entertainment industry—cinema, theater, music. My name, sol Lucius, is proof of where I belong, yet here I am, having climbed the ladder of success one painful rung at a time.

The bullet train reaches Cytherea’s central terminal, Einstein Station, and I shoulder my way through my fellow passengers to disembark. In the very center of the station, a statue of two men stretches toward the ceiling, three meters tall and made of clear quartz. One man places wings of copper and gold on the other’s back. This statue and the numerous others like it throughout Cytherea depict Daedalus placing his grand invention on his son’s shoulders and serves as a reminder in two parts.

The first reminds us what our ancestors faced. During the Dead Century War, they left Mars for uninhabited, unexplored, and dangerous Mercury on the science vessel Icarus. But instead of perishing in fire, they flew to the planet closest to the sun, survived, and flourished.

The second reminder is this: while technological advancements can carry humankind to impossible heights, power must be exercised responsibly. After all, people tend to forget that Daedalus’s wings for his son did work; it was Icarus who used them incorrectly.

Despite the overwhelming crowd in the station, I stand apart. Black isn’t a popular color among fashionable Icarii, and my uniform carves a space for me in the press of people. A peacekeeper, an officer of the law also clad in black but in a different cut, respectfully nods to me at the exit of the station. As I descend the stairs toward Cytherea’s main thoroughfare, Newton Street, the city overwhelms me.

Cytherea is a wild and sprawling youth. Where other cities breathe sighs of relief, Cytherea sings of its glory. Mercury’s domed city, Spero, was created in a time of necessity, but Venus was seeded out of prosperity; every corner is full of substantial sights and sounds that assault me as I walk by—pulsing music from floating speakers that zip through the air like insects, Paragon influencers in the newest fashions lounging on the trendiest furniture as if they’re selling nothing at all, holograms of celebrities encouraging everyone to come to their newest interactive play. Everyone who’s anyone has a building on Newton Street, from vid studios to the president of the Icarii. Even the military.

The Spire is an obelisk of a building as black as our uniforms that stretches into the domed sky. It houses the Command division that provides orders to all branches of the military. Surrounded by other buildings in pearl white and shimmering opal, neon-bright advertisements pasted on street-level windows, the Spire stands out in its restraint. The building is bare of ornament other than one bold word that flashes red in the three most used languages, English, Spanish, and Chinese. ENLIST. ALÍSTATE.參加軍隊, the Spire reads.

But everyone knows the truth behind the Spire’s command: those who don’t attend the Academy won’t be duelists of the Special Forces, one of the elite Icarii soldiers. Instead they’ll be low-ranking infantry, their neural implants programmed to answer to their commanders en masse. In the Academy the duelists joked they were like worker bees, unable to make decisions without their queen. Dad just called them cannon fodder. I went to primary school on the lowest level of Cytherea with a few kids who were so desperate for credits, they joined up to pay their debts, and I’d quickly lost track of them. They’d ship out on a vessel bound for the Gean space around Earth or Mars, and they’d disappear into the stars, never to be heard from again.

When I reach my destination, a scanner confirms my neural implant at the Spire’s gate, and an infantryman in a formal black-and-silver uniform salutes me as I enter. The grounds in front of the building have well-maintained green bushes but no flowers, another thing that separates the Spire from the lively surrounding buildings that overflow with vines and blossoms. Still, we do our part toward air purification, even if our hedges are plain.

While the exterior is imposing, the interior is similar to what you’d find inside any other of the skyscrapers downtown: clean, white hallways blink with interactive maps on the floors, and people stroll through the lobby on their way to their assignments. But that’s where the similarities end. The workers here are soldiers, duelists, and commanders. There are no animated images acting as advertisements on the walls, as would be common in other buildings, and there are no desks or secretaries; to even get this far, you have to belong.

“I’ve been summoned by High Commander Beron val Bellator,” I say aloud.

The intelligence in charge of the lobby reads my neural implant, checks scheduling, and opens a gold-trimmed elevator door in less than a second. It’s not quite AI; it doesn’t approach the Marian Threshold—not after the Dead Century War, when the Synthetics left the inner planets because of Gean abuses—but it’s smart enough, following yes/no protocols with ease. Beneath my feet, a red arrow points toward the elevator. “Please proceed, Lito sol Lucius,” a genderless voice replies.

I enter the elevator, and my stomach pitches at the descent. While the Command division holds offices on the top floors of the Spire, Beron prefers to assign missions below. But the dark, plantless basement and its incessant pressure can drive someone stir-crazy even with the sunlamps and fresh air pumped through the vents that line the hallways.

I remind myself I won’t be stuck here this time, that this visit is only temporary. I suck in a deep breath and let it out slowly, picturing the ocean to calm the nervousness that tightens my chest. There’s something about Earth’s seas, something I’ve only seen in vids, that soothes me. The rhythmic lapping of the waves, the sound of the water…

“Refreshment while you wait?” the intelligence in the elevator asks, pulling me from my attempt at meditation. But before I even have a chance to refuse, I arrive at my destination and the doors part.

The basement levels are a nondescript gray, long tunnels of concrete and sharp turns. Only Beron, a slender man of average height with close-shorn brown hair and cutting blue eyes, serves to differentiate the space.

“Lito,” Beron rasps, standing poised with a thin black compad tucked beneath his arm, the red phoenix with wings displayed pinned on his chest and the crossed rapier and dagger pips on his shoulder denoting his rank in Command. I have a hard time believing that he wasn’t waiting for me. The harsh lighting from above deepens the soft scarring of his face, something he had his geneassist leave when he rewound some years. I suspect Beron is in his eighties, since his neural implant has been removed, but I can’t know for sure, since he looks not a day over forty.

“High Commander.” I salute him with two fingers. “You summoned me?”

“I did. I have a new assignment for you. Follow me.” He turns before I have a chance to drop my salute.

I trail him down the identical corridors, unsure how he navigates this place where everything looks the same, or why he even wants to. The building regulates the temperature so that it matches the lobby, yet I can feel the change in the air. The basement seeps into my skin and permeates my lungs in such a way that I just know that I’m in the lower levels. Underground and trapped, just like I was as a kid. Just like I was after Ceres.

Beron opens an unnumbered red door seemingly at random and motions for me to enter ahead of him. Did he choose this room on impulse, or is there something here we need? I aim to sit in one of the two chairs when I realize that it’s already occupied. Coming here was clearly part of his plan, then. With nowhere else to sit, I remain standing as Beron takes the chair on the opposite side of the metal desk.

“This is Ofiera fon Bain,” Beron says, motioning to the sitting woman without even looking at her. Fon, indicating she comes from a lineage of government workers and politickers. It doesn’t matter what her family does now; the title remains. All of the titles, from the lofty scientist val to the lowly maintenance worker sol, can be traced back to the first Icarii who left Mars during the Dead Century War. The three letters were a code that our ancestors used to denote their jobs aboard the Icarus, and while the titles don’t restrict our movement through Cytherean society, the prejudice remains.

I fear in my core why he’s introducing me to another deulist when I am currently partnerless, and my stomach twists into a horrid shape when she stands. I command my neural implant to neutralize my nervousness so that I can objectively measure this Ofiera fon Bain.

She is slender with willowy limbs, good for fighting, and of average height for a woman of her age and build. From her musculature, I determine she would be quick in combat. The crossed dagger and rapier pips on her shoulder denote that she’s also Special Forces Command. Strangest of all, she’s plain. If she’s ever seen a geneassist, I can’t find their work. Her eyes are hazel, one slightly darker than the other, her hair a chestnut brown. But normal. Someone you would absolutely look past in a crowd even if she has pretty features, like well-formed lips and dark brows that keep her face in a perpetually serious scowl.

“Ofiera fon Bain,” I say, and salute.

She salutes in return. “Lito sol Lucius.” Her eyes flick over me once, as if she’s unimpressed with what she sees; or perhaps she has already sized me up and finds me lacking. Maybe it’s that sol in my name. That feeling assaults me again: I don’t belong here. Her eyes dart away as if she would prefer to look anywhere else.

I straighten. I’ve earned this. I do belong here. How much more must I do before I prove it?

“Good, then.” Beron reads something from his black compad. “As you know, Lito, after the Fall of Ceres, the Geans have much to celebrate. They’re currently planning something to honor the Mother, whom they credit with the idea that wrested Ceres from us.”

Beron’s eyes come up to meet mine, hard and full of anger. As if it’s personally my fault that Ceres fell. And since I was there on the ground with Hiro, he does blame me… at least partially. Me and every other duelist who was surprised by the Gean coup, who lost a battle that could turn the tide of the entire war.

Hell, I don’t know that he’s wrong to blame us. The weight of that loss has dragged me down every day for the past year.

Because we lost Ceres, Hiro was sent on assignment away from me, punishment enough, and I was confined to the lower levels of the Spire for six months until Beron let me out to teach kids…

For a moment, I remember waking in the cold, stale air of the basement, my shoulder aching and bandaged, reaching out for Hiro with my neural implant, and finding nothing but silence. The fear that Hiro was dead overwhelmed me so quickly that I couldn’t send it away, and I screamed and screamed, flailing against the vast ocean of fear like a drowning man, until nurses came to sedate me. The next time I woke, it was only Beron’s explaining to me that Hiro was alive and on assignment that calmed me enough to allow the doctor to patch the wound I had reopened.

But that emptiness has remained with me, and the fear still clings to me like a shadow.
It rises now, burning like bile in my throat, and I command my neural implant to do away with it. Save it for another day. I can’t use that emotion here, now, just as I can’t openly miss Hiro when the man who took them away from me is sitting across the table with a smug look on his face. I’m lucky Beron isn’t one of the commanders who utilizes an implant to sense what his inferiors are feeling. I’m sure he’d notice the wavering emotions rising and falling within me like the tide.

But Ofiera—is she watching for that?

“We have several operations already in place regarding the Mother’s Celebration.” Beron drops his gaze to his compad. The faint wrinkles of his forehead smooth as his judgment dissipates. “We want you on the ground for one of them.”

“On Ceres?” I’m sure the surprise filters into my tone. “We lost Ceres only a year ago.”

“Do you have a problem returning there?” Beron asks, his words a loaded weapon.

“Of course not,” I respond quickly. “But without Hiro—”

“Yes, about them. Unfortunately…” Beron’s lips thin as he considers his words. “Hiro has been compromised.”

Compromised.

What is that supposed to mean? My hands shake at my sides. There’s no way Hiro could be—they can’t be—

“Hiro was assigned some months ago to return to Ceres alongside Ofiera.” Beron rubs his eyes with thumb and forefinger. When he pulls his hand away, the bags beneath his eyes look deeper. “But Ofiera reports they’ve gone completely dark.”

So they’re not… ? I still can’t ask.

“Off book is Hiro’s style,” I manage in a weak voice.

“Not this time, Lito.” He motions to the compad on his desk as if I could read the file he references. “This time, I’m afraid Hiro has defected.”

A shudder runs down my spine. Hiro had only been reassigned to spy on Ceres as punishment for the Fall. Beron had assigned them there, and now Beron wants me back on the ground for the Mother’s Celebration—and what else? My mind races.

“You assigned them to Ceres as a spy for us, and then—”

“They disappeared. Stopped working with Ofiera. I think you get the picture.” Beron flattens both hands on the desk. “We fear the Geans may have turned them.”

Somehow this is worse than Beron telling me that Hiro is dead. Because if Hiro betrayed us to the Geans, then they’re as good as dead. There won’t be a single place in Icarii space where they will be safe, even if their father is Souji val Akira, CEO of Val Akira Labs and one of the richest, most powerful men in the system.

“And Ofiera fon Bain?” I ask.

Ofiera squares her shoulders at her name.

“Your new Dagger,” Beron says.

My eyes shoot to Ofiera and land on the crossed rapier and dagger on her shoulder. There were always rumors that some in Command could act as either Rapier or Dagger despite the years of training each position required. Most of us at the Academy waved it off as the talk of the drunk or braggarts. But if Ofiera was Hiro’s Rapier and she’ll now be acting as my Dagger… it’s absolutely true.

But despite discovering the answer to this old mystery, all I can focus on is this: What does her presence mean? Why would Beron assign someone so highly skilled to accompany me on this mission?

What kind of mission is this?

“What’s our assignment?” I ask, forcing my words through numb lips.

“Two parts. First, finish Hiro val Akira’s assignment: assassinate the Mother.”

Thousand gods, is that what Hiro had been assigned—hunting down and killing the religious leader who commands half of the Gean government? And right after what happened to us on Ceres?

Beron dips his chin but keeps his eyes on me. Watching, waiting to see what I will do. “You will be given a full debrief regarding this mission, should you accept.”

But I don’t do anything because I fear, in the deepest pit of my stomach, that the worst is yet to come. “And the second objective?” I prompt.

Thick brows furrow as Beron meets my gaze. “Find Hiro val Akira.” Even Ofiera turns to look at me when Beron speaks. “Kill them.”

My shoulder throbs. “Kill—not capture?” I ask, ignoring my scar until it stops aching. “Certainly Hiro deserves a trial, a chance to explain their reasoning—”

“Those are your orders, Lito.” Beron’s voice is harsh, his anger rising to the surface as his face reddens. “Are you unable to follow them, sol Lucius?”

The emotions swarm me, one after another. Blinding anger, deep sorrow, claws of agony. My mercurial blade hums on my hip, itching to be released. There is only animal instinct, only the urge to fight and kill as I’ve been trained. But as these feelings come, I wish them away, banish them, as I place one gloved hand into the other and bend my fingers backward. I want to feel that pain, disappear into that hole, not drown in the tide of unwanted emotions that cloud my judgment.

The pain brings clarity. I cannot lash out here. These are my people. This is my assignment. This is who I am, Lito sol Lucius, a soldier of the Icarii before all else. And I will not falter, I will not fail and doom myself and my family back to short, shallow lives.

I focus on the physical for three more seconds. Five. I stand a whole fifteen seconds in silence before I release my own hand and leave myself a clean slate. The emotions are gone, the sorrow and sting of betrayal banished, the anger and anxiety quieted. My blade is hushed. My head is blank. Even the burn of my fingers lightens until the soreness is nothing more than a dull pang. My scars are silent.

“I accept this assignment, Commander,” I say at last, the binding words that grant my assent. And even as I say it, I wonder if this is my punishment, just as assigning my former partner to spy on Ceres after the Fall was Hiro’s. Because now I will return to the place where it all shattered, where I almost died, where we lost a battle that could lose us a war, without Hiro at my side.

And this time, my blade will be wielded to kill them.

What have you done now, Hiro?

PLAY: 01

Fucking gods, I’ve started this recording over a hundred times now. I’m never going to figure out what I want to say before I say it. You’ll just have to deal with the shitty, rambling quality of it. It should answer your questions.

At least, I hope it will.

That’s the only reason I’m bothering with all this. I know how dangerous it is to leave any trail connecting us now that we’re no longer Rapier and Dagger. I know Beron will be watching you like you’re compromised and your every sneeze is a sign to a Gean agent.

But I also know you, Lito.

I know how you sleep on your back with your arm thrown over your eyes so no one can tell if you’re awake or asleep. I know you hate when people see through the perfectly cultivated persona you wear like a uniform. I know you chase not just the first layer of truth but also the why behind it with a single-minded focus that you’d never let anyone, least of all yourself, admit to.

And you…

[A deep breath in. A heavy, rattling breath out.]

You at least deserve the truth. The unaltered, full version of it. The why of it.

So I’ll make this easy for you.

I’m guilty.

There. Easy, right?

And I know what you’re thinking: I can’t be guilty of everything they say I am, because so much of it is conflicting.

But I am guilty. Maybe not of everything, but of some things.

This doesn’t help you, does it? It doesn’t help me either. Saying it aloud doesn’t lighten the load on my shoulders. But isn’t that what confessions are supposed to do?

Maybe this isn’t a confession. It’s certainly not meant to ask for forgiveness. It’s not meant for anyone other than you. And I don’t care what the Icarii think of me—what my father or Beron thinks of me.

So please. Just listen, Lito.

Let me try to explain everything.

Excerpted from The First Sister, copyright © 2020 by Linden A. Lewis.

The post Read an Excerpt From The First Sister appeared first on Reactor.

We’re excited to share an excerpt from Caleb Roehrig’s YA paranormal romance The Fell of Dark—available from Feiwel & Friends.

The only thing August Pfeiffer hates more than algebra is living in a vampire town.

Located at a nexus of mystical energy fields, Fulton Heights is practically an electromagnet for supernatural drama. And when a mysterious (and annoyingly hot) vampire boy arrives with a cryptic warning, Auggie suddenly finds himself at the center of it.

An ancient and terrible power is returning to the earthly realm, and somehow Auggie seems to be the only one who can stop it.

Yekaterinburg, Russia
1918

Even before she opened her eyes, the girl knew that death had come for her. Again. The dark air was thickened with its pall, tangible as humidity and just as lush, and it settled over her with a gentle caress. This body was healthy and young, and it could have had a long life. But instead it would be sacrificed in a grab for power—that much had been written on the wall for months, years—because the only thing mortals prized more than the preciousness of life was their ability to destroy it.

“Your Highness?” A man hovered at her bedside, one hand on her shoulder. It was Botkin, the physician, his high forehead laddered with concern. He was a kind man, loyal—and doomed. The second she met his gaze, the fate that awaited him unrolled in her mind’s eye. It would be ugly. “You need to get up.”

“Is something wrong with Alexei?” The question came automatically, dredged from the grooves of instinct and a rebellious part of her consciousness that wouldn’t let go.

“It… the tsarevich is fine, Your Highness,” Botkin answered soothingly. Across the room, Olga was already on her feet, and Tatiana was stretching her limbs. “But it seems we’re being moved again. There’s been violence in the city, and they fear it will get worse.”

Taking a deep breath, she let the thick air coat her tongue and fill her body, her senses crackling. Rage, and hatred, and—yes, violence. But not in the city; it was here. Under this roof. It gathered like a thunderhead, and soon it would burst. Casting her covers aside, she sat up. “All right, then. I’ll get dressed.”

They moved quickly. Of the four sisters forced to share this room, she alone realized what was to come, and there was no point warning the others. Foreknowledge would be its own torture, and there was nothing to be done about it, anyway. She could stop it, of course, if she wanted to. But what would be the point? As healthy as her body was, it wouldn’t survive what would be required of it, and it might make things harder next time around. Next time. A pity. She was hungry for chaos now.

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With care, the four girls strapped themselves into corsets, the fabric panels packed tightly with precious stones—a fortune in hidden diamonds that the revolutionaries would have seized, had they thought to look. Bulletproof, the girl observed grimly, death so close she couldn’t shut out the visions if she’d wanted to. And then the guards came for them.

They were hustled through the dining room, with all its ostentatious furniture, and something whispered across her skin. She turned, the sensation tugging her attention, and glimpsed the dark outline of a woman standing in the shadowed passageway leading to the kitchen. Faceless in the dark, the energy she radiated was as clear as a fingerprint.

A smile played on the girl’s lips, in spite of everything. The men herding them were drunk on power and self-importance—completely ignorant of how fragile they really were. How small and insignificant, how close to their own deaths. Their lives were as delicate as fairy floss, and one, two, three, they’d all be in their graves before their grandchildren were old enough to remember them. She could see it all, entropy scattering their futures.

Down the stairs and through the courtyard, the girls were reunited with their parents and brother, and then escorted into a basement room with scarred floors. They were told to wait, and Mama asked for chairs—one for herself, and one for poor, pallid Alexei—and the request was granted. Not for the first time, the girl wished her mother’s cleric and faith healer, Grigori, was still with them; he’d been a scoundrel and a fraud, but most unwilling to die. If anyone could have gotten them out of here alive…

“Where do you think they’re taking us this time?” Olga asked in a worried murmur, perhaps sensing the tension in the air. The younger girl had no answer to give, so she allowed her sister to find comfort in a squeeze of the hand, a listless shrug.

The answer was an unmarked grave. It flashed before her—a mineshaft, blankets wrapped around bodies, men woozy with alcohol tossing human remains into the void. The air in the room grew hazy with bloodlust, the smell of sulfur stronger than ever; and deep inside, she came alive. She drank in the caustic miasma of vengeance and loathing that spread as far as her senses reached, poisoning the blood of ordinary people. She felt their rage, their pain, their suffering; into her lungs she drew the intoxicating degradation of it.

The tension finally burst as, unannounced, more than a dozen men poured into the basement, all of them armed. A familiar face, bearded, lean, and lupine, pushed through to the front of the crowd—Yurovsky, their chief jailor. She pulled sharply at his thoughts until he turned, compelled by forces he couldn’t begin to understand, and met her eyes.

It took less than a second to dive inside his consciousness and find her way around, to leave sooty fingerprints on his best memories and plant a ring of frost around this night—one that would spread to kill any joy he might ever experience. There was no point trying to stop what he meant to do; but there was no reason to let him live a peaceful life, either. As she pulled back, releasing her influence, she let out a sigh. He had twenty years left, almost to the day, and every last hour of it would now be plagued with misery.

“Nikolai Alexandrovich,” Yurovsky began in a loud, crisp voice, addressing her father, “in view of the fact that your relatives are continuing their attack on Soviet Russia, the Ural Executive Committee has decided to execute you.”

“What?” Her father started, the blood draining from his face. In the split second before the roar of gunfire filled the room, before a crew of inebriated men could begin a gruesome and inept act of mass murder, Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova closed her eyes. The youngest daughter of Russia’s last emperor, she’d had so much ahead of her. But this grisly little scene was not really the end—and she knew that better than anyone.

Death was only the beginning.

1
Fulton Heights, Illinois
Now

The only thing worse than living in a vampire town is having to take Algebra I for the second time. While living in a vampire town. I have a quiz tomorrow on exponents and square roots,
and literally the only thing that will keep me from failing it at this point is if I get eaten by one of the undead on my way to school in the morning.

To make matters worse, Fulton Heights, roughly thirty minutes from downtown Chicago, isn’t even one of the cool suburbs. All we’ve got is a dying mall, a nexus of weird, mystical energy that attracts monsters, and a handful of abandoned buildings the municipal government can’t afford to tear down. Hence the real source of our vampire problem. Empty warehouses make great hideouts for creatures of the night, who need proximity to their food source (us) and a safe place to sleep during the day.

I seriously don’t understand why we can’t just move somewhere else, but my parents refuse to discuss it. Right now, going on minute twelve of my agonizing attempt to solve for x on question number eight, I’m not sure if dying doesn’t have a certain amount of appeal. Reviving a lost argument might be pointless, but it is distracting, so I shout from the kitchen, “Why do I have to learn this stuff when I could get vampired at, like, any moment?”

“About three people in Fulton Heights die from vampire attacks each year, August,” my dad calls back from the living room in his stop-being-so-dramatic tone. “That’s less than the number of people we lose to heart disease, cancer, and traffic accidents. It’s not even in the top ten causes of death for the area! Stop being so dramatic.”

Like that’s supposed to make me feel better. Pretty much every Fulton Heights resident has those statistics memorized, but for most of us, it’s cold comfort. Vampires aren’t wild animals that kill indiscriminately, and most of them are smart enough to know that it’s in their best interests not to rack up a huge body count and give the frightened townsfolk a reason to get all torches-and-pitchforks about them hanging out in our long-shuttered glassworks factory. But we don’t exactly have an armistice, either.

They still need to eat, and we’re their favorite entrée. Okay, unlike what you see in the movies, they don’t tend to chase us down dark alleys and tear our throats out. A little Undead 101: Along with their superstrength and eternal youth and all that business, vampires also have this special mind-control thing that makes humans all docile and aroused, which renders us easy pickings. You meet a cute boy, he smiles at you—and the next thing you know you wake up all light-headed with a great big hickey and a pint of blood missing from your veins.

Or so goes the rumor. No cute boys have tried to seduce me yet. That’s another thing Fulton Heights doesn’t seem to have: other gay guys for me to date.

“We should move!” I shout next, because I want to keep this pointless conversation going as long as possible.

“Move where?” my mom responds this time. It’s a challenge. “I think Californ—”

“Earthquakes.” She doesn’t even let me finish, and I know I’ve got her. “Heat waves, droughts, brush fires, mudslides… Do you know how many people die from those each year? Do you know how much property values are, or how much homeowner’s insurance costs?”

“No!” I’m on a roll now. “How much?”

“Stop baiting your parents,” my tutor scolds, tapping the worksheet in front of me to regain my focus. Daphne Banks is a student at Northwestern University, about fifteen minutes away from here, and my parents pay her to come by twice a week and torture me. “You’re not leaving this table until you finish every one of these problems, mister.”

“Who cares if seventeen is the square root of three hundred and sixty-one?” I exclaim. “A vampire could chase me down an alley tomorrow and eat me, and it’s not like me being barely competent in algebra will scare him off!”

“‘Barely competent’ might be… kind of a stretch,” Daphne says, wincing, “and the square root of three hundred and sixty-one is nineteen, not seventeen.”

“Ha—gotcha!” Gloating, I scribble down the answer to question number eight. I feel a little bad for tricking her like that, but when you’re this bad at math, you need to be really good at grifting. “Thanks, Daph.”

“August Pfeiffer, you little swindler!” She reaches out and messes up my hair to teach me a lesson—but the joke’s on her, because my hair was already a mess to begin with. “This is important, though, you know? You need to learn this if you want to leave here for college. The odds that you’ll get vampired to death are, like, twenty-thousand to one; but if you don’t get decent grades, you could end up stuck in Fulton Heights forever.”

It’s a sobering thought, and I rededicate myself to the soul-sapping practice test. I cannot wait to leave this town, with its empty buildings and guys I can’t date, and go live someplace where “Heart disease is our leading cause of death!” isn’t a humblebrag. It doesn’t have to be California, either. Just a place big enough that the ratio of art galleries to yearly vampire attacks is at least even. The only person I’ll miss is my best friend, Adriana. And my parents. And Daphne.

Everyone else can get eaten.

Excerpted from The Fell of Dark, copyright © 2020 by Caleb Roehrig.

The post Read an Excerpt From The Fell of Dark appeared first on Reactor.

We’re excited to share an excerpt from Kathleen Jennings’ debut novella Flyaway, a beguiling story that proves that gothic delights and uncanny family horror can live—and even thrive—under a burning sun. Available July 28th from Tordotcom Publishing.

ALL THAT WAS

Once, somewhere between the Coral Sea and the Indian Ocean but on the way to nowhere, there was a district called—oh, let’s call it Inglewell.

Now, of course, it is overlaid by the smooth, sturdy engineering of the mining companies—the towns and their histories have been dug up or made over. A few landmarks remain unchanged: the inevitable memorial to wars long ago and far away, the street names. But almost every town has just such a memorial, and many places have a Spicer Street or a Pinnicke Road. You could never be sure you’d arrived.

But not so long ago it was a cupped palm of country, pinned to time by its three towns: Woodwild, Carter’s Crossing, and Runagate, my own.

Runagate—Heart of Inglewell on its stone welcome sign. Thirteen streets, one remaining pub, never a bank. One grocery store with a comfortable bench outside and air-conditioning sighing through the bright plastic strips curtaining the door. A water tower patterned in white and rust and shade. Three churches, each smaller than a house. The clawing precision of hard-won roses planted in wire-fenced gardens on the buried corpses of roadside kangaroos. Geraniums hot as matches. The spice of pepperina, oleander’s poison-sapped glow, the hallowed death of angel’s trumpets as apricot as sunset. Showgrounds, handsome in dusty cream and pea-green paint; stockyards. A long low school smelling of squashed jam sandwiches, the heady scents of cheap felt-tips and novelty erasers.

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Of Inglewell’s three towns, only Runagate still had a pulse. Woodwild was already nearly vanished; Carter’s Crossing had barely been. They held to each other by fraying ribbons of fractured, blue-black bitumen and cords of ribbed dirt, fringed with pale sand or beaded with blood-red pebbles (not stained by massacres, no, nor cursed, whatever people whispered about how the Spicer family first established Runagate Station).

That triangle tangle of roads and tracks held the district of Inglewell: hills and scrub glittered in the powder-white light, fading to chalk blue; sharp grasses fluttered pale in the paddocks, green and burgundy on the verge; grey huts subsided into themselves like memory. Then the plunge into purple shadows, the troll-rattle of an old timber bridge, a secret of dim emerald and the barrier-shriek of cicadas. Then up again, sky-tumbled, grass-fogged.

It was a fragile beauty: too easy to bleach with dust and history, to dehydrate with heat, rend with the retort of a shotgun or the strike of a bullbar, blind with sun on metal. Easy to turn from it, disgusted and afraid. But if you got out of a car to stretch your legs and instead were still, if you crouched down and waited, it would find you, nosing among the grass like the breeze. The light and loveliness would get into your bones, into your veins. It would beat in your blood like drumming under the ground.

Memory seeped and frayed there, where ghosts stood silent by fenceposts. There the bone horse kept pace with night drivers, while high branches shifted continuously even on breathless days and creaked with the passage of megarrities or other creatures unseen, and at midday long shadows whispered under the trees. And what trees!

Bottle and box, paper and iron, thorned and blossomed under the unutterable light (the sky blue as breath, as enamel, or beaten like copper, everything beneath it turned to metal, or else translucent). Trees like lanterns, like candles, ghosts and bones. The fibrous skeletons of moth-slain cactus and beetle-eaten lantern-bush leaned over the opal-veined bulk of petrified limbs spilled in empty creek beds. Trees bled resin like rubies, sprouted goitrous nests, suspended cat’s-cradles of spiderwebs, spinning disks of silk. Trees towered hard as bronze in still sunlight, and stirred like a living hide in the rolling advent of a storm.

If you were born to Runagate with all its fragile propriety, its tidy civilisation, its ring-fence of roads and paddocks, wires and blood, there was nothing else in the world beyond but trees.

CHAPTER ONE
Lemon Tree and Lantern-bush

My mother—pale, delicate Nerida Scott, who wilted like a garden in the heat of the day—did not like to speak of or even look at the trees beyond Runagate.

Our front garden—the prettiest-kept on Upper Spicer Street, the handsomest street in Runagate—contained nothing native to the ground from which we daily coaxed and tortured it. It was decent, tidy and ornamental, and, like my mother, gracious. Though she always sent me to borrow books for her on homemaking and manners and inspiring true stories, she didn’t need them: Nerida Scott was as naturally elegant as a lily.

I, in contrast, had reached the age of nineteen, graceless and unlovely, despite our best efforts. There was too much of my father in me.

“But you are a good girl, aren’t you?” said my mother, catching my hand with slender fingers when I stood to clear the lunch dishes. Her nails were smooth and petal-pink.

“Yes, Mother,” I assured her. As I washed the plates, I concentrated on scrubbing out a little more, too, of that old childish self—the restless temper, the loose-limbed insolence I had got from my mocking father and unloving brothers, an unflattering pretension to cleverness. Unlearning the habits gained during the useless, featureless years I had spent at Runagate State School, before I had to grow up. Before I chose to. Nothing (she liked to say) is as unattractive as a woman with a little education, is it, Bettina? And I had spent three years resolutely becoming responsible and civilised and winsome. A strong will has its uses.

That day, like nearly every day, was bright. My mother, her eyes already green-shadowed with tiredness, settled to sleep. My mind quiet, I swept the kitchen to the companionable hum of the refrigerator, the midday crooning of red hens scratching beneath the lemons that hung in the backyard: lemons the size of ox hearts, thick-rinded, brilliant and knobby, luminous among the glossy green. They were not, I think, the shapely fruit my mother had expected, but she did not want to replace the tree. The scent wandered through the house. I would have gone and gathered armfuls of fragrant leaves, but my mother, in one of her few deviations from her magazines, considered cut arrangements gauche.

I washed my face and hands, carefully cleaned the dirt from beneath my nails, added the faintest of colours to my cheeks and lips, brushed the thick dull bob of my hair over the thread-thin scar, almost invisible, on my cheek—a childhood injury, forgotten—and straightened my skirt and blouse. My mother might be asleep, might not love her petty, parochial neighbours, but in Runagate she would certainly hear if I went out looking as if I had no one to care for me.

There had been no car at our house since the night my father left. My mother had barred my brothers from repairing their battered ute in the driveway, and in any event Mitch and Chris had soon gone too. But under the pressure of the midday sun, as I wheeled my yellow bicycle to the front gate, opened it and latched it neatly behind me, I almost regretted not being able to drive. Almost, but then a throbbing in my head and neck reminded me of what we had lost with it: the snarl and roar of engines in the garage and on the lawn, boys rioting through the house, light hair feathered white from the sun, shouting like crows, always too much in the open air. Monsters! my mother had called them, rightly: husband, sons, and cars too.

Nowadays our peace was broken only by wings outside the windows, the shifting of lace shadows. “We are pleasant together, aren’t we, Bettina?” my mother would say, and I would answer, “Yes.” We were homemakers; after everything, I chose to stay when restless spirits fled.

We bloom where we are planted. Don’t we, Bettina? We are content. And I was content. For a moment, pushing back my hair at the door of the library before returning my mother’s books (improving and inspiring), I smelled the ghost of oil and petrol sweet on my hands, but while I had few secrets from my mother, that was not a memory to grieve her with. It would fade.

I ran all my errands but one, and the bags swung heavy on the bicycle’s handles.

“Scott-girl!” bellowed Pinnicke, the old scalper, on the corner before the petrol station, on the road leading away from Runagate. “I found something near the traps, dingo traps, I thought I’d got its paw—you’d think it would be a paw—but come see, come see.”

I stepped down hard on the pedals, flew across the road and past the pumps, kicked the stand down quickly and darted into the shop.

“A hand!” laughed the old man, outside. “Complete with a ring!”

“Pinnicke bothering you, Bettina?” asked Casey Hale at the counter. She had cut off all her wild permed curls and her short hair was sleek. Modern.

“No, Miss Hale.” Pinnicke was quite unbalanced; it was correct to avoid him, whatever acquaintance he’d scraped with my father. No one worth knowing had liked him. I scrambled to remember any of the old books on etiquette my mother had me read to her, but they didn’t contemplate Pinnickes. I was breathing too fast. I’d hardly been acting my age.

“Bring your bike in,” she said, too kindly. “You can leave through the back.”

“No, thank you, Miss Hale.” That would be undignified. “Is there a delivery for me, Miss Hale? From the bus?” We don’t end a sentence as if it is a question, do we, Bettina? “From the bus,” I corrected myself.

She raised one eyebrow—vulgar, my mother would have said, and once I would have wished I could do it—then went through a door and brought out a white box tied with baling twine and punched with holes. From inside, small voices cheeped.

“Are you sure?” she asked.

“Yes, Miss Hale. That is all, thank you.”

I waited for her to give me the box. She gave me a long stare first. “Okay, Miss Scott.” Her tone was rude, but at least she wasn’t treating me like a child. “My compliments to your mum.”

I accepted the box of chickens and bundled hastily outside again, narrowly avoiding a tall man with a sandy beard, and above it pale keen eyes, cold as a crow’s. He smelled of blood and oil. Not from Runagate, I registered, and with speed (but not haste) stowed the box in the basket of my bicycle and fastened it there with cords.

“Reckon your dad would have been interested.” Old Pinnicke was leaning against the wall. His breath stank like the air from the pub. “Always picking things up, wasn’t he?”

The stranger had parked his ute—dented, rusted, piled with cages of geese and feathers—on what footpath there was. A two-way radio crackled inside the cab and something slumped low in the passenger seat, cowed, or dead. I pushed off the kerb into the road, where there were never cars.

Brakes screamed.

I stopped, hunched over the handlebars, eyes closed, waiting for my mind to catch up (surely it had once been faster). Curses from Old Pinnicke. A blue smell of rubber, like time contracting too fast. I opened one eye and saw a young man drop down from the cab of his red truck, rusty hair on end and freckles showing. This one was from Runagate. Too much so.

“Tina Scott!” said Gary Damson. “What the hell are you doing?”

But I was on the bicycle and away, my face hot as fire. I stood on the pedals, as if I were fifteen and heedless. I wanted only to get out of the open street, the staring eyes of Runagate. To get to home and safety.

It was common knowledge (which is not the same as gossip) that Mr Alleman, who lived next door, lost his son in the Woodwild School fire before I was born. Since he’d retired from covering clearing sales and dances for the STAR, he’d found nothing better to do than watch his neighbours. His sharp nose tracked above the leaves of his lantern-bush hedge. “You’ve got a fan, Bettina Scott,” he observed.

I intended to ignore him but could not avoid seeing what he nodded to. Scrawled in black letters across our neat white fence was the word MONSTERS.

“Who—” I began.

“I didn’t see,” said Mr Alleman, and tapped his blade of a nose. “But we can guess, we can guess.”

I couldn’t. In spite of the heat, the paint stuck to my fingers. Fresh. Mr Alleman was chuckling. Chilled with fury, I gathered the mail from our letterbox and went quickly through the gate.

I settled the new chicks—no worse for the adventure with the truck—under the hanging bulb, then lingered by the door of the garage and sorted the mail, waiting for my mood to settle, and Mr Alleman to lose interest and go indoors. A bill. A flyer for events at the cultural centre: a bush-dance, an introduction to computers, a water-dowsing workshop, a movie to be shown on the last Saturday, and an historical lecture on the eradication of invasive plants. That should be of interest to Mr Alleman—we didn’t approve of his garden. Letters to my mother from her travelling friends in scripts looped, elegant and feminine on flower-scented paper—I breathed it in, forcing myself to relax. The stamps read Åland, Ísland, Magyarország. Tiny bright worlds, smaller than Runagate, places where plants froze in the snow and died in the autumn. A catalogue of pretty throw-rugs and framed sayings, which we would look through after dinner. And a grubby little envelope, not stamped or postmarked, not even addressed except for one word: TINK.

You are truthful, Bettina, aren’t you? I didn’t answer, even to myself. That paper, that writing—filthy and bold and untidy—offended my already-ruffled spirit, and stirred it up like dirt at the bottom of a water tank. All my worst impulses.

This—whatever it was—was mine. I put it into the pocket of my skirt and stood in the garage, feeling my unsteady heart, and the paper resting guilty as fire against my leg. Mr Alleman had gone. My mother’s advice would have guided me, but she was asleep, and for a moment the idea of rebelling against my own better judgement tasted as good as salt.

I scrubbed the fence, the sun hot through my blouse, the breeze pressing the fabric against my shoulder blades. But I could not enjoy that secret glory of movement and effort. My peace was twitched by my conscience, by the worry Mr Alleman was watching behind his curtains, or my mother behind hers, by the growing suspicion this was not, in fact, the first letter I had received and therefore neither special nor deserving of secrecy. Hadn’t there been a letter once, ages ago, that my mother had read by the window, laughing softly to herself? The memory was sluggish, cobwebbed with disuse. It had been foolishness, my mother had said. Nothing to bother our heads about, Bettina, is it?

“Bettina Scott,” said a voice behind me, angry and light, but a man’s. I spun, spiralling dirty water. It spattered the driver’s door of Gary Damson’s truck, where the letters spelling Damson Fencing were peeling to reveal only their own deeper shadows. I was indecorously, bitterly, delighted. It was his own fault. He had startled me twice today.

“Was that paint?” he said. For a moment, my thoughts were fast enough: I was suddenly certain what Gary Damson’s square hands would feel like, raised in anger. He leaped out, but I was taller and faster. Gathering bucket and brushes, I ran into the yard, past the house, back to the safety of the garage.

“You coward, Tina!” he shouted, voice cracking. I knew he would not follow. Mother had forbidden him the yard, back when my brothers left. Damsons respect fences.

Coward. My hands were shaking. “Hush,” I whispered to myself, until they stilled, and my thoughts were quiet once more. I rinsed the bucket, and after a while the truck choked to life and roared away. Caution was better than bravery, I reminded myself. A civilised, bone-china soul knows, as a bird does, that a heavy-footed, shouting man is a thing to be fled.

The garage was quiet, except for the scrape and slide of noisy miner and magpie claws on the iron roof, the spreading patterns of hydrangea-blue shadows, and the perennial half-whispers in the trees that did not belong to any breeze or beast I had ever seen.
I wrung out the damp hem of my skirt, dried my hands and went inside.

“Are you feeling ill, Bettina?” my mother asked me in the bright evening, pausing over her letters.

“My stomach,” I said. Unthinking, I rubbed my neck and shoulder.

“You mustn’t be ill, Bettina,” said my mother, anxious. “You are never ill.” She smiled at me bracingly. “You are a good girl. You always do what I need to be done—you must be well for that. You are feeling better, aren’t you?”

“Yes, Mother,” I said. It had, after all, only been tension. Guilt, and alarm.

She paused delicately. “I heard some . . . altercation this afternoon.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. Her eyes were still shadowed. “Someone painted words on our fence. Not crude. Just ‘monsters.’ I cleaned it.” Looking up, I saw her watching me, eyes kind and green, her pale lashes fine as the fringe on a fern.

“And?” she prompted.

“Gary—Mr Damson, young Mr Damson—came by.”

“What did he want, Bettina?”

“I don’t know,” I said, honestly. “I didn’t stay to ask.”

My mother nodded. “The Damsons are no better than they should be,” she said. “Fencers.” She shook her head, as if she did not love her white fence, as if the Damsons were involved in an arcane and dubious activity. “They are not like us, are they?”

“No, Mother.”

She watched me.

“He shouted at me,” I said, to please her, and to claw my way back to the peace I had felt that morning. You always feel better when you tell the truth, don’t you? “For almost splashing paint on his truck. But he was the one who frightened me.” Odd I had not heard him drive up. What had I been thinking of?

“Poor Bettina,” said my mother. “Come here.” She reached up and embraced me briefly; her skin was soft over the vine-firm tendons of her thin arms. A tightness I hadn’t noticed in my back eased. There was, after all, nothing to worry about.

“Perhaps we should send that shock back where it belongs,” said my mother.

She had ways—terribly polite, peaceful ways—of putting our world to rights. That night she called Sergeant Aberdeen, our policeman. I listened calmly, suppressing a juvenile glee. She thought he should know young Gary Damson was stirring up trouble; of course she could trust him to do what was necessary, couldn’t she? He had a daughter, so he understood, after all?

We did not care for poor Winston’s daughter, and so, “Did he understand?” I asked, when she hung up. My mother merely sighed. Patricia Aberdeen, after all, would have revenged herself upon Gary without recourse to the proper authorities.

“A shame he was saddled with raising such a wild girl,” said my mother. “It was fortunate for everyone when she was sent away. Better not to think about her, don’t you agree?”

So I did not. But when I changed for bed and emptied my pockets, I found the letter again.

It wasn’t a real envelope. The paper was locked together by an untidy series of creases. With it a memory unfurled just as mechanically and rumpled: my hands knew this pattern, we had folded notes like this at school. We? I had been peculiarly friendless; it wasn’t nice to have favourites, besides which the company at Runagate State School had been lacking. Not like us. Like Gary Damson, too much themselves: nothing but sunburn, muscle and dirt. Like my brothers.

A sudden image of the three of them, crow-hoarse with laughter, Mitch and Chris lanky as cranes beside Gary.

Dismissing that train of thought as unprofitable, I opened the letter over my bare knees, the brittle butcher paper scraping faintly on faded scars.

It contained a page torn from the Runagate, Woodwild and Crossing STAR. The date was three years old, but I guessed each word before I read it.

YOUTHS RUN AMOK
DAMAGE AND DISTURBANCE
DESTRUCTION OF PEACE

I shifted the scrap to read the writing underneath: a large, unsteady scrawl, the pen pressing veins into the paper.

YOU COWARD, TINK

Why would anyone trouble to point that out twice in one day? Gary Damson’s words, although he wouldn’t have called me Tink. Only my brothers and father had called me that. But they were long gone. When I tried to remember how their voices sounded when they said it, I couldn’t. I wasn’t surprised: even their faces were blurry. My mother hadn’t kept any photographs. We don’t need to be reminded, do we, Bettina? Forgetting is easy, once you learn how.

I looked at the article again. It had been torn from its page, with greasy thumbprints dark on the grey paper. It smelled of motors and dung. I rested it back on my knees, holding it cautiously so the newsprint could not come off too much on my fingers.

Only my brothers.

I could have told my mother. But I lingered too long, and felt through the house a draught, laden with the breath of growing things. Rain, I knew as if it had already fallen on me. A serenity comes with that smell, calming the acid of doubt and regret, stirring different thoughts. The scent of sharp grass softening, the lemon tree digging its roots further into the dissolving earth, the pepperina and lantern-bush and beyond—pine, brigalow, eucalypt, the vast, uncivilising world shifting like a shaggy animal, silver-green under the clouds, dreaming, although my mother would not credit it, in memories.

Excerpted from Flyaway, copyright © 2020 by Kathleen Jennings.

The post Read an Excerpt From Kathleen Jennings’ Flyaway appeared first on Reactor.

Now she’s awakened a nightmare.

During a routine survey mission on an uncolonized planet, Kira finds an alien relic. At first she’s delighted, but elation turns to terror when the ancient dust around her begins to move.

As war erupts among the stars, Kira is launched into a galaxy-spanning odyssey of discovery and transformation. First contact isn’t at all what she imagined, and events push her to the very limits of what it means to be human.

Read To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, a brand new epic novel from New York Times bestselling author Christopher Paolini, out September 15, 2020 from Tor Books.

New chapters on Tor.com every Monday.

Chapter 5

***

Madness

1.

Kira’s eyes shot open.

There was no slow rise to consciousness. No gradual return to awareness. Not this time. One moment nothing; the next, a burst of sensory information, bright and sharp and overwhelming in its intensity.

She was lying at the bottom of a tall, circular chamber—a tube with a ceiling five meters above her, far too high to reach. It reminded her of the grain silo their neighbors, the Roshans, had built when she was thirteen. Halfway up the side of the tube was a two-way mirror: a large, silvery rectangle filled with the grey ghost of a reflection. A narrow lightstrip along the edge of the ceiling was the only source of illumination.

Not just one but two robot arms moved about her with silent grace, a cluster of diagnostic instruments protruding from the end of each one. As she looked at them, they paused and then retracted toward the ceiling, where they hung in readiness.

Embedded within one side of the tube was an airlock with a built-in hatch for passing small objects in and out. Opposite the airlock was a pressure door that presumably led deeper into… into wherever. It too had a hatch, similar in size and for the same purpose. Glorified jailer’s slots. There was no bed. No blanket. No sink. And no toilet. Just cold, bare metal.

She had to be on a ship. Not the Fidanza. The Extenuating Circumstances.

Which meant…

A jolt of adrenaline caused Kira to gasp and sit upright. The pain; the spikes; Neghar, Fizel, Yugo, Ivanova… Alan! The memories returned in a deluge. They returned, but Kira wished they hadn’t. Her gut clenched, and a long, deep groan escaped her as she fell to her hands, knees, and forehead. The ridges of the deck cut into her skin, but she didn’t care.

When she could breathe, she howled, pouring all of her grief and anguish into a single wailing cry.

It was all her fault. If she hadn’t found that damned room, Alan and the others would still be alive and she wouldn’t have ended up infected by some sort of xeno.

The spikes.

Where were the spikes and tendrils that had torn through her skin? Kira looked down, and her heart skipped a beat.

Her hands were black when they shouldn’t have been. So too were her arms and her chest and everything else she could see of her body. A layer of glossy, fibrous material clung to her, tight as any skinsuit.

Horror welled up inside Kira.

She clawed at her forearms in a desperate attempt to rip off the alien organism. Even with their hard new veneer, her nails couldn’t cut or break the fibers. Frustrated, she brought her wrist to her mouth and bit.

The taste of stone and metal filled her mouth. She could feel the pressure from her teeth, but no matter how hard she bit down, it didn’t hurt.

Kira scrambled to her feet, heart pounding so fast it skipped beats, the edges of her vision going dark. “Get it off!” she shouted. “Get this fucking thing off me!” Through her panic, she wondered where everyone was, her one coherent thought amid the madness.

One of the robotic arms descended toward her. The manipulator at the end of the arm was holding a syringe. Before Kira could move, the machine reached around her head and injected her behind the ear, on a patch of still-bare skin.

Within seconds a heavy blanket seemed to press down upon her. Kira stumbled sideways, reaching out an arm to catch herself as she fell—

2.

The panic returned the moment Kira regained consciousness.

There was an alien creature bonded with her. She was contaminated, possibly infectious. It was the sort of situation every xenobiologist dreaded: a containment breach leading to fatalities.

Alan…

Kira shuddered and buried her face in the crook of her arm. Below her neck, her skin prickled with a million tiny fears. She wanted to look again, but she didn’t have the courage. Not yet.

Tears leaked from under her eyelids. She could feel Alan’s absence like a hole in her chest. It didn’t seem possible that he was dead. They’d had so many plans, so many hopes and dreams, and now none of them would come to fruition. She’d never get to see him build the house he’d talked about, nor go skiing with him in mountains in the far south of Adra, nor watch him become a father, nor any of the other things she’d imagined.

The knowledge hurt more than any physical pain.

She felt her finger. The band of polished iron set with tesserite was gone, and with it her only tangible reminder of him.

A memory came to her then, from years past: her father kneeling next to her in a greenhouse and bandaging a cut on her arm while saying, “The pain is of our own making, Kira.” He pressed a finger against her forehead. “It only hurts as much as we let it.”

Maybe so, but Kira still felt terrible. Pain was pain, and it insisted on making itself known.

How long had she been unconscious? Minutes? Hours?… No, not hours. She was lying where she’d fallen, feeling neither hungry nor thirsty. Only drained from the torment of misery. Her whole body ached as if bruised.

Behind her shuttered lids, Kira noticed that none of her overlays were displaying. “Petra, on,” she said. Her system didn’t respond, not even with a flicker. “Petra, force restart.” The darkness remained unchanged.

Of course. The UMC would shut down her implants.

She growled into her arm. How could the military techs have overlooked the organism in her and Neghar? The xeno was large. Even a basic examination ought to have spotted it. If the UMC had done their job properly, no one would have died.

“Goddamn you,” she muttered. Her anger fought back the grief and panic enough for her to open her eyes.

Again she saw the bare metal. Lightstrips. Mirrored window. Why had they brought her onto the Extenuating Circumstances? Why risk the additional exposure? None of their choices made sense to her.

She’d avoided the inevitable long enough. Steeling herself, Kira looked down.

Her body was still covered in the layer of inky black. That and nothing more. The material resembled bands of overlapping muscles; she could see the individual strands stretch and flex as she moved. Her alarm strengthened, and a shimmer seemed to pass across the fibers. Was it sentient? No way to know for sure at the moment.

Tentative, Kira touched a spot on her arm.

She hissed, baring her teeth. She could feel her fingers on her arm, as if the intervening fibers didn’t exist. The parasite—machine or organism, she didn’t know which—had worked itself into her nervous system. The motions of the circulating air were noticeable against her skin, as was every square centimeter of decking that pressed into her flesh. She might as well have been totally naked.

And yet… she wasn’t cold. Not as she ought to be.

She examined the soles of her feet. Covered, same as her palms. Feeling upward, she discovered that—in the front—the suit stopped near the top of her neck. There was a small ridge: a drop-off between fibers and skin that curved around her ears. In the back, the fibers continued up and over the back of her head and—

Her hair was gone. Nothing but the smooth contours of her skull met her exploring fingers.

Kira set her teeth. What else had the xeno stolen from her?

As she concentrated on the different sensations of her body, Kira realized that the xeno wasn’t just bonded to her outside; it was inside her as well, filling her, penetrating her, if however unobtrusively.

Her gorge rose, and claustrophobia closed in around her, choking her. She was trapped, embedded in the alien substance with no way of escaping…

She bent over and retched. Nothing came out, but bile coated her tongue and her stomach continued to heave.

Kira shivered. How the hell could the UMC decontaminate her when the suit was wound up all inside? She was going to be stuck in quarantine for months, maybe years. Stuck with it.

She spat into the corner and, without thinking, wiped her mouth on her forearm. The smear of spit soaked into the fibers, like water into cloth.

Disgusting.

A faint hiss—as of speakers turning on—broke the silence, and a new source of light struck Kira’s face.

3.

A hologram covered half the wall. The image was several meters high and showed a small, empty desk—painted battleship grey—in the middle of an equally small, equally stark room. A single chair, straight-backed and armless, sat behind the desk.

A woman walked in. She was of medium height, with a pair of eyes like chips of black ice and a cast-iron hairdo shot through with strands of white. A Reform Hutterite, then, or something similar. There were only a few Hutterites on Weyland: a handful of families Kira had seen on occasion during the settlement’s monthly gathering. The older adults always stood out with their sagging skin and receding hairlines and other obvious signs of aging. The sight had scared her when she was little and fascinated her when she was in her teens.

What she focused on, though, weren’t the woman’s features but her clothes. She was wearing a grey uniform—grey like the desk—that had been starched and ironed until each crease looked as if it could slice through hardened tool steel. Kira didn’t recognize the color of the uniform. Blue was the Navy/Spacecorps. Green was the Army. Grey was… ?

The woman seated herself, placed a tablet on the desk, centered it with the tips of her forefingers. “Ms. Navárez. Do you know where you are?” She had a thin, flat mouth, like that of a guppy, and when she spoke, her bottom row of teeth was visible.

“The Extenuating Circumstances.” Kira’s throat hurt; it felt raw and swollen.

“Very good. Ms. Navárez, this is a formal deposition in accordance with article fifty-two of the Stellar Security Act. You will answer all of my questions, willingly and to the best of your knowledge. This isn’t a court, but if you fail to cooperate, you can and will be charged with obstruction, and if your statement is later found to be false, perjury. Now, tell me everything that you remember after you woke up from cryo.”

Kira blinked, feeling lost and confused. Grinding out each word, she said, “My team… what about my team?”

Guppy Face pressed her lips together into a pale line. “If you’re asking who survived, four of them did. Mendoza, Neghar, Marie-Élise, and Jenan.”

At least Marie-Élise was still alive. Fresh tears threatened to spill down Kira’s cheeks. She scowled, not wanting to cry in front of the other woman. “Neghar? How…”

“Video footage shows that the organism she expelled melded with the one currently attached to your body after the… hostilities. As far as we can tell, the two are indistinguishable. Our current theory is that Neghar’s organism was drawn to yours as yours was larger and more fully developed—a lesser part of a hive-swarm rejoining the greater, if you will. Aside from some internal bleeding, Neghar seems unharmed and free of infection, although at the moment, it’s impossible for us to be sure.”

Kira’s hands knotted into fists as her anger swelled. “Why didn’t you spot the xeno before? If you had—”

The woman made a cutting motion with her hand. “We don’t have time for this, Navárez. I understand you’ve had a shock, but—”

“You couldn’t possibly understand.”

Guppy Face eyed Kira with something close to disdain. “You’re not the first person to be infected by an alien life-form, and you’re certainly not the first person to lose some friends.”

Guilt caused Kira to look down and squeeze her eyes shut for a moment. Hot tears peppered the backs of her fists. “He was my fiancé,” she mumbled.

“What was that?”

“Alan, he was my fiancé,” Kira said, louder. She gave the woman a defiant look.

Guppy Face never blinked. “You mean Alan J. Barnes?”

“Yes.”

“I see. In that case, you have the condolences of the UMC. Now, I need you to pull yourself together. The only thing you can do is accept God’s will and move forward. Sink or swim, Navárez.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“I didn’t say it would be easy. Grow a pair and start acting like a professional. I know you can. I read your file.”

The words stung Kira’s pride, although she would never admit it. “Yeah? Well who the hell are you?”

“Excuse me?”

“Your name? You haven’t told me.”

The woman’s face tightened, as if she hated to share any personal information with Kira. “Major Tschetter. Now, tell me—”

“And what are you?”

Tschetter raised an eyebrow. “Human, last I checked.”

“No, I meant…” Kira gestured at the woman’s grey uniform.

“Special attaché to Captain Henriksen, if you must know. This is beside the—”

Frustrated, Kira let her voice rise. “Is it too much to ask what branch of the armed forces, Major? Or is that classified?”

Tschetter assumed a flat, affectless expression, a professional blankness that told Kira nothing of what she was thinking or feeling. “UMCI. Fleet Intelligence.”

A spy then, or worse, a political officer. Kira snorted. “Where are they?”

“Who, Ms. Navárez?”

“My friends. The… the ones you rescued.”

“In cryo, on the Fidanza, being evacuated from the system. There. Satisfied?”

Kira released a bark of laughter. “Satisfied? Satisfied?! I want this damn thing off me.” She plucked at the black coating on her arm. “Cut it off if you have to, but get it off.”

“Yes, you made your desire abundantly clear,” said Tschetter. “If we can remove the xeno, we will. But first, you’re going to tell me what happened, Ms. Navárez, and you’re going to tell me right now.”

Kira bit back another curse. She wanted to rant and rage; she wanted to lash out and make Tschetter feel even a small measure of her hurt. But she knew it wouldn’t help. So she did as she was ordered. She told the major everything she remembered. It didn’t take long, and Kira found no relief in confession.

The major had numerous questions, most of them focused on the hours before the parasite burst forth: Had Kira noticed anything unusual? An upset stomach, elevated temperature, intrusive thoughts? Had she smelled anything unfamiliar? Had her skin been itchy? Rashes? Inexplicable thirst or cravings?

Aside from the itching, the answer to most of the questions was no, which Kira could see didn’t please the major. Especially when Kira explained that—to the best of her knowledge—Neghar hadn’t experienced the same symptoms.

Afterward, Kira said, “Why didn’t you stick me in cryo? Why am I on the Extenuating Circumstances?” She didn’t understand it. Maintaining quarantine was the most important task in xenobiology. The thought of breaking it was enough to give anyone in her profession the cold sweats.

Tschetter smoothed an invisible wrinkle out of her jacket. “We tried to freeze you, Navárez.” Her gaze met Kira’s. “We tried and failed.”

Kira’s mouth went dry. “Failed.”

A short nod from Tschetter. “The organism purged the cryonic injections from your body. We couldn’t keep you under.”

A new fear struck Kira. Freezing the xeno was the easiest way to stop it. Without that, they had no quick way to keep it from spreading. Also, without cryo, it was going to be a hell of a lot harder for her to get back to the League.

Tschetter was still speaking: “After we released you and Neghar from quarantine, our medical team was in close contact with the both of you. They touched your skin. They breathed the same air. They handled the same equipment. And then”—Tschetter leaned forward, intense—“they came back here, to the Extenuating Circumstances. Now do you understand, Navárez?”

Kira’s mind started to race. “You think you’ve been exposed.”

Tschetter inclined her head. “The xeno took two and a half days to emerge after Neghar was removed from cryo. Less so in your case. Being frozen may or may not have slowed the development of the organism. Either way, we have to assume the worst. Minus the time since your release, that means we have somewhere between twelve and forty-eight hours to figure out how to detect and treat asymptomatic hosts.”

“That’s not enough time.”

The corners of Tschetter’s eyes tightened. “We have to try. Captain Henriksen has already ordered all nonessential crew into cryo. If we don’t find a solution by end of tomorrow, he’ll have the rest of us frozen.”

Kira licked her lips. No wonder they’d been willing to bring her onto the Extenuating Circumstances. They were desperate. “What happens to me then?”

Tschetter steepled her fingers. “Our ship mind, Bishop, will continue your examination as he sees fit.”

Kira could see the logic in that. Ship minds were kept isolated from the rest of the life-support system. By all rights, Bishop ought to be perfectly safe from infection.

There was just one problem. Whatever she was carrying wasn’t just a threat on the micro level. She lifted her chin. “And what if… what if the xeno acts out the way it did on Adra? It could rip a hole right through the hull. You should have set up a pressure dome on the surface, studied the xeno there.”

“Ms. Navárez…” Tschetter made a minuscule adjustment to the position of the tablet in front of her. “The xeno currently occupying your body is of the highest possible interest to the League, tactically, politically, and scientifically. We were never going to leave it on Adrasteia, regardless of the risk to this ship or this crew.”

“That’s—”

“Furthermore, the chamber you are currently in is completely isolated from the rest of the ship. Should the xeno attempt to damage the Extenuating Circumstances as it did your base, or should it display other hostile actions, the entire pod can be jettisoned into space. Do you understand?”

Kira’s jaw clenched despite herself. “Yes.” She couldn’t blame them for the precautions. They made sense. Didn’t mean she had to like them.

“Let me be perfectly clear, Ms. Navárez. The League won’t let any of us return home—including your friends—until we have a reliable means of detection. Let me repeat that: no one on this ship will be permitted within ten light-years of a human-settled planet unless we can figure this out. The League would blow us out of the sky before they would let us land, and rightly so.”

Kira felt sorry for Marie-Élise and the others, but at least they wouldn’t be aware of the time passing. She squared her shoulders. “Okay. So what do you need from me?”

Tschetter smiled without humor. “Your willing cooperation. Do I have it?”

“Yes.”

“Excellent. Then—”

“Just one thing; I want to record a few messages for my friends and family, in case I don’t make it. Also a message for Alan’s brother, Sam. Nothing classified, but he deserves to hear from me.”

The major paused for a second, eyes darting as she read something in front of her. “That can be arranged. It may be some time before any communications are allowed, though. We’re running silent until we receive orders from Command.”

“I understand. Oh, and—”

“Ms. Navárez, we’re operating under a very tight deadline.”

Kira held up a hand. “Can you turn my implants back on? I’m going to go crazy in here without my overlays.” She nearly laughed. “I might be going crazy anyway.”

“Can’t,” said Tschetter.

Kira’s defenses shot back up. “Can’t or won’t?”

“Can’t. The xeno destroyed your implants. I’m sorry. There’s nothing left to turn back on.”

Kira grunted, feeling as if another someone had died. All her memories… She’d had her system set to automatically back up to the server at HQ at the end of each day. If the server had survived, then so had her personal archives, although everything that had happened to her since would be lost, existing only in the fragile and fallible tissues of her brain. If she had to choose, she would have rather lost an arm than her implants. With her overlays, she had a world within a world—a whole universe of content to explore, both real and invented. Without, all she was left with were her thoughts, thin and insubstantial, and the echoing darkness beyond. What’s more, her senses had been blunted; she couldn’t see UV or infrared, couldn’t feel the magnetic fields around her, couldn’t interface with machines, and worst of all, couldn’t look up whatever she didn’t know.

She was diminished. The thing had reduced her to the level of an animal, to nothing more than meat. Primitive, unenhanced meat. And in order to do that, it must have worked its way into her brain, severed the nanowire leads that joined the implants to her neurons.

What else had it severed?

For a minute Kira stood still and silent, breathing heavy. The suit felt as hard as steel plate around her torso. Tschetter had the sense not to interrupt. At last Kira said, “Then let me have a tablet. Or some holo-glasses. Something.”

Tschetter shook her head. “We can’t allow the xeno to access our computer system. Not at the moment. It’s too dangerous.”

A huff of air escaped Kira, but she knew better than to argue. The major was right. “Dammit,” she said. “Okay. Let’s get started.”

Tschetter picked up her tablet and stood. “One last question, Navárez: Do you still feel like yourself?”

The question struck an unpleasant chord. Kira knew what the major was asking. Was she, Kira, still in control of her mind? Regardless of the truth, there was only one answer she could give if she were to ever walk free.

“Yes.”

“That’s good. That’s what we want to hear.” But Tschetter didn’t look happy. “Alright. Doctor Carr will be with you shortly.”

As Tschetter started to walk away, Kira asked a question of her own: “Have you found any other artifacts like this?” The words fell out of her in a breathless jumble. “Like the xeno?”

The major glanced back at her. “No, Ms. Navárez. We haven’t.”

The holo winked out of existence.

4.

Kira sat by the pressure door, still mulling over the major’s final question. How could she be sure her thoughts, actions, or emotions were still her own? Plenty of parasites modified the behavior of their hosts. Maybe the xeno was doing the same to her.

If so, she might not even notice.

Some things Kira felt sure an alien wouldn’t be able to successfully manipulate, no matter how smart the creature was. Thoughts, memories, language, culture—all of those were too complex and context-dependent for an alien to fully understand. Hell, even humans had difficulty going from one human culture to another. However, big emotions, urges, actions, those would be vulnerable to tampering. For all she knew, her anger might be coming from the organism. It didn’t feel like it, but then it wouldn’t.

Have to try and stay calm, Kira thought. Whatever the xeno was doing to her was out of her control, but she could still watch herself for unusual behavior.

A spotlight snapped on overhead, pinning her beneath its harsh glare. In the darkness beyond, there was a stir of movement as the robotic arms descended toward her.

Halfway up the cylindrical wall, the two-way mirror blurred transparent. Through it, she saw a short, hunched man in a UMC uniform standing at a console. He had a brown mustache and deep-set eyes that stared at her with feverish intensity.

A speaker clicked on overhead, and she heard the man’s gravelly voice: “Ms. Navárez, this is Doctor Carr. We met before, although you wouldn’t remember.”

“So you’re the one who got most of my team killed.”

The doctor tilted his head to the side. “No, that would be you, Ms. Navárez.”

In that instant, Kira’s anger curdled into hate. “Oh fuck you. Fuck you! How could you have missed the xeno? Look at the size of it.”

Carr shrugged, tapping buttons on a display she couldn’t see. “That’s what we’re here to find out.” He peered down at her, his face round and owlish. “Now stop wasting time. Drink.” One of the robotic arms presented her with a pouch of orange liquid. “It’ll keep you on your feet until there’s time for a solid meal. I don’t want you passing out on me.”

Biting back an obscenity, Kira took the pouch and downed it in a single, sustained gulp.

Then the hatch set within the airlock popped open, and at the doctor’s order, she dropped the pouch inside. The hatch closed, and a loud thud sounded as the airlock vented into space.

From that point on, Carr subjected her to an unrelenting series of examinations. Ultrasounds. Spectrographs. X-rays. PET scans (prior to those she had to drink a cup of milky-white liquid). Cultures. Reactant tests… Carr tried them all and more.

The robots—he called them S-PACs—acted as his assistants. Blood, saliva, skin, tissue: if she could part with it, they took it. Urine samples weren’t possible, given how the suit covered her, and no matter how much Kira drank, she never felt the need to relieve herself, for which she was grateful. Peeing in a bucket while Carr watched wasn’t something she wanted to do.

Despite her anger—and her fear—Kira also felt a strong, almost irresistible curiosity. The chance to study a xeno like this was what she’d hoped for her whole career.

If only the chance hadn’t come at such a terrible price.

She paid close attention to which experiments the doctor was running and in which order, hoping to glean some hint of what he was learning about the organism. To her immense frustration, he refused to tell her the results of his tests. Every time she asked, Carr was evasive or outright refused to answer, which did nothing to improve Kira’s mood.

Despite his lack of communication, Kira could tell from the doctor’s scowls and muttered expletives that the thing was proving remarkably resistant to scrutiny.

Kira had theories of her own. Microbiology was more her specialty than macro, but she knew enough about both to deduce a couple of things. First, given its properties, there was no way the xeno could have evolved naturally. It was either a highly advanced nanomachine or some form of gene-hacked lifeform. Second, the xeno possessed at least a rudimentary awareness. She could feel it reacting to the tests: a slight stiffening along her arm; a soap-bubble shimmer across her chest, so faint as to be nearly invisible; a subtle flexing of the fibers. Whether it was sentient or not, though, she didn’t think even Carr knew.

“Hold still,” said the doctor. “We’re going to try something different.”

Kira stiffened as one of the S-PACs produced a blunt-tipped scalpel from within its casing and lowered the knife toward her left arm. She held her breath as the blade touched. She could feel the edge pressing against her, sharp as glass.

The suit dimpled beneath the blade as the S-PAC scraped it sideways across her forearm, but the fibers refused to part. The robot repeated the motion with increasing force, until at last it gave up scraping and attempted a short draw cut.

As Kira watched, she saw the fibers underneath the blade fuse and harden. It looked as if the scalpel were skating across a surface of molded obsidian. The blade produced a tiny shriek.

“Any pain?” the doctor asked.

Kira shook her head, never taking her eyes off the knife.

The robot withdrew several millimeters and then brought the round tip of the scalpel down upon her forearm in a swift, plunging movement.

The blade snapped with a bell-like ping, and a piece of metal spun past her face.

Carr frowned. He turned to speak to someone (or someones) she couldn’t see, and then turned back to her. “Okay. Again, don’t move.”

She obeyed, and the S-PACs moved around her in a blur, jabbing every centimeter of skin covered by the xeno. At each spot, the organism hardened, forming a small patch of adamantine armor. Carr even had her lift her feet so the robots could stab at the soles. That made her flinch; she couldn’t help it.

So the xeno could defend itself. Great. Freeing her would be that much harder. On the plus side, she didn’t have to worry about being stabbed. Not that it had been a problem before.

The way the thing had emerged on Adra, spikes bristling, tendrils writhing… Why wasn’t it acting like that now? If anything might have been expected to provoke an aggressive response, it should have been this. Had the xeno lost the ability to move after bonding with her skin?

Kira didn’t know, and the suit wasn’t telling.

When the machines finished, the doctor stood, one cheek sucked in as he chewed on it.

“Well?” said Kira. “What did you find? Chemical composition? Cell structure? DNA? Anything.”

Carr smoothed his mustache. “That’s classified.”

“Oh come on.”

“Hands on your head.”

“Who am I going to tell, huh? I can help you. Talk to me!”

“Hands on your head.”

Biting back a curse, Kira obeyed.

5.

The next round of tests was far more strenuous, invasive even. Crush tests. Shear tests. Endurance tests. Tubes down her throat, injections, exposures to extremes of heat and cold (the parasite proved to be an excellent insulator). Carr seemed driven to the point of distraction; he yelled at her if she was slow to move, and several times, Kira saw him berating his assistant—a hapless ensign by the name of Kaminski—as well as throwing cups and papers at the rest of his staff. It was clear the experiments weren’t telling Carr what he wanted, and time was fast running out for the crew.

The first deadline came and went without incident. Twelve hours, and so far as Kira could tell, the xeno hadn’t emerged from anyone on the Extenuating Circumstances. Not that she trusted Carr to inform her if it had. But she could see a change in his demeanor: a renewed sense of focus and determination. The doctor had his second wind. They were working against the longer deadline now. Another thirty-six hours before the rest of the crew would have to enter cryo.

Ship-night came, and still they continued to work.

Uniformed crew brought the doctor mug after mug of what Kira assumed was coffee, and as the night wore on, she saw him toss back several pills. StimWare or some other form of sleep-replacement meds.

Kira was increasingly tired herself. “Mind giving me some?” she said, gesturing toward the doctor.

Carr shook his head. “It’ll mess with your brain chemistry.”

“So will sleep deprivation.”

That gave him a moment’s pause, but then the doctor just shook his head again and returned his attention to the instrument panels in front of him.

“Bastard,” Kira muttered.

Acids and bases had no effect on the xeno. Electrical charges passed harmlessly across the skin of the organism (it seemed to form a natural Faraday cage). When Carr raised the voltage, there was an actinic flash at the end of the S-PAC and the arm flew back as if it had been thrown. As the smell of ozone filled the air, Kira saw that the S-PAC’s manipulators had fused together and were glowing red hot.

The doctor paced about the observation bay, tugging at the corner of his mustache with what looked like painful force. His cheeks were red, and he seemed angry, dangerously so.

Then he stopped.

A moment later, there was a clatter as something dropped into the delivery box outside the cell. Curious, Kira opened it and found a pair of dark glasses: eye protection against lasers.

A worm of unease twisted inside her.

“Put them on,” said Carr. “Left arm out.”

Kira obeyed, but slowly. The glasses gave the cell a yellowish cast.

The manipulator mounted on the end of the undamaged S-PAC flowered open to reveal a small, glossy lens. Kira’s unease sharpened, but she held her position. If there was any chance of getting rid of the thing, she’d take it, no matter how much it hurt. Otherwise she knew she’d end up spending the rest of her life stuck in quarantine.

The S-PAC positioned itself above and just to the left of her forearm. With a snap, a purplish-blue beam shot from the lens to a point on the deck near her feet. Flecks of dust gleamed and glittered in the bar of collated light, and the grating below began to glow cherry red.

Moving sideways, the robot brought the beam into contact with her forearm.

Kira tensed.

There was a brief flash, and a wisp of smoke curled upward, and then… and then to her astonishment, the laser beam curved around her arm, like water flowing around a stone. Once past her arm, the laser regained its geometric precision and continued straight down to the deck, where it traced a ruddy line across the grating.

The robot never paused its sideways slide. At a certain point, the laser flipped sides and arced around the inside of her forearm.

Kira felt no heat; it was as if the laser didn’t exist.

What the xeno was doing wasn’t impossible. It was just very difficult. Plenty of materials could bend light. They were used in numerous applications. The invisibility cloak she and her friends had played with when they were kids was a perfect example. However, to detect the exact wavelength of the laser and then manufacture a coating that could redirect it, and all in a tiny fraction of a second, was no mean feat. Not even the League’s most advanced assemblers could pull that off.

Once again Kira revised upward her estimate of the xeno’s abilities.

The beam vanished. Carr scowled and scratched his mustache. A young man—an ensign, she thought—approached the doctor, said something. The doctor turned and seemed to shout at him; the ensign flinched and then saluted and gave a quick answer.

Kira started to lower her arm.

“Stay,” said the doctor.

She resumed her position.

The robot settled over a spot a few centimeters below her elbow.

A pop rang out, nearly as loud as a gunshot, and Kira yelped. It felt as if she’d been jabbed with a red-hot spike. She yanked her arm back and clapped a hand over the wound. Between her fingers, she saw a hole as big around as her pinkie.

The sight shocked her. Out of everything they’d tried, the laser blast was the first to actually hurt the suit.

Her astonishment was nearly enough to override the pain. She bent over, grimacing as she waited for the initial surge to wear off.

After a few seconds, she glanced back at her arm; the suit was flowing into the hole, the fibers reaching out and grasping each other, tentacle-like. They closed over the wound, and within moments, her arm looked and felt the same as before. So the organism could still move.

Kira let out her breath in a ragged flow. Had it been the suit’s pain she felt or her own?

“Again,” Carr said.

Setting her jaw, Kira held out her arm, hand clenched in a fist. If they could cut through the suit, perhaps they could force it to retreat.

“Do it,” she said.

Pop.

A spark and a small puff of vapor erupted from the wall as a pin-sized hole appeared in the metal plating. She frowned. The suit had already adapted to the laser’s frequency.

With hardly any pause:

Pop.

More pain. “Dammit!” She grabbed her arm and pressed it against her stomach, lips pulled tight against her teeth.

“Don’t fucking move, Navárez.”

She gave herself several breaths and then resumed position.

Three more spikes drove through her skin in quick succession. Her whole arm was on fire. Carr must have figured out how to shift the laser’s frequency in a way to bypass the suit’s defenses. Elated, Kira opened her mouth to say something to him—

Pop.

Kira flinched. She couldn’t help it. Okay, Carr had had his fun. Time to stop. She started to draw her arm back, but the second S-PAC spun around and grabbed her wrist with its manipulator.

“Hey!”

Pop.

Another blackened crater appeared on her forearm. Kira snarled and tugged against the robot. It refused to budge.

“Stop it!” she shouted at the doctor. “That’s enough!”

He glanced at her and then returned to studying something on a monitor below the edge of the mirror-window.

Pop.

A new crater appeared in the same spot as the last one, which was already filling in. The blast drilled even farther into her arm, burning through skin and muscle.

“Stop!” she shouted, but Carr didn’t respond.

Pop.

A third crater overlapping. Panicked, Kira grabbed the S-PAC holding her and yanked, throwing all her weight backwards. It shouldn’t have made any difference—the machines were large and well-built—but the joint behind the S-PAC’s manipulator snapped, and the manipulator broke free with a spray of hydraulic fluid.

Surprised, Kira stared for a moment. Then she pried the manipulator off her wrist, and it fell to the floor with a solid bang.

Carr stood watching with a frozen expression.

“We’re done here,” said Kira.

Excerpted from To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, copyright © 2020 by Christopher Paolini.

The post Read To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini: Chapter 5: “Madness” appeared first on Reactor.

We’re excited to share the cover for The Future Is Yours, a science fiction thriller from author Dan Frey—publishing February 2021 with Del Rey. Check out the cover below, along with an excerpt of the first chapter!

Ben Boyce and Adhi Chaudry are outsiders struggling to find their place in Silicon Valley. But when Ben reads Adhi’s graduate dissertation about an obscure application for quantum computing, he has a vision of a revolutionary new technology: a computer that can see forward through time by communicating with its future self.

The two friends quit their jobs and team up to form a business, building a company that will deliver their groundbreaking device to consumers around the world. Rival tech giants try to steal their innovation, while government agencies attempt to bury it—but Ben and Adhi are helped by their own cutting-edge technology, staying a step ahead of the competition and responding to challenges before they arise.

As the tension mounts, Ben and Adhi’s friendship begins to fracture under the weight of ambition, jealousy, and greed. Most frightening of all, they discover the dark side of the machine they’ve created—the ways in which viewing the future sets them on a path toward unavoidable disaster of epic, apocalyptic proportions. Unless they can disrupt the technological system they’ve created, there won’t be any future at all.

Told through emails, texts, transcripts, and blog posts, this bleeding-edge tech thriller chronicles the social costs of innovation and asks how far you’d be willing to go to protect the ones you love—even from themselves.

Buy the Book

The Future Is Yours

Buy Book

The Future Is Yours

Buy this book from:

• Amazon
• Barnes and Noble
• iBooks
• IndieBound
• Target

CHAPTER 1

EMAIL
From: Ben Boyce
To: Ben Boyce, Adhvan Chaudry

My Dudes,

IT WORKS! Seriously. You did it.

This is so weird—I’m sending this on Feb 28, 2022, knowing that I’ll receive it (already DID receive it) on Feb 28, 2021. Pretty trippy, right?

So listen up, Past-Ben… First of all, high-five! You were right to believe this whole time—in yourself, in Adhi, in all of it. Your dream of becoming the first black CEO to launch a billion-dollar company is gonna come true… and I can say that with certainty, because for me, IT ALREADY DID.

And Adhi. Bro. You’re the brilliance that makes it possible. I always said you’d do something to change the world and I was right. It’s crazy—you’re sitting across the room as I write this, but I still remember your face the day you read it. Pick up your jaw and keep reading.

Now, I know you’re both about to flip out and start using the Prototype to look up everything you can, so lemme just save you a little suspense.

1: Stanford’s season is gonna be terrible, so just detach yourselves from that shitshow right away and save yourselves the heartache.

2: Stock tips-wise, yeah, of course, you COULD get into some foolproof investments today. But I promise you’ll be better off not mucking around with all that, cause the main thing you gotta do is invest in your motherfuckin SELVES.

I just wanna take this moment to say: everything is gonna be fine. The Prototype works (obviously). And whatever happens, don’t trip. Not about money or respect or prestige, any of it. Just pop that cork and enjoy the best shitty champagne of your life, I remember it well. From here on out—trust the process, enjoy the ride, and most of all, stick together.

Sincerely and eternally your friend,

Ben from the future

* * *

Excerpt from Transcript of Congressional Hearing
December 1, 2021

SEN. GREG WALDEN (D-Ore): The Committees on the Judiciary and Commerce, Science, and Technology will come to order. We welcome everyone to today’s hearing on the new commercial venture known as “The Future,” and the potential legal, ethical, and policy ramifications of its technology.

Though not unprecedented, this hearing is a unique opportunity to anticipate and address serious social consequences of a new consumer technology. This legislative body has a history of playing distant catch-up to new innovation, as evidenced by last year’s hearings about social media and privacy issues. The hope is that we can be ahead of the curve—especially in light of the recent whistleblower leak, which seems to suggest that this technology may pose an existential threat to our nation and our people.

BOYCE: Mr. Chairman, I object to characterizing it as—

SEN. GREG WALDEN (D-Ore): You have not been invited to speak yet, Mr. Boyce. And regardless of your objections, we have seen data, from your own company, which many reputable scientists interpret to mean that we are on a course toward the obliteration of civilization as we know it, on a time horizon of less than two years. Now if that’s not an existential threat—

BOYCE: I just think it’s irresponsible to call it that, without proper consideration of all the factors.

SEN. GREG WALDEN (D-Ore): Do not lecture me on irresponsible, Mr. Boyce. And if you will not adhere to parliamentary rules of decorum, you will be charged with Contempt. Understood?

BOYCE: … Understood.

SEN. GREG WALDEN (D-Ore): Good. Now, the members of this body have called two witnesses, the founders of the company called The Future: Mr. Benjamin Boyce and Mr. Adhvan Chaudry. However, let the record show, at the time of this hearing, only Mr. Boyce has appeared before the committee. Mr. Boyce, can you answer for the absence of your colleague?

BOYCE: No I cannot. And I’m worried. If Adhi’s not here, clearly something is wrong, and it would be best if we can adjourn for now.

SEN. GREG WALDEN (D-Ore.): This is not a meeting held at your convenience. You are answering a subpoena before 44 members of Congress. Since one of you has failed to appear, a warrant will be issued for the arrest of Mr. Chaudry, and he will be charged with Contempt of Congress. Now, if you wish to avoid similar charges, are you prepared to proceed with the hearing?

BOYCE: …Yes sir. I would just like the record to reflect my request for postponement.

SEN. GREG WALDEN (D-Ore.): Duly noted, and we can all hope that at some point today, your co-founder will deign to join us. He is certainly earning his reputation for intellectual hubris.

BOYCE: I just want to point out, it’s not really hubris if it’s earned, is it? No offense or anything, but Adhi is smarter than anyone in this room.

SEN. GREG WALDEN (D-Ore): That may be the case, Mr. Boyce. But this body is convened because trusting people who are ostensibly “smarter” has gotten us in quite a bit of trouble in the past. No doubt the data scientists at Cambridge Analytica were very proud of their intelligence, as were the eugenicists of a century ago.

BOYCE: Come on, is that really a fair comparison?

SEN. GREG WALDEN (D-Ore): We are dealing with a technology that apparently has the potential to end the world as we know it. So excuse me if my comparisons offend, but it is well worth discussing how Mr. Chaudry’s intelligence has created problems in the past.

* * *

Adhvan Chaudry’s College Admissions Essay
Submitted January 12, 2012 to Stanford University

Education is bullshit.

I know it may be ill-advised to say so in this particular forum, but I hope that Stanford recognizes rigor and rewards honesty. Allow me to explain how I reached this particular conclusion.

My parents came to this country shortly before I was born. They were seeking to escape the caste system of India. It had been formally abolished in 1950, but was, for practical purposes, still firmly in place 20 years ago. Since my parents were Shudras (poor laborers), they never had any hope of becoming Rajanyas (rich merchants). But they believed in America they could.

When they arrived in San Francisco, they tried their best. But they were frustrated to discover it is just as impossible to move up in the world here. Not only that, they learned that the Indian system had been preferable in a way—because no Shudra is ever made to feel guilty about being poor. It is their lot in life. But in America, poverty equates to failure. It is a source of deep and abiding shame.

So they pinned their hopes on me. They sacrificed and worked long hours. They instilled the value of hard work in the hope that I would go to a great college and win for myself a job better than either of them had the privilege of having. They saw education as the way out.

However, from my experience in the academic world so far, I have seen that it is all a facade. A rigged game. A system of smoke and mirrors, to separate the wheat from the chaff, and perpetuate an oligarchic system that rewards privilege generation after generation, just as much as the caste system did. At the “prestigious” prep school that I attend (on a full academic scholarship), the vast majority of my fellow students are from wealthy families. And cheating is rampant among my peers. Most parents are complicit in a system that values perfect grades, test scores, and a robust resume of activities… but does not give a damn about integrity.

We are admonished to be scholars and gentlemen “at all times,” and students are threatened with expulsion for their conduct on the weekend. Of course, when our school president’s son (one of my classmates) got so drunk at a school basketball game that he stumbled onto the court and vomited on the foul line, he was merely given detention, and the incident was swept under the rug.

With all this said, you are probably wondering—does this kid even want to attend Stanford? And the answer for me is unequivocally yes.

I know that my low opinion of education will always sound like an excuse, unless it is backed up with experience. I know my earning potential will be bolstered by the diplomas, even if they don’t mean a thing. I intend to get the best schooling I can get, all the way through a PhD, so I can assert with utter confidence that education, top to bottom, is total fucking bullshit.

* * *

Excerpt from Congressional Hearing

SEN. CORINNE SOTHEBY (R-Neb.): Mr. Boyce, I’d like to discuss the origins of your connection to Mr. Chaudry. I understand that you met at university.

BOYCE: Yeah, that’s right. Freshman year. Well, Adhi was actually a year older than everyone, but he still had to come in as a freshman. He’d been rejected by Stanford his first time applying, believe it or not. Even though he had perfect grades, SAT’s, all of it, they turned him down. Because of his essay, supposedly. Which really just means, he didn’t know how to play the game, how to tell people what they want to hear.

So he did a year at a junior college, somewhere in the East Bay, and then he applied again. And since he was out there publishing math papers as a freshman at a J.C., Stanford saw they’d missed out on something, and they let him in the next fall. He was not happy about having to take all his core requirements again, or being a year older than everyone else. But under all the bitching, I could tell, he was happy to be at Stanford. And so was I.

That’s when we met. Randomly assigned to the same dorm. And right away, first day, we hit it off.

SEN. CORINNE SOTHEBY (R-Neb.): Were you immediately interested in a professional partnership with Mr. Chaudry?

BOYCE: When I was eighteen? I wasn’t interested in professional anything.

SEN. CORINNE SOTHEBY (R-Neb.): It’s just, the two of you seem like rather unlikely friends.

BOYCE: You never been friends with anyone different than you? Personally, I liked that Adhi was quiet. These days we’d probably say, “on the spectrum.” Which is why he’d never really connected with anyone before.

But I liked him right away. Even though not everybody saw it, I thought he was funny as hell. Since he wasn’t really the talkative type, we’d be at our computers, same dorm room, chatting over IM for hours while we were supposed to be studying, and I would just lose my shit cracking up.

What I’m trying to say is, we might’ve been different on the surface, but we were in the same boat at Stanford. Neither of us fit in. I wasn’t as smart as all the other super-achievers around us… and Adhi, to be honest, he was smarter. Smarter than the other students, smarter than the teachers. Too smart for his own good, sometimes.

It was us against the world. I helped him meet people, he helped me with my homework. Six months in, we were best friends.

SEN. CORINNE SOTHEBY (R-Neb.): That’s very sweet. But it’s also when the trouble started, isn’t it? Even early on in your college career, you two seem to have developed an attitude that the rules did not apply to you. Would you care to elaborate on that?

BOYCE: You’re bringing up, what, the library thing? I don’t see what that’s got to do with any of this.

* * *

GCHAT CONVERSATION
5/4/2014, 8:16 PM

Adhvan Chaudry

Benjamin Boyce: YO! Where r u bro

Adhvan Chaudry: Library
Art history final tmrw

Benjamin Boyce:Laaaaame. Come back.
Picked up Nattys.
U gonna make me drink n Halo by myself?

Adhvan Chaudry: I’m srsly gonna fail this class if I don’t learn all of it tonite
So annoying.
I took art history last year
But these snobs won’t count any of my transfer credits
Which, lets be honest, is bc I didn’t pay a Stanford premium for them

Benjamin Boyce: Dude lets be honest, neither of us actually payin tuition here

Adhvan Chaudry: It’s the principle that counts.

Benjamin Boyce: Come on back bro
I have world myth final tmrw, don’t see me stressin

Adhvan Chaudry: Not all of us can get by on charm

Benjamin Boyce: Hey I bet we could both get out of our finals if the library floods

Adhvan Chaudry: Haven’t checked the weather but seems highly unlikely

Benjamin Boyce: Dr. Dark could make it flood tho
I bet Dr. Dark controls the weather

Adhvan Chaudry: Hahaha yes.
And there’s nothing his nemesis Benny-Boy could do to stop it.

Benjamin Boyce: Benny-Boy would join forces w him for that one

Adhvan Chaudry: Actually… I think I could manage a flood in the library.
Or at least, a storm.
If called upon.

Benjamin Boyce: Uh, consider yourself called upon then.
U serious? That would be so fuckin sick.

Adhvan Chaudry: Worth a shot.
Meet me up on the 2^nd floor

Benjamin Boyce: Bro if this gonna work I’m gonna get the word out…

* * *

Sourced from Stanford University Student Records

INCIDENT REPORT

Student Disciplinary Board
Student: Adhvan Chaudry
Major: Computer Science
Standing: Sophomore (Transfer)
Time: May 4, 2014. 11:20 PM.
Location: Wilkes Library, 2nd floor stacks.

Nature of Offense: Student unlawfully gained computer access to building’s system controls and set off fire-control sprinkler systems in the library.

Actions were clearly premeditated, and plans had been publicly shared, as students were present in the Library with bathing suits and water guns.

Damage to property is estimated in excess of $50,000 due to water damage to facilities and books.

Action also resulted in two students being treated at the Health Center as a result of falls sustained due to water present on tile floor.

University also incurred liability damage due to arrival of the Fire Department. Damage to systems and necessary investigation and patching of online systems vulnerabilities estimated at $12,000.

Actions were also disruptive to other students who were studying in the library during Finals Week.

Damage also incurred to University’s reputation and good public standing, due to news coverage and Internet circulation of “Library Water Party” videos.

Student Disciplinary History: This is the second time Student has been caught illegally breaching University computer protocol. First offense involved the projection of lewd messages on stadium scoreboard during Stanford-UCLA football game in Fall 2013.

Recommended Action: Due to the severity of the Damage, the repeat nature of the offense, and the brazenly illegal nature of the crime, SSDB unanimously recommends Expulsion, effective end of this Semester.

* * *

Letter — Sent May 13, 2014

Esteemed Members of the Student Disciplinary Board,

I am writing to you in regard to Adhvan Chaudry, or as I have come to know him, Adhi. Adhi was brought before the Disciplinary Board for his role in the prank that took place in the library last week, and he’s looking at potentially getting expelled from this University.

First, I want a chance to speak to Adhi’s character. I have firsthand knowledge of it due to the fact that I share a dorm room with him—and as you all may hopefully remember, there are few secrets between two guys living in a 10 by 20 foot room.

Adhi is a man of great moral principle. He is totally uncompromising in living by values he believes in. Everybody on our dorm floor recognizes that while he might not be the most outgoing guy around, he’s helpful to almost all of us. People even call him “I.T.” because he’s been so generous in troubleshooting technical problems for everyone.

Even more than that, Adhi is a great friend. The transition to college has been exciting for me; I honestly never wanted anything more than to come to Stanford. Adhi has helped me keep some perspective. He and I took Philosophy together this semester for one of our core reqs, and he helped me study. I have ADHD and dyslexia, so it’s not easy for me academically here. Adhi has been a patient tutor, but also never helped me in any way that might possibly verge on cheating, because he is a man of integrity. I will have to find some new person to proofread this letter, because Adhi has always been the one to do it for me, and never asked anything in return.

Now, with regard to the prank Adhi is being disciplined for, I know it was a mistake. He never anticipated the level of damage it would cause. And I can say that with total certainty because I was part of it too. To be honest, the whole thing was my idea. I pretty much talked Adhi into it.

Now I’m aware that by disclosing this, I am setting myself up to be punished along with Adhi, and yes even potentially be expelled with him from this school that I love so much. As the first member of my family to attend a university, I do not take that lightly, and I know that my mother (who passed away last year) would be immensely saddened to see me go.

But she would also be proud of me for doing what is right in this situation. And it is only fair that I be treated in the same way as Adhi. So I would like to leave you with this quote by Aristotle from the Nicomachean Ethics:

Between friends there is no need for justice, but people who are just still need the quality of friendship; and indeed friendliness is considered to be justice in the fullest sense.

I hope you will find it in your hearts to do what is just and allow me and Adhi to stay on at this beautiful University.

Sincerely,
Benjamin Boyce

* * *

EMAIL — May 22, 2014
From: SDB@stanford.edu
To: Adhvan Chaudry

Mr. Chaudry,

On behalf of the Stanford Disciplinary Board, I am writing to inform you of the outcome of the Hearing regarding your conduct on 5/4/14, with regard to the damages incurred to Wilkes Library.

The SDB has determined that you will be placed on Disciplinary Probation for a period of at least 1 year. That means that if you are involved in any other disciplinary incident, you will be expelled from the University.

Additionally, you will be assigned a Behavioral Counselor, whom you will meet with a minimum of sixteen times per semester. Your continued enrollment will be contingent on clearance from your Behavioral Counselor.

Thank you,
Mary Kleeman
Vice President of Student Affairs

* * *

EMAIL (Draft)
From: Adhvan Chaudry
To: Ben Boyce

B—

Just got word from the bigwigs…

No expulsion. Fuck yeah.

See ya in the fall after all.

I can’t really express how

The way that you stuck your neck out

Dude that was above and beyond, I

The foregoing Draft was composed May 22, 2014, but never sent.

* * *

EMAIL — May 23, 2014
From: admin@tumblr.com
To: Adhvan Chaudry

Welcome to the Tumblr community! Thank you for registering your new page: The Black Hole: Musings of an Anonymous Sci-Fi Superfan

As a member, you are expected to abide by all terms and conditions of our User Agreement. All material that you post to your new blog is represented to be your own intellectual property, and is subject to takedown in the event that it violates any of our community standards or guidelines surrounding IP.

Happy blogging!

* * *

Tumblr Blog Post — May 23, 2014
The Black Hole — Musings of an Anonymous Sci-Fi Superfan
“The Head and the Heart”

The greatest love story of our time is not between a man and a woman

or even between two people at all.

It is between a human and a Vulcan.

The brash emotional Kirk, and the stoic, logical Spock.

Kirk has always been seen as the main character of course.

The swashbuckling Captain, the fearless leader.

But Spock is the more compelling character.

For Spock, it is initially painful to find himself on the Enterprise.

He doesn’t fit in.

His logic and intelligence make him anomalous. Even threatening.

Kirk recognizes his value, but cannot understand him.

Yet over time, Kirk sees that Spock’s way of being is not a lack of feeling.

It is merely a necessary compartmentalization.

The Vulcan feels deeply…

but his feelings are not allowed to make his decisions.

They balance each other out.

They get each other’s backs and save each other’s lives, time and again.

Gene Roddenberry sought to make a show about ideas,

but it is the emotional bond between those two that has made it last.

When it comes to the films, “Wrath of Khan” is undeniably the best.

The martyrdom of Spock, when he dies for Kirk and crew, is touching.

But “Search for Spock” is the one that cuts the deepest.

When Kirk risks his Captainship to rescue his First Officer—

when we see that the love between them transcends rank and duty—

when even death cannot break their bond,

and the reborn Spock, cleansed of his memory,

nevertheless recognizes his old friend, and says “You are… Jim,”

even the most hardened Vulcan heart swells with joy.

* * *

Excerpt from Congressional Hearing

SEN. BOB HOLDER (R-Ariz.): I’m sure it felt very noble, to stick up for him like that. But the incident with the “library party” was brought up to help paint a picture, for the Committee, of the nature of your relationship.

BOYCE: We were friends. Adhi would’ve done the same for me.

SEN. BOB HOLDER (R-Ariz.): That is certainly one way to view it. Another is that Mr. Chaudry carried out a publicly-damaging use of technology, while you sheltered him from the consequences. That pattern of behavior seems to be very much in line with what has happened with your company.

BOYCE: Is there a question in there that I’m missing?

SEN. BOB HOLDER (R-Ariz.): I’m trying to illuminate the nature of your partnership—especially in light of the fact that you were both lawfully summoned before this committee, yet you are the only one who appeared.

BOYCE: I wish Adhi were here too. But he’s not. And I honestly don’t know why. I haven’t heard from him in a couple days.

SEN. BOB HOLDER (R-Ariz.): You’re saying, Mr. Chaudry has… what, disappeared? Should we be alarmed?

BOYCE: Look, he does stuff like this sometimes. He gets in his head, and… Adhi’s just not really made for the real world, you know? People like him thrive in a controlled environment, like school. By the time we graduated, I was eager to get out, but Adhi went straight into the grad program. And that’s where he started cooking up the ideas that led us here.

SEN. BOB HOLDER (R-Ariz.): So an antisocial introvert doing everything in his power to avoid the world… may have created a technology that will end up destroying it? Interesting. I have no further questions.

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The Future Is Yours

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The post Revealing The Future Is Yours, a Sci-Fi Thriller by Dan Frey appeared first on Reactor.

The trio traverse the galaxy in Michael R. Underwood’s space opera adventure Annihilation Aria, publishing July 21st with Parvus Press. Read an excerpt below!

The crew of the Kettle are deeply in debt to the drifting city’s most powerful gangster, and she wants her money back. So when a dangerous but promising job comes their way, Max, Lahra, and Wheel have little choice but to take it if they have any hope of keeping their ship, and themselves, afloat. But the crew of the Kettle gets more than they bargained for when they find themselves in possession of a powerful artifact, one that puts them in the crosshairs of the Vsenk, the galaxy’s ruthless and oppressive imperial overlords.

Before they know it, Max, Lahra, and Wheel are pulled into a web of galactic subterfuge, ancient alien weaponry, a secret resistance force, lost civilizations, and giant space turtles. The Vsenk will stop at nothing to recover what the crew of the Kettle has found and Max’s brains, Lahra’s muscle, and Wheel’s skills may be all that stand between entire planets and annihilation.

Can they evade space fascists, kick-start a rebellion, and save the galaxy, all while they each try to find their own way home?

Chapter One
Max

Max Walker was very good at running for his life. He had plenty of motivation, given the ravenous horde of purple space locusts nipping at his heels. He cradled the mapping device in his arms, shielding it from the locusts. Dying would be bad. Coming out empty-handed wouldn’t be much better.

It was that kind of day. A “you really should have come up with a better plan, but hindsight is 20/20, and hey, you’ve got a kickass wife with a giant sword beside you, so it’s not all bad” day. Unfortunately for Max, those days were pretty common. But hey, he hadn’t died yet.

Lahra Kevain, said kickass wife, ran beside him, keeping stride, though she could have easily lapped him any time she wanted. Lucky for him, she’d decided that she liked him enough to save him from the aforementioned horde of space locusts. Even wearing a twenty-kilo set of EVA-capable armor, Lahra moved with impeccable grace. It made sense though, since she spent more time in her armor than out of it. A soldier-caste Genae, Lahra was made for battle. Even when she was running for her life, she wasn’t really worried.

As far as he could tell.

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Annihilation Aria

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They fled the tomb so fast that Max could barely maintain his mental record of the turns and doorways and puzzles that had taken them hours to work through on their way in.

But now, there was only running. And holding onto the mapping device, which would maybe, possibly, hopefully give Max and Lahra the information they needed to finally make real progress on their respective missions.

One of the locust beasties ripped a chunk off the heel of his space suit. Air bled out like a whoopee cushion, and his O₂ gauge started sagging.

“We need to run faster!” Lahra said, still calm despite the odds.

“This is me running faster!” Max replied through huffs and puffs.

Max kept his eyes forward even as he felt the beasts scraping at his heels and crunching beneath his feet. They were gaining.

None of this would have happened if the tomb had been properly sealed. But no, some grave robbers had gotten to the site before them and screwed everything up. Great job, assholes. He’d refrained from kicking their skeletons. It wouldn’t help.

“Keep going!” Lahra said, and he felt her drop back.

“Lahra, no!” The vid feed from Lahra’s suit showed the horde of locust beasts swarming her, the screen filling with the purple creatures and their black teeth.

“Die, beasts!” she shouted, her scattergun barking death in every direction. “Wheel is just around the corner! I will catch up.”

More gunshots. More dead locusts. But the next sound was different—a cry of pain from Lahra.

Max hailed their pilot, Wheel, on the ship. “We got swarmers here. Need a hot extraction.”

“No atmo, no flamethrower, kid,” came Wheel’s reply. On easier days, Max would describe Wheel as terse.

He could see more of Lahra in the diminished cloud of locusts, her armor gouged and slashed in dozens of places. But the smile on her blue-hued face told him she’d be fine.

“Hit the wall!” she called. Max dove to the side. It’d only taken a few months to accept that in a fight, Lahra knew best.

A blast from the scattergun disintegrated another chunk of the swarm, and Lahra burst free, the creatures fading into the shadows.

She staggered forward, swatting away a few stragglers. “Get us out of here, now!”

They took the final corner and ran down the rest of the hallway. Max’s O₂ gauge was tickling the red.

The Kettle’s forward lights flashed through the small passageway Lahra had dug through the rubble. It had only been a few hours, though it felt like days.

“Standing by. One of these days, you kids are going to walk leisurely out of a tomb, arms full of loot and not pursued by anything.”

Max chuckled. “We wouldn’t want to give you a heart attack.”

Wheel grumbled.

“I mean, if that did happen, those nanites would just jump-start you, right?”

“Better to nail the jump than count on the net, kid.”

Lahra’s feet pounded on the floor of the temple foyer as they approached the rubble. “There was never real doubt that we would succeed.”

Max crawled through the tunnel, still babying the mapping device. The hold of the Kettle opened like the maw of a friendly fish, Wheel holding the ship steady. Lahra followed shortly after, sword-first since she wouldn’t fit with the blade locked onto the back of her suit. He offered her a hand as she emerged from the tunnel. She took it and squeezed, letting him “help” even though she was fine on her own. It was one of the many ways they showed one another that they were a team, always looking out for one another. Like when she’d sit up with him as he was studying even though his research could literally put her to sleep.

Max took one last look at the tomb as the ship pulled away, the ramp rising to close. Another brush with death, another run-and-gun engagement, and, if they were lucky, another step closer to home.

But whose home? And what did that mean for him and Lahra?

* * *

Chapter Two
Lahra

Lahra sang “Sahvo’s Embrace” to her armor in the sun-soaked cargo hold. The embrace was an aria of resilience and rebirth from the epic of Zhore, sung originally by a love-struck guardian to the princess who was her charge.

The song awakened the suit, allowing her armor to repair itself using the sun’s energy. The coral-steel resonated with her voice, stitching itself back together, scalloped ridges and joints sealing and smoothing over. One by one, traces of her and Max’s last misadventure faded, and the suit returned to its optimal form.

Lahra stood in underclothes, the cargo hold baking as mostly-filtered sunlight streamed through the starboard portal. The portal nearly filled an entire side of the cargo bay, eight meters high and ten meters long. The radiation of the nearby star was reduced such that it would not harm her but would still power the suit’s regenerative capacity, guided by her song. And it might help restore the lustrous azure tone her skin had gained that summer working sentry on the grain farms of Ikerr.

Her voice was low, solid, like packed earth. Her mother’s voice had been richer, like fresh-tilled soil. Halra Kevain had sung to Lahra all her life, taught her all the songs needed to operate the suit and to fight as a royal guardian. All of the greatest power of the Genae was conveyed through song, from the marches of the royal guards to the songs of restoration, as well as the snippets Lahra had picked up from other Genae.

Lahra’s repertoire was a mere shadow of the full power of the soldier caste, so much of their legacy lost.

Lahra lifted the heel of one of the suit’s legs and watched the puncture hole close over. More warmth slid into her tone as she continued, diving into the chorus. “Sahvo’s Embrace” was meant to be sung in call-and-response, sergeant to her squad. She’d taught it to Max, but with the way he fought (mostly through stealth and hiding behind solid objects), it failed to serve its original purpose. The Embrace sang strength into a squad’s suits and their limbs, recalling the rebirth brought with the sun’s return in the spring.

Max stood on the other side of the cargo hold, bent over his laboratory and research desk, where he had hooked their just-liberated device into his terminal. Up a ladder from the hold were the gunner’s turret, the living quarters, and the hatch to the engine room. Above that, at the top and front of the ship, was the cockpit—Wheel’s domain.

Max all but lived at his desk. In the seven years Lahra had known him, he’d always been driven, focused, but also kind, charming. He remembered names as easily as textual citations. But not songs. Singing was hard for him, his voice thin. He had an ear for language but not music. A cosmic joke, one of many.

The suit was whole, her song complete. She left it in the sun to absorb energy, her greatsword locked in place on the suit’s back.

“How goes the decryption?” Lahra took her customary place to Max’s left, looking on as he worked.

“Mostly there. Anything I can’t crack, Uwen can take care of. Anyway, he likes it when I go to him for help. Think he enjoys feeling useful.”

“Or that you still have more to learn.”

Max nodded, the wall lamps illuminating his brown skin. “Which is true. This section here still makes absolutely no sense to me. And without that, I can’t tell if the chart is telling us to go into the center of the Forbidden Sectors or if it wants us to go beyond warp space.”

“Surely it is the former.”

Warp space delineated the known galaxies. Beyond those bounds, ships crawled along at a fraction of the speed of warp travel. The Forbidden Sectors were so-dubbed because they held the core of the Old Atlan Empire, destroyed by the Vsenk in their usurpation. But since those broken or abandoned planets contained forgotten Old Atlan technology, they were an ideal place to hunt for artifacts.

“I sure hope so. Not sure we could convince Wheel to take a three-month trip on burners only.”

“You want me to take the ship where now?” Wheel called down the echoing halls of their ship. The Kettle was small enough that it was hard to ever be truly out of earshot.

“Nowhere yet!” Max shouted back.

Lahra laid a kiss on his temple, her fingers trailing along his shoulder and neck as a reminder and a promise. “Let me know if you need any help.” She relished in his happy shudder and hauled herself up the ladder by door to the engine room. She walked by her shared quarters with Max, Wheel’s quarters, the bathroom, the gunnery station, the ship’s meager galley, and then up another short ladder to the cockpit.

Cruji snored in one corner, curled up in his straw-laden cage. The Molja was a mass of tentacles and feathers and had no practical use aside from boosting morale.

Wheel was elbow-deep in the Kettle’s control console. The Atlan’s skin was the color of faded moonstone, arms and much of her back replaced by cybernetic implants. When she plugged in all the way, the console grew to meet her, screen connecting to a cybernetic eye, panels and switches sprouting cables to interface directly with Wheel via ports from head to hip.

The Atlan were the only species fully adapted to cybernetic enhancements, allowing them to control spaceships through a neural link. Lahra or Max could pilot the Kettle, but only Wheel could truly inhabit it. Atlan’s cybernetics spanned a wide range of technologies, none more fiercely guarded than those allowing direct connection with ships’ computers and warp drives.

Lahra and Max had been working with Wheel (and as a result, living on the Kettle) for several years. Wheel was taciturn, mostly liked being left to herself and the ship’s business, but she had unparalleled contacts—including fences who would take nearly any Old Atlan artifact Lahra and Max could find.

The Atlan had once ruled warp space, but when the Vsenk took over, the Atlan homeworld was destroyed and the survivors scattered to the winds. They survived by adapting and through their monopoly on the capacity to interface with warp drives. What took a day’s travel via warp space would take months otherwise.

Now the Atlan were pilots, mechanics, and engineers. They’d made themselves essential but rarely held power beyond their lock on transportation. The Vsenk resented the Atlan’s adaptation and continued to scapegoat them at every turn.

“How’s the imperial traffic?” Lahra looked out the viewscreen into the black. Sensors would pick anything up before her eyes could, but she couldn’t break the habit. And any system could fail. “Always trust yourself more than your gear,” her mother had sung to her time and time again. That line was one of dozens from a song she’d composed to a traditional tune, an amalgamation of half-remembered lessons from her own youth.

Wheel’s arm twisted, and a map with dozens of red dots popped up on the screen next to Lahra, showing their weaving path through the gaps left between the imperial sensors. “No patrols within range. Just the buoys they’ve littered around the system like Drell droppings.”

To hear them tell the tale, the Vsenk Imperium had ruled for ten thousand years. They created the universe and loved their creation so much that they chose to live among their children as benevolent god-emperors.

Lies, all of it. The Vsenk had overthrown the Old Atlan and made warp space their own a thousand years ago. Since then, they’d tried to erase every bit of history they could. Controlling schools, outlawing texts, enforcing an imperial monopoly on comm relays, the Vsenk kept a tight grip. But the Vsenk had destroyed a half-dozen inhabited worlds along the way, eliminating most of the Atlan’s greatest technology.

The Empire could keep the real histories in the margins, but people remembered the truth of the Vsenk’s rise and the Atlan’s fall. Most were just smart enough not to say so where the Vsenk could hear them.

The last people to challenge the Vsenk had been the Genae, Lahra’s people. The Genae gave the Vsenk their greatest challenge, but in the end, even the battle songs of her sisters were powerless against the Vsenk’s super-weapon, the Devastation. The Vsenk cracked the entire planet of Genos into several pieces, ending the war in one stroke. The surviving Genae, including Lahra’s great-great-grandmother, scattered on the solar winds, swearing vengeance and pledging themselves to restoring the crown.

The Vsenk were many things—cruel, arrogant, aggressive; but above all else, they were absolutists. They prized decisive victories.

With more than two dozen systems to patrol, however, even the Vsenk couldn’t be everywhere at all times. By best estimates, there were only a few thousand Vsenk, even after centuries of aggressive breeding programs to counteract their low fertility. They leaned heavily on a vassal-driven military, which meant that Lahra and Max could operate at the edges, keep off the radar, and be about their missions without running afoul of Imperial forces for more than a bribe here or there coming or going from docking stations.

Most of the time.

“How long until we’re back at the Wreck?” Lahra asked.

“Without attracting Imperial attention? Better part of two days.”

Max walked into the cockpit on the comms. “That should be plenty of time to figure this thing out and be ready to chat with Uwen.”

“Two days it is,” Lahra said. “I’m going to check our supplies, see how much of our payment we’ll need to end up pouring back into the ship.”

Wheel cocked her head to the side the way she did when she was analyzing data. “The Kettle’s plenty hungry, but she can last a while if need be. As long as you two are fine eating algae paste.”

Max made a sound of mock delight. “Just like momma used to make.”

“Why not?” Lahra asked. “It’s incredibly efficient food.” Growing up, efficient food wasn’t available. You took what you could get.

Max had come from Earth, an industrialized, non-spacefaring culture. But at least they too had music, so they were odd, not barbaric.

Lahra slipped into a song of memory as she began her rounds, tallying spare parts, rations, and more. The song helped her hold the numbers and details in her mind, a musical memory palace.

They’d survived another adventure, and now the song of battle and exploration gave way to the daily work songs of maintenance and travel.

Until the next explosion. Which would inevitably come sooner than they expected.

* * *

Chapter Three
Wheel

“Okay, I’ve got good news and shit news!” Wheel called down to the lovebirds.

“Shit first, dessert second!” Max called back.

“The shit news is that the there’s an Imperial patrol boat parked just outside the Wreck. Probably trawling for bribes. Good news is, we made it. Hurray.”

Max’s frustration echoed through the halls and up into the cockpit. “Fucking greedy assholes. Bet you the entire Empire would collapse in on itself if they couldn’t get people coming and going. Base tax rate’s already highway robbery.” His footsteps echoed through the halls as he approached, Lahra alongside him. The Imperium didn’t just suppress historical truth and tax citizens within a centimeter of their life, they also aggressively conscripted troops from vassal planets and encouraged infighting through scapegoating and competition for appointed political positions.

And worse.

Wheel pulled her gaze from the comms to scowl at Max. “Play it cool, okay? I don’t want the Kettle flagged in every imperial system for the rest of eternity.”

Lahra shrugged. “It’s only a matter of time before we end up on some list or another of theirs. They have as many lists as there are imperial citizens. Suspected dissidents, information smugglers, heretical historians, draft dodgers . . .”

Wheel tuned Lahra out as the Kettle took its place in line. Half an hour later, when they finally pulled by into range of the bribe boat, Wheel took the call.

The voice was melodious, probably a Rellix. “Vessel, you are required by Imperial law to transmit your information and submit to search.”

It was a constant struggle trying to make a living on the edge. Imperial patrols at every port requiring licenses and bribes, taxes pushing most everything into gray and black markets, and the humiliation of keeping up their ring-kissing supplication skills.

Wheel sighed, then switched her comms to broadcast. “This is freighter designate the ‘Kettle.’ Captain and proprietor Wheel speaking. I am transmitting my license and registration codes.” She sent with it a notice of an unclassified credit packet transfer that could be assigned anywhere by the recipient. Cleanest, simplest way to send a bribe. Flunkies could even send it up the chain to their bosses. If you were being extorted at the end of a barrel, making the transaction as easy as possible tended to get you out of the line of fire faster.

“Yes, confirming receipt of your transmission, Kettle, thank you for your prompt reply.” She could practically hear the Rellix measuring the bribe and weighing their response.

A few moments later. “Freighter Kettle, your data are in order. You may proceed. For the Empire.”

“For the Empire,” Wheel said through only mostly gritted teeth. It wasn’t enough to bleed them dry at every port; the Imperium also demanded that they speak their words, bow to their flag, and salute their god-warriors on sight. For the rulers of a galaxy-spanning empire, the Vsenk’s egos were terribly fragile.

Wheel had spent the past decade out on the periphery and had no interest in going back into the core planets, where the Imperials had squads in every neighborhood, overbearing propaganda posters, and vid-screens looping their official histories. The dangers and uncertainties of the edge were far more comforting.

The Kettle’s comms pinged again. Jesvin.

Wheel’s whole body went tense. Voiddamnit.

They were getting it from all sides today. Her nostrils flared as the message played through her comms implant.

My dearest Wheel,

I’ve received word that you’re returning to our glorious home, and I look forward to hosting you in one of my fabulous garages. I know how you like to pamper the Kettle after your little adventures, and I want only the best for you. While my finest engineers are seeing to your ship’s needs, I hope you’ll do me the courtesy of coming over for Vrial so that we can discuss your recent ventures and that little matter of your outstanding debt.

I remain dutifully yours,

Jesvin Ker

Wheel steadied herself and sent a confirmation receipt, red creeping in at the edges of her vision. Without an immediate response, Jesvin would just repeat the message every five minutes until Wheel replied or until the Rellix’s goons could track her down.

“Get up here, you two. Jesvin’s on our ass again.”

Excerpted from Annihilation Aria, copyright © 2020 by Michael R. Underwood

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Melissa Bashardoust’s feminist fairy tale Girl, Serpent, Thorn is available now from Flatiron Books. We’re excited to share an audiobook clip below, narrated by Nikki Massoud.

There was and there was not, as all stories begin, a princess cursed to be poisonous to the touch. But for Soraya, who has lived her life hidden away, apart from her family, safe only in her gardens, it’s not just a story.

As the day of her twin brother’s wedding approaches, Soraya must decide if she’s willing to step outside of the shadows for the first time. Below in the dungeon is a demon who holds knowledge that she craves, the answer to her freedom. And above is a young man who isn’t afraid of her, whose eyes linger not with fear, but with an understanding of who she is beneath the poison.

Soraya thought she knew her place in the world, but when her choices lead to consequences she never imagined, she begins to question who she is and who she is becoming… human or demon. Princess or monster.

Girl, Serpent, Thorn is available from Flatiron Books
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From the roof of Golvahar, Soraya could almost believe that she existed.

The roof was a dangerous place, a painful luxury. Standing at the edge, she could see the garden spread out in front of the palace, lush and beautiful as always. But beyond that, beyond the gates of Golvahar, was the rest of the world, far larger than she could ever imagine. A city full of people encircled the palace. A road led south, down to the central desert, to other provinces and other cities, on and on, to the very edge of Atashar. Beyond that were more kingdoms, more land, more people.

From the other end of the roof, she could see the dry forestland and the dreaded Mount Arzur to the northeast. From every corner, there was always more and more, mountains and deserts and seas, hills and valleys and settlements, stretching on without end. It should have made Soraya feel small or inconsequential—and sometimes it did, and she would have to retreat with teeth gritted or fists clenched. More often, though, standing alone under the open sky made her feel unbound and unburdened. From this height, everyone seemed small, not just her.

But today was different. Today, she was on the roof to watch the royal family’s procession through the city. Today, she did not exist at all.

The royal family always arrived shortly before the first day of spring—the first day of a new year. They had a different palace in a different province for each season, the better to keep an eye on the satraps who ruled the provinces on the shah’s behalf, but even though Soraya was the shah’s sister, she never moved with them. She always remained in Golvahar, the oldest of the palaces, because it was the only palace with rooms behind rooms and doors behind doors. It was the perfect place to keep something—or someone—hidden away. Soraya lived in the shadows of Golvahar so that her family would not live in hers.

From above, the procession resembled a sparkling thread of gold winding its way through the city streets. Golden litters carried the noblewomen, including Soraya’s mother. Golden armor encased the dashing soldiers who rode on horseback, led by the spahbed, the shah’s most trusted general, his lined face as stern as always. Golden camels followed at the rear, carrying the many belongings of the royal family and the bozorgan who traveled with the court.

And at the head of the procession, riding under the image of the majestic green-and-orange bird that had always served as their family’s banner, was Sorush, the young shah of Atashar.

Light and shadow. Day and night. Sometimes even Soraya forgot that she and Sorush were twins. Then again, the Creator and the Destroyer were also twins, according to the priests. One born of hope, one of doubt. She wondered what doubts had gone through her mother’s head as she gave birth to her daughter.

In the streets, people cheered as the shah and his courtiers threw gold coins out into the crowd. Soraya understood why the people loved him so much. Sorush glowed under the light of their praise, but the smile he wore was humble, his posture relaxed compared to the rigid, formal stance of the spahbed. Soraya had long stopped imagining what it would be like to ride with her family from place to place, but her body still betrayed her, her hands clutching the parapet so tightly that her knuckles hurt.

As the procession moved through the palace gates and into Golvahar’s vast garden, Soraya could see faces more clearly. With a grimace, she noticed Ramin in the red uniform of the azatan. He wore it proudly, with his head held high, knowing that as the spahbed’s only son and likely successor, he had been born to wear red.

Her eyes gladly shifted away from Ramin to a figure riding a few horses behind him. He was a young man near the same age, his features indistinct from so far away, dressed not like a soldier in red and gold, but like a commoner, in a brown tunic without adornment. Soraya might not have noticed him at all except for one thing—

He was looking directly at her.

Despite the pomp of the procession, the lush beauty of the garden, and the grandeur of the palace ahead of him, the young man had looked up and noticed a single, shadowy figure watching from the roof.

Thank you for listening to this clip, provided to you by Macmillan Audio. To hear more, look for this title wherever audiobooks are sold.

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In the lands of Bethel, where the Prophet’s word is law, Immanuelle Moore’s very existence is blasphemy. Her mother’s union with an outsider of a different race cast her once-proud family into disgrace, so Immanuelle does her best to worship the Father, follow Holy Protocol, and lead a life of submission, devotion, and absolute conformity, like all the other women in the settlement.

But a mishap lures her into the forbidden Darkwood surrounding Bethel, where the first prophet once chased and killed four powerful witches. Their spirits are still lurking there, and they bestow a gift on Immanuelle: the journal of her dead mother, who Immanuelle is shocked to learn once sought sanctuary in the wood.

Fascinated by the secrets in the diary, Immanuelle finds herself struggling to understand how her mother could have consorted with the witches. But when she begins to learn grim truths about the Church and its history, she realizes the true threat to Bethel is its own darkness. And she starts to understand that if Bethel is to change, it must begin with her.

That evening, the Moores gathered for their usual Sabbath dinner. Martha tended a bubbling vat of chicken stew that hung on an iron hook above the crackling fire, mopping sweat from her brow with the back of her hand. While she hunched over the hearth, Anna mixed batter bread with both hands, folding in fistfuls of flaxseeds and crushed walnuts, singing hymns as she worked. Immanuelle ducked between the two of them, taking on different tasks and trying her best to be of help. She was clumsy in the kitchen, but she did what she could to aid them.

Anna, ever cheerful, was the first to break the silence. “It was a good service this morning, wasn’t it?”

Immanuelle set a pewter plate down at the head of the table, before her grandfather’s empty chair. “That it was.”

Martha said nothing.

Anna plunged her fists into the bread dough again. “When the Prophet spoke, I felt like the air had been sucked right out of me. He’s a true man of the Father, that one. More so than other prophets, even. We’re lucky to have him.”

Immanuelle set one spoon beside Martha’s plate and another beside Honor’s bowl, a little wooden thing she’d carved and polished some three summers ago, when the child had been no bigger than a minnow in Anna’s womb. For Anna’s eldest, Glory, she reserved the brass spoon she liked best, an antique Martha had bought from a market peddler years ago.

Glory, like her mother, had an appetite for pretty things: ribbons and lace and sweets and other delights the Moores couldn’t afford. But when she could, Immanuelle tried her best to oblige the girl with little tokens. There were so few pretty things left in the house. Most of their treasures and trinkets had been sold during the thick of the winter in an attempt to make up for the bad reap and all the livestock they’d lost to sickness the past summer. But if Immanuelle had anything to say about it, Glory would have her spoon, a small token to offset their world of lack.

When the meal was prepared, Martha carried the vat of stew to the table and set it down with a loud thump that carried through the house. At the sound, Honor and Glory raced into the dining room, eager to fill their seats and eat. The wives sat next, Immanuelle’s grandmother, Martha, claiming her place at the opposite end of the table, as was custom, and Anna, second wife of Immanuelle’s grandfather, claiming the seat beside her husband’s empty chair.

After a few long moments, there was the groan of hinges, the sound of a door opening, then the pained and shuffling racket of Abram making his way down the stairs. Her grandfather was having a bad day; Immanuelle could tell by the sound of his gait, the way his stiff foot dragged across the groaning floorboards as he moved toward the table. He had skipped church again that morning, making it the third Sabbath he’d missed in a month.

Once, long ago, Abram had been an apostle—and a powerful one, too. He had been the right hand of Simon Chambers, the prophet who served before the current prophet, Grant Chambers, had been chosen and ordained. As such, Abram had once owned one of the seven estates in the sacred Holy Grounds, and he had wielded the Father’s Gift of Discernment. At age nineteen, he married Martha. The two of them were well yoked, both in age and in status, but despite this, the Father did not bless them with children for a long time. In fact, after years of trying, Abram and Martha were able to conceive only Miriam, and her birth was succeeded by a series of stillborns, all of them sons. Many later claimed that Miriam’s birth damned the children who were born after her, said that her very existence was a plague to the good Moore name.

On account of Miriam’s crimes, Abram had been stripped of his title as apostle, and all the lands that went with it. The Moore stead, which had once been a rolling range so big it rivaled the Prophet’s, was divided up among the other apostles and nearby farmers, who picked it apart like vultures do a carcass. Abram had been left with a small fragment of the land he once owned, shadowed by the same rambling forest to which he’d lost his daughter. Such was the life he lived now, in ridicule and squalor, scraping together an existence from the meager reap of pastures and blighted cornfields that were his only claim.

It had been nothing short of a miracle that Anna agreed to follow Abram to the altar eighteen years ago despite the shame of Miriam’s fall from grace. Immanuelle suspected that her loyalty stemmed from the fact that Abram had used his Healing Touch to save her when she was dying of fever as a young girl. It was as though she owed him a kind of life debt and was steadfast in her resolve to fulfill it. Perhaps that was why her love for Abram seemed more akin to the way the apostles revered the Holy Father than to the common affections between husband and wife.

As Abram entered the dining room, Anna broke into a wide smile, the way she always did. But Abram paid her no mind as he limped past the threshold. He paused to catch his breath, bracing his hands on the back of a broken chair. The right side of his body was clenched, his fingers twisted to near bone-breaking angles, his arm bent and drawn to his chest as if held by some invisible sling. He limped with his left leg thrown out to one side, and he had to brace himself on the wall to keep from falling as he dragged his way around the dining room to his seat at the head of the table.

He settled himself roughly in his chair, then began the prayer, struggling with the words. When it was finished, Abram raised his fork with his good hand and set into his food. The rest of them followed suit, the children eagerly spooning up the stew, as though they worried it would disappear before they’d have the chance to finish it. The sad truth was it was less a chicken stew and more a watery bone broth with a bit of parsnip, a few stray cabbage leaves, and the grisly scraps of the chicken. Even so, Immanuelle took pains to eat slowly, savoring every bite.

Anna took another stab at kindling conversation, but her attempts were futile. Martha kept her eyes on her stew and the girls were smart enough to stay silent, fearing their father’s wrath.

In turn, Abram didn’t say much. He rarely did on his bad days. Immanuelle could tell it pained him, to have once been the voice of the Prophet and now, in the years since her mother’s death, to be reduced to little more than the village pariah, cursed by the Father for his leniency. Or so the rumors went.

Really, Immanuelle knew little of what had happened to Abram after her mother died. All she knew were the scant morsels that Martha offered her, the fragments of a story too vile to be told in full.

Seventeen years ago, her mother, Miriam, newly betrothed to the Prophet, had taken up illicit relations with a farm boy from the Outskirts. Months later, after their affair was uncovered, that same farm boy had died on the pyre as punishment for his crimes against the Prophet and Church.

But Miriam was spared, shown mercy by the Prophet on account of their betrothal.

Then, on the night before her wedding, Miriam—grief-mad and desperate to avenge her lover’s death—had stolen into the Prophet’s bedroom while he slept and tried to slit his throat with his own sacred dagger. But the Prophet had woken and fought her off, thwarting the attack.

Before the Prophet’s Guard had the chance to apprehend her, Miriam had fled into the forbidden Darkwood—the home of Lilith and her coven of witches—where she disappeared without a trace. Miriam claimed that she spent those brutal winter months alone in a cabin at the heart of the wilderness. But given the violence of that winter and the fact that the cabin was never found, no one in Bethel believed her.

Months passed with no sign of Miriam. Then one night, in the midst of a violent snowstorm, she emerged from the Darkwood, heavy with child—the sinful issue of her lover, who had died on the pyre. Mere days after her return, Miriam gave birth to Immanuelle.

While his daughter screamed in the midst of labor, Abram was struck by a stroke so violent it remade him, twisting his limbs and warping his bones and muscles, stripping him of his strength and stature, as well as the power of his Holy Gifts. And as Miriam struggled and labored and slipped into the afterlife, so nearly did he. It was only a miracle of the Father that saved him, dragging him back from the cusp of death.

But Abram had suffered for Miriam’s sins, and he would continue to suffer for them until the day he died. Perhaps he would have suffered less if he’d had the strength to shun Immanuelle for the sins of her mother. Or if he had simply shunned Miriam after she’d returned pregnant from the woods, he may have found the Prophet’s favor once more.

But he hadn’t. And for that, Immanuelle was grateful.

“You’ll go… to the market… in the morning,” said Abram across the table, grinding the words between his teeth as he spoke, every syllable a struggle. “Sell the black yearling.”

“I’ll do my best,” Immanuelle said with a nod. If he was intent upon selling the yearling, their need must be dire. It had been a bad month, a bad month at the end of a string of terrible months. They desperately needed the money. Abram’s sickness had worsened in the winter after a bad bout of fever, and the steep costs of his medicines had pushed the family to the brink of ruin. It was vital that Immanuelle did her part to ease the burden, as they all did.

Everyone in the Moore house had some job or trade. Martha was a midwife blessed with Father’s Tongue and through it the power to call down Names from the heavens. Anna was a seamstress with a hand so gentle and an eye so keen she could darn even the finest lace. Abram, once a carpenter, had in the years after his stroke taken to whittling crude little figures that they sometimes peddled at the market. Even Glory, a talented artist despite the fact that she was barely twelve, painted little portraits on woodcuts she then sold to her friends at school. Honor, who was too young to take up a craft, helped around the farm as best she could.

And then there was Immanuelle, the shepherdess, who tended a flock of sheep with the help of a hired farm boy. Every morning, save for the Sabbath or the odd occasion when Martha called her along for a particularly risky birthing, Immanuelle would take to the pastures to watch over her sheep. Crook in hand, she’d lead them to the western range, where the flock would spend its day grazing in the shadows of the Darkwood.

Immanuelle had always felt a strange affinity for the Darkwood, a kind of stirring whenever she neared it. It was almost as though the forbidden wood sang a song that only she could hear, as though it was daring her to come closer.

But despite the temptation, Immanuelle never did.

On market days, Immanuelle took a selection of her wares—be it wool or meat or a ram—to the town market for peddling. There, she would spend the whole of her day in the square, haggling and selling her goods. If she was lucky, she’d return home after sundown with enough coppers to cover their weekly tithes. If she wasn’t, the family would go hungry, and their tithes and debts to Abram’s healers would remain unpaid.

Abram forced down another mouthful of stew, swallowing with some effort. “Sell him… for a good bit. Don’t settle for less than what he’s worth.”

Immanuelle nodded. “I’ll go early. If I take the path that cuts through the Darkwood, I’ll make it to the market before the other merchants.”

The conversation died into the clatter of forks and knives striking plates. Even Honor, young as she was, knew to mind her tongue. There was silence, save for the rhythmic drip, drip, drip of the leak in the corner of the kitchen.

Martha’s cheeks all but drained of color and her lips were bloodless. “You never go into those woods, you hear? There’s evil in them.”

Immanuelle frowned. The way she saw it, sin wasn’t a plague you could catch if you ventured too close. And she wasn’t sure she believed all the legends about the evils in the womb of the Darkwood. In truth, Immanuelle wasn’t sure what she believed, but she was fairly certain a brief shortcut through the forest wouldn’t be her undoing.

Still, no good would come from an argument, and she knew that in a battle of wills, she couldn’t win. Martha had a heart of iron and the kind of unwavering faith that could make stones tremor. It was futile to provoke her.

And so, Immanuelle bit her tongue, bowed her head, and resigned herself to obey.

That night, Immanuelle dreamed of beasts: a girl with a gaping mouth and the yellowed teeth of a coyote; a woman with moth wings who howled at the rising moon. She woke in the early morning to the echo of that cry, the sound slapping back and forth between the walls of her skull.

Bleary-eyed and drunk with exhaustion, Immanuelle dressed clumsily, trying to push the twisted images of the woodland ghouls from her mind as she fumbled into her button-down dress and readied herself for a day at the market.

Slipping out of the sleeping household, Immanuelle strode toward the far pastures. She began most every morning like this—tending to the sheep by the light of dawn. On the rare occasion when she couldn’t—like the week she caught whooping cough a few summers prior—a hired farmhand by the name of Josiah Clark stepped in to fill her role.

Immanuelle found her flock huddled together in the eastern pastures, just beyond the woodland’s shadow. Crows roosted in the branches of the oaks and birches in the nearby forest, though they sang no songs. The silence was as thick as the morning’s fog, and it was broken only by the sound of Immanuelle’s lullaby, which echoed through the foothills and distant fields like a dirge.

It wasn’t a normal lullaby, like the folk songs or nursery rhymes that mothers sing to their children, but rather a rendition of an old mourning hymn she had once heard at a funeral. Her song carried across the pastures, and at the sound her flock moved east, sweeping like a tide across the rolling hills. They were upon her in moments, bleating and trotting happily, pressing up against her skirts. But the yearling ram, Judas, hung back from the rest, his hooves firmly planted and his head hanging low. Despite his age, he was a large and fearsome thing with a shaggy black coat and two sets of horns: the first set jutting like daggers from the crown of his skull, the second curling back behind his ears and piercing along the harsh cut of his jaw.

“Judas,” Immanuelle called above the hiss of wind in the high grass. “Come now, it’s time to go to the market.”

The ram struck the dirt with his hooves, his eyes squinted thin. As he stepped forward, the sheep stirred and parted, the little lambs tripping over their hooves to make way for him. He stopped just a few feet from Immanuelle, his head turned slightly to the side so he could stare at her through the twisted crook of his horn.

“We’re going to the market.” She raised the lead rope for him to see, the slack dangling above the ground. “I’ll need to tether you.”

The ram didn’t move.

Stooping to one knee, Immanuelle eased the loop of the knot over his horns, tugging the rope taut to tighten it. The ram fought her, kicking and bucking and throwing his head, striking the earth with his hooves. But she held fast, bracing her legs and tightening her grip, the rope chafing across her palms as Judas reared and struggled.

“Easy,” she said, never raising her voice above a murmur. “Easy there.”

The ram threw his head a final time and huffed hard, a cloud of steam billowing from his nostrils, thick as pipe smoke on the cold morning air.

“Come on, you old grump.” She urged him along with another tug on the lead rope. “We’ve got to get you to the market.”

The walk through the Glades was long, and despite the initial chill of the morning, the sun was hot. Trails of sweat slipped down Immanuelle’s spine as she trudged along the winding path to town. Had she taken the shortcut through the woodland—instead of the long way around the forest’s edge—she would have been in town already. But she’d promised Martha she’d stay clear of the woods, and she was determined to keep her word.

So Immanuelle trudged on, her knapsack weighing heavy on her shoulders as she went. Her feet ached in her boots, which were a size and a half too small and pinched her heels so badly they blistered. It often seemed like everything she owned was either too big or too small, like she wasn’t fit for the world she was born to.

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Excerpted from The Year of the Witching, copyright © 2020 by Alexis Henderson.

The post Read an Excerpt From The Year of the Witching appeared first on Reactor.

We’re pleased to share an excerpt from Renée Ahdieh’s The Damned, the second installment in The Beautiful series—available July 7th from G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books.

Following the events of The Beautiful, Sébastien Saint Germain is now cursed and forever changed. The treaty between the Fallen and the Brotherhood has been broken, and war between the immortals seems imminent. The price of loving Celine was costly.

But Celine has also paid a high price for loving Bastien. Still recovering from injuries sustained during a night she can’t quite remember, her dreams are troubled. And she doesn’t know she has inadvertently set into motion a chain of events that could lead to her demise and unveil a truth about herself she’s not ready to learn.

Forces hiding in the shadows have been patiently waiting for this moment. And just as Bastien and Celine begin to uncover the danger around them, they learn their love could tear them apart.

BASTIEN

Not long after I lost my sister and my parents, Madeleine told me that whenever I was on the cusp of losing control, I should close my eyes. Breathe in through my nose. Exhale twice as slowly through my mouth.

Though I know it is an exercise in futility, I turn to this approach once more. This final gasp of my humanity. I close my eyes. Focus as I breathe.

A slew of scents floods my nostrils. The citrus wax used to polish the furniture; the rose water in Odette’s perfume; the expensive myrrh oil Hortense smooths through her long hair; the sharp brass of Nicodemus’ walking stick; even the musty smell of the dust collecting above the velvet drapery. But one aroma rises to the forefront, winding through my mind, ensnar­ing all my senses, beckoning me forward in a trance. Something warm and salty and… delicious.

Before I can think, I blur toward the windows facing the street and tear back the heavy indigo curtains, without a thought for safety.

Thankfully it is dusk, the last rays of sunlight waning in the distance. On the pavers across the street, a boy of no more than five is sprawled across the stones after tripping on his overlarge shoes. He looks to his mother, then proceeds to wail as if in the throes of death. Bright crimson drips from his scraped knee, trickling toward the grey stones at his feet.

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The smell of it bewitches me. Sears all else from my mind. I am Moses in the desert. Jonah in the whale. It is not redemp­tion I seek. Lost souls do not seek redemption.

My mouth waters. Otherworldly energy flows beneath my skin. Something inside me begins to take shape. A monster I cannot contain. Incongruously it is like fighting for breath. Like clawing to the surface of the sea, every second all the more precious. My teeth lengthen in my mouth, slicing through my lower lip. My jaw and fingers harden to bronze. If I had a pulse at all, it would be hammering in my chest like a Gatling gun.

I press a palm to the glass of the mullioned window. It begins to crack under the force of my touch, splintering from my fin­gertips like a spiderweb.

Boone flashes to my side and takes hold of my arm. I snarl at him like an untamed beast. With a thin smile, Boone digs his hand tightly into my biceps, to root me to the earth. “Brother,” he says in a soothing tone. “You have to control the hunger before it consumes you.”

I tear my arm from Boone’s grasp with a force that takes him by surprise. He shifts half a step back before grim determina­tion settles onto his face. Again he reaches for me, but I snare my brother by the throat and slam him into the wall beside the window, causing a gilt-framed portrait to crash to the floor.

Dark blood falls from the back of Boone’s head, two drops staining his pristine collar before the wound heals, the sound like the rending of paper. Though he appears nonchalant, I can­not miss the shock that flares across his face, there and gone in the blink of an eye.

Even I am taken off guard. Injuring an immortal like Boone is no mean feat. I am… strong. Stronger than I first realized. My anger has become a creature too large for me to contain. I should let him go. Apologize.

Instead I tighten my grip, the rage unfurling over my body like a second skin.

Apologies are for sheep. Let them all see what I’ve become. Let them fear me.

Something stirs at my back.

“No,” Madeleine demands. “Stay where you are, Arjun. A blow like that could kill you.”

“I can help,” Arjun replies carefully. “At the very least I can buy us some time.”

“You can try,” I whisper without glancing toward the half fey.

It’s foolish for me to bait an ethereal. Arjun’s touch could immobilize me. Leave me at my siblings’ mercy. But I am more focused on what will follow, should he bother to make the attempt.

They cannot corral me forever.

“I know you think yourself unafraid,” Arjun says. “That we should all fear you instead.”

I say nothing, though a twinge knifes through me.

“My mortal father used to say that anger and fear are two sides of the same coin,” Arjun continues. “They both make us behave outside our nature.”

“Or perhaps they simply distill us down to our essence. Maybe this is my nature now.” I glower at Boone, who raises his arms like Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man.

“I don’t believe that.” Boone’s voice is hoarse, but gentle. “Not for one minute.”

Madeleine blurs closer, pausing to my left. “Sébastien.” Her tone is laced in warning. Her teeth begin to lengthen, com­manding me without words to stand down. “Don’t do this, mon enfant.”

Mon enfant. My child. Madeleine is the closest thing to a mother I have known since my own mother perished ten years ago. Nevertheless I ignore her, the bloodlust raging through my veins. The desire to kill and consume of utmost importance.

Tulle rustles to Madeleine’s right. “Écoute-moi, mon petit diable,” her sister, Hortense, commands in the singsong of a medium conducting a séance. “Nous ne sommes pas vos ennemis.”

“Listen to her, brother,” Boone says, his hands inching toward his temples. “Our enemies are real. If we waste time squabbling among ourselves, there’ll be nothing left for the true fight to come.”

The rational part of me knows Boone is right. But I respond by tightening my grasp until he can no longer speak. The plas­ter around his head starts to powder, causing a shower of white dust to descend on his cherubic curls.

Another flicker of movement. “Let him go,” Jae demands, tak­ing hold of my right shoulder. Each of his words is the point of a dagger at my back. “Now.”

“Do you still think me afraid?” I level a cool gaze at the assas­sin. One meant to convey nothing but contempt.

His scowl deepens.

It is all a lie. Everything I’ve done or said to this point is for show.

I am afraid. Deathly afraid. From the moment I first under­stood what had happened to me. But fear cannot be all I know. I will not let it be all I know.

Jae remains silent. My fear threatens to eclipse all else. I stoke my anger until it burns everything else away. The color leaches from Boone’s skin, the ink in his eyes swirling, spreading until the whites are completely black. His fingers turn into fists.

I know he is preparing to fight back. I should release him before the situation worsens. But the wrath continues flowing down my arms, surging through my stomach, burrowing into my bones. It makes me feel powerful. As if I am in control. I do not want to lose this feeling. I cannot be afraid. I cannot be weak.

What kind of beast surrenders to its basest nature?

The kind with nothing to fear.

So be it.

I squeeze tighter, feeling the bones in Boone’s throat begin to splinter in my grasp.

I don’t see Madeleine move until she has shattered my wrist with a single swipe of her arm. I roar and fly backward, slam­ming into the far wall. My body lands in a position of defense, crouched like a panther. Toussaint coils at my feet, his fangs bared, daring any of my siblings to tread closer.

I clutch my injured hand, feeling the crushed bones knit back together like torch fire through tinder. The sensation should feel marvelous, for it is further proof of my indestructibility; instead it only emphasizes my monstrousness. The utter loss of my humanity.

All the while, no one moves. Madeleine stands guard before a fallen Boone, who grips his throat and coughs, blood spewing from his lips. His eyes flash as Madeleine bares her fangs at me and hisses through her teeth.

Beside her, Arjun waits with his hands in his pockets, his monocle swaying from its gold chain. Hortense hovers behind Madeleine, her lips forming the beginnings of a smirk. Jae stares at me, his expression like that of a disapproving father. Odette looks… sad.

“It is as I suspected,” Nicodemus says. A casual observer might believe he is troubled by this turn of events, but I know my uncle far too well. He did nothing to stop me from injur­ing Boone, nor did he attempt to intervene when the rest of his progeny moved against me in force. There is a gleam in his amber eyes. One of supreme pleasure.

Nicodemus wanted to see what might happen. I suspect he is thrilled to witness how strong I am. How invincible his immor­tal blood has made me.

With Nicodemus Saint Germain, everything is a test.

I ignore the world around me, squeezing my eyes closed.

In through the nose. Out through the mouth.

The smell of the blood beyond the window taunts me again. Surrounded as I am by other vampires—my brothers and sis­ters—I know I cannot break free and sate my hunger. Though I have attacked one of their own, still they take on the mantle of responsibility. Still they fight to save me from myself.

Even though I almost crushed Boone’s throat in my fist a moment ago.

I look around the room. I search within me for something more. I find nothing. It is not gratitude I feel for my immortal brethren. Only despair.

Choking through a haze of bloodlust, I recoil. My chest heav­ing, I settle my sights on my uncle, who has not moved from his position beside the burl-wood table. Who continues to watch the scene unfold with a disconcerting gleam.

“Tonight, you will go with Jae and Boone to hunt,” Nicode­mus says as if he were prescribing a tincture for a common cold. “They will teach you how to mark your victims. Then they will show you how to dispose of all traces, so that you do not put any of us at risk with reckless behavior.”

“No,” I reply. “I am not going anywhere with any of you.”

“If you refuse to learn our ways, then you will be forbidden from leaving this place,” Nicodemus counters without missing a beat. “I cannot risk you causing a scene.” Disgust grips me for a moment. My uncle is more concerned with me drawing attention to our coven than he is about the plight of the humans in my vicinity. I could kill every last one of them and he would not care, provided I cleaned up after myself.

I make my decision without even considering it. “Then I will remain confined here.”

At least at Jacques’—ensconced in the tri-storied building my uncle owns on Rue Royale—I will not be a threat to any of the hapless mortals unfortunate enough to wander too close. Were I left to roam the streets of the Crescent City, that boy and his mother and every person nearby would be killed before I wasted a single breath reflecting upon the consequences.

Nicodemus’ cheeks hollow. He arches a brow. “And what will you do for food?”

I almost blanch. “Bring me what I require to survive. Nothing more.” If I sound imperious enough, perhaps he will not argue.

Anger clouds his expression. “That is not the way of it, Sébastien.”

“It is now.”

“The bloodsacs below should not—”

“Never call them that again in my presence,” I interrupt, incensed by the slur. One he never before used in my presence.

His eyes narrow further. “And what will you do then? You are only beginning to understand what you are. Will you crush them in your arms? Listen to them scream and beg for mercy? Or will you learn our ways and subdue their emotions, never forgetting to stay to the shadows?”

The revulsion in me grows. Already I am being taught to see mortals as lesser beings. Only last night, I wandered among them, a young man with the promise of a future filled with light. A boy with a soul. Now I am demon of the shadows, sub­sisting off stolen blood.

I don’t want to be reminded of the price paid for my immor­tality. The price Celine paid. The price I paid. “Keep them away,” I say. “If they don’t know what I’ve become, I want them nowhere near me.”

Nicodemus takes a step closer. There is danger in the way he grips the roaring lion carved into the brass handle of his walk­ing stick. He thinks me weak.

Nevertheless I refuse to cow beneath his scrutiny.

“I can bring him blood for the time being,” Odette interjects. “It is no trouble to me. First thing tomorrow, I’ll put in an order for a new case of the Green Fairy’s finest.”

I glance her way, puzzled.

“A capful of absinthe prevents the blood from becoming too thick to drink,” she explains. “When blood grows cold or is left standing too long, it congeals.” She speaks in soothing tones.

Of course. A detail I never had occasion to consider. Nicode­mus looks to Madeleine.

She nods in turn.

“Very well,” Nicodemus says. “But I will not permit this accom­modation for long. You will learn our ways, no matter how much you may disdain them.” He points the end of his walking stick at my chest. “And you will obey your maker without question, as your brothers and sisters do, or you will be banished from the city.” With that, he exits the room in a swirl of darkness.

After a time in stilted silence, Odette sighs. Then a bright smile cuts across her face. “Charades, anyone?”

Jae grunts. “You are… tiresome.”

“And you are an incomparable wordsmith, Jaehyuk-ah.” Odette simpers.

“Don’t bait him,” Madeleine commands before their bicker­ing can continue, her expression weary. “We’ve had enough of that for one evening.”

Odette crosses her arms, her lips pursing. “Le chat grincheux started it.”

“I was hoping to appeal to your better nature,” Jae says.

“Silly boy,” Odette snaps back. “You know I don’t have one.”

“Enough!” Madeleine says. She looks to me. “Sit, Bastien. You are due for a lecture, tout de suite.”

Hortense yawns. She throws herself on the closest chaise, pausing to cross her bare ankles on the edge of a carved tea table. “Ça sera un grand ennui,” she sings to no one.

“I am in no mood for your lecture,” I say.

“You damn near took Boone’s head off, old chap.” Arjun’s British accent rounds out his words. “Learn from today’s mis­takes so you won’t make them again tomorrow.”

“I have no intention of making mistakes today, tomorrow, or any day thereafter,” I retort, biting back the taste of my own blood. The hunger that thrashes in its wake. “I suppose I need only to accept”—I stare at my hands, my fingers still curled like bronze talons—“this fate. My new future. No matter how much I might wish it were not the case.”

“Even if that meant you had died the true death?” Odette’s voice is small.

I do not hesitate to respond. “Yes.”

For a time, none of them says a word.

Then Jae moves forward. “It does no good to dwell on things we cannot change.” The muscles in his jaw work. “And you should learn the ways of a vampire sooner rather than later. The rules are clear, Sébastien. If you cannot rein in your appe­tites—if you draw undue attention to us with indiscriminate violence—then you will be banished from New Orleans. Our peace is paramount.”

Boone feigns a cough, as if to clear his throat. “Can’t have a repeat of what happened in Dubrovnik or Wallachia hundreds of years ago, when so many of our kind were lost to supersti­tious mayhem. Why, I even recall when…”

I let his words fade into a drone as I stare at the cracked window across the room and the damaged plaster beside it, noting how the hem of the blue velvet curtain continues to sway like a pendulum. I let it lull me into a trance. Out of habit, I shift my fingertips to the side of my neck to check my pulse, an action that always served to remind me of my humanity.

The absence of a heartbeat rocks through me like a blow to the chest. I turn in place and retreat into the recesses of the chamber. In my periphery, the edges of a gilt-framed mirror glisten in the glow of the candlelight. I stride toward the sil­vered glass like a mortal, one foot in front of the other, my fin­gers flexing at my sides.

“Don’t, mon cher,” Odette warns, trailing in my shadow. “Not today. Give it some time. Un moment de grâce.” She smiles at our shared reflections, a suspicious shimmer in her eyes. “We could all stand to be a bit more forgiving of our­selves, n’est-ce pas?”

I disregard her. Something about her sisterly affection grates my nerves like it never has before. I take in my appearance, refusing to turn from the mirror, no matter how disturbing its truth. My canines shine like ivory daggers; my eyes burn lam­bent, suffused with an otherworldly light. Thin rivulets of blood trickle from my lower lip where my fangs pierced through my brown skin.

I look like a monster from Hell. A creature from a Grimm fairy tale, come to life.

I… hate what I have become. Despise it as I have never despised anything before. I want to shed this new reality like a snakeskin. To leave it in the dust so that I might stroll in the sunlight and breathe in the air with the lungs of a mortal man. I want to love and hope and die with all the limitations that make such a life worth living.

What I wouldn’t give for a chance to be a mortal boy again, standing before the girl I love, hoping she will take my hand and walk with me toward an unknown future.

Bitterness seeps through to the marrow of my bones. I let the bloodlust fill me again, watch my eyes swirl to obsidian, my ears lengthen into points, and my fangs unfurl like claws, cutting through my flesh once more, until the wet crimson trails down my neck to stain my collar.

“Bastien,” Madeleine commands over my shoulder, her expression like stone. “Too many newborn vampires lose themselves to the hunger, drowning their sorrows in blood, destroying all sense of who they were in life,” she says. “Rarely do they survive a decade before walking into the sun or being obliterated by their elders. Turn away from this path of destruction, no matter how tempting it might be.” She leans closer to the mirror, watching me all the while. “The best among us never forsake their humanity.”

“The higher hatred burns, the more it destroys,” Arjun says. “My father is proof of that.”

“Feel your anger, but do not succumb to it,” Madeleine con­tinues, “for it will be your end.”

“And what would you have me embrace in its stead?” I ask my reflection, my words a coarse whisper.

Odette gestures to the handful of immortals gathered before me. “We would have you embrace love.”

“Love?” I say, gripping the edges of the gilt mirror in both my hands, my eyes blacker than soot.

Odette nods.

“This is not a love story.” My fingers fall from the mirror, leav­ing dents in the gold filigree. I want nothing more than to rage about like a demon unleashed. To defy the moon and the stars and all the torments of an infinite sky.

But most of all I want to forget everything I’ve ever loved. Each of the immortals standing guard around me. My cursed uncle for bringing this blight upon our family. Nigel, for betray­ing us and leaving me to drown in a pool of my own blood.

But mostly I curse her. I want to forget her face. Her name. Her wit. Her laughter. How she made me hope and want and wish and feel. As far as I am concerned, Celine Rousseau died that night in Saint Louis Cathedral. Just like I did.

A true hero would find a way back to her. Would seek a path of redemption for his lost soul. A chance to stand once more in the light.

There is no such path. And I am no one’s hero. So I choose the way of destruction.

Excerpted from The Damned, copyright © 2020 by Renée Ahdieh.

The post Read an Excerpt From Renée Ahdieh’s The Damned appeared first on Reactor.

Now she’s awakened a nightmare.

During a routine survey mission on an uncolonized planet, Kira finds an alien relic. At first she’s delighted, but elation turns to terror when the ancient dust around her begins to move.

As war erupts among the stars, Kira is launched into a galaxy-spanning odyssey of discovery and transformation. First contact isn’t at all what she imagined, and events push her to the very limits of what it means to be human.

Read To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, a brand new epic novel from New York Times bestselling author Christopher Paolini, out September 15, 2020 from Tor Books.

New chapters on Tor.com every Monday.

Chapter 4

***

Anguish

1.

It was late, and Kira found it increasingly difficult to focus on the conversation. Most of the words slipped past her in a stream of meaningless sound. At last, she roused herself and glanced over at Alan. He nodded, understanding, and they extricated themselves from their chairs.

“Night,” said Neghar. One-word responses had been all she could manage for the past hour or so. Anything more and the coughing cut her off. Kira hoped she wasn’t getting sick; everyone in the group would probably catch the same bug then.

“Night, chérie,” said Marie-Élise. “Things will seem better tomorrow. You’ll see.”

“Make sure you’re up by oh nine hundred,” said Mendoza. “The UMC finally gave us the all-clear, so we blast off at eleven for the Fidanza.”

Kira raised a hand and stumbled off with Alan.

Without discussing it, they went straight to his room. There, Kira pulled off her fatigues, dropped them on the floor, and climbed into bed, not even bothering to brush her hair.

Four weeks of cryo, and she was still exhausted. Cold sleep wasn’t the same as real sleep. Nothing was.

The mattress sagged as Alan lay next to her. One of his arms wrapped around her, his hand grasped hers, and his chest and legs pressed against her: a warm, comforting presence. She uttered a faint sound and leaned back against him.

“I thought I’d lost you,” he whispered.

She turned to face him. “Never.” He kissed her, and she him, and after a time, gentle caresses grew more eager, and they clung to each other with fervent intensity.

They made love, and never had Kira felt more intimate with Alan, not even when he had proposed. She could feel his fear of losing her in every line of his body, and she could see his love in every touch, hear it in every murmured word.

Afterward, they stumbled over to the narrow shower at the back of the room. Keeping the lights dim, they bathed, soaping each other and talking in lowered voices.

As she let the hot water beat across her back, Kira said, “Neghar didn’t sound too good.”

Alan shrugged. “It’s just a bit of cryo sickness. The UMC cleared her. Fizel too. The air in here is so dry—”

“Yeah.”

They toweled off, and then with Alan’s help, Kira slathered lotion across her whole body. She sighed with relief as the cream went on, soothing the prickling of her skin.

Back in bed, with the lights turned off, Kira did her best to fall asleep. But she couldn’t stop thinking about the room with the circuit-board patterns, nor what her discovery had cost the team (and her personally). Nor the words Fizel had thrown at her.

Alan noticed. “Stop it,” he murmured.

“Mmm. It’s just… What Fizel said—”

“Don’t let him get to you. He’s just pissed and frustrated. No one else feels that way.”

“Yeah.” But Kira wasn’t so sure. A sense of injustice wormed inside her. How dare Fizel judge her! She’d only done what she was supposed to—what any of them would have. If she’d ignored the rock formation, he would have been the first to call her out for shirking. And it wasn’t as if she and Alan hadn’t lost plenty because of her discovery, same as the rest of the team…

Alan nuzzled the nape of her neck. “Everything is going to be fine. Just you watch.” Then he lay still, and Kira listened to his breathing slow while she stared into the darkness.

Things still felt wrong and out of sorts. Her stomach knotted even more painfully, and Kira screwed her eyes shut, trying not to obsess over Fizel or what the future might hold. Yet she couldn’t forget what had been said in the mess hall, and a hot coal of anger continued to burn inside her as she fell into a fitful sleep.

2.

Darkness. A vast expanse of space, desolate and unfamiliar. The stars were cold points of light, sharp as needles against the velvet backdrop.

Ahead of her, a star swelled in size as she hurtled toward it, faster than the fastest ship. The star was a dull reddish-orange, like a dying coal smoldering against a bed of char. It felt old and tired, as if it had formed during the earliest stages of the universe, when all was hot and bright.

Seven planets spun about the sullen orb: one gas giant and six terrestrial. They looked brown and mottled, diseased, and in the gap between the second and the third planets, a band of debris glittered like flecks of crystal sand.

A sense of sadness gripped her. She couldn’t say why, but the sight made her want to weep the way she had when her grandfather died. It was the worst of things: loss, utter and complete, without a chance of restoration.

The sadness was an ancient sorrow, though, and like all sorrows, it faded to a dull ache and was supplanted by more pressing concerns: those of anger, fear, and desperation. The fear predominated, and from it, she knew danger encroached— intimate and immediate—and yet she found it hard to move, for unfamiliar clay bound her flesh.

The threat was nearly upon her; she could feel it drawing nigh, and with it, panic breaking. There was no time to wait, no time to think. She had to force her way free! First to rive and then to bind.

The star brightened until it shone with the force of a thousand suns, and blades of light shot forth from the corona and into the darkness. One of the blades struck her, and her vision went white and it felt as if a lance had been driven into her eyes and every inch of her skin burned and crisped.

She screamed into the void, but the pain didn’t stop, and she screamed again—

Kira bolted upright. She was panting and drenched in sweat; the blanket clung to her like plastic film. People were shouting elsewhere in the base, and she recognized the sound of panic in their voices.

Next to her, Alan’s eyes flew open. “Wh—”

Footsteps sounded in the hallway outside. A fist pounded against the door, and Jenan shouted, “Get out here! It’s Neghar.”

Cold fear shot through Kira’s gut.

Together, she and Alan scrambled into their clothes. Kira spared a second of thought for her strange dream—everything felt strange at the moment—and then they hurried out of the cabin and rushed over toward Neghar’s quarters.

As they approached, Kira heard hacking: a deep, wet, ripping sound that made her imagine raw flesh going through a shredder. She shuddered.

Neghar was standing in the middle of the hallway with the others gathered around her, doubled over, hands on her knees, coughing so hard Kira could hear her vocal cords fraying. Fizel was next to her, hand on her back. “Keep breathing,” he said. “We’ll get you to sickbay. Jenan! Alan! Grab her arms, help carry her. Quickly now, qu—”

Neghar heaved, and Kira heard a loud, distinct snap from inside the woman’s narrow chest.

Black blood sprayed from Neghar’s mouth, painting the deck in a wide fan.

Marie-Élise shrieked, and several people retched. The fear from Kira’s dream returned, intensified. This was bad. This was dangerous. “We have to go,” she said, and tugged on Alan’s sleeve. But he wasn’t listening.

“Back!” Fizel shouted. “Everyone back! Someone get the Extenuating Circumstances on the horn. Now!”

“Clear the way!” Mendoza bellowed.

More blood sprayed from Neghar’s mouth, and she dropped to one knee. The whites of her eyes were freakishly wide. Her face was crimson, and her throat worked as if she were choking.

“Alan,” said Kira. Too late; he was moving to help Fizel.

She took a step back. Then another. No one noticed; they were all looking at Neghar, trying to figure out what to do while staying out of the way of the blood flying from her mouth.

Kira felt like screaming at them to leave, to run, to escape.

She shook her head and pressed her fists against her mouth, scared blood was going to erupt out of her as well. Her head felt as if it were about to burst, and her skin was crawling with horror: a thousand ants skittering over every centimeter. Her whole body itched with revulsion.

Jenan and Alan tried to lift Neghar back to her feet. She shook her head and gagged. Once. Twice. And then she spat a clot of something onto the deck. It was too dark to be blood. Too liquid to be metal.

Kira dug her fingers into her arm, scrubbing at it as a scream of revulsion threatened to erupt out of her.

Neghar collapsed backwards. Then the clot moved. It twitched like a clump of muscle hit with an electrical current.

People shouted and jumped away. Alan retreated toward Kira, never taking his eyes off the unformed lump.

Kira dry-heaved. She took another step back. Her arm was burning: thin lines of fire squirming across her skin.

She looked down.

Her nails had carved furrows in her flesh, crimson gashes that ended with crumpled strips of skin. And within the furrows, she saw another something twitch.

3.

Kira fell to the floor, screaming. The pain was all-consuming. That much she was aware of. It was the only thing she was aware of.

She arched her back and thrashed, clawing at the floor, desperate to escape the onslaught of agony. She screamed again; she screamed so hard her voice broke and a slick of hot blood coated her throat.

She couldn’t breathe. The pain was too intense. Her skin was burning, and it felt as if her veins were filled with acid and her flesh was tearing itself from her limbs.

Dark shapes blocked the light overhead as people moved around her. Alan’s face appeared next to her. She thrashed again, and she was on her stomach, her cheek pressed flat against the hard surface.

Her body relaxed for a second, and she took a single, gasping breath before going rigid and loosing a silent howl. The muscles of her face cramped with the force of her rictus, and tears leaked from the corners of her eyes.

Hands turned her over. They gripped her arms and legs, holding them in place. It did nothing to stop the pain.

“Kira!”

She forced her eyes open and, with blurry vision, saw Alan and, behind him, Fizel leaning toward her with a hypo. Farther back, Jenan, Yugo, and Seppo were pinning her legs to the floor, while Ivanova and Marie-Élise helped Neghar away from the clot on the deck.

“Kira! Look at me! Look at me!”

She tried to reply, but all she succeeded in doing was uttering a strangled whimper.

Then Fizel pressed the hypo against her shoulder. Whatever he injected didn’t seem to have any effect. Her heels drummed against the floor, and she felt her head slam against the deck, again and again.

“Jesus, someone help her,” Alan cried.

“Watch out!” shouted Seppo. “That thing on the floor is moving! Shi—”

“Sickbay,” said Fizel. “Get her to sickbay. Now! Pick her up. Pick—”

The walls swam around her as they lifted her. Kira felt like she was being strangled. She tried to inhale, but her muscles were too cramped. Red sparks gathered around the edges of her vision as Alan and the others carried her down the hallway. She felt as if she were floating; everything seemed insubstantial except the pain and her fear.

A jolt as they dropped her onto Fizel’s exam table. Her abdomen relaxed for a second, just long enough for Kira to steal a breath before her muscles locked back up.

“Close the door! Keep that thing out!” A thunk as the sickbay pressure lock engaged.

“What’s happening?” said Alan. “Is—”

“Move!” shouted Fizel. Another hypo pressed against Kira’s neck.

As if in response, the pain tripled, something she wouldn’t have believed possible. A low groan escaped her, and she jerked, unable to control the motion. She could feel foam gathering in her mouth, clogging her throat. She gagged and convulsed.

“Shit. Get me an injector. Other drawer. No, other drawer!”

“Doc—”

“Not now!”

“Doc, she isn’t breathing!”

Equipment clattered, and then fingers forced Kira’s jaw apart, and someone jammed a tube into her mouth, down her throat. She gagged again. A moment later, sweet, precious air poured into her lungs, sweeping aside the curtain darkening her vision.

Alan was hovering over her, his face contorted with worry.

Kira tried to talk. But the only sound she could make was an inarticulate groan.

“You’re going to be okay,” said Alan. “Just hold on. Fizel’s going to help you.” He looked as if he were about to cry.

Kira had never been so afraid. Something was wrong inside her, and it was getting worse.

Run, she thought. Run! Get away from here before—

Dark lines shot across her skin: black lightning bolts that twisted and squirmed as if alive. Then they froze in place, and where each one lay, her skin split and tore, like the carapace of a molting insect.

Kira’s fear overflowed, filling her with a feeling of utter and inescapable doom. If she could have screamed, her cry would have reached the stars.

Fibrous tendrils erupted from the bloody rents. They whipped about like headless snakes and then stiffened into razor-edged spikes that stabbed outward in random directions.

The spikes pierced the walls. They pierced the ceiling. Metal screeched. Lightstrips sparked and shattered, and the high-pitched keen of Adra’s surface wind filled the room, as did the blare of alarms.

Kira fell to the floor as the spikes jerked her around like a puppet. She saw a spike pass through Yugo’s chest and then three more through Fizel: neck, arm, and groin. Blood sprayed from the men’s wounds as the spikes withdrew.

No!

The door to sickbay slammed open and Ivanova rushed in. Her face went slack with horror, and then a pair of spikes struck her in the stomach and she collapsed. Seppo tried to run, and a spike impaled him from behind, pinning him to the wall, like a butterfly.

No!

Kira blacked out. When she came to, Alan was kneeling next to her, his forehead pressed against hers and his hands heavy upon her shoulders. His eyes were blank and empty, and a line of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

It took her a moment to realize that a dozen or more spikes stitched her body to his, joining them with obscene intimacy.

Her heart fluttered and stopped, and the floor seemed to drop away into an abyss. Alan. Her teammates. Dead. Because of her. The knowledge was unbearable.

Pain. She was dying, and she didn’t care. She just wanted the suffering to end—wanted the swift arrival of oblivion and the release it would bring.

Then darkness clouded her sight and the alarms faded to silence, and what once was, was no more.

Excerpted from To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, copyright © 2020 by Christopher Paolini.

The post Read To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini: Chapter 4: “Anguish” appeared first on Reactor.

When Michael’s best friend is murdered, the evidence leads back to Wendy’s client, setting off a dangerous chain of events that will profoundly change the couple—and the country.

Set in an economic dystopia that’s just around the corner, Adam Wilson’s Sensation Machines grapples with greed, automation, universal basic income, wearable tech, revolutionary desires, and a broken justice system. Available July 7th from Soho Press.

MICHAEL

On Monday, the third of December, roughly twenty-four hours before my oldest and closest friend would be murdered, I woke with sinus pain, an itchy scalp, and the accumulated clog of postnasal drip. At 2 a.m. I’d taken a Trazodone—a mild antidepressant prescribed as a sleep aid—and in the cocoon of the drug’s afterglow, as dawn shot itself through our casement windows and a bacon scent blew in from downstairs, I watched my wife sleep: pillowless, chin tilted to ceiling like a dental patient’s.

Wendy’s nostrils flared on each exhale and she issued grunts in a lower register than she used in waking life. Her speaking voice is affectedly high-pitched, the product of being five foot ten and embarrassed about it, but these grunts came from her gut, from the bile-scorched basement of her intestines. Most of the bedbug bites had scabbed off her forehead and cheeks, but some leaked pus and blood from where she’d scratched. Still, she was stunning, like an actress made up for a zombie flick, who, despite the artist’s best efforts with latex and greasepaint, remains implausibly lovely. No scabs could distract from the neat plane of her nose, or the buoyant, red curls spread across our new SureGuard anti-allergen sheets.

We’d discovered the bedbugs the previous week, and our apartment had since been emptied of clothing and other possibly contaminated items. In the absence of curtains, the sun now striped the wall where our dresser once sat, a Civil War–era showpiece bought above market value in a heated eBay auction. The image brought to mind the afternoon, three years before, when Wendy and I stood in the empty loft and surveyed the space, bright with promise, soon to be filled with everything we owned.

Most of that stuff was still here—Wendy’s Miró and Kandinsky prints, my books on hip-hop, Apple products and other electronics, cookware and baby gear, plus our collections: nineties cassingles, ceramic hands, antique hat mannequins, deadstock Air Jordans, inherited Judaica—but the room felt bare, more warehouse than home, though here we were, inhabiting, and here was the cat, leaping onto the air bed where she perched atop Wendy’s head. It looked like Wendy was wearing one of those sable hats that protect the bald domes of oligarchs from frosty Moscow winters. She threw the crying cat across the loft.

The cat landed on four feet and scurried toward the bathroom. A gaunt, acrobatic animal with silver fur and green eyes the color of a faded military rucksack, she was a stray I’d found picking at garbage outside our building a few weeks prior. The cat’s aggression toward Wendy spoke to an interspecies female territoriality, and my wife, defensive, had later accused the cat of being bedbug patient zero. Wendy still appeared to be asleep.

I leaned in and kissed her. Our accounts were overdrawn, creditors called me by the hour, my job was in limbo, and Wendy knew none of this, but at least we appeared to be bedbug free.

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Sesation Machines

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It was early winter, and would reach eighty by noon, but at 6:30 a.m. bodega owners braced themselves in jackets and hats as they rolled up their chains to signal the commencement of commerce, diurnal music as yet undisturbed by the market crash that had put the dollar in freefall and Clayton & Sons, the bank where I worked, on the verge of insolvency. There would be no bailout this time, and in this panicked climate, a proposal for Universal Basic Income had passed through Congress and was headed to the Senate for final approval.

TV news flashed shuttered windows and boarded doorways, but here, in my corner of upmarket Brooklyn, things appeared status quo. The day’s first delivery drones descended from tree height to eye level before lowering landing gear and making soft contact outside the remaining brownstones and the high-rise condos that had mostly replaced them. Pigeons scattered, wary of the claws that carried shrink-wrapped Gap sweaters, flatbread sandwiches, and other objects impossible to print at home. Earlier drones were sci-fi chic—floating orbs and baby Death Stars—but people found them sinister. The solution was to design the objects after actual birds, and now it was Hitchcock twenty-four seven. I turned up Court Street toward the Brooklyn Bridge.

I should mention that I’m not from around here. I was raised off an exit ramp in East Coast exurbia, where every gas station sells Red Sox crapaphernalia and the strip malls aren’t yet full franchise; they’re still half occupied by local bars and burger joints, blue-lit, filled with Carhartted Brosephs and their female companions—Tara, Britney, Aurora, etc.—sassed in green eyeshadow, in beerlight shadow, in Bud Light soft-stupor, whittling away their middle twenties with wet eyes and dry skin, wet bars and dry heaves, and Japanese trucks that somehow still run after all those miles spewing dust and American fumes.

Of course, that’s a romantic half-truth because (1) I’m from the Berkshires, twenty minutes from the quaint town of Lenox, which is home to both Tanglewood and a community of retired Bostonians who antique on Saturdays, then head to Williamstown Sundays for a taste of the theatre. Their cottages are dotted with Rockwellian Americana (purchased from the nearby Rockwell museum), scented by potpourri and sawdust, cinders in fireplace, local kale simmering on stovetop, steeping itself in red wine reduction as grandma dusts off the viola, prepped to serenade grandkids with riffage from the Charles Ives songbook; and (2) my family was different, not your typical townies, what with gamer dad, immigrant mom, face-tattooed sister, and my Long Island cousins calling me toward femininity with their floriated perfumes and ethnic rainbow of American Girl dolls.

Not that we were special. In most ways, I resembled my classmates, who lived in Colonial-style homes that spiraled out from the abandoned factory. And though the local recession stayed in remission through the early aughts, the current crisis had brought unemployment back to where it was when GE pulled out in ’91 leaving ten thousand jobless, including my dad. Terms like highbrow and lowbrow had ceased to have meaning in a place where, no matter one’s tastes, you were stalled in what was outmodedly called the working class. Pittsfield was a microcosm for what I’d come to think of as the Great American Unibrow, an unruly line that connected East and West across the painted plains dotted with the same mediocre takes on what had once been regional cuisines. You could get a Southwest-style quesadilla from Seattle to the southern tip of Florida, and find no difference in the chipotle rub or soggy Jack cheese. So, I left for New York, forgoing Audubon trails for the feeling I get on the Brooklyn Bridge at dawn, the feeling I got as I walked and scratched and called across that dirty river for someone to save me.

When I hit Manhattan, I was soaked in sweat. Duane Reade was alive with the faint smell of carpet shampoo and the insectoid traffic of the day walkers, middle-aged men in Canal Street bling and velour tracksuits, which were mostly maroon for some reason. These guys were everywhere. They loitered on subway platforms and outside bodegas, even in rain, sipping cigars, tapping canes, and scaring tourists with their scars and shiny watches. But they weren’t criminals, just unemployed men, vaguely lame, with a healthy share of love and other problems, or so it could be gleaned from the baskets filled with lipstick, prophylactics, and reams of wrapping paper. Consumer spending had bottomed hard, but people still paid for cosmetics. Vanity, it turns out, is the last sturdy pillar of society.

By the time I reached the counter, my basket was filled with what I’d need to make it through the day. Ten ChapSticks, two bags of cough drops—one mint, one cherry—Tylenol, Advil, calamine, aloe, moisturizer, deodorant, Sudafed, NyQuil, DayQuil, Benadryl, Gas-X, condoms, D vitamins, a men’s multivitamin for prostate health, an issue of Men’s Health, the New York Times, AA batteries, eight packs of Emergen-C (two orange, two lemon/lime, four cranberry), one photo frame, Rogaine, reading glasses (+3), Band-Aids, bacitracin, nicotine patches, nicotine gum, and two packs of cigarettes.

The checkout clerk was a college-age woman with bright white teeth and an assortment of neck and arm tattoos. Her face bore the cratered remains of teenage acne, a piercing sat bindi-like between her eyes, and a dyed pink stripe ran at a slant from her forehead’s peak to the tip of her bangs. I had chosen her line, despite its length, over the six self-checkout machines. A recent federal law mandated that retailers keep at least one human employee on premises. This was a meaningless gesture, the vestige of an immuno-compromised jobs bill. One employee per store would not put a dent in unemployment. Still, I’m a people person.

Andrea K. took me in like I was a specimen from some alien world, the last remains of an earlier evolutionary stage. I was wearing the one wrinkled suit I’d saved from quarantine, and with my three-day beard and bedbug scabs, I must have given the impression of someone in mourning, or someone in global transit, or a killer on the lam in an old film. Suffice to say, there were problems at home: with Wendy, with myself, with modern-day America that sliced our lives into curated blocks hubbed around an eighty-hour workweek—at least for those, like us, still gainfully employed. Whisk in trips to Pure Barre and therapy, plus allotted minutes for shopping, streaming, and sleep, and the sum was a doomed approximation of marriage, unprecedented by parents.

My own parents were governed by the social laws of an earlier era in which Adderall and a competitive job market hadn’t inflamed the work ethos, and the task of procreation had imbued all else with a whisper of profanity. Now procreation was its own profanity between Wendy and me. It was a word we ignored, or spoke only in bedtime darkness, in the loose mumblings of pre-dream.

I’d wanted a child from an early age, sophomore year, when I first met Wendy. I bought into the laugh-tracked fantasy of fatherhood, saw it as the end at which my future means would gain nonmonetary meaning. Or maybe I just wanted to please my parents.

Wendy wasn’t as eager, and wouldn’t be until our mid-thirties, when her feeds filled with friends holding newborns like mucus-slicked trophies. What followed was scheduled, utilitarian sex, which, like pizza, was finished in seconds and left stains on the couch. After, we would cuddle and binge-watch Project Runway, or read aloud from a book of baby names. These were happy, hopeful times, and when they culminated, soon after, in the desired result—nausea, swollen nipples, and a faint blue cross on a pregnancy test—we felt elated and deserving, like Olympic medalists whose discipline and training had paid off. A few days later the pregnancy was lost.

It was the first in a string of early miscarriages, until we found ourselves passing forty—frustrated, exhausted, losing hope. For years, doctors had suggested IVF, but Wendy was hesitant. The treatment was expensive and invasive and how shitty would it feel if even this potential remedy resulted in failure? I pushed and she yielded, and though she’ll never forgive me, the treatment did work. After seven years of trying, Wendy carried past the three-month mark.

Like many parents-to-be, we left Manhattan for Brooklyn, staking out a gentrifier’s guilty claim on a Boerum Hill penthouse. There, we prepared for our retro-nuclear unit, bought the necessary accessories, rubbed her belly and sang to it, my out-of-tune baritone penetrating her epidermal walls, piping Boyz II Men covers into the almost-baby’s watery bedroom. We took birthing classes and researched strollers, bought tiny Air Jordans and spent evenings babyproofing the loft. When Amazon sent someone to assemble the crib, I watched like a hawkeyed foreman. We could not have been more prepared.

Our daughter wasn’t technically stillborn—the monitor showed a heartbeat when she emerged—and the term is a misnomer anyway. So much is moving, like the slithering liquid surrounding the body, or the doctors’ and nurses’ scurrying hands, creating a charade of motion, a defiant charade against the situation’s fixity. And I don’t know if Wendy knew something was wrong when the room fell silent in the absence of our daughter’s cry, but either way I saw her first, this beautiful human, crowning into air she couldn’t find a way to breathe.

Andrea K. continued to scan my selections. She moved with metric precision, never pausing to price-check an item or rotate a package to locate the barcode. In a theater at Vassar, this might have played as modern dance, a misguided commentary on the Tao of retail. Here, in Manhattan, it was no more or less than that endangered species, the low-wage job.

“Morning,” she said in cheery voice. She had a sympathetic countenance, Andrea K., and I liked her tattoos—a kinematic schema of a dragonfly’s wings, slot-machine cherries, the injunction Look Alive—which, with their stylistic mishmash, spoke to the fickle whims of the human heart.

“Taking a trip?” she asked, as I bagged my stash.

It had occurred to me that Wendy and I could use a weekend away. To get out on the road, bunk down at a boutique hotel upstate. We’d drink champagne and order room service sundaes, a last blast on my company card before the company burned or I got canned and they killed my expense account.

“Thinking about it,” I said. “I’ve been wanting to take my wife somewhere nice. Where would you go this time of year?”

The cashier eyed my crumpled outfit, my year’s supply of Rogaine, my bottle of two hundred prostate-health pills.

“Preventative,” I said, in reference to the pills, or perhaps to the lot. But she was admiring my suit, a Crayola-blue, shawl lapel Fashion Week sample. Kanye had worn the same one during the pro-union rant at the Grammys that announced his return to the political left.

“That a Yeezy?” she said.

I tugged my lapel like it might make the jacket magically unwrinkle. I wasn’t sure whether to be proud or embarrassed by the item’s exorbitant price. She handed back my Visa, which her machine had declined.

“It’s telling me to cut this card in half.”

I gave her my Amex instead.

“So where might a frugal guy like me take his wife?”

The answer was obvious to Andrea K.

“Storm King, dude. It’s only, like, twenty bucks to get in, and chicks Instagram the shit out of that place.”

She was referring to an outdoor museum, a couple hours upstate, that was a popular setting for romantic montages in films about the love lives of the Brooklyn precariat. I hadn’t taken Andrea K. for the type. In my own youth, her look would have been labeled alternative, and carried with it a particular set of assumptions, one being that its owner held a healthy disdain for the status markers of bourgeois life. But young people these days didn’t buy into such rigid segmentation; they just wanted to Instagram the shit out of stuff. So did Wendy. Many times she’d suggested that we drive up to Storm King. I’d always deferred, wary of cliché, or maybe only traffic on the Palisades Parkway.

Today would not be an exception. But later, after everything went down, I wondered what might have turned out differently if I’d heeded the cashier’s advice. In this alternate history, I convince Wendy to play hooky from work, and I whisk her upstate. In this alternate history, humbled before nature and modernist sculpture, I find the courage to come clean about the millions of dollars that I lost on the market. In this alternate history, Wendy is angry, but after hours of open and honest discussion, she arrives at forgiveness. And in this alternate history, we hit traffic on our way back to Brooklyn, and Wendy never meets Lucas or lands the Project Pinky account, and my best friend, Ricky, skips the Great Gatsby party because I’m not there to be his wingman, and he avoids the riot, and he doesn’t get murdered.

But I was not ready, just yet, to come clean. There was still time to fix things before Wendy found out. I had a plan, and I was heading to Ricky’s to ask for his help.

Andrea K. ran my Amex, handed back a receipt. Her forearm, I noticed, featured a list of men’s names: Albert, Sadeeq, Tino, Bartholomew. Each tattooed name was struck through with a line.

“Those guys take you to Storm King?”

“Bartholomew did.”

“And?”

“It was nice.”

“So what happened?”

She rolled her eyes. “One good deed,” she explained, “does not a winner make.” She studied my card before handing it back. “Are you a loser, Michael Mixner?”

I told her it remained to be seen.

WENDY

I was already thinking of leaving Michael by the time we found blood on the bedsheets. The amount was minuscule, a few dark dots. I assumed I was spotting.

There was more blood, the next day, on Michael’s side of the bed. Michael said he’d cut himself shaving. We didn’t connect the marks on our skin to these stains. The marks itched, and I’d falsely sourced them to dander allergies. Michael had recently brought home an itinerant tabby. As a child I was afraid of cats, their abject nihilism. I still am. At night, the unnamed cat gnawed my heels and toes. Sometimes she broke skin, another explanation for the blood.

When I uploaded photos of Michael’s bites to MeMD.com, the range of responses was broad. There were fifty-four comments. One user suggested that Michael had a rare form of leprosy, previously contained to the sub-Saharan desert. Another suggested that Michael was a self-denying victim of spousal abuse. Six were spam posts offering sets of Don’t Tread On Me windshield decals at a competitive price. Eleven members of the forum suspected bedbugs.

I blamed the cat and demanded her eviction. Michael defended the cat. The cat cowered. She looked guilty, but that’s how cats look. We agreed to disagree. The cat was granted probation. An exterminator laid pesticide throughout our apartment. We took our vacuum-packed clothing to my father’s storage space where it would sit for the recommended eighteen months. Our spoiled furniture littered the sidewalk. I left a note warning rummagers to steer clear. It was not an ideal moment for this drama.

We were courting an enigmatic client at work, referred to on the books as Project Pinky. In lieu of an RFP, the client had provided a study syllabus of theoretically comparable marketing campaigns. The syllabus included familiar campaigns like Joe Camel and Just Do It, but also campaigns selling abstract commodities: Ronald Reagan’s appropriation of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA”; the public relations circus surrounding the O. J. Simpson trial. The final item was Aristophanes’s Lysistrata, the Greek comedy about women who withhold sex from their husbands in an effort to end the Peloponnesian War.

The plan was to pitch our ingenuity by presenting updates on these historical campaigns. The client had offered an unprecedented $10,000 materials fee to cover preparation costs. It was unclear what materials we were meant to acquire—O. J.’s glove?—but the message came across: despite the absurdity of our assignment, Project Pinky was serious business. We had a week to prepare. The client would not be approaching other agencies. The account was ours to lose.

Communitiv.ly, where I worked, is a Think Tank for Creative Synergy and Digital Solutions. More simply, the company helps heritage brands engage with consumers on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Ru.ffy, Pim-Pam, Twitch, and Instagram, and provides access to in-house strategists, as well as to a network of freelance designers, community managers, editors, journalists, programmers, videographers, and copywriters.

It is the network of freelancers that sets Communitiv.ly apart. Say, for instance, that your cosmetics company wants to set up an aspirational webzine that promotes a branded lifestyle and provides entry points for single-click purchase. Communitiv.ly will find a freelancer in its network to curate editorial content. Communitiv.ly will provide that editor with a database of underemployed fashion writers. Then Communitiv.ly will design, build, and optimize your site, create promotional communities on social media, launch traditional print, TV, and radio campaigns, and provide event planners and viral marketing experts to make sure the site’s launch gets enough old-media coverage to incite traffic-fueling buzz. It’s a one-stop shop, and it works because brands like Marc Jacobs and Revlon have more to spend on editorial projects, and can milk more revenue from them, than struggling old-media entities like Condé Hearst.

I’d heard people say that this was the future of journalism. What they meant was the end of journalism. Despite my active role in the razing, I was among its mourners. In ninth grade, while classmates tested their developing wiles in Spice Girls costumes and witchy lingerie, I went as Bob Woodward for Halloween. I must have been a sight: five-nine with a tangerine Jew-fro and pimples, wearing my dad’s corduroy suit. I dressed my Welsh Springer Spaniel as Carl Bernstein.

In college, I covered student activism for the Columbia Spectator. I was both too cowardly and too skeptical to participate in the demonstrations that were a fixture of campus life. The protested causes weren’t always commensurate with the protesters’ zeal, and I sometimes wondered if the real cause wasn’t the self-validation of those involved. I’m thinking, particularly, of a weeklong hunger strike devoted to curtailing fraternities from referring to beer pong by its insensitive alias, Beirut. I found the reporter’s role empowering, a way to participate while maintaining a balance between distrust and support. I harbored hopes of putting truth to paper.

Project Pinky was something else. Lillian arrived in the mornings on three hours’ sleep. Greg fine-tuned our General Deck, a PowerPoint presentation explaining our business model through buzzwords and animation. I mocked up a “Free O. J.” fan page, complete with links to articles on police corruption and racial profiling, as well as a message board where people who’d been harassed by the LAPD could share their stories. Greg’s shirts grew progressively more unbuttoned until, by week’s end, a briar patch of black hair threatened to garrote anyone who stood too close. I combed interviews with Springsteen for quotes that might reiterate right-wing talking points if taken out of context. Lillian lost her voice screaming supposedly inspirational marketing clichés about team building that she’d found on a Tumblr dedicated to cherry-picking from a handful of marketing blogs that, in their turn, had cherry-picked from books by blog-anointed marketing gurus. The gurus were paraphrasing the founding fathers.

The night before the pitch—this would be Sunday, the second of December, two days before Ricky’s murder—Lillian invited me to her West Village townhouse for a once-more-unto-the-breach sort of sendoff. We sat on her balcony and watched the darkening sky. There was a bottle of Riesling uncorked on the table, half-eaten canapés, the roach of a joint from which I’d abstained. I’d spent ten minutes explaining Lysistrata to my stoned boss. Lillian lit a cigarette. Like many New Yorkers, she’d started smoking again when the embargo on Cuba’s lung cancer vaccine was lifted. After reading the fine print regarding emphysema, throat cancer, and low rates of preventative efficacy, she was now, unsuccessfully, attempting to quit.

“So, they stop fucking their husbands,” said Lillian. “And then expect them to end the war? These women clearly knew zilch about men.”

Lillian had been married twice and this made her an expert. She had one child to show for it, Damien Earl, a living embodiment of every cliché about privileged urban youth. At eighteen, he’d participated in a reality TV program about privileged urban youth. He was currently finishing a semester in Milan.

After Damien’s father ran off with the younger wife of a deceased Kuwaiti oil baron, Lillian swore off men, only to return amid this golden era of online dating. My boss was a fit and elegant fifty, subtly Botoxed, with sharp brown eyes and long natural lashes. She wore her hair in a chic, angular bob that flattered her narrow face and gave off a shimmering aura of money. In the current dating climate, these attributes weren’t enough. We often spent lunch breaks swiping profiles on Kügr, but she rarely matched with anyone of interest. I used to wonder how I’d do, what currency my looks still carried. Since the death of our daughter, Nina, I’d noted a down-tilt in male attention. Men used to stare while I swam laps at the Red Hook pool. Now stretch marks scored my stomach. Wrinkles spidered from my eyes. Michael told me I looked beautiful. He was not an objective audience.

“It does seem shortsighted,” I agreed.

“I mean, for one,” Lillian continued, “they’re acting without regard for their own interests. Everyone knows a soldier in the heat of battle is a maniac in the sack. And, for two, they’re absolutely fucking deluded. Denying a man sex is the most surefire way to incite mass violence. History has proven it: the Christian Crusades, 9/11. Both could have been prevented by blowjobs. Why do you think Clinton was the only president in recent history who didn’t nuke the shit out of some sleepy Islamic hamlet?”

I started to say something, but it wasn’t worth it. Provocation was her mode, and I’d learned, over the years, to avoid being baited. In my loftier moments, I projected onto Lillian a feminist objective: to co-opt locker-room talk, reclaim vulgarity from its province on the right.

It may have simply been her style. My boss’s disposition toward crass innuendo surely had Darwinian value in her deft infiltration of our industry’s boys’ club. I was the closest thing she had to a protégé, and I sensed her desire to instill in me something of this bro-ish bearing. I knew that my refusal—was it refusal or failure?—had affected my career. Male clients tended to request Greg as their account liaison.

“The way to manipulate men is not by denying them sex,” Lillian explained, “but by forcing them to make promises while their dicks are in your mouth. You ever been with a soldier?”

One thing she respects is a lengthy sexual CV. My own was not. Lillian knew this but pretended to forget. I shook my head.

“You really should try it sometime. Their penises are tiny and they compensate by going down on you for hours. They love to take directions.”

She knew I was married too.

“I used to keep a stash of plastic medals I’d hand out after mission complete.”

A compulsive liar.

“After sex they cry. It’s better than most standup routines. Anyway, tell me something about you for a change. How’s Michael?”

She refilled my wine without my asking. She wanted me to spill marital secrets. A few months prior, I’d mistakenly confessed to a sexual experiment Michael and I had undertaken, a threesome. I thought telling Lillian would get her off my back. It only provoked.

“Michael’s fine,” I said.

“Even with this Wall Street bullshit?”

The truth was I didn’t know. I watched TV and scanned my news feeds. I read the The New York Times. The intricacies of the crisis were buried beneath stories of other catastrophes, the cataclysmic wreckage of the last administration. Headlines warned of coming hurricanes and tsunamis. Warned of rising sea levels and methane emissions. Chronicled the continuing barrage of Weinstein-esque behavior in politics and entertainment. Addressed the uptick in anti-immigration violence in the wake of mass layoffs at fast food chains in Texas and Arizona, the right-wing backlash against the soda ban in public schools. It all just kept coming. That morning’s front page featured a Florida militia with stockpiled Uzis who wore swastika armbands but touted their support for the Jewish State.

I did know that the hacking group mAchete had leaked internal memos from the C&S brass, suggesting bank employees unload their company shares. I knew the board was trying to push a last-minute sale of the bank and its holdings to a Japanese megabank.

The Universal Basic Income, or UBI as it was called, was a threat to the entire financial apparatus. If the proposal passed, the government would award every American with $23,000 per year. This $10 trillion dividend would be funded largely by tax hikes for the wealthy, and by increasing taxes on carbon emissions. But it would also be funded, in part, by charging fees to financial institutions on all individual trades and transactions. As far as I understood it, this meant that large investment banks like C&S, which processed nearly three million transactions daily, would be forced to drastically scale down their operations. Right-wing pundits warned of the negative effect this would have on lending. They warned that it would cause steep inflation and disrupt the economy’s flow. They warned that this restriction on capital movement would have widespread repercussions for job creation and trickle-down wealth. They’d used these arguments for decades against other forms of socialization.

There is no way I could have known then, as I leaned back in my chair and watched the day’s last light impart a Coppertone glow on the old brick church across Lillian’s street, that Project Pinky would be linked to the UBI. That, in fact, the person in charge of Project Pinky hoped to tank the bill and replace it with a system of his own design. I’m not sure what, if anything, this knowledge would have changed.

Michael and I didn’t talk about the crisis or its possible ramifications for us. We worked late. We left early. At home, we lay in bed staring at separate laptops. We argued about whose turn it was to take out the trash. Michael let the cat sprawl across his ribcage. He stroked her fur and fed her salmon treats that left crumbs on the duvet. I dust-busted around their bodies. We didn’t have sex.

“So no more threesomes?” said Lillian. “You onto other stuff now? Bondage? Strap-ons? Cosplay?”

I swirled my wine. One night the previous week, I’d come home to a bleach-clean apartment and Michael in an apron standing over the stove. He’d set the table with our good wedding flatware. Candles were lit. A spray of wildflowers filled a vase.

I should not have been surprised. Michael gave me gifts all the time and planned date nights: reservations at trendy new restaurants, third-row seats to see Alvin Ailey at BAM. He meant well, I knew, but I often found myself inflamed at his presumptions. For example: that I would ever wear a floral-print, off-the-shoulder romper; that, after a long day at work, I’d be in the mood to leave the house.

Cooking and cleaning, however, were welcome. He made pan-fried sole in a brown butter sauce. The fish was flaky and moist. We moved to the couch where we drank Côtes du Rhône and listened to records. Michael rubbed my feet. After my second glass of wine, I was convinced to take his arm and practice the waltz we’d learned years ago for our wedding. The waltz seemed like a metaphor. To move as a unit. To create a momentum that would carry us through each other’s mistakes.

The next day we had bedbugs.

I hadn’t told Lillian about that either. Displaying uncharacteristic tact, she hadn’t asked about my face. I think she considered the body a safe space. She refused to acknowledge its betrayals.

“I love making you uncomfortable,” said Lillian. “It’s too easy. I’m sorry. It’s funny to me to watch you squirm. Is that wrong? I should be nicer, right? I’m your boss. I could fire you. Maybe I’ll fire you right now. Ha-ha. Have you noticed that people say ha-ha these days instead of laughing? What’s that about?”

I changed the subject.

“Tell me about Project Pinky,” I said. “Fill me in. There must be more to the story.”

“You ever watch that cartoon show, Pinky and the Brain?”

I told her I’d seen it. I had a proper childhood, cereal and Saturday morning TV. My mother sat beside me and sketched in a notebook. It’s one of my strongest memories. Not anything we said, but the ease of her pose, the piney bouquet of her men’s deodorant. She found the cartoons amusing. Even as a kid, I was more interested in commercials.

“What aw we going to do today, Bwain?” said Lillian, imitating the cartoon rat.

“Today, Pinky,” she continued, now doing Brain’s voice, an operatic tenor, “we are going to take over the world.”

“Sure,” I said.

“That’s the plan, anyway, world domination. I’m not sure how, or why, or what it means, but the money’s real, and for some reason we’ve been tapped for this project. I’m guessing that reason is discretion. They could have any of the big agencies with the kind of contract they’re promising: Ogilvy, Precocious Baby, whoever.”

The client had floated a figure, enough to put us in the black for the coming year. We were a boutique service with a solid reputation, but even during our strongest quarters we spent nearly as much as we made. Precocious Baby had copied our business model and amassed a larger network of freelancers.

“They want to go small. They want someone who knows how to keep their mouth shut. The meeting I had was in a motel on Brighton Beach. At first I thought it was a joke. Then I saw the shoes. I met with a young guy. His shoes, dude. The leather could have been the scrotum on a newborn foal.”

I did my best not to visibly recoil.

“The ten grand came in cash in a fucking briefcase. Could be mafia or Russian mafia, but I don’t think so. The guy was too white. Something sketchy is going on and I want us to be part of it. We get this account and we’ll make a killing. They sent me home in a limo. A motel in Brighton Beach and I’m sent home in a limo.”

“Mysterious.”

Lillian relit the roach.

“There’s another thing. They asked about you.”

“Me?”

The sun was all but gone now, and the air was cooler. I wished I’d thought to bring a sweater.

“You specifically. They said the contract depended on your full availability. I told them no problemo, of course. I guess your reputation precedes you.”

“I have a reputation?”

“You were bang-up on Samsung. Brought them back from the brink. I know you’re being headhunted left and right.”

There had been offers, none I’d considered. I did think about leaving, but not for another agency. Instead, I imagined launching a startup in the Social Impact space, using my skills to do good. But I was comfortable at Communitiv.ly. For years I’d refused direct deposit because I loved receiving an envelope on my desk every other Friday morning. I loved waiting in line at the bank and holding the envelope. I loved handing the check to the teller.

Like most beneficiaries of a bat mitzvah savings account, I had a complex relationship with wealth. On one side was guilt, a dumbbell in the pit of my stomach. My paternal grandfather came through Ellis Island with only a toolbox. He quite literally built his modest empire from brick and mortar, erecting low-income housing on the Lower East Side. I built a wall as well, around the dumbbell. If there’s one thing Manhattan private schools are good for, it’s reminding the children of New Money Jews that, in the grand scheme of savings and loans, they’re relatively deprived. I had classmates who owned helicopters, houses on Mustique.

Then my mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Treatment gave her two years. I wouldn’t trade that time, difficult as it was. I spent long hours in her hospital rooms, doing schoolwork and watching trashy TV. My father was there too: pacing, opening and closing the window, staring at his coffee. He took an open-ended leave from work to be at her bedside. Insurance covered certain costs, but treatment was expensive, as was hospice later on. We had no income during that period. When she died, my father was essentially broke.

The personification of money has always made sense to me: money does this, money does that. It’s as if it has legs. It might, at any moment, leave. This is one reason I didn’t pursue writing. In my Advanced Nonfiction workshop, our professor warned against nurturing a fallback plan. He said the problem with a fallback plan is that you’ll fall back. My classmates nodded and wrote this down. Personally, I liked the idea of falling back. I pictured myself in one of those summer camp trust exercises, plummet disrupted by a bed of hands.

“I get it,” said Lillian. “Puma was boring, and you’re sick of explaining Pim-Pam to geriatric CEOs. I am too, Wen. But this client is different. They’re interesting. I don’t know what they are. But as I said, the money’s real. This works out and from now on everything’s pickles and cream if you catch my meaning.”

“I don’t.”

“It’s a saying.”

“It is?”

“It must be.”

“Okay.”

Lillian kicked back her chair. She laid a leg upon my leg. I brushed the dirt from her shoe from my pants. She hit the roach and coughed hard. Her cheeks looked purple in the porch light.

“The account is ours,” she said. “God help me, I have a feeling. A rumble in my gut like the dam’s about to burst.”

“That may have been the shrimp. It felt a little slimy.”

“I didn’t eat the shrimp. I’m off shellfish. The smell makes me want to vom.”

I looked down at my plate. There were twelve shrimp tails on it. There were none on Lillian’s.

“Why’d you serve it?”

“It’s what you serve.”

She flicked a shrimp tail off the balcony.

Excerpted from Sensation Machines, copyright © 2020 by Adam Wilson.

The post Read an Excerpt From the Near-Future Dystopia Sensation Machines appeared first on Reactor.

Thanks to the heroics of former New York City Mayor Tom Cafferty and his team, the world is once again safe. The villainous Foundation for Human Advancement has been dismantled, the cities of the world are safe from nuclear annihilation, and Cafferty is now on a hunt to decimate every nest of creatures on the planet.

When Cafferty enters a nest underneath the Nevada desert, he is horrified to find it completely empty. It can only mean one thing: the battle for survival is not over. Across the planet, creatures are emerging from their subterranean homes. Now, the all-out war against humanity has begun—a war in which only one apex species will survive. Humankind has finally met its match.

Cafferty knows that only one man can help him stop the onslaught. A man who is despised by the world. A man who has already caused the death of millions. A man who is a sworn enemy hell-bent on taking Tom Cafferty down forever: Albert Van Ness.

But even this desperate move may not be enough to stop the creatures and save humanity…

Chapter Six

Mike Gianno walked along a corridor to his high-roller suite in Circus Circus. He grasped the hand of a lady he only knew as Cindy. She was wearing a tight red dress, showing her voluptuous curves. Maybe thirty years old. He wasn’t sure. She was most definitely out of his league, but his natural charm had clearly won her over.

This morning, he’d dressed to impress. Skinny jeans. A white linen shirt, unbuttoned to the center of his chest, ensuring he flashed his thick gold necklace. It was most likely real, too. He avoided tucking his shirt in to conceal his growing pot belly. A classic fat guy trick. The short sleeves flashed his inked biceps. He wasn’t exactly ripped, but for a balding man approaching his mid-forties, he thought he looked pretty good. Distinguished, even.

To complement his appearance, a squirt of Stetson cologne had given him a woodsy, citrus aroma compared to his competition at the casino bars: morbidly overweight desperados with cigarettes constantly jammed between their lips. He didn’t need to sink that low. The thought disgusted him. He upgraded to e-cigarettes long ago. And the ultimate ace in his pocket: he had a suite in the hotel. Women love suites, is what he had heard. He also had the decency to put his wedding ring in the safe, so all good there.

“You got booze?” Cindy asked.

Mike smiled. “Does a shark have a waterproof nose?”

“What?”

“Forget about it. There’s a mini bar.”

It’s expensive.

So what. I’ll take the hit to impress her.

His excitement grew as they neared his room. He’d previously had no luck at the tables or the slots. Five-hundred bucks, hosed in under two hours. Something he couldn’t really afford with a wife and two kids back in Michigan. After his losing streak, he’d hung around the bar. Six rejections later, he’d met Cindy. A fitness instructor from Tyler, Texas. They’d immediately hit it off, talking about their love of action movies and barbeque food.

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Cindy and he had talked for half an hour. It felt like he’d known her for years. It was like she understood what he was all about. She had an insight into the male psyche that he’d never encountered before. She knew what men were about, clearly.

Here goes.

Mike placed his key card against the door. He opened it and waved Cindy inside with the flourish of a ringmaster. “After you, madam.”

She frowned at him. “Are you sure you’re not drunk?”

“Only had five Moscow mules,” he replied proudly. “I could have easily had six.”

She shook her head and entered the room.

Mike closed the door behind him and spun to face her. Sure, the high roller suite at Circus Circus had only cost him one hundred bucks, but it was the best room in the hotel with a living area, separate bedroom, and a huge bathroom.

Cindy peered around. “Is this really the presidential suite?

Mike nodded. “Uh- huh.”

“Which President? Carter?” Cindy sassed back.
She slipped off  her purse and reached for the zip on the back of her dress.

Holy shit this is happening…

“Oh, one last thing…” Cindy said while unzipping her dress.

“Anything for you baby.”

“You need to pay up front.”

Mike’s eyes widened. “Oh…uh…excuse me?”

“That’s standard here in Vegas, baby. It’s not that I don’t trust you.”

“Oh…you’re…uh…working right now?”

Cindy rolled her eyes. “Does a shark have a waterproof nose?”

Mike hadn’t realized. The revelation momentarily hurt his ego. He imagined the bums in the casino bar laughing after he’d left. He’d given most of them a triumphant grin on the way past, like he’d been the victor in their unspoken competition. He might have even given one the finger.

“Uh, yeah. So how much are we talking?” he asked.

“Depends on what you want.”

Mike did fast math in his head. A few hundred lost on the casino floor, a hundred for the  room, five Moscow mules, pay- per- view last night to watch that new hidden camera comedy movie that just came out, Uber X from the airport…

Damn, adds up fast.

“Um…two hundred?” he replied.

She shook her head and held up one hand. “That’s what you get. I’m gonna use the bathroom first.”

“Ok, um, it’s right through there.”

Cindy sauntered through to the bedroom and headed for the bathroom.

Excitement rose inside him. Feelings he hadn’t experienced since his last ‘business’ trip. He stripped naked and slipped on a terrycloth bathrobe, leaving it loosely fastened around his waist. Mike checked himself out in the mirror. He sucked in and puffed out his chest.

A clatter of noise came from the bathroom, followed by silence.

“Hey,” he shouted. “You all right in there?”

“You need to pay up front,” Cindy’s voice said from behind the closed door.

This sent a wave of irritation through him. If she planned on talking turkey all the way through their experience, it promised to be a total turn off.

“Okay, I get it,” he replied, opening his wallet and counting out two hundred dollars. That

left eighty dollars in his wallet. Plenty for the Uber back to the airport, and maybe another pay per view tonight. He had already maxed out his credit card, so reception would have to take cash. He was dying to watch Anaconda again.

Then, her identical voice again, from behind the bathroom door.
“You need to pay up front,” she repeated.

“I said I get it,” he said, annoyed.

Mike entered the bedroom, attempting to push her parroted comment to the back of his mind. The crisp ivory sheets had been spread to one side, and her dress lay across the top of them. He sat on the edge of the bed, waiting for her to finish whatever she was doing in the bathroom.

He reached across to the bedside cabinet, and grabbed the half-drunk glass of wine he’d left there the previous night. It tasted warm and sour as it gushed down his throat. He squeezed one eye shut, wincing.

“You need to pay up front,” she called again.

“What the frick?” Mike replied.

He strode over to the bathroom and flung the door open, ready to demand that she leave his suite immediately. Enough was enough.

The large bathroom had a mirrored shower at the far end. No water was running. Cindy wasn’t on the toilet or at the sink. The curtain was drawn across the bath, and had stains across its white surface.

What the hell has she done?

Mike stormed over and swept the curtain to one side. Cindy lay slumped in the bathtub, eyes rolled back in her head. She had huge slash marks across her stomach and a shallow pool of blood lapped against the lower parts of her body.

He clasped a hand over his mouth to stifle his own scream.

How?
Suicide?


What do I do now?


He glanced up for signs of any security cameras. None.

They’ll think I did it…


What do I tell my wife?


Mike spun to face the bathroom door. He needed to think this through.

As he turned, a massive black creature exploded through the mirrored shower screen. Blood dripped from its razor-sharp teeth. Its tail whipped from side to side as it advanced toward him, blocking off his escape.

Mike stumbled back in shock.  His  legs hit the bath and he collapsed back. His backside crashed against Cindy’s wounded stomach and he wacked his head on the edge of the tub. His eyes went hazy, possibly from a concussion. Cindy’s warm blood saturated his white robe.

The creature approached, wide-eyed with excitement as it towered over its prey. It leaned down close to Mike’s face. “You need to pay up front,” the creature said, its vocal chords mimicking Cindy’s voice precisely.

Equal parts terror and regret instantly spread across Mike’s slumped-down face. Before he had a chance to look up, two powerful hands clamped around his head. Claws immediately sunk into his temples. The hands crushed hard against his skull.

The creature ripped him out of the bathtub and held him a few feet in the air. Cindy’s blood dripped from his robe to the tiled floor.

Mike screamed, long and loud, hoping somebody would hear. Hoping somebody would help.

The creature swung his body toward the towel hook on the door.

Then it thrust him downward with tremendous force.

The blunt hook crunched through his spine, just below his neck. His legs went numb, and  he could no longer move his arms. The creature took a step back and watched as Mike swung gently from side to side on the door hook, the life draining from his body.

He wheezed out a gurgling, dying breath.

Not yet sated, the creature raised its thick black arm and rammed three razor-sharp claws into Mike’s neck.

Everything instantly went black.

Just like that, Mike’s business trip had come to an end.

Excerpted from Obliteration by James S. Murray and Darren Wearmouth
Copyright © 2020 All Rights Reserved. Reprinted with permission from HarperCollins.

The post Read an Excerpt From Obliteration, the Final Novel in the Awakened Series appeared first on Reactor.

Now she’s awakened a nightmare.

During a routine survey mission on an uncolonized planet, Kira finds an alien relic. At first she’s delighted, but elation turns to terror when the ancient dust around her begins to move.

As war erupts among the stars, Kira is launched into a galaxy-spanning odyssey of discovery and transformation. First contact isn’t at all what she imagined, and events push her to the very limits of what it means to be human.

Read To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, a brand new epic novel from New York Times bestselling author Christopher Paolini, out September 15, 2020 from Tor Books.

New chapters on Tor.com every Monday.

Chapter 3

***

Extenuating Circumstances

1.

To start with, there was the awareness of awareness.

Then an awareness of pressure, soft and comforting.

Later still, an awareness of sounds: a faint chirp that repeated, a distant rumble, the whir of recycled air.

Last of all came an awareness of self, rising from within the depths of blackness. It was a slow process; the murk was thick and heavy, like a blanket of silt, and it stifled her thoughts, weighing them down and burying them in the deepness. The natural buoyancy of her consciousness prevailed, though, and in time, she woke.

2.

Kira opened her eyes.

She was lying on an exam table in sickbay, at HQ. Above her, a pair of lightstrips striped the bracketed ceiling, blue-white and harsh. The air was cool and dry and smelled of familiar solvents.

I’m alive.

Why was that surprising? And how had she ended up in sickbay? Weren’t they supposed to be leaving for the Fidanza?

She swallowed, and the foul taste of hibernation fluids caused her to gag. Her stomach turned as she recognized the taste. Cryo? She’d been in fucking cryo? Why? For how long?

What the hell had happened?!

Panic spiked her pulse, and Kira bolted upright, clawing at the blanket that covered her. “Gaaah!” She was wearing a thin medical gown, tied at the sides.

The walls swam around her with cryo-induced vertigo. She pitched forward and fell off the table onto the white decking, heaving as her body tried to expel the poison inside of her. Nothing came up except drool and bile.

“Kira!”

She felt hands turning her over, and then Alan appeared above her, cradling her with gentle arms. “Kira,” he said again, his face pinched with concern. “Shhh. It’s okay. I’ve got you now. Everything’s okay.”

He looked nearly as bad as Kira felt. His cheeks were hollow, and there were lines around his eyes she didn’t remember from that morning. Morning? “How long?” she croaked.

Alan winced. “Almost four weeks.”

“No.” Dread sank into her. “Four weeks?” Unable to believe it, Kira checked her overlays: 1402 GST, Monday, August 16, 2257.

Stunned, she read the date twice more. Alan was right. The last day she recalled, the day they’d been supposed to depart Adra, was the twenty-first of July. Four weeks!

Feeling lost, she searched Alan’s face, hoping for answers. “Why?”

He stroked her hair. “What do you remember?”

Kira struggled to answer. “I—” Mendoza had told her to check on the downed drone, and then… and then… falling, pain, glowing lines, and darkness, darkness all around.

“Ahhh!” She scrabbled backwards and clutched at her neck, heart pounding. It felt as if something were blocking her throat, suffocating her.

“Relax,” said Alan, keeping a hand on her shoulder. “Relax. You’re safe now. Breathe.”

A clutch of agonized seconds, and then her throat loosened and she sucked in a breath, desperate for air. Kira shuddered and grabbed Alan and held him as tight as she could. She’d never been prone to panic attacks, not even during finals for her IPD, but the feeling of being suffocated had been so real…

His voice muffled by her hair, Alan said, “It’s my fault. I should never have asked you to check out those rocks. I’m so sorry, babe.”

“No, don’t apologize,” she said, pulling back enough to look at his face. “Someone had to do it. Besides, I found alien ruins. How amazing is that?”

“Pretty amazing,” he admitted with a reluctant smile.

“See? Now, what—”

Footsteps sounded outside sickbay, and Fizel walked in. He was slim and dark and kept a short, faded haircut that never seemed to grow out. Today he was wearing his clinician’s jacket, and his cuffs were rolled back, as if he’d been giving an exam.

On seeing Kira, he leaned back out the doorway and shouted, “She’s up!” Then he sauntered past the three patient beds set along the wall, picked up a chip-lab off the small counter, squatted next to Kira, and grabbed her wrist. “Open. Say ah.”

“Ah.”

In quick succession, he looked in her mouth and ears, checked her pulse and blood pressure, and felt under her jaw, saying, “Does this hurt?”

“No.”

He nodded, a sharp gesture. “You’ll be fine. Make sure to drink lots of water. You’ll need it after being in cryo.”

“I have been frozen before,” said Kira, as Alan helped her back onto the exam table.

Fizel’s mouth twisted. “Just doing my job, Navárez.”

“Uh-huh.” Kira scratched her forearm. As much as she hated to admit it, the doctor was right. She was dehydrated, and her skin was dry and itchy.

“Here,” said Alan, and handed her a water pouch.

As Kira took a sip, Marie-Élise, Jenan, and Seppo rushed into sickbay.

“Kira!”

“There you are!”

“Welcome back, sleepyhead!”

Behind them, Ivanova appeared, arms crossed, no-nonsense. “Well it’s about time, Navárez!”

Then Yugo, Neghar, and Mendoza joined them as well, and the entire survey team crowded into sickbay, packing in so close that Kira felt the heat from their bodies and the touch of their breath. It was a welcome cocoon of life.

And yet, despite the nearness of her friends, Kira still felt odd and unsettled, as if the universe were out of joint, like a tilted mirror. Partly because of the weeks she had lost. Partly, she thought, because of whatever drugs Fizel had pumped into her. And partly because, if she allowed herself to sink into the depths of her mind, she could still feel something lurking there, waiting for her… a horrible, choking, suffocating presence, like wet clay being pressed into her nose and mouth—

She dug the nails of her right hand into her left forearm and inhaled sharply, nostrils flaring. No one but Alan seemed to notice; he gave her a worried glance and his arm tightened around her waist.

Kira shook herself in an attempt to dislodge her thoughts and, looking around at them all, said, “So who’s going to fill me in?”

Mendoza grunted. “Give us your report first, and then we’ll bring you up to speed.”

It took Kira a moment to realize that the team hadn’t come just to greet her. There was an anxious look to them, and as she studied their faces, she saw the same signs of stress as on Alan. Whatever they had been dealing with for the past four weeks, it hadn’t been easy.

“Uh, is this going to be on the record, boss?” she asked.

Mendoza’s face remained hard and fixed, unreadable. “On the record, Navárez, and it won’t just be the company seeing it, either.”

Shit. She swallowed, still tasting the hibernation fluids on the back of her tongue. “Could we do this in an hour or two? I’m pretty out of it.”

“No can do, Navárez.” He hesitated, and then added, “It’s better talking to us rather than…”

“Someone else,” said Ivanova.

“Exactly.”

Kira’s confusion deepened. Her worry too. She glanced at Alan, and he nodded and gave her a comforting squeeze. Okay. If he thought this was the right thing to do, then she’d trust him.

She took a breath. “The last thing I remember is heading out to check on the organic material the drone tagged before crashing. Neghar Esfahani was piloting. We landed on island number—”

It didn’t take Kira long to summarize what had followed, ending with her fall into the strange rock formation and the room deep within. She did her best to describe the room, but at that point, her memory became so disjointed as to be unusable. (Had the lines on the pedestal really been glowing, or was that an artifact of her imagination?)

“And that’s all you saw?” said Mendoza.

Kira scratched at her arm. “It’s all I remember. I think I tried to stand up and then…” She shook her head. “Everything after that is blank.”

The expedition boss scowled and stuffed his hands in his overall pockets.

Alan kissed her on the temple. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

“Did you touch anything?” Mendoza said.

Kira thought. “Just where I fell.”

“Are you sure? When Neghar pulled you out, there were marks in the dust on and around the pillar in the center of the room.”

“As I said, the last thing I remember is trying to stand up.” She cocked her head. “Why don’t you check the recording from my suit?”

Mendoza surprised her by grimacing. “The fall damaged your suit’s sensors. The telemetry is useless. Your implants weren’t much help either. They stopped recording forty-three seconds after you entered the room. Fizel says that’s not uncommon with traumatic head injuries.”

“Were my implants damaged?” Kira asked, suddenly concerned. Her overlays seemed normal.

“Your implants,” said Fizel, “are in perfect working order.” His lip curled. “More than can be said for the rest of you.”

She stiffened, unwilling to let him see how frightened that made her. “Just how badly was I hurt?”

Alan started to answer, but the doctor overrode him. “Hairline fractures in two ribs, chipped cartilage in your right elbow along with a strained tendon. Fractured ankle, ruptured Achilles, multiple bruises and lacerations, and a moderate to severe concussion accompanied by cerebral swelling.” Fizel ticked off each injury on his fingers as he spoke. “I repaired most of the damage; the rest will heal in a few weeks. In the meantime, you may experience some soreness.”

At that, Kira nearly laughed. Sometimes humor was the only rational response.

“I was really worried about you,” Alan said.

“We all were,” said Marie-Élise.

“Yeah,” said Kira, tightening her hold on Alan. She could only imagine what it had been like for him, waiting for her these past weeks. “So, Neghar, you managed to haul me out of that hole?”

The woman wobbled her hand in front of her. “Eh. So-so. It took some doing.”

“But you got me out.”

“Sure did, honey.”

“Next chance I get, I’m buying you a whole case of cinnamon rolls.”

Mendoza snared Fizel’s exam stool and sat. He rested his hands on his knees, arms straight. “What she’s not telling you is—You know what? Tell her, go ahead and tell her.”

Neghar rubbed her arms. “Shit. Well, you were unconscious, so I had to strap us together so I could keep you from getting your head ripped off or something when Geiger winched you out. There wasn’t much room in the tunnel you fell through, and, well—”

“She tore her skinsuit,” said Jenan.

Neghar extended a hand toward him. “That. Full—” A cough interrupted her, and she doubled over for a moment, hacking. Her lungs sounded wet, as if she had bronchitis. “Guh. Full pressure breach. Was a bitch to patch with one hand while hanging from a harness.”

“Which meant,” said Mendoza, “that Neghar had to be quarantined along with you. We ran every test in the book, including some that aren’t. They all came up negative, but you were still unresponsive—”

“Which was scary as fuck,” said Alan.

“—and since we didn’t know what we were dealing with, I decided it was better to put both of you into cryo until we got a handle on the situation.”

Kira winced. “Sorry about that.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Neghar.

Fizel thumped himself on the chest. “What of poor me? You forget about me. Cryo is easy. I had to stay in quarantine for almost a month after working on you, Navárez. A month.”

“And I appreciate your help,” said Kira. “Thank you.” She meant it too. A month in quarantine would wear on anyone.

“Bah. You shouldn’t have been poking your bony nose where it didn’t belong. You—”

“Enough,” said Mendoza in a mild tone, and the doctor subsided, but not without flicking his index and middle fingers toward her in a way that Kira had learned was a rude gesture. A very rude gesture.

She took another sip of water to fortify herself. “So. Why did you wait so long to thaw us out?” Her gaze shifted back to Neghar. “Or did they wake you up sooner?”

Neghar coughed again. “Two days ago.”

Around the room, Kira noticed faces tightening, and the mood growing tense, uncomfortable. “What is it?” she asked.

Before Mendoza could answer, the roar of a firing rocket—louder than any of their shuttles—sounded outside and the walls of the compound shuddered as if from a minor earthquake.

Kira flinched, but none of the others seemed surprised. “What was that?” On her overlays, she checked the feed from the cameras outside. All she couldsee were billows of smoke expanding from the landing pad some distance from the buildings.

The roar quickly receded as whatever vessel was taking off vanished into the upper atmosphere.

Mendoza stabbed a finger toward the ceiling. “That’s the problem. After Neghar brought you back, I told Captain Ravenna, and she sent an emergency flash to the suits at Sixty-One Cygni. After that, the Fidanza went radio silent.”

Kira nodded. That made sense. The law was clear: in the event of discovering intelligent alien life, they were to take all necessary measures to avoid leading those aliens back to settled space. Not that a technologically advanced species would have much difficulty finding the League if they were motivated to look.

“Ravenna was spitting antimatter she was so mad,” said Mendoza. “The crew of the Fidanza weren’t planning on having to stay here for more than a few days.” He waved a hand. “In any case, once corporate got the message, they alerted the Department of Defense. Couple of days later, the UMC dispatched one of their cruisers, the Extenuating Circumstances, from Sixty-One Cygni. They arrived in-system about four days ago, and—”

“And ever since they’ve been a royal pain in the ass,” said Ivanova.

“Literally,” said Seppo.

“Bastards,” Neghar muttered.

The UMC. Kira had seen enough of the League’s military, both on and off Weyland, to know how they tended to run roughshod over local concerns. One of the reasons, she thought, was the relative newness of the service; the League, and thus the United Military Command, had only been created in the wake of the discovery of the Great Beacon. A coming together had been needed, the politicians claimed, given the implications of the Beacon. Growing pains were to be expected. But the other reason for the UMC’s often callous disregard, Kira believed, was the imperialistic attitude of Earth and the rest of Sol. They thought nothing of ignoring the rights of the colonies in favor of what was best for Earth, or what they called “the greater good.” Good for whom, though?

Another grunt from Mendoza. “Captain of the Extenuating Circumstances is a cat-eyed SOB by the name of Henriksen. Real piece of work. His main concern was that Neghar here had picked up some sort of contamination in those ruins. So Henriksen sent down his doctor and a team of xenobiologists and—”

“And they set up a clean room and spent the past two days poking and prodding us until we puked,” said Jenan.

“Literally,” said Seppo.

Marie-Élise nodded. “It was so unpleasant, Kira. You are lucky you were still in cryo.”

“I guess,” she said slowly.

Fizel snorted. “They irradiated every square centimeter of our skin, multiple times. They X-rayed us. They gave us MRIs and CAT scans, ran full blood panels, sequenced our DNA, examined our urine and feces, and took biopsies; you may notice a slight mark on your abdomen from the liver sample. They even cataloged our gut bacteria.”

“And?” said Kira, glancing from face to face.

“Nothing,” said Mendoza. “Clean bill of health, for Neghar, for you, for all of us.”

Kira frowned. “Wait, they tested me also?”

“You better believe it,” said Ivanova.

“Why? Do you think you’re too special to be examined?” asked Fizel. His tone set Kira’s teeth on edge.

“No, I just…” She felt weird—violated even—knowing those procedures had been performed on her while she was unconscious, even if they had been necessary to maintain proper biocontainment.

Mendoza seemed to pick up on her discomfort. He eyed her from beneath his heavy brows. “Captain Henriksen made it abundantly clear that the only reason he isn’t keeping us under lock and key is because they found nothing unusual. Neghar is the one they were really worried about, but they weren’t going to let any of us off Adrasteia until they were sure.”

“You can’t blame them,” said Kira. “I’d be doing the same in their place. Hard to be too careful in this sort of situation.”

Mendoza huffed. “I don’t blame them for that. It’s the rest of it. They put us under a strict gag order. We can’t even talk to corporate about what we found. If we do, it’s a felony and up to twenty years in prison.”

“How long is the gag order?”

His shoulders rose and fell. “Indefinite.”

There went Kira’s plans for publication, at least in the near term. “How are we supposed to explain why we’re so late returning from Adra?”

“Drive malfunction on the Fidanza resulting in unavoidable delays. You’ll find the details in your messages. Memorize them.”

“Yessir.” She scratched her arm again. She needed lotion. “Well, that’s a hassle, but it’s not that bad.”

A pained expression crossed Alan’s face. “Oh it gets worse, babe. A lot worse.”

Kira’s sense of dread returned. “Worse?”

Mendoza nodded slowly, as if his head was too heavy for his neck. “The UMC didn’t just quarantine the island.”

“Nope,” said Ivanova. “That would have been too easy.”

Fizel slammed his hand down on the counter. “Just tell her already! They quarantined the whole damn system, okay? We lost Adra. It’s gone. Poof!”

3.

Kira sat next to Alan in the mess hall, studying a live image of the Extenuating Circumstances taken from orbit and projected from the holo in front of them.

The ship must have been half a kilometer long. Stark white, with a spindly midsection, bulbous engine at one end, and a petal-like arrangement of spinning decks at the other. The habitat sections were hinged so they could lie flat against the stem of the ship when under thrust, a costly option that most vessels went without. At the nose of the Extenuating Circumstances were several ports, like shuttered eyes: missile tubes and lenses for the ship’s main laser.

A quarter of the way down the ship, a pair of identical shuttles fitted snugly against either side of the hull. The shuttles were far larger than the ones the survey team had used. Kira wouldn’t be surprised if they were equipped with Markov Drives, same as a full-sized spaceship.

The most striking feature of the Extenuating Circumstances was the banks of radiators that lined its midsection, starting directly behind the habitats and continuing all the way down to the swell of the engine. The edges of the diamond fins flashed and gleamed as they caught the light of the sun, and the tubes of molten metal embedded within the fins shone like silver veins.

In all, the ship looked like a huge, deadly insect, thin, sharp, and glittery.

“Hey,” said Alan, and she tore her attention away from the overlays to see him holding out her engagement ring, almost as if he were proposing again. “Thought you might want this.”

Despite her worries, Kira softened for a moment, feeling a welcome warmth. “Thank you,” she said, slipping the iron band onto her finger. “I’m glad I didn’t lose it in that cave.”

“Me too.” Then he leaned in close and murmured, “Missed you.”

She kissed him. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

“Congratulations to the both of you, chérie,” said Marie-Élise, and she wiggled her finger from Kira to Alan.

“Yeah, congrats,” said Jenan, and everyone else added their well-wishes. Everyone but Mendoza—who was off radioing Ravenna to set up a pickup time for the following day—and Fizel—who was cleaning his fingernails with a plastic butter knife.

Kira smiled, pleased and somewhat self-conscious. “Hope you don’t mind,” said Alan, bending down toward her. “I kinda let it slip when it looked like you weren’t going to wake up.”

She leaned back against him and gave him another quick kiss. Mine, she thought. “It’s fine,” she murmured.

Then Yugo came over to them and knelt by the end of the table so he wasn’t looming over Kira. “Do you think you can eat?” he asked her. “It would do you some good.”

Kira wasn’t hungry, but she knew he was right. “I can try.”

He nodded, spade-shaped chin touching the top of his chest. “I’ll warm up some stew for you. You’ll like it. Nice and easy on the stomach.”

As he lumbered away, Kira returned her attention to the Extenuating Circumstances. She scrubbed at her arms again and then started to fiddle with the ring on her finger.

Her head was still spinning from Mendoza’s revelation, and her earlier sense of disassociation had returned even stronger than before. She hated that all their work over the past four months had been for nothing, but more than that, she hated the thought of losing the future she and Alan had planned together on Adrasteia. If they weren’t going to settle there, then—

Alan must have guessed what she was thinking, because he leaned down so his lips were close to her ear and said, “Don’t worry. We’ll find another place. It’s a big galaxy.”

And that was why she loved him.

She hugged him tighter.

“What I don’t understand—” she started to say.

“There are a lot of things I don’t understand,” said Jenan. “Like, who keeps leaving their napkins in the sink?” And he held up a soggy piece of cloth.

Kira ignored him. “How can the League expect to keep any of this a secret? People are going to notice that a whole system has been marked off-limits.”

Seppo hopped up to sit cross-legged on one of the tables. With his slight stature, he looked almost childlike. “Easy. They announced the travel ban a week ago. The story is we discovered a contagious pathogen in the biosphere. Something like the Scourge. Until containment is assured—”

“Sigma Draconis stays quarantined,” said Ivanova.

Kira shook her head. “Shit. I don’t suppose they let us keep any of our data.”

“Nope,” said Neghar.

“Nada,” said Jenan.

“Nothing,” said Seppo.

“Zip,” said Ivanova.

Alan rubbed her shoulder. “Mendoza said he’d talk with corporate when we get back to Vyyborg. They might be able to convince the League to release everything unrelated to the ruins.”

“Small chance of that,” said Fizel. He blew on his nails and then continued cleaning them. “Not with the League. They’ll keep your little discovery a secret for as long as they can. The only reason they ever told anyone about Talos Seven is because there’s no way to hide the damn thing.” He wagged his butter knife at Kira. “You cost the company a whole planet. Pleased with yourself?”

“I was doing my job,” she said. “If anything, it’s good I found the ruins now, before anyone settled on Adra. It would cost a hell of a lot more to ship a whole colony back off-world.”

Seppo and Neghar nodded.

Fizel sneered. “Yeah, well, that still doesn’t make up for screwing us out of our bonuses.”

“They canceled our bonuses,” Kira said flatly.

Alan made an apologetic face. “Corporate said it was on account of project failure.”

“Sucks too,” said Jenan. “I’ve got kids to feed, you know? It would have made a big difference.”

“Me too—”

“Same. Two ex-husbands and a cat ain’t—”

“If you’d only—”

“Don’t know how I’m going to—”

Kira’s cheeks burned as she listened. It wasn’t her fault, and yet it was. The whole team had lost out because of her. What a disaster. At the time she’d thought finding the alien structure was going to be good for the company, good for the team, but it had just ended up hurting them. She glanced at the logo printed on the wall of the mess hall: Lapsang printed in the familiar angular font with a leaf over the second a. The company was always running ads and promotional campaigns touting their loyalty to customers, colonists, and employee-citizens. “Forging the future together.” That had been the slogan she’d grown up hearing. She snorted. Yeah, right. When it mattered, they were just like any other interstellar corporation: bits before people.

“Dammit,” she said. “We did the work. We fulfilled our contract. They shouldn’t punish us for it.”

Fizel rolled his eyes. “And if starships farted rainbows, wouldn’t that be lovely? My God. Oh you feel bad, so sorry. Who cares? That’s not going to get us our bonuses back.” He glared at her. “You know, it would have been better if you tripped and broke your neck as soon as you stepped out of the shuttle.”

A brief, shocked silence followed.

Next to her, Kira felt Alan stiffen. “You take that back,” he said.

Fizel tossed the knife into the sink. “Didn’t want to be here anyway. Waste of time.” And he spat on the floor.

Ivanova hopped away from the gob of saliva. “Goddamn it, Fizel!”

The doctor smirked and sauntered off. There was someone like him on every mission, Kira had learned. A sour shitheel who seemed to take perverse pleasure in being the piece of grit stuck in everyone’s teeth.

The others started talking the moment Fizel was out of sight:

“Don’t mind him,” said Marie-Élise.

“Could have happened to any of us—”

“Same old Doc, always—”

“Should have heard what he said when I thawed out. He—”

The conversation stalled as Mendoza appeared in the doorway. He gave them a measured look. “There a problem in here?”

“Nossir.”

“We’re good, boss man.”

He grunted and trundled over to Kira and, in a lower voice, said, “Sorry about that, Navárez. Nerves have been stretched a bit tight the past few weeks.”

Kira smiled wanly. “It’s okay. Really.”

Another grunt, and Mendoza took a seat by the far wall, and the room soon returned to normal.

Despite her reply, Kira couldn’t seem to lose the knot of unease in her gut. Too much of what Fizel had said struck home. Also, it bothered her not knowing what she and Alan were going to do now. Everything she’d laid out in her mind for the next few years had been overturned by that damned alien structure. If only the drone hadn’t gone down. If only she hadn’t agreed to check the site for Mendoza. If only…

She started as Yugo touched her on the arm.

“Here,” he said, and handed her a bowl filled with stew and a plate piled with steamed vegetables, a slice of bread, and half of what must have been their only remaining bar of chocolate.

“Thanks,” she murmured, and he smiled.

4.

Kira hadn’t realized how hungry she was; she felt weak and shaky. The food didn’t sit well, though. She was too upset, and her stomach kept rumbling from a combination of anxiety and the remnants of cryo.

From his spot on the neighboring table, Seppo said, “We’ve been trying to decide whether the ruins here were made by the same aliens who made the Great Beacon. Whaddya think, Kira?”

She noticed the others watching her. She swallowed, put down her fork, and in her best professional voice said, “It seems… it seems unlikely that two sentient species could have evolved so close together. If I had to bet, I’d say yes, but there’s no knowing for sure.”

“Hey, there’s us,” said Ivanova. “Humans. We’re in the same general region.”

In the corner, Neghar was coughing again, a wet, meaty sound that Kira found off-putting.

Jenan said, “Yeah, but there’s no telling how much territory the Beacon xenos covered. It could have been half the galaxy for all we know.”

“I think we would have found more evidence of them if that were the case,” said Alan.

“Well, didn’t we just?” said Jenan.

Kira had no easy answer to that. “Did you learn anything more about the site while I was in cryo?”

“Mmm,” said Neghar, and held up a hand while she struggled to finish coughing into her sleeve. “Gah. Sorry. Throat’s been dry all day… Yeah. I ran some subsurface imaging before I pulled you out of the hole.”

“And?”

“There’s another chamber, right below the one you discovered. It’s pretty small, though, only a meter across. It might be housing a power source, but it’s impossible to tell for sure without opening it up. Thermals didn’t pick up any heat signature.”

“How large is the whole structure?”

“Everything you saw above ground, plus another twelve meters below. Aside from the rooms, it looks like just solid foundation and walls.”

Kira nodded, thinking. Whoever had made the structure, they had built it to last.

Then Marie-Élise said, in her high, flutelike voice, “The building you found doesn’t seem like the same sort of work as the Beacon. That is, it’s such a small thing in comparison.”

The Great Beacon. It had been discovered out on the edge of explored space, 36.6 light-years from Sol and 43-some light-years from Weyland. Kira didn’t need to check her overlays to know the distances; she’d spent hours upon hours as a teen reading about the expedition.

The Beacon itself was an amazing artifact. It was, quite simply, a hole. A very large hole: fifty kilometers across and thirty deep, surrounded by a net of liquid gallium that acted as a giant antenna. For the hole emitted a powerful EMP burst every 5.2 seconds, and with it, a blast of structured noise that contained ever-evolving iterations of the Mandelbrot set in ternary code.

Attending the Beacon were creatures that had been dubbed “turtles,” although Kira thought they looked more like ambulatory boulders. Even after twenty-three years of study, it still wasn’t clear if they were animals or machines (no one had been foolish enough to attempt a dissection). The xenobiologists and the engineers agreed it was unlikely the turtles had been responsible for the Beacon’s construction—not unless they’d lost all their technology—but who or what was responsible was still a mystery.

As for its ultimate purpose, no one had any idea. The only thing they knew for sure was that the Beacon was around sixteen thousand years old. And even that was merely a rough estimate based on radiometric dating.

Kira had an uncomfortable suspicion she might never find out whether or not the makers of the Beacon had anything to do with the room she’d fallen into. Not even if she lived for several hundred more years. Deep time was slow to surrender its secrets, if ever it did.

She sighed and dragged the tines of her fork across the side of her neck, enjoying the sensation of the metal tips on her dry skin.

“Who cares about the Beacon,” said Seppo, hopping down from his table. “What really bothers me is that we can’t even make any money off this mess. Can’t talk about it. Can’t publish. Can’t go on the talk shows—”

“Can’t sell the entertainment rights,” said Ivanova in a mocking tone.

They laughed, and Jenan called out, “As if anyone would want to see your ugly face.”

He ducked as she threw her gloves at him. Chuckling, he offered them back to her.

Kira hunched her shoulders, her sense of guilt strengthening. “Sorry for the trouble, everyone. If there was anything I could do to fix this, I would.”

“Yeah, you sure dicked things up good this time,” said Ivanova.

“Did you have to go exploring?” Jenan said, but he didn’t sound serious.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Neghar. “It… it could have…”

A cough interrupted her, and Marie-Élise finished what she’d been saying: “It could have been any of us.”

Neghar bobbed her head in agreement.

From the wall where he was sitting, Mendoza said, “I’m just glad you weren’t too badly hurt, Kira. You and Neghar. We lucked out, all of us.”

“We still lost the colony,” Kira said. “And our bonuses.”

A sharp glint appeared in Mendoza’s dark eyes. “Somehow I think your find will more than make up for those bonuses. Might take years. Might take decades. But long as we’re smart, it’ll happen, sure as death and taxes.”

Excerpted from To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, copyright © 2020 by Christopher Paolini.

The post Read To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini: Chapter 3: “Extenuating Circumstances” appeared first on Reactor.

Faith Herbert is a pretty regular teen. When she’s not hanging out with her two best friends, Matt and Ches, she’s volunteering at the local animal shelter or obsessing over the long-running teen drama The Grove. So far, her senior year has been spent trying to sort out her feelings for her maybe-crush Johnny and making plans to stay close to Grandma Lou after graduation. Of course, there’s also that small matter of recently discovering she can fly….

When the fictional world of The Grove crashes into Faith’s reality as the show relocates to her town, she can’t believe it when TV heroine Dakota Ash takes a romantic interest in her. But her fandom-fueled daydreams aren’t enough to distract Faith from the fact that first animals, then people, have begun to vanish from the town. Only Faith seems able to connect the dots to a new designer drug infiltrating her high school.

But when her investigation puts the people she loves in danger, she will have to confront her hidden past and use her newfound gifts—risking everything to save her friends and beloved town.

PROLOGUE

THREE MONTHS AGO

It was supposed to be an epic summer. It would be my last summer with Matt and Ches before our senior year and we had big plans—the kinds of plans that involved a whole lot of nothing. Like racing to eat snow cones before they melted down our arms and floating in Matt’s neighborhood pool until our skin wrinkled and curling up together by night to watch every episode of Battlestar Galactica followed by a marathon of our favorite episodes of The Grove (selected by yours truly).

All of that changed the day Matt and Ches showed up at my house during our first full week of summer break and broke the news that Matt would be spending most of the summer with his grandmother in Georgia. Not only that, but Ches would be joining him.

“I won’t go if you don’t want me to,” Ches had said to me apologetically.

But I couldn’t blame her. Matt’s grandma had a soft spot for Ches, who’d never even left the state of Minnesota. I was sad and felt left out, but I couldn’t blame her. Matt felt bad too, but his grandmother’s retirement community only allowed her to host two people at once.

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The first few weeks without them were fine. I’d fallen deep down the rabbit hole of Kingdom Keeper, a new multi.player online role-playing game. I’d tried but failed to get Matt and Ches into it, so that we could play from afar, but they were busy exploring Atlanta. At least they sent me selfies from their adventures at the aquarium and the Coca-Cola museum. Besides, there were plenty of other people to play with in Kingdom Keeper, and putting yourself out there is a heck of a lot easier when you’re an avatar.

One night, a private message popped up on my screen from an orc who went by Sting.

STING: Hey, you’re in the Midwest, right?

A few of us had organized into different regional groups with the hopes of doing some meet-ups. Sting knowing I was from the Midwest was the least alarming thing about him. (Trust me. You should have seen his victory dance. It involved thrusting. Lots of thrusting.)

YOUGOTTAHAVEFAITH: Yeah. The land of cheese and malls.

STING: Cool. A bunch of us are meeting up at Mall of America on Friday. You should go!

I wish I could say I took the time to consider all the reasons why meeting a stranger from the internet was a less-than-stellar idea, but I missed my best friends desperately. Besides, we were meeting at a mall. What could possibly go wrong?

YOUGOTTAHAVEFAITH: Count me in!

Grandma Lou dropped me off since she needed the car, and I headed straight to Nickelodeon Universe, where I was supposed to meet the whole group. Sting said he expected at least fifteen or twenty people. I loved Matt and Ches, but the idea that I could make my own friends separate from them excited me in a way that now riddles me with guilt. What if I’d just stayed home? But I was so lonely without them.

There was only one person waiting for me that day. Sting. A white guy with mussed brown hair and a square jaw. Jeans, a black T-shirt, and a black baseball cap. He was definitely too old to be in high school, but I could imagine him in college. Okay, well, maybe grad school.

“YouGottaHaveFaith?” he asked, a charming smile playing on his lips. “I thought it might be only me.”

“No one else came?” I asked, my stomach plummeting. I was basically one second away from starring in an episode of To Catch a Predator.

He smirked, appearing suddenly boyish. “Just me and you. I guess that’s what I get for trying to make new friends.”

I could kick myself for how gullible I was, but that little response set me at ease. “I know the feeling.” Extending my hand, I added, “You can call me Faith.”

He chuckled. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, Faith. It’s Sting… from Kingdom Keeper. You can call me Peter.”

Peter and I spent the whole day together, riding roller coasters, eating pretzels, and playing with all the different gadgets in the types of stores people rush to for Father’s Day. At the end of the day, when it was nearly time for Grandma Lou to pick me up, Peter and I took one last turn at the pretzel place.

“I think you might be special, Faith,” he said. “Have you ever felt like you were special?”

I snorted. “Uh, definitely not.”

He shook his head, and I could swear he blushed a little. “No, I mean, don’t you ever wonder if your whole life is a TV show and you’re the star?”

I gulped down my orange soda, not sure how to respond, because, yes, of course, I’d had that very same thought, but how could I even admit to that? I’d sound nuts, plus this was quite possibly the cutest guy who’d ever given me the time of day. But there he was, putting himself out there. It only felt fair to do the same.

“I know exactly what you mean. Do you want to hear something really weird, though?”

He tore off a piece of the cinnamon sugar pretzel we were sharing. “Oh, yeah. Lay it on me. I’m the king of weird.”

“So my parents died when I was a kid. Both of them. In the same car accident.”

“Oh, Faith—”

“It’s okay, it’s okay. That’s not what this is about. Well, it is. Kind of. Anyway, sometimes I wonder if them dying was part of some bigger thing. Every superhero and character I’ve ever loved had to go through some awful thing to achieve greatness. What if that was my awful thing?” I sighed, feel.ing guilty about how self-centered I knew I sounded. My parents didn’t live and die just so I could be a superhero or something ridiculous like that. “Some days,” I say, “that was the only way I could get past it all, pretending that their death was part of some bigger picture. But it wasn’t. They’re just dead. Gone. Forever. No higher—”

“Faith.” He looked straight at me, unflinching. In a matter of moments, he’d become someone or something else completely. There was nothing boyish about him anymore. “What if I told you there was a way to find out? A way to get the answer to every question you’d ever asked? Maybe your parents’ death was for a higher purpose.”

“But—how could—”

“There’s only one way to find out. I’ve been through some shit, Faith, okay? I’m not perfect.” He zoned out for a second, concentrating on his hands before shaking his head. “Hell, I don’t even know that I’m good, but sometimes the only way I can cope with it all is to know that everything I’ve done and everything that’s happened to me has brought me to this point.” He shook his head, and for the first time I felt like maybe I was getting a glimpse of the real Peter and not the guy who was trying to be on his best behavior or feeding me some line I’d want to hear.

After a moment, Peter looked me right in the eye. “I know I haven’t given you a lot of reasons to trust me. As far as you know, I’m just some rando from the internet, but Faith, I need you to know that I’ve felt lost like you do and sometimes I still feel lost. What I’m offering isn’t a magic pill. But I think there’s something special about you, and I think you might have the kind of potential you can’t even begin to imagine.”

I felt like he was dancing around the real question here. “I don’t quite understand what exactly it is you’re saying.”

He must have seen the skepticism on my face, because he added, “Your parents were great people, Faith. I believe that every moment in our lives serves a purpose, and maybe everything in your life has led you here to this moment. I don’t know for sure, but I bet Jack and Caroline would agree.”

“How do you—”

“We know everything about you, Faith. We’ve chosen you for a reason,” he said with absolute certainty.

Part of me was unnerved by him knowing my parents’ names, and the other part of me just wanted to know how. “Just say it. Just tell me what exactly it is you’re talking about.”

He scooted to the edge of his chair, so that his voice could be the quietest whisper in the midst of the chaotic food court. “Superhuman abilities, Faith.”

Everything around me silenced until there was nothing left in the entire mall except for me and Peter.

I felt like a bird that had just flown straight into a glass window. “Wait. Are you telling me superheroes are… real?”

Peter grimaced. “I wouldn’t exactly call us superheroes. I don’t think you could really use the word ‘heroic’ to describe the people I work for,” he scoffed.

“Wait. Go back. You’re saying superheroes are real and you think I might be one?”

He glanced from side to side and then finally shrugged. “Well, sort of. Yeah, I guess that’s what I’m saying.”

“Sign me the heck up.” I didn’t know if I could trust him or if I even should, but I knew one thing: I’d do anything for answers. The logical part of my brain told me this guy was a creep and that I should run, but I couldn’t help but think back to every movie, television show, and comic book I’d ever loved. Peter could lead me to my Giles or Professor X or Gandalf or Nick Fury or Dumbledore.

“There’s no guarantee, Faith, and there are possible side effects. You’d also have to find a way to leave home for the rest of the summer, but we’ve got a solid cover for you. We do think you have the potential to be someone very special. We think you could be a psiot.”

“A psiot?” I asked. “What even is that?”

“Psiots are people gifted with superhuman abilities. We think your abilities are dormant inside of you. Potential waiting to be unlocked, and my organization has the keys.”

“Just freaking say superheroes!” Despite his aversion to the superhero label, the flashing neon sign in my head read SUPERHERO. You, Faith Herbert, could be a superhero. Grandma Lou says I believe in too many things, but I can’t help but think life is a little more fun that way. And if superheroes were real, then maybe my whole life had prepared me for this moment. Maybe the massive collection of comics my parents left behind was more than a reminder of what was. Maybe those comics—some of my most prized possessions—were meant to be the ultimate guidebook.

Peter sent me home with everything I would need. Permission slips, camp brochures, and emergency contact information for Grandma Lou. I’d only be gone for a few weeks, and he swore I’d be perfectly safe. He’d gone through the same program, he said. And look at him! He was fine! Normal even!

“So this is basically like superhero camp?” I asked.

“Sort of. Fewer canoes. Definitely no campfire songs.” He dropped a hand on my shoulder. “See you on Monday, kid.”

The next Monday, Grandma Lou dropped me off in the school parking lot, where a bus waited for me along with Peter, dark bags under his eyes and much less boyish than I remembered, in a Camp Pleasant Oaks Staff T-shirt. Grandma Lou stuffed some cash into my pockets and gave me a tight hug before sending me on my way.

“You’re sure about this?” Peter asked quietly as I boarded the bus, his easy confidence from just days ago beginning to waver.

I nodded with absolute certainty.

As I sat on the bus, with a handful of other kids my age who I didn’t recognize, eager nerves ate away at me. The small Asian girl who sat beside me, freckles spread across the bridge of her nose, leaned in and whispered, “Can you believe how lucky we are? I always knew there was something different about me. My name’s Lucia, by the way.”

I smiled, too nervous to remember my own name, let alone introduce myself.

After hours on the bus, we drove into the heart of Chicago. I’d never been to Chicago, and if my nerves weren’t eating me up, I’d have taken in the sights a little bit more. As the sun set across the glistening skyline, the bus turned down into a parking garage and into a giant freight elevator that took us deep underground, and my stomach immediately sank as dread slowly crept over me. This wasn’t the camp of burgeoning superheroes I’d expected.

As we plummeted down, a few kids around me screamed, and beside me Lucia began to cry. Whatever we’d each been sold, this wasn’t it.

When the elevator finally stopped and the door to the bus opened, a tall blond white guy who looked like an evil Ken doll on steroids trotted up the steps. “Everybody off the bus,” he barked. “Line up in a single file. Welcome to the Harbinger Foundation.”

Peter sneered at the man. “Better keep a lid on all that charisma. The new recruits might actually start to like you, Edward.”

Outside the bus, Peter leaned against a headlight, while the evil Ken doll, Edward, paced back and forth. “You’re here thanks to the goodwill of Toyo Harada. Follow me to your rooms, where you’ll find your uniforms. Please leave your personal belongings here, to be collected and tagged,” said Edward.

I had hope that this could still be a good thing. Maybe these people were just really serious about what they were doing. And shouldn’t they be?

Edward led us down a long cement corridor through a door that required his thumbprint to open and into a hallway of rooms made entirely of glass, leaving very little privacy, with Peter on our heels. One by one we were assigned rooms with a bed, sink, and toilet behind a small partition.

“Faith Herbert?” Edward called. “Until further notice, you will be referred to as the number embroidered on your uniform.”

I walked into my room and the glass door slid shut behind me. I pressed my palms against the glass, trying to push it back, but I was locked in.

As Peter walked past me, he kept his gaze focused on the ground.

“Peter,” I said, but he didn’t look up. “Peter, I need to talk to you.” I knocked on the glass, trying to get his attention, but he was gone and the group was on to the next room. I told myself that the rooms were soundproof and he probably didn’t hear me, but I had a feeling that wasn’t true.

Waiting for me on my bed was a pair of white pants and a white shirt with a 6-973 stitched to the front. I wasn’t Faith Herbert. I was 6-973. I created a million different reasons for why anyone would treat us all like this, but every show, movie, and comic I’d ever read told me everything I needed to know. I’d been assigned a number. I’d been labeled. I was an experiment.

Excerpted from Faith: Taking Flight, copyright © 2020 Valiant Entertainment, LLC

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We’re thrilled to share a preview from Elizabeth Lim’s Unravel the Dusk, the sequel to Spin the Dawn—available July 7th from Knopf Books.

Maia Tamarin’s journey to sew the dresses of the sun, the moon, and the stars has taken a grievous toll. She returns to a kingdom on the brink of war. Edan, the boy she loves, is gone—perhaps forever—and no sooner does she set foot in the Autumn Palace than she is forced to don the dress of the sun and assume the place of the emperor’s bride-to-be to keep the peace.

When the emperor’s rivals learn of her deception, there is hell to pay, but the war raging around Maia is nothing compared to the battle within. Ever since she was touched by the demon Bandur, she has been changing… glancing in the mirror to see her own eyes glowing red; losing control of her magic, her body, her mind. It’s only a matter of time before Maia loses herself completely, and in the meantime she will stop at nothing to find Edan, protect her family, and bring lasting peace to her country.

Fireworks exploded from behind the palace, shooting high beyond the stars.

“Ah!” Everyone gasped, marveling at the sight.

Briefly, I marveled too. I’d never seen fireworks before. Sendo tried to describe them to me once, though he’d never seen them either.

“They’re like lotuses blooming in the sky, made of fire and light,” he’d said.

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“How do they get up so high?”

“Someone shoots them.” He shrugged when I frowned at him, skeptical. “Don’t make that face at me, Maia. I don’t know everything. Maybe it’s magic.”

“You say that about everything you don’t know how to explain.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

I had laughed. “I don’t believe in magic.”

But as the fireworks burst into the sky now, lurid splatters of yellow and red against the black night, I knew magic looked nothing like this. Magic was the blood of stars falling from the sky, the song of my enchanted scissors—eager to make a miracle out of thread and hope. Not colored dust flung into the sky.

While those around me cheered, eight more young men carried another golden palanquin toward the emperor. Lanterns hung from every side, illuminating an elaborately painted phoenix.

A phoenix to match the emperor’s dragon. To breathe new life into the country, helping it rise from the ashes of war.

The attendants lowered the palanquin, but Lady Sarnai didn’t step out. She was wailing so loudly that even from the back of the square, I could hear her. In some villages, it was tradition for a bride to wail before her wedding, a sign of respect to her parents, to show that she was distressed to leave them.

But how unlike the shansen’s daughter.

A soldier parted the curtains and Lady Sarnai tottered forward to join the emperor and her father. An embroidered veil of ruby silk covered her face, and the train of her gown dragged behind her, crimson in the fragile moonlight. It did not even shimmer, as any of the dresses I’d made for her would have: woven with the laughter of the sun, embroidered with the tears of the moon, and painted with the blood of stars. Strange, that Khanujin would not have insisted she wear one of Amana’s dresses to show off to the shansen.

I frowned as she continued to wail, a shrill sound that pierced the tense silence.

She bowed before her father, then before the emperor, falling to her knees.

Slowly, ceremoniously, Emperor Khanujin began to lift her veil. The drumming began again, growing louder, faster, until it was so deafening my ears buzzed and the world began to spin.

Then—as the drums reached their thunderous climax—someone let out a scream.

My eyes snapped open. The shansen had shoved Khanujin aside and seized his daughter by the neck. Now, he held her shrieking and kicking above the Hall of Harmony’s eighty-eight steps—and he ripped off her veil.

The bride was not Lady Sarnai.

Excerpted from Unravel the Dusk, copyright © 2020 by Elizabeth Lim

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We’re excited to share an excerpt from Melissa Bashardoust’s Girl, Serpent, Thorn, publishing July 7th with Flatiron Books.

There was and there was not, as all stories begin, a princess cursed to be poisonous to the touch. But for Soraya, who has lived her life hidden away, apart from her family, safe only in her gardens, it’s not just a story.

As the day of her twin brother’s wedding approaches, Soraya must decide if she’s willing to step outside of the shadows for the first time. Below in the dungeon is a demon who holds knowledge that she craves, the answer to her freedom. And above is a young man who isn’t afraid of her, whose eyes linger not with fear, but with an understanding of who she is beneath the poison.

Soraya thought she knew her place in the world, but when her choices lead to consequences she never imagined, she begins to question who she is and who she is becoming…human or demon. Princess or monster.

Soraya rose and dressed on the morning of Nog Roz, the first day of the new year, with a sense of purpose.

On a day like this, Soraya would normally take extra care not to leave her room. Today, the palace opened its gates to everyone, the palace gardens teeming with people from all parts of society— including the shah himself. Though he would spend a portion of the day in the audience hall accepting gifts and offerings, he was also free to celebrate among the crowd.

But all night long, Ramin’s parting words kept returning to her: Only the shah can decide who is permitted to see the div.

Catching the shah alone was difficult. He was often surrounded by guards, and more often accompanied by either the spahbed or Tahmineh. Even if Soraya tried to use the passageways to reach him, she would probably run into a guard first and have to explain why she was sneaking up on the most powerful and protected person in Atashar. But today was different. Sorush would still be well protected, but he would be out in the open and easier to reach. Plus, he would be in a good mood, and Nog Roz was a day for gift-giving, after all. Perhaps he would be moved to grant Soraya the only gift she had ever asked him for. Her mother had refused her, but Sorush outranked her, and so if he allowed Soraya to see the div, Tahmineh would have to agree.

Dressed in a finely made gown of green and gold brocade that she never had reason to wear, Soraya left her room through the golestan and made her way to the celebration in the garden, which was already full of people. Under the cypresses, children gathered around an old storyteller acting out the stories of brave heroes. She heard snatches of song from musicians and bards, singing both triumphant tales of legendary kings and sad ballads of tragic lovers. Directly in front of the palace were the four mud-brick pillars that were raised every year, one for each season. On top of the pillars were sprouting lentil seeds, meant to bring abundance for the year to come. Low tables were set up throughout the garden, holding golden bowls of fruit, candied almonds, and pastries, along with beehive-shaped bundles of pashmak—meant for decoration, but children kept sneaking handfuls of the sugary strands. Hyacinth and rosewater mingled in the air, creating the scent of spring.

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Soraya had only ever seen this celebration from above, or heard it from afar. Being in the midst of all this color and light made her believe for once that the year was changing for her, too, the promise of spring’s renewal fulfilled at last. She would have liked to have taken some almonds, but there were too many people gathered around the tables. Instead, she found a safe place under the magenta-blossomed branches of an arghavan tree where she observed the festivities from a distance.

She had thought the crowds would be difficult—and true, she did have to be especially careful of every movement, every step— but now she realized that only in such a vast and varied crowd could she hide without hiding. No one looked at her, no one glanced down at her gloves or asked her who she was, and yet she felt freer and more visible than she ever had before.

She might have forgotten her purpose entirely while standing under the trees, but an hour or so later, she heard a boisterous cheer roaring over the rest of the noise, and Soraya turned to its source. Sorush was passing through the crowd, a group of soldiers raising their goblets to toast him in his wake. He was dressed as one of them, in a red tunic that suited his black hair and bronze complexion, rather than in the more cumbersome robes of a shah. In the days before their father’s death, they had celebrated Nog Roz together, along with Laleh. Sorush would steal pastries for them, and he and Laleh would bring them to Soraya’s room to share.

Soraya peeled away from the shade of her tree and began to follow Sorush. She had to move slowly through the crowd, careful not to come too close to anyone, so she lost sight of Sorush in the line of cypresses that separated the four quarters of the garden. Still, Soraya kept winding her careful path forward, feeling a little like a serpent, unable to move in a straight line.

Once she’d passed through the cypresses, she caught sight of Sorush again, his red tunic easy to spot from a distance. Where was he going with such drive, such purpose? He barely looked around at anyone, moving through the crowd as though it didn’t exist. Following more slowly, Soraya looked beyond him, to see where he was heading. Her eyes traced a clear path to one of the pavilions that offered shade and rest to the celebrants.

She stopped cold when she saw Laleh in the pavilion, waiting for her groom. Beside Laleh was Tahmineh, her forehead smooth now, her gaze fond.

Soraya ducked behind a flowering almond tree near the pavilion and watched Sorush join his bride and his mother. Together, the three of them were unmistakably a family. Laleh wore a brilliant smile, her eyes sparkling. Someone like Laleh doesn’t belong hidden away, Soraya remembered as she watched Sorush take Laleh’s hands, his thumbs softly stroking her knuckles. And Tahmineh beamed over them both, a son and a new daughter she could take pride in. Soraya had never seen her look so untroubled.

Soraya’s gloved hands clutched at the bark of the tree. In the space around her mother, her brother, and the only friend she had ever had, she saw her own absence. In their glowing smiles, she saw the truth: that she always would have lost them, because they were meant to know joy. And no matter how much she wanted to deny it, Soraya knew that a part of her would always resent them for that joy, for having even the possibility of it.

Soraya slunk away, like a shadow disappearing when the sun was at its highest. But the crowd had thickened behind her, creating what seemed to her like an impenetrable wall of people. She tried to breathe and slow her quickening heartbeat as she sought a path through the crowd. But after only a few steps, something collided with her legs, and she jerked away in response, looking down at a little girl who had crossed her path. With visions of butterflies fluttering behind her eyelids, Soraya went cold with fear, almost waiting to see the girl fall dead on the spot. But the girl had only touched the fabric of Soraya’s dress, and she skipped away without even paying Soraya notice.

Still, Soraya couldn’t slow her pulse, and as she tried to keep making her way through the crowd, she was light-headed from the mixture of panic and relief. She kept her head down, knowing from the familiar heat in her cheeks that her veins were visible on her face, but as a result, she kept accidentally brushing against more people. Each time it happened, her heart would give another involuntary lurch, until her body felt exhausted and overwhelmed from the constant bursts of fear.

She was curling in on herself now, her shoulders hunching protectively, her head hanging forward, her arms going around her waist. She didn’t even think she was moving anymore, but it was hard to tell when she was so disoriented. Her veins felt like they were straining against her skin. Don’t faint, she told her swimming head, her pounding heart. If she fainted, then someone might touch her face or remove her gloves to find her pulse. Don’t faint, don’t faint.

A firm arm came around her shoulders. A hand clamped around her upper arm. Someone was trying to help her. “No,” Soraya said weakly. “No, don’t—” She lifted her head enough to see who had innocently come to her rescue without knowing that she was more dangerous than in danger. And through the curtain of hair spilling over her face, she saw a familiar young man dressed in red.

“Azad,” she breathed.

He blinked at her. “You know me,” he said, a note of surprised pleasure in his voice.

“You shouldn’t come near me.” She tried to draw away from him. “You don’t understand—”

But Azad didn’t let go. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I know you, too, shahzadeh banu.”

***

Soraya froze under the weight of the young man’s arm, repeating his words to herself. He knew her, he said. But what did he know? He had addressed her by her title, and so he clearly knew she was the princess. But did he know why she was wearing gloves on this warm spring day? Did he know why she was trying to hide her face? Did he know that only a layer of fabric separated him from death?

“You don’t look well,” Azad said. “How can I help you?”

Soraya pushed her questions aside. She was still in the middle of the garden, in the middle of a crowd, her head lightly spinning. “I need to get back to the palace,” she said, her voice hoarse. Once she was inside, she could escape back into the passageways, their cool darkness never so appealing as now.

“I’ll take you,” Azad said. True to his word, he proceeded to lead her through the crowd, his arm around her shoulder both holding her up and shielding her from stray touches. Soraya’s heart slowed, and her head settled. She felt weightless, all responsibility removed from her, like she was simply a passenger in her body.

But as they neared the palace steps, Soraya found something else to worry about—Ramin was standing in the shade of the wide ayvan that marked the palace entrance. If they went in now, he would be sure to notice her, and she wasn’t ready to face him again so soon after last night’s encounter.

Soraya halted suddenly, and Azad’s brow furrowed with concern. “Not this way,” she said to him. She veered to the right, and he followed her lead toward the trees of the orchard around the side of the palace. As soon as they were beyond the main garden’s borders, the crowd began to diminish considerably, until they were finally alone. Even so, Soraya didn’t move away from under Azad’s arm. His nearness was no longer just a shield now, but a kind of luxury, a sip of heady wine that she would probably never taste again. Was it so wrong to linger?

It’s wrong when he doesn’t know what you are, or the danger he’s in, a voice in her mind answered. He said he knew her, but he couldn’t possibly know the whole truth, not when he had put his arm around her so comfortably.

Soraya halted somewhat abruptly under the shade of a pomegranate tree, causing Azad’s arm to slip away. “Thank you,” she said, “but I can go the rest of the way on my own.”

“Of course, shahzadeh banu,” he said with a small bow of his head. “You honored me by letting me assist you. Please tell me if I may help in any other way.” He lifted his head from its bow, his dark eyes looking to her in expectation and… was it hope?

She opened her mouth to tell him that she didn’t need any further help, but what slipped out instead was, “How do you know who I am?”

He looked down with an embarrassed laugh, and she tried not to notice the graceful slope of his neck, the pronounced dimples in his cheeks. This is foolish, she told herself. She should have dismissed him immediately.

“I knew who you were when I saw you on the roof a few days ago,” Azad said. “You were exactly as I had pictured you.” He was staring at her now as boldly as he had done when he had spotted her on the roof, and the longer he looked, the more real she felt, like she was taking shape under his gaze.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

He spoke softly, his tone almost reverent. “My father was once a merchant. He traveled all throughout Atashar and beyond, and when he returned, he would bring me stories from wherever he’d been. When I was no more than ten years old, he told me the mystery of the shahzadeh. No one outside the walls of Golvahar had ever seen her or heard her voice, he said. She was a secret, hidden away in the palace like a carefully guarded treasure.”

Soraya couldn’t help lifting an eyebrow at that. She wanted to remark that she was no treasure, but the way Azad was looking at her—that gentle, dreamy look, like he wasn’t quite sure she was real—held her back.

“I was captivated,” he continued. “I would stay up long into the night, wondering what you looked like and why you were kept hidden, imagining that I would ride up to the palace in a majestic horse to free you. I used to think that we’d…” He looked away, his cheeks coloring slightly. When he faced her again, his eyes gleamed with something that Soraya couldn’t recognize. “Do you see now why I recognized you? You’re my favorite story. I feel like I’ve known you for a long time.”

Soraya drew in a breath, unable to speak. For the first time, she saw herself as Azad had imagined her—the heroine of a story, not the monster. It was only an illusion, of course, born from a young boy’s uninformed romantic dreams, but for the space of a breath, she let herself enjoy it.

She didn’t want to tell him the truth. She wanted his version of her to keep existing, if only in his mind. And so she knew what she had to do.

“Well, you did come to my rescue today, so now that you’ve lived out your dreams, I’ll be on my way.”

His face fell at once, a wrinkle of dismay forming at the center of his forehead. “Is there anything I can say to persuade you to stay and talk with me for a little longer?”

Soraya smiled sadly and shook her head. “Trust me. It’s better that we—”

But before she finished speaking, a loud voice startled them both: “I thought I saw you in the crowd.”

She and Azad both turned at once to see the approaching figure of Ramin. She took a hasty step away from Azad, but that only made her look guiltier.

“It’s reckless of you to be out on such a crowded day.” He looked at her with a significant arch of his eyebrow. “You’ve even made a new friend. Are you sure that’s wise?”

All of Soraya’s muscles tightened at once. He wouldn’t dare tell Azad about her curse—to do so was to risk angering the royal family. Soraya was torn between the competing urges to shrink away, or step forward and show him she was unafraid. But her guilt from almost losing control the night before still lingered, and so Soraya simply said, “That’s none of your concern, Ramin.”

But Ramin wasn’t even looking at her anymore—he was focused on Azad, who was standing stiffly, not moving or speaking. Ramin moved closer, coming to stand directly in front of him. Only then did Azad take a breath, his shoulders drawing back so that he was standing at his full height. There was a strange energy surrounding Azad, like clouds gathering before a storm, or the stillness of a snake about to strike. She couldn’t take her eyes off him.

“You’re that villager we brought back,” Ramin said. He lifted his chin, his arms crossed, and nodded at Azad in approval. “You proved yourself to us all that day, so let me give you some advice, from one soldier to another: stay away from this one.”

Azad tilted his head slightly, his long neck moving with slow, deliberate grace. “I don’t think I need your advice,” he said.

“Ramin, this isn’t necessary,” Soraya interrupted, trying to keep her voice calm.

Ramin looked directly at Soraya, disdain curling his lip, and said, “I don’t need to hear from you, Soraya. You’re not part of this conversation.”

There was a sudden cracking sound—the snake had struck at last. Soraya barely even saw Azad’s fist move, but it must have, because now Ramin was sprawled on the grass, rubbing his jaw.

And for the first time since Ramin had approached them, Azad looked away from him and turned to Soraya. “I’m sorry,” he said at once, but his eyes were still burning with anger, his hand still closed into a fist.

Soraya felt that strange energy wrap around her now, the two of them practically trembling with it. And she realized that her hand was also a fist, like she had struck Ramin herself, like Azad had become an extension of her. He was the arm of her anger, lashing out when she could not. He was the force of her rage, unbound.

She looked Azad in the eye and shook her head. “Don’t be,” she said, with a firmness that surprised her.

Ramin pushed himself up from the ground, a dark bruise already starting to appear on his jaw. “That was a mistake,” he said to Azad. Ramin started to charge toward him, but Soraya threw herself in between them, forcing Ramin to come to a sudden stop directly in front of her.

And now Soraya was the snake, her venom far deadlier than Azad’s, and she wanted nothing more than to strike. She took a step toward Ramin, gratified when he took a hurried step back, a flash of fear in his eyes.

But the flash quickly transformed into a triumphant glint, and Soraya knew what was about to happen even as she knew she couldn’t stop it.

“Don’t think me a coward,” he said to Azad over Soraya’s shoulder. “I would fight you right here, but you have an unfair advantage. This girl is poisonous—cursed by a div. If you ever touch her, you’ll die.”

All the blood drained out of her as Ramin spoke, and she felt like she was made of ice, cold enough to burn. Soraya was glad her back was to Azad, in case her veins were visible. Something familiar was bubbling inside her—the same cruel urge that had made her want to hurt Ramin the night before. And as she had done last night, she swallowed the urge down and tried not to choke.

Ramin smirked at her in satisfaction and walked away. Laleh wasn’t enough for him, Soraya thought. He won’t be content until I’m completely alone.

Even when Ramin was gone, Soraya couldn’t face Azad. “It’s true,” she called back to him, the words scraping her throat. “That’s the secret you’ve always wanted to know. The mysterious shahzadeh was cursed by a div when she was just an infant, and that’s why she must be hidden away. If you touch me, you’ll die.”

She turned to him, knowing from the feel of blood rushing through her that her veins were etched dark green in her face. Azad was watching her, his face solemn, his eyes sad.

“Well,” she said, holding her gloved hands out to him, “am I still your favorite story?”

Excerpted from Girl, Serpent, Thorn, copyright © 2020 by Melissa Bashardoust, with permission from Flatiron Books.

The post Read an Excerpt From Melissa Bashardoust’s Girl, Serpent, Thorn appeared first on Reactor.

Now she’s awakened a nightmare.

During a routine survey mission on an uncolonized planet, Kira finds an alien relic. At first she’s delighted, but elation turns to terror when the ancient dust around her begins to move.

As war erupts among the stars, Kira is launched into a galaxy-spanning odyssey of discovery and transformation. First contact isn’t at all what she imagined, and events push her to the very limits of what it means to be human.

Read To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, a brand new epic novel from New York Times bestselling author Christopher Paolini, out September 15, 2020 from Tor Books.

New chapters on Tor.com every Monday.

Chapter 2

***

Reliquary

1.

Kira tightened her grip on the arms of her seat as the suborbital shuttle pitched downward, descending toward island #302–01–0010, just off the western coast of Legba, the main continent in the southern hemisphere. The island lay on the fifty-second parallel, in a large bay guarded by several granite reefs, and was the last known location of the disabled drone.

A sheet of fire engulfed the front of the cockpit as the shuttle burned through Adrasteia’s thin atmosphere at almost seven and a half thousand klicks per hour. The flames looked as if they were only a few inches from Kira’s face, yet she felt no heat.

Around them, the hull rattled and groaned. She closed her eyes, but the flames remained jumping and writhing in front of her, bright as ever.

“Hell yeah!” shouted Neghar next to her, and Kira knew she was grinning like a fiend.

Kira gritted her teeth. The shuttle was perfectly safe, wrapped in the mag-shield that protected it from the white-hot inferno outside. Four months on the planet, hundreds of flights, and there hadn’t been a single accident. Geiger, the pseudointelligence that piloted the shuttle, had a nearly flawless record; the only time it had malfunctioned was when some hotshot asteroid captain had tried to optimize a copy and ended up killing his crew as a result. Safety record notwithstanding, Kira still hated reentry. The noise and the shaking made her feel as if the shuttle were about to break up, and nothing could convince her otherwise.

Plus, the display wasn’t doing anything to help her hangover. She’d popped a pill before leaving Alan in his cabin, but it had yet to cut the pain. It was her own fault. She should have known better. She did know better, but emotion had trumped judgment last night.

She turned off the feed from the shuttle’s cameras and concentrated on breathing.

We’re getting married! It still didn’t feel real. She’d spent the whole morning with a silly smile plastered on her face. No doubt she’d looked like an idiot. She touched her sternum, fingering Alan’s ring under her skinsuit. They hadn’t told the others yet, so she’d chosen to wear the ring on a chain for the time being, but they were planning to that evening. Kira was looking forward to
seeing everyone’s reactions, even if the announcement didn’t come as much of a surprise.

Once they were on the Fidanza, they would get Captain Ravenna to make it official. And then Alan would be hers. And she his. And they could begin to build their future together.

Marriage. A change of jobs. Settling down on just one planet. Family of her own. Helping to build a new colony. As Alan had said, it would be a huge change, but Kira felt ready for the shift. More than ready. It was the life she’d always hoped for but that, as the years crept by, had seemed increasingly unlikely.

After they finished making love, they had stayed up for hours, talking and talking. They’d discussed the best places to settle on Adrasteia, the timeline of the terraforming effort, and all the activities possible on and off the moon. Alan went into great detail about the type of dome house he wanted to build: “—and it has to have a hot tub big enough to stretch out without touching the other side, so we can have a proper bath, not like these dinky little showers we’ve been stuck with,” and Kira had listened, touched by his passion. In turn, she talked about how she wanted greenhouses like the ones on Weyland, and they both agreed that whatever they did, it was going to be better done together.

Kira’s only regret was that she’d drunk so much; everything after Alan’s proposal had become something of a blur.

Delving into her overlays, she pulled up her records from the previous night. She saw Alan kneeling in front of her again, and she heard him say, “I love you too,” before wrapping her in his embrace a minute later. When she’d had her implants installed as a kid, her parents hadn’t paid for a system that allowed for full sense-recording—no touch, taste, or smell—as they’d considered it an unnecessary extravagance. For the first time, Kira wished they hadn’t been so practically minded. She wanted to feel what she’d felt that night; she wanted to feel it for the rest of her life.

Once they returned to Vyyborg Station, she decided, she would use her bonus to have the necessary upgrades installed. Memories like the ones from yesterday were too precious to lose, and she was determined not to let any more slip away.

As for her family back on Weyland… Kira’s smile faded somewhat. They wouldn’t be happy about her living so far from home, but she knew they would understand. Her parents had done something similar themselves, after all: emigrating from Stewart’s World, around Alpha Centauri, before she was born. And her father was always talking about how it was humanity’s grand goal to spread out among the stars. They’d supported her decision to become a xenobiologist in the first place, and Kira knew they would support her current decision.

Returning to her overlays, she opened the most recent video from Weyland. She’d already watched it twice since it had arrived a month ago, but right then, she felt a sudden urge to see her home and family again.

Her parents appeared, as she knew they would, sitting at her dad’s workstation. It was early morning, and the light slid in sideways through the westfacing windows. In the distance, the mountains were a jagged silhouette draped along the horizon, nearly lost in a bank of clouds.

“Kira!” said her dad. He looked the same as always. Her mom had a new haircut; she offered a small smile. “Congratulations on making it to the end of the survey. How are you enjoying your last few days on Adra? Did you find anything interesting in the lake region you told us about?”

“It’s been cold here,” said her mom. “There was frost on the ground this morning.”

Her dad grimaced. “Fortunately the geothermal is working.”

“For now,” said her mom.

“For now. Other than that, no real news. The Hensens came by for dinner the other night, and they said—”

Then the study door slammed open and Isthah bounced into view, dressed in her usual nightshirt, a cup of tea in one hand. “Morning, sis!”

Kira smiled as she watched them natter on about the doings in the settlement and about their day-to-day activities: the problems with the ag-bots tending the crops, the shows they’d been watching, details about the latest batch of plants being released into the planet’s ecosystem. And so forth.

Then they wished her safe travels and the video ended. The last frame hung before her, her dad frozen mid-wave, her mom’s face at an odd angle as she finished saying, “—love you.”

“Love you,” Kira murmured. She sighed. When had she last managed to visit them? Two years ago? Three? At least that. Too long by far. The distances and the travel times didn’t make it easy.

She missed home. Which didn’t mean she would have been content to just stay on Weyland. She’d needed to push herself, to reach beyond the normal and the mundane. And she had. For seven years she had traveled the far reaches of space. But she was sick of being alone and sick of being cooped up on one spaceship after another. She was ready for a new challenge, one that balanced the familiar with the alien, the safe with the outlandish.

There on Adra, with Alan, she thought perhaps she would find just such a balance.

2.

Halfway through reentry, the turbulence began to subside and the EM interference vanished along with the sheets of plasma. Lines of yellow text appeared in the top corner of Kira’s vision as the comm link to HQ went live again.

She scrolled through the messages, catching up with the rest of the survey team. Fizel, their doctor, was being his usual annoying self, but other than that, nothing interesting.

A new window popped up:

<How’s the flight, babe? — Alan>

Kira was unprepared for the sudden tenderness his concern evoked in her. She smiled again as she subvocalized her response:

<No problems here. You? — Kira>

<Just doing a last bit of pickup. Thrilling stuff. Want me to clear out
your cabin for you? — Alan>

She smiled. <Thanks, but I’ll take care of it when I’m back. — Kira>

<’K… Listen, we didn’t really get a chance to talk this morning, and I wanted to check: You still okay with everything from last night? – Alan> 

<You mean, do I still want to marry you and settle here on Adra? — Kira>  She followed up before he could reply: <Yes. My answer is still yes. — Kira>

<Good. — Alan>

<What about you? Are you still okay? — Kira> Her breath caught a little as
she sent the text.

His answer was swift: <Absolutely. I just wanted to make sure you were doing alright. — Alan>

She felt herself soften. <More than alright. And I appreciate that you bothered to check. — Kira>

<Always, babe. Or should I say… fiancée? — Alan>

Kira made a delighted sound. It came out more choked than intended.

“All good?” Neghar asked, and Kira could feel the pilot’s eyes on her.

“More than good.”

She and Alan continued to talk until the retrorockets kicked in, jolting her back to full awareness of her surroundings.

<Gotta go. We’re about to land. Touch base later. — Kira>

<’K. Have fun. ;-) — Alan>

<Riiight. — Kira>

Then Geiger spoke in her ear: “Touchdown in ten… nine… eight… seven…”

His voice was calm and emotionless, with a hint of a cultured Magellan accent. She thought of him as a Heinlein. He sounded as if he would be named Heinlein, if he were a person. Flesh and blood, that is. With a body.

They landed with a short drop that caused her stomach to lurch and her heart to race. The shuttle listed a few degrees to the left as it sank into the dirt.

“Don’t take too long, you hear?” said Neghar, unclipping her harness. Everything about her was neat and compact, from her finely carved features to the folds in her jumpsuit to the thin lines of braids that formed a wide strip across her head. On her lapel she wore an ever-present gold pin: a memorial to co-workers lost on the job. “Yugo said he’s cooking a fresh batch of cinnamon rolls as a special treat before blastoff. ’Less we hurry, they’ll all be gone by the time we get back.”

Kira pulled off her own harness. “I won’t be a minute.”

“Better not, honey. I’d kill for those rolls.”

The stale smell of reprocessed air hit Kira’s nose as she slipped on her helmet. Adrasteia’s atmosphere was thick enough to breathe, but it would kill you if you tried. Not enough oxygen. Not yet, and changing that would take decades. The lack of oxygen also meant that Adra didn’t have an ozone layer. Everyone who ventured outside had to be fully shielded against UV and other forms of radiation. Otherwise, you were liable to get the worst sunburn of your life.

At least the temperature’s bearable, thought Kira. She wouldn’t even have to turn on the heater in her skinsuit.

She climbed into the narrow airlock and pulled the inner hatch shut behind her. It closed with a metallic boom.

“Atmosphere exchange initialized; please stand by,” said Geiger in her ear.

The indicator turned green. Kira spun the wheel in the center of the outer hatch and then pushed. The seal broke with a sticky, tearing sound, and the reddish light of Adrasteia’s sky flooded the airlock.

The island was an unlovely heap of rocks and rust-colored soil, large enough that she couldn’t see the far side, only the near coast. Beyond the edge of land spread an expanse of grey water, like a sheet of hammered lead, the tips of the waves highlighted with the ruddy light from the cloudless sky. A poison ocean, heavy with cadmium, mercury, and copper.

Kira jumped down from the airlock and closed it behind her. She frowned as she studied the telemetry from the downed drone. The organic material it had detected wasn’t by the water, as she’d expected, but rather at the top of a wide hill a few hundred meters to the south.

Okay then. She made her way across the fractured ground, picking her steps with care. As she walked, blocks of text popped up in front of her, providing info on the chemical composition, local temperature, density, likely age, and radioactivity of different parts of the landscape. The scanner on her belt fed the readings into her overlays while simultaneously transmitting them back to the shuttle.

Kira dutifully reviewed the text but saw nothing new. The few times she felt compelled to take a soil sample, the results were as boring as ever: minerals, traces of organic and pre-organic compounds, and a scattering of anaerobic bacteria.

At the top of the hill, she found a flat spread of rock scored with deep grooves from the last planetary glaciation. A patch of orange, lichen-like bacteria covered much of the rock. Kira recognized the species at first glance—B. loomisii—but she took a scraping just to confirm.

Biologically, there wasn’t much of interest on Adrasteia. Her most notable find had been a species of methane-eating bacteria beneath the arctic ice sheet—bacteria that had a somewhat unusual lipid structure in their cellular walls. But that was it. She’d write up an overview of Adrasteia’s biome, of course, and if she was lucky, she might get it published in a couple of the more obscure journals, but it wasn’t much to crow about.

Still, the absence of more developed forms of life was a plus when it came to terraforming: it left the moon a lump of raw clay, suitable for remolding however the company, and the settlers, saw fit. Unlike on Eidolon—beautiful, deadly Eidolon—they wouldn’t have to be constantly fighting the native flora and fauna.

While Kira waited for her chip-lab to finish its analysis, she walked to the crest of the hill, took in the view of the rough-scraped rocks and the metallic ocean.

She frowned as she remembered how long it would be before they could stock the oceans with anything more than gene-spliced algae and plankton.

This is going to be our home. It was a sobering thought. But not depressing. Weyland wasn’t much friendlier, and Kira remembered the massive improvements she had seen on the planet over the course of her childhood: once-barren dirt converted to fertile soil, the spread of green growing things across the landscape, the ability to walk around outside for a limited time without supplemental oxygen. She had optimism. Adrasteia was more habitable than 99-some percent of the planets in the galaxy. By astronomical standards, it was an almost perfect analogue for Earth, more similar than a high-g planet like Shin-Zar, and even more similar than Venus, with its floating cloud cities.

Whatever the difficulties Adrasteia presented, she was willing to face them if it meant she and Alan could be together.

We’re getting married! Kira grinned and lifted her arms overhead, fingers splayed, and stared straight up, feeling as if she were about to burst. Nothing had ever felt so right.

A high-pitched beep sounded in her ear.

3.

The chip-lab had finished. She checked the readout. The bacteria was B. loomisii, as she’d thought.

Kira sighed and turned off the device. Mendoza had been right—it was their responsibility to check out the growth—but it was still a huge waste of time.

Whatever. Back to HQ and Alan, and then they could blast off for the Fidanza.

Kira started to leave the hill, and then, out of curiosity, she looked toward where the drone had crashed. Neghar had IDed and tagged the location during the shuttle’s descent.

There. A klick and a half from the coast, near the center of the island, she saw a yellow box outlining a patch of ground next to…

“Huh.”

A formation of jagged, pillar-shaped rocks stabbed out of the ground at a steep, sideways angle. In all the places Kira had visited on Adra—and they were many—she hadn’t seen anything quite like it.

“Petra: select visual target. Analyze.”

Her system responded. An outline flashed around the formation, and then a long list of elements scrolled next to it. Kira’s eyebrows rose. She wasn’t a geologist like Alan, but she knew enough to realize how unusual it was to have so many elements clustered together.

“Thermals up,” she muttered. Her visor darkened, and the world around her became an impressionistic painting of blues, blacks, and—where the ground had absorbed the warmth of the sun—muted reds. As expected, the formation perfectly matched the ambient temperature.

<Hey, check this out. — Kira> And she forwarded the readings to Alan.

Less than a minute later: <The hell! You sure your equipment is ? — Alan>

<Pretty sure. What do you think it is? — Kira>

<Dunno. Might be a lava extrusion… Can you get a scan of it? Maybe pick up a few samples? Dirt, rock, whatever is convenient. — Alan>

<If you really want. It’s a bit of a hike, though. — Kira>

<I’ll make it worth your while. — Alan>

<Mmm. I like the sound of that, babe. — Kira>

<Hey now. — Alan>

She smirked and swapped out of the infrared as she started down the hill. “Neghar, do you read?”

A crackle of static and then: *What’s up?*

“I’m going to be another half hour or so. Sorry.”

*Dammit! Those rolls aren’t going to last more than—*

“I know. There’s something I have to investigate for Alan.”

*What?*

“Some rocks, farther inland.”

*You’re gonna give up Yugo’s cinnamon rolls for THAT?*

“Sorry, you know how it is. Besides, haven’t seen anything quite like this before.”

A moment of silence. *Fine. But you better haul ass, you hear me?*

“Roger that, hauling ass,” said Kira. She chuckled and quickened her pace.

Where the uneven ground allowed, she jogged, and ten minutes later, she arrived at the tilted outcropping. It was bigger than she’d realized.

The highest point was a full seven meters overhead, and the base of the formation was over twenty meters across: wider even than the shuttle was long. The broken cluster of columns, black and faceted, reminded her of basalt, but their surface had an oily sheen similar to that of coal or graphite.

There was something about the appearance of the rocks that Kira found offputting. They were too dark, too stark and sharp-edged, too different from the rest of the landscape—a ruined spire alone amid the granite wasteland. And though she knew it was her imagination, an uneasy air seemed to surround the outcropping, like a low vibration just strong enough to annoy. Were she a cat, Kira felt sure her hair would be standing on end.

She frowned and scratched her forearms.

It sure didn’t look like there’d been a volcanic eruption in the area. Okay then, a meteor strike instead? But that didn’t make sense either. No blast wall or crater.

She walked around the base, scanning. Near the back, she spotted the remnants of the drone: a long strip of broken and melted components dashed against the ground.

Hell of a lightning strike, Kira thought. The drone must have been going pretty fast to spread it out like that.

She shifted in her suit, still feeling uneasy. Whatever the formation was, she decided she’d leave the mystery for Alan to figure out. It would give him something to do on the flight out of the system.

She took a soil sample and then searched until she found a small piece of the black rock that had flaked off. She held it up to the sun. It had a distinct crystalline structure: a fish-scale-like pattern that reminded her of woven carbon fiber. Impact crystals? Whatever it was, it was unusual.

She tucked the rock into a sample pouch and gave the formation one last look-over.

A silvery flash, several meters off the ground, caught her eye.

Kira paused, studying it.

A crack had split open one of the columns to reveal a jagged white seam within. She checked her overlays: the seam was too deep within the crack to get a good reading. The only thing the scanner could tell her for sure was that it wasn’t radioactive.

The comm crackled, and Neghar said, *How ya doing, Kira?*

“Almost done.”

*’K. Hurry up, would you?*

“Yeah, yeah,” Kira muttered to herself.

She eyed the crack, trying to decide if it was worth the effort to climb up and examine. She nearly contacted Alan to ask but then decided not to bother him. If she didn’t find out what the seam was, she knew the question would annoy him until they, hopefully, returned to Adra and he got a chance to examine it himself.

Kira couldn’t do that to him. She’d seen him stay up late far too many times, poring over blurred footage from a drone.

Besides, the crack wasn’t that hard to reach. If she started there and went over to that, then maybe… Kira smiled. The challenge appealed to her. The skinsuit didn’t have gecko pads installed, but it shouldn’t matter, not for an easy climb like this.

She walked to a slanted column that ended only a meter above her head. Sucking in a quick breath, she dipped her knees and jumped.

The rough edge of the stone dug into her fingers as she caught hold of it. She swung a leg over the top of the column and then, with a grunt, pulled herself up.

Kira stayed on all fours, clutching the uneven stone while she waited for her heart to slow. Then she carefully got to her feet atop the column.

From there it was relatively easy. She jumped across to another angled column, which allowed her to scramble up several more, like climbing a giant staircase, aged and crumbling.

The last meter was a bit tricky; Kira had to wedge her fingers between two pillars in order to support herself as she swung from one foothold to another. Fortunately, there was a broad ledge beneath the crack she was trying to reach—broad enough that she had room to stand and move about.

She shook her hands to get the blood back into her fingers and walked over to the fissure, curious what she would find.

Up close, the gleaming white seam looked metallic and ductile, as if it were a vein of pure silver. Only it couldn’t be; it wasn’t tarnished.

She targeted the seam with her overlays.

Terbium?

Kira barely recognized the name. One of the elements in the platinum group, she thought. She didn’t bother looking it up, but she knew it was odd for a metal like that to appear in such a pure form.

She leaned forward, peering deeper into the crack as she tried to get a better angle for the scanner.…

Bang! The sound was as loud as a gunshot. Kira jerked with surprise, and then her foot slipped, and she felt the stone shift underneath her as the whole ledge gave way.

She was falling—

An image flashed through her mind of her body lying broken on the ground.

Kira yelped and flailed, trying to grab the column in front of her, but she missed and—

Darkness swallowed her. Thunder filled her ears and lightning shot across her vision as her head bounced against the rocks. Pain shot through her arms and legs as she was pummeled from every direction.

The ordeal seemed to last for minutes.

Then she felt a sudden sense of weightlessness—

—and a second later, she slammed into a hard, jagged mound.

4.

Kira lay where she was, stunned.

The impact had knocked the breath out of her. She tried to fill her lungs, but her muscles wouldn’t respond. For a moment she felt as if she were choking, and then her diaphragm relaxed and air rushed in.

She gasped, desperate for oxygen.

After the first few breaths, she forced herself to stop panting. No point in hyperventilating. It would only make it harder to function.

In front of her, all she saw was rock and shadow.

She checked her overlays: skinsuit still intact, no breaches detected. Elevated pulse and blood pressure, O₂ levels high normal, cortisol through the roof (as expected). To her relief, she didn’t see any broken bones, although her right elbow felt as if it had been smashed by a hammer, and she knew she was going to be sore and bruised for days.

She wiggled her fingers and toes, just to test that they worked.

With her tongue, Kira tabbed two doses of liquid Norodon. She sucked the painkiller from her feeding tube and gulped it down, ignoring its sickly sweet taste. The Norodon would take a few minutes to reach full strength, but she could already feel the pain retreating to a dull ache.

She was lying on a pile of stone rubble. The corners and edges dug into her back with unpleasant insistence. Grimacing, she rolled off the mound and onto all fours.

The ground was surprisingly flat. Flat and covered with a thick layer of dust.

It hurt, but Kira pushed herself onto her feet and stood. The movement made her light-headed. She leaned on her thighs until the feeling passed and then turned and looked at her surroundings.

A ragged shaft of light filtered down from the hole she had fallen through, providing the only source of illumination. By it she saw that she was inside a circular cave, perhaps ten meters across—

No, not a cave.

For a moment she couldn’t make sense of what she was seeing, the incongruity was so great. The ground was flat. The walls were smooth. The ceiling was curved and dome-like. And in the center of the space stood a… stalagmite? A waist-high stalagmite that widened as it rose.

Kira’s mind raced as she tried to imagine how the space could have formed. A whirlpool? A vortex of air? But then there would be ridges everywhere, grooves… Could it be a lava bubble? But the stone wasn’t volcanic.

Then she realized. The truth was so unlikely, she hadn’t allowed herself to consider the possibility, even though it was obvious.

The cave wasn’t a cave. It was a room.

“Thule,” she whispered. She wasn’t religious, but right then, prayer seemed like the only appropriate response.

Aliens. Intelligent aliens. A rush of fear and excitement swept through Kira. Her skin went hot, pinpricks of sweat sprang up across her body, and her pulse started to hammer.

Only one other alien artifact had ever been found: the Great Beacon on Talos VII. Kira had been four at the time, but she still remembered the moment the news had become public. The streets of Highstone had gone deathly quiet as everyone stared at their overlays, trying to digest the revelation that, no, humans weren’t the only sentient race to have evolved in the galaxy. The story of Dr. Crichton, xenobiologist and member of the first expedition to the lip of the Beacon, had been one of Kira’s earliest and greatest inspirations for wanting to become a xenobiologist herself. In her more fanciful moments, she had sometimes daydreamed of making a discovery that was equally momentous, but the odds of that actually happening had seemed so remote as to be impossible.

Kira forced herself to breathe again. She needed to keep a clear head.

No one knew what had happened to the makers of the Beacon; they were long dead or vanished, and nothing had been found to explain their nature, origin, or intentions. Did they make this as well?

Whatever the truth, the room was a find of historic significance. Falling into it was probably the most important thing she would ever do in her life. The discovery would be news through the whole of settled space. There would be interviews, appearance requests; everyone would be talking about it. Hell, the papers she could publish… Entire careers had been built on far, far less.

Her parents would be so proud. Especially her dad; further proof of intelligent aliens would delight him like nothing else.

Priorities. First she had to make sure she lived through the experience. For all she knew, the room could be an automated slaughterhouse. Kira double-checked her suit readouts, paranoid. Still no breaches. Good. She didn’t have to worry about contamination from alien organisms.

She activated her radio. “Neghar, do you read?”

Silence.

Kira tried again, but her system couldn’t connect to the shuttle. Too much stone overhead, she guessed. She wasn’t worried; Geiger would have alerted Neghar something was wrong as soon as the feed from her skinsuit cut out. It shouldn’t be long before help arrived.

She’d need help, too. There was no way she could climb out by herself, not without gecko pads. The walls were over four meters high and devoid of handholds. Through the hole, she could see a blotch of sky, pale and distant. She couldn’t tell exactly how far she’d fallen, but it looked like enough to place her well below ground level.

At least it hadn’t been a straight drop. Otherwise she would probably be dead.

Kira continued to study the room, not moving from where she stood. The chamber had no obvious entrances or exits. The pedestal that she had originally believed to be a stalagmite had a shallow, bowl-like depression in the top. A pool of dust had gathered within the depression, obscuring the color of the stone.

As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, Kira saw long blue-black lines cut into the walls and ceiling. The lines jagged at oblique angles, forming patterns similar to those of a primitive circuit board, although farther apart.

Art? Language? Technology? Sometimes it was difficult to tell the difference. Was the place a tomb? Of course, the aliens might not bury their dead. There was no way of knowing.

“Thermals up,” Kira murmured.

Her vision flipped, showing a muddy impression of the room, highlighted by the warmer patch of ground where the sunlight struck. No lasers, no artificial heat signatures of any sort.

“Thermals down.”

The room could be studded with passive sensors, but if so, her presence hadn’t triggered a noticeable response. Still, she had to assume she was being watched.

A thought occurred to Kira, and she switched off the scanner on her belt. For all she knew, the signals from the device might seem threatening to an alien.

She scrolled through the last set of readings from the scanner: background radiation was higher than normal due to an accumulation of radon gas, while the walls, ceiling, and floor contained the same mixture of minerals and elements she’d recorded on the surface.

Kira glanced at the blotch of sky again. Neghar wouldn’t take long to reach the formation. Just a few minutes in the shuttle—a few minutes for Kira to examine the most important find of her life. Because once she was pulled out of the hole, Kira knew she wouldn’t be allowed back in. By law, any evidence of alien intelligence had to be reported to the proper authorities in the League of Allied Worlds. They would quarantine the island (and probably a good portion of the continent) and send in their own team of experts to deal with the site.

That didn’t mean she was about to break protocol. As much as she wanted to walk around, look at things closer, Kira knew she had a moral obligation not to disturb the chamber any further. Preserving its current condition was more important than any personal ambition.

So she held her ground, despite her almost unbearable frustration. If she could just touch the walls…

Looking back at the pedestal, Kira noticed the structure was level with her waist. Did that mean the aliens were about the same size as humans?

She shifted her stance, uncomfortable. The bruises on her legs were throbbing, despite the Norodon. A shiver ran through her, and she turned on the heater in her suit. It wasn’t that cold in the room, but her hands and feet were freezing now that the adrenaline rush from the fall was subsiding.

Across the room, a knot of lines, no bigger than her palm, caught her attention. Unlike elsewhere on the curving walls, the lines—

Crack!

Kira glanced toward the sound just in time to see a melon-sized rock dropping toward her from the opening in the ceiling.

She yelped and stumbled forward awkwardly. Her legs tangled, and she fell onto her chest, hard.

The rock slammed into the floor behind her, sending up a hazy billow of dust.

It took Kira a second to catch her breath. Her pulse was hammering again, and at any moment, she expected alarms to sound and some hideously effective countermeasure to dispose of her.

But nothing happened. No alarms blared. No lights flashed. No trapdoors opened up beneath her. No lasers poked her full of tiny holes.

She pushed herself back onto her feet, ignoring the pain. The dust was soft beneath her boots, and it dampened the noise so the only sound she heard was her feathered breathing.

The pedestal was right in front of her.

Dammit, Kira thought. She should have been more careful. Her instructors back in school would have ripped her a new one for falling, even if it was a mistake.

She returned her attention to the pedestal. The depression in the top reminded her of a water basin. Beneath the pooled dust were more lines, scribed across the inner curve of the hollow. And… as she looked closer, there seemed to be a faint blue glow emanating from them, soft and diffuse beneath the pollen-like particles.

Her curiosity surged. Bioluminescence? Or was it powered by an artificial source?

From outside the structure, she heard the rising roar of the shuttle’s engines. She didn’t have long. No more than a minute or two.

Kira sucked on her lip. If only she could see more of the basin. She knew what she was about to do was wrong, but she couldn’t help it. She had to learn something about this amazing artifact.

She wasn’t so stupid as to touch the dust. That was the sort of rookie mistake that got people eaten or infected or dissolved by acid. Instead, she took the small canister of compressed air off her belt and used it to gently blow the dust away from the edge of the basin.

The dust flew up in swirled plumes, exposing the lines beneath. They were glowing, with an eerie hue that reminded her of an electrical discharge.

Kira shivered again, but not from cold. It felt as if she were intruding on forbidden ground.

Enough. She’d tempted fate far more than was wise. Time to make a strategic retreat.

She turned to leave the pedestal.

A jolt ran up her leg as her right foot remained stuck to the floor. She yelped, surprised, and fell to one knee. As she did, the Achilles tendon in her frozen ankle wrenched and tore, and she uttered a howl.

Blinking back tears, Kira looked down at her foot.

Dust.

A pile of black dust covered her foot. Moving, seething dust. It was pouring out of the basin, down the pedestal, and onto her foot. Even as she watched, it started to creep up her leg, following the contours of her muscles.

Kira yelled and tried to yank her leg free, but the dust held her in place as securely as a mag-lock. She tore off her belt, doubled it over, and used it to slap at the featureless mass. The blows failed to knock any of the dust loose.

“Neghar!” she shouted. “Help!”

Her heart pounding so loudly she could hear nothing else, Kira stretched the belt flat between her hands and tried to use it like a scraper on her thigh. The edge of the belt left a shallow impression in the dust but otherwise had no effect.

The swarm of particles had already reached the crease of her hip. She could feel them pressing in around her leg, like a series of tight, ever-shifting bands.

Kira didn’t want to, but she had no other choice; with her right hand, she tried to grab the dust and pull it away.

Her fingers sank into the swarm of particles as easily as foam. There was nothing to grab hold of, and when she drew her hand back, the dust came with it, wrapping around her fingers with ropy tendrils.

“Agh!” She scrubbed her hand against the floor, but to no avail.

Fear spiked through her as she felt something tickle her wrist, and she knew that the dust had found its way through the seams of her gloves.

“Emergency override! Seal all cuffs.” Kira had difficulty saying the words. Her mouth was dry, and her tongue seemed twice its normal size.

Her suit responded instantly, tightening around each of her joints, including her neck, and forming airtight seals with her skin. It wasn’t enough to stop the dust. Kira felt the cold tickle progress up her arm to her elbow, and then past.

“Mayday! Mayday!” she shouted. “Mayday! Neghar! Geiger! Mayday! Can anyone hear me?! Help!”

Outside the suit, the dust flowed over her visor, plunging her into darkness. Inside the suit, the tendrils wormed their way over her shoulder and across her neck and chest.

Unreasoning terror gripped Kira. Terror and abhorrence. She jerked on her leg with all her strength. Something snapped in her ankle, but her foot remained anchored to the floor.

She screamed and clawed at her visor, trying to clear it off.

The dust oozed across her cheek and toward the front of her face. She screamed again and then clamped her mouth shut, closed off her throat, and held her breath.

Her heart felt as if it were going to explode.

Neghar!

The dust crept over her eyes, like the feet of a thousand tiny insects. A moment later, it covered her mouth. And when it came, the dry, squirming touch within her nostrils was no less horrible than she had imagined.

… stupid… shouldn’t have… Alan!

Kira saw his face in front of her, and along with her fear, she felt an overwhelming sense of unfairness. This wasn’t supposed to be how things ended! Then the weight in her throat became too great and she opened her mouth to scream as the torrent of dust rushed inside of her.

And all went blank.

Excerpted from To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, copyright © 2020 by Christopher Paolini.

The post Read To Sleep in a Sea of Stars by Christopher Paolini: Chapter 2: “Reliquary” appeared first on Reactor.

We’re excited to share an excerpt from The Kingdom of Liars, the debut fantasy from Nick Martell—publishing June 23rd with Saga Press.

Michael is branded a traitor as a child because of the murder of the king’s nine-year-old son, by his father David Kingman. Ten years later on Michael lives a hardscrabble life, with his sister Gwen, performing crimes with his friends against minor royals in a weak attempt at striking back at the world that rejects him and his family.

In a world where memory is the coin that pays for magic, Michael knows something is there in the hot white emptiness of his mind. So when the opportunity arrives to get folded back into court, via the most politically dangerous member of the kingdom’s royal council, Michael takes it, desperate to find a way back to his past. He discovers a royal family that is spiraling into a self-serving dictatorship as gun-wielding rebels clash against magically trained militia.

What the truth holds is a set of shocking revelations that will completely change the Hollows, if Michael and his friends and family can survive long enough to see it.

Prologue
The Trial of Michael Kingman

At my trial for treason for killing the king, I played with my father’s ring, twisting it around my middle finger. It was one of the few things they hadn’t taken away from me when I was arrested. Maybe because they knew it was my father’s last gift to me… or maybe because no one cared about an old ring. Despite wearing it for the past ten years, first on a chain around my neck and then on my middle finger when I was finally big enough, I never understood why my father gave it to me before his execution for murdering the nine-year-old prince.

My father gave my sister our mother’s red scarf, the one she wore every day before the incident that claimed her memories. My brother received my father’s favorite book, something he refuses to read, even to this day. But I was given a ring. An extremely unremarkable, once black and steel, rusted ring. When I was young, I thought my father bequeathed it to me so I could sell it to support our family. But after an appraiser revealed it was essentially worthless, I convinced myself there must have been another reason. Looking back, I can only think it was something he had cherished, and he thought I might follow in his footsteps.

My father had been right—in the worst way possible. Now I was the one on trial for killing the king. As if regicide could be inherited from father to son. I wondered how many people thought it was true: that I had killed King Isaac. It seemed obvious—after all, I had been there when he died. I had even heard him plead for forgiveness.

Not that it matters what actually happened. No one seemed to believe me anymore.

Not that most of them should have. Depending on who one asked, I was either a puppet master—with my strings tugging around nobility and commoners alike—or a mindless weapon others could direct without care. Yet, no matter what they claimed, I had only ever done what I believed was necessary, which had been easier in some aspects than others. Particularly when the city was so hesitant to change.

The entire city—no, country—had gone to shit after my father was executed. Hollow owed its foundation and preservation to my family. This city had grown up in the shadow of my ancestors—men and women who were more fantastical and awe-inspiring than any tale of make-believe dragons, of children chosen to rule by God, of bandits masquerading as vengeful demonic creatures, or whatever else was passed around as a bedtime story. Anyone who claimed to be a demon hunter, or god slayer, or divine champion, was a pretender and professional liar. Fools who had flown too high and had not yet been shot down by the moon.

The king wanted Hollow’s citizens to forget the truth in favor of a fiction, as if it would make the past easier to swallow. Worse, eager to make my father’s betrayal less painful, they blindly accepted the king’s medicine.

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And forgot everything my family has sacrificed for this country.

We eased the hate against the king. We spoke for the common people. We were the neutral party in all negotiations and never dreamed of taking power for ourselves, content in protecting the citizens from those who had illusions of grandeur. Without us, the separation between the nobility and commoners had grown so much that few could talk with the other without spitting venom, let alone sympathize. It wasn’t a surprise refugees had stopped coming here. There was nothing but death, riots, war, and poverty waiting for them. Hollow, the once famous refugee city, was no more. It was just another sign of how our country was preparing to be forgotten by history, only remembered for shattering the moon Celona.

All those problems that would soon be another’s to worry about. I was, after all, still on trial for treason. And I knew I would be found guilty, because, for everyone who hadn’t been there, the choice was clear. How could they not find the boy who had been found standing over the king’s body, blood-splattered with gun in hand, guilty?

Regardless, I am Michael Kingman, and my tarnished legacy will survive, even if my body does not. It will take more than this trial to erase me and my deeds from memory. I understand that now, when before I was always chasing my ancestors’ shadows, hoping to be remembered as fondly by history as they were.

Clearly, that wouldn’t happen. My story was a tragedy.

Still, here I was, sitting alone underneath a skylight in the middle of the court, with a large half-circle bench in front of me, waiting. Normally, the bench would be filled with the three lucky individuals who would hear the charges and make their decision, but they were still in discussion. Except for the Scales judge, who sat unmoving. I hoped they would hurry up and share their verdict. I was anticipating a bad death.

In all the time I spent waiting, I never turned my head toward the crowd. I could deal with strangers who believed in my treason, but I didn’t want to see people I cared about look at me like I was a monster. I was doing this to protect them, even if they didn’t know it. That desire kept me focused on the bench and the gold statue of balanced scales behind it.

The morning sunlight peppered through the blanket of snow covering the skylight, warming my aching bones and tight muscles. It was such a simple thing, basking in the sun’s glow, that I had taken for granted before I was kept in an endless darkness.

My reverie didn’t last long. The door behind the bench opened and out strode the three people who would decide my fate.

First came Gaius Hewitt, Whisperer for the Church of the Eternal Flame, dressed in his church’s garb: heavy black robes with a vibrant red lining and flames sewn across the bottom.

Then came Efyra Mason, Captain of the Ravens, serving in place of King Isaac. She wore dented steel plate mail and carried a curved sword. There were seven peacock feathers woven into her black hair, denoting her high rank.

Lastly came Charles Domet, the man who had led me down the path toward my death. The business magnate wore no smile today, instead picking at his jacket, buttons done up in the wrong holes, black hair disheveled, and wolf’s head cane at his side. He was a cowardly contrast to the man I had first met two or three weeks ago—it was hard to tell how long I had been in the dungeons.

Once they had taken their seats to the right of the judge, he began: “Michael Kingman, son of David Kingman, before the jury gives their decision I will ask you one more time: How do you plead?”

The chains rattled as I rose to my feet.

I looked each of them in the eyes. I had not spoken since I surrendered myself, and as much as they’d tried, nothing would get me to utter a single word. This time wasn’t any different.

“Do you plead to be a Forgotten?”

I gave no reply. I wasn’t a Forgotten. I hadn’t overused the nobles’ magic of Fabrication until it took all my memories. My suffering and experiences were still mine. They made me who I was: my father’s son, inheritor of his legacy. And I remembered everything, now more than ever.

The judge met my unwavering gaze. “Members of the jury, how do you find Michael Kingman?”

Charles Domet rose slowly and read from the piece of paper, his hands shaking, “On the charge of treason of the highest degree, we find Michael Kingman…” Domet met my eyes for a last desperate moment, seeking forgiveness. “…guilty.”

Shouts rose around me. I heard every voice except for my brother’s, Lyon. No doubt he was paralyzed in his seat, the nightmare of my father’s fate in mind as he consoled my sister, Gwen. We, the sole surviving members of the Kingman family, knew what would come next better than any. A charge of high treason only had one fate.

Or so I thought.

Moonstruck heroes always seemed to ruin everyone’s plans. As the judge pounded his armored hand against the bench, screaming at the crowds to be silent, a man jumped over the barrier that separated me from everyone. He had a flintlock pistol in his hand and reeked of alcohol, likely for bravery. The gun was aimed at my heart. I had no idea what I had done to him, but knew I deserved his hate.

I would have a clean death after all. A better death than any king killer deserved.

“I won’t let there be another!” the man screamed. “You will not be remem—”

It would have been a poetic death. Gunpowder made everyone equal, when the strongest Fabricator could be killed with the pull of the trigger… as everyone in the city knew far too well.

But, sadly, the poor fool didn’t see that the Captain of the Ravens was already in flight. She leaped from her spot on the jury, soaring through the air as lightning crackled around her. She came down right above him, blowing the gun out of his hand with a lightning bolt. As the dust settled and coughing filled the courtroom, a nearby Advocator grabbed the gun before anyone else could.

The assassin didn’t even scream when his plan failed, only stared at me. He was on his knees soon after, crying about how much this city had suffered because of me and my father. How he had sought to save it from taking the coward’s way out of this mess. The crowd was silent, waiting for what was next.

“Michael Kingman will die when we say he can. As we dictate. After everything he’s done, we will not let him go peacefully. We will have justice,” Efyra growled. “Judge, what is the penalty for having firearms in Hollow?”

“Death,” he said.

Efyra held her hand over the man. “Then let it be done.”

It only took a single bolt of lightning out of her palm, aimed at the heart, for the man to die. He blew back into the crowd, smashing into people and their seats. His body smoldered, smoke wafting off it, and the entire courtroom was filled with a foreign, unnatural smell. Something that haunted my dreams ever since this all began.

While others dealt with what she had done, Efyra returned to her seat on the jury with her blade drawn. She laid it across her lap as if daring my siblings to try and save me.

When the chaos settled and the body had been removed by the Wardens, the judge continued my sentencing, “Michael Kingman, we hoped for more from you, of all people. You should know better than this. Despite your father’s actions, you are still a Kingman, and our troubled times called for a man who could lead us, aid us. Yet here we are with a king killer instead.”

The judge paused for a moment, eyeing the brand for treason on my neck. A gift the king had given me ten years ago after my father’s execution. I wasn’t ashamed of it anymore. As the judge shook his head, he continued, “I hereby sentence you to death. You will be executed on the steps of the Church of the Wanderer, as your father was before you, in a week’s time. May God have mercy upon you.”

I wanted to laugh. If only that would-be assassin had waited a little bit longer, he would have got exactly what he wanted.

There was no controlling the noise after that. Behind me, I could hear the Advocators of Scales holding back the crowds. Cheers and clapping and threats became white noise as a Warden came for me. The metal monster wrapped my chains around one gauntlet and dragged me away from the witnesses and into one of the back rooms with tempered ferocity. As I was shoved through the open door, I took my first look back at the courtroom crowd. My sister was at the front, smashing herself against the Advocators, reaching for me.

Dark, the Mercenary, was leaning against a doorframe at the back of the courtroom with his arms crossed. He was shaking his head at me. His dull, smoky eyes silently said I should’ve known better. He wasn’t wrong—I should have… yet here I was. What a sad sight I must have been, to elicit pity from a Mercenary.

The door closed and I was separated from the court. I shut my eyes and waited to feel the sun’s warmth again, knowing full well it would mean my death.

1
An Audience

You will hear this story as I lived it.

Count yourself lucky to hear a Kingman tell their story. There has been no other account like this. And all I ask from you, in return for the greatest story ever told, is a small favor and to let me live long enough to tell it.

To learn how I earned the title of king killer, we must begin on the night before the Endless Waltz began, the last remnant of my youth.

Not that I ever really had one.

After my father’s execution, I spent years struggling to survive in a city that wanted to see shackles on my wrists and my head roll. It might not surprise you to hear that I spent much of my time conning the nobility, which was always easier than it should have been. Even without hiding the brand on my neck or how suspicious my intentions ever were.

And my actions were as suspicious as usual that night I oversaw a duel between my friend Sirash, a former Skeleton, and his target: a rather drunk and rather obnoxious country-born Low Noble who had never been to Hollow before. The mark was so fresh to the city, he hadn’t even had time to change into something more befitting of a Hollow noble, and was still wearing layers of clothes that lacked a uniform style or color. It showed everyone how low he was, as if that wasn’t evident enough when he called Sirash a copper-skinned savage. The so-called civilized people only did that in the comfort of their own homes.

The Low Noble pointed the flintlock pistol at Sirash, then showed it to his painfully sober brother before peering down the barrel himself. His finger was on the trigger the entire time. Thankfully for him, it wasn’t loaded. Not that he was privileged to that information. “Sure you want to do this, Skeleton?”

Sirash didn’t reply. We were already past the point of no return, and the nobles were ensnared in our trap. There was no chance they were escaping unscathed.

But that didn’t stop the brother from trying. “Adrianus, we shouldn’t do this. Guns are still illegal here and the last thing you want is to be seen with one. They’ll execute you.”

“Adrianus,” I said quietly. “I am compelled to inform you that unless you apologize, this duel will proceed. Should you decline, with the Endless Waltz beginning so soon, your reputation will be ruined.”

“He’s a Skeleton!” Adrianus said. “What could he do to me?”

I looked at Sirash. He was sitting calmly on a stone wall, fiddling with the other flintlock pistol I had brought. Since he was masquerading as a Low Noble, he was clean-shaven, wearing long, dark-colored trousers and an almost see-through, partly unbuttoned white shirt. The only odd detail about his appearance was the bone tattoo on the back of his left hand. A remembrance of his past. Much as the rusted ring on my middle finger was for me.

“Look at him. He’s clearly risen in society,” I said.

“Could he be a Low Noble?” Adrianus asked.

“Maybe. High Noble Morales has added many new families in recent years.”

“Even a former Skeleton?”

“Stranger things have happened.”

Adrianus considered my words, nodding as he studied the flintlock pistol in his hand.

“Enough of this,” Adrianus’s brother said. “Forget the Skeleton. We should go and receive the Eternal Flame’s blessing for the Endless Waltz tomorrow. High Noble Maflem Braven can protect us from gossip and rumors.”

“But what if he names me a coward and the women want nothing to do with me?” Adrianus said, worrying as only an underconfident boy could about those of the opposite sex. “I don’t want to please Father and marry Jessi. I want a more adventurous future than breeding horses!”

“What if someone hears this duel and arrests you?” his brother said.

I put my hand on Adrianus’s shoulder. “We’re in the middle of the Fisheries. There are no members of Scales or the King’s Ravens down here unless there’s a riot about taxes. Most of the locals are asleep.”

“Is… is the gun ready?” Adrianus asked.

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve prepared it for you. All you have to do is point and shoot.”

“Let us do it,” he said. “I’m ready.”

Before his brother could protest, I made a sweeping gesture and guided Adrianus into place with my hand on the small of his back. “Listen closely, Adrianus. Instead of the typical ten steps, turn, then shoot, you’re simply going to stand a distance apart and shoot. That way no one cheats and turns early. Sound good?”

Another nod as I signaled for Sirash to take his place opposite from him. “You will shoot on three. Aim true.” With a final pat on the back, I took my place.

“On my mark!” I shouted. “One! Two! Three!”

They shot. White smoke billowed across them both and they were lost in it for an instant. As it cleared, there was a crash, and Sirash fell to the floor. Blood poured out of his knee and upper thigh, soaking the ground around him. Despite being unharmed, Adrianus screamed and dropped the gun, letting it clatter to the stone.

“Shit!” I was at Sirash’s side in an instant, my hand over his knee, staunching the blood. It ran cold over my hands regardless, flowing over the stone around me. “He’s bleeding out.”

Adrianus stood there moonstruck. “What have I done? I didn’t want this. Wanderer, forgive me!”

I checked for his pulse. “Your shot severed an artery and he bled out in a few heartbeats. He’s dead.”

The noble retched and then puked all over the stone, his shocked brother patting him on the back. Adrianus mumbled to himself as he recovered, and it wasn’t long before his mumbles turned to sobs as he repeated to himself, “I killed him. Oh, Wanderer, I killed him.”

“I didn’t think you’d actually hit him. Why couldn’t you apologize!”

Adrianus’s brother stepped forward and pointed at me. “No, this is not happening. I knew who you were the moment I saw that brand. You are Michael Kingman, traitor son of David Kingman, and you are going to fix this.”

I felt the crown brand on my neck throb, whether from being reminded it was there, or from my racing heartbeat, I couldn’t tell. “Fix this? How do you expect me to bring him back from the dead?”

“I don’t.” He reached into his pocket, pulled out a bulging purse, and shook it at me. I suspected it was a sizable part of his allowance for the Endless Waltz. “You will take this, get rid of that body, and we are never going to hear from you again. Understand?” He sneered at Sirash’s body. “I doubt anyone will miss him. If someone does, they can always import a new slave from the Skeleton Coast.”

“You want me to cover up a murder for you and your brother?”

He pushed the bag of coins against my chest. “I don’t want you to. I’m telling you to.”

“If I don’t?”

Lightning began to form and crackle around his right arm, saying more than any idle threat could. I hadn’t realized he was a Fabricator, though it explained why the moonstruck fools had been sent to Hollow for the Endless Waltz.

I held my tongue as he bundled Adrianus away from the scene, first pushing and then dragging him away by the shirt. Once they were out of sight, I wiped my stained hands off on my shirt and then kicked Sirash in the ribs to signal we were in the clear.

“Seriously? How am I supposed to convince someone you died from being shot in the knee?”

Sirash sat up and grimaced at his dirty clothes. He’d broken a sheep’s stomach full of blood for effect during the duel. “Oh, I’m sorry. Next time I’ll grab my chest after he points the gun at my leg. We’re lucky he aimed anywhere near me. Unlike the last one.”

“All I’m asking is for an easy one, so I don’t have to come up with some artery in some random place to explain why you dropped dead. You should be grateful I can talk us out of these problems.”

“Literally every time you open your mouth, all you do is get us into more trouble.”

“Then why am I always the one doing the talking, not the shooting?”

“Because no one would hesitate to shoot you.” Sirash grinned at me wickedly. “So, how much did we get?”

I returned his smile and crouched down, emptying the bag of coins in front of us. We began to spread out the gold, silver, copper, and iron, making sure to count as we did. “Almost eleven suns,” Sirash said.

“I would have expected more from a noble coming to Hollow Court.”

“Must’ve been poorer than we thought. You should have tried to get Adrianus’s allowance, too.”

“Maybe if he had less to drink I would have.”

We split the take. Sirash took seven suns to cover his expenses and to help his lover, Jean, pay for her tuition at the College of Music. I took the rest—enough to cover my expenses and potentially buy another cure if I haggled the oddity merchants down a bit. With it safely in my pocket, I asked, “How much more do you need for the month?”

“Another three suns. I’m not sure how many more Low Nobles will come to Hollow for this ridiculous courting ritual—”

“Call it the Endless Waltz. We’ve been doing this for two years now; it has to be second nature if we’re masquerading as Low Nobles.”

“How much do you need?”

“I don’t know. This should cover my mother’s medical expenses. I’ll talk to Trey and figure out how much more I need tomorrow. I might have to start covering part of his bills while he’s indentured to a High Noble family—”

A bell rang out in the city, and we turned our heads toward the sky, looking for the piece of the moon falling from it.

“I can’t see it with all this light,” he murmured.

Before I had a chance to respond, the city began to darken. Seizing the guns, Sirash and I emerged from the alleyway and looked down the street. The gas lamps that ran down the length of one of the main roads in Hollow held a strong flame within them, burning brightly. One by one they were being snuffed out by the lamplighters, and it was Lights Out in the city. The spreading darkness was accompanied by a symphony of slamming shutters and windows.

“Do you see it?” he asked.

I didn’t. Tenere, our smaller moon, was full, its orange-bluish mass clear in the dark, even at a distance. In front of it, much larger, was the ever-broken Celona, its seven major pieces bright and white. They were surrounded by dust and smaller rocks, most of which would eventually hit the world below. The stars around them looked dull and flickering… and then I saw the falling piece of Celona. I strained to make out what color the tail was, hoping for red. If it was blue or white, it would mean the end of Hollow, no matter how the king and Scales attempted to stop it.

Their infamous Celona defense system, built to reassure the general public, was little more than a trebuchet. I’d love to see the imbeciles tasked with aiming that thing at a fast-falling piece of the moon try to save Hollow. It would be a show worth watching before the city’s inevitable destruction.

“We need to find cover in case a second or third bell starts ringing,” Sirash said.

“I can’t,” I said. “I should have been at the asylum already. Celona be damned.” I slapped Sirash on the shoulder and took off, running through the streets, knowing Sirash would find shelter in the sewers, as he always did when the bells rang.

Amidst his laughter, Sirash shouted, “Michael! If you don’t take moon-fall seriously, one of these days it will be the death of you! You’d be the bastard that gets hit!”

Doubtful. The Kingman family did not die with whimpers. History was shaped by our births and deaths, and whether I liked it or not, I would be no exception.

2
The Woman in the Asylum

I had never feared the falling pieces of Celona, not like others did. Especially not when only one bell was ringing.

One bell signaled a piece of the moon was falling, two bells signaled that it would fall within the country, three bells meant it would hit Hollow, and a fourth bell meant to expect an earthquake or a wave from the coast. Until I heard that third or fourth bell, I’d keep running.

I ran through the city as fast as I could, heading for the asylum in the Student Quarter near Hawthorn Medical College. The Upper Quarter was like a lighthouse in the middle of a storm: it was never Lights Out there. It was some noble-esque bullshit, since the observatories trying to track the moon-fall were hindered by the light from their district, but few, if any, complained. Too scared they’d be associated with the rebels if they spoke up against the Royals and their High Nobles. I was one of the few who wasn’t. After all, what more could they do to me? I was already branded. Whatever I did, my legacy would never amount to more than that of a simple con man.

By the time I reached the asylum, the Student Quarter was dark. A second bell began to ring across the city as I pushed the door open and ran along the cold, stark white hallways. I could hear shouting ahead.

“Get your hands off my mother!” my sister screamed. “You’re not throwing her out while the bells are ringing!”

I rounded the corner in time to see one of the asylum nurses dragging my mother toward the exit by her long black hair. Her green eyes were so glazed over, I doubted she even realized. My sister, Gwen, had her hands clenched into fists, exposing the treason brand on the back of her left hand.

“Dustin!” I said, skidding to a stop in front of them. “I have the money right here. Both of you, calm down.”

The nurse, a monk from the Church of the Eternal Flame, dressed in a black robe with flame trim, released my mother and gave me a sideways glance. “You heathens are late again! How many times do I have to remind you payment is due at month-end? No exceptions, no charity.”

“Does it matter? I have your money.”

The nurse fingered through the gold I put in his palm.

“Do you want to bite it? It’s real. Now let us get our mother back to bed.”

He waved us away dismissively. “As much as I would enjoy throwing you out, I must be faithful to Prophet Hewitt and show mercy. Even toward you heathens who destroyed Celona, God’s masterpiece. It’ll be five suns next month. My tithe has gone up, and so must yours.”

I could see a vein throbbing in Gwen’s neck. I wasn’t doing much better, but instead of making it worse I said, “Please, our mother needs to get back in her room.”

The nurse left without another word, whistling.

“You’re late and smell like a bar,” my sister snapped. She crouched down and ran her fingers through our mother’s hair. “You were supposed to be here hours ago.”

“It took longer than I thought to get the money.”

“If you could hold down a real job for more than a month, maybe we wouldn’t have problems so often. The only reason we’ve made it this far is luck and the fact one of the other wards routinely takes pity on us. But she wasn’t here tonight, and it almost went to shit. As it always seems to.”

“I’m doing my best, Gwen.”

The bells stopped, and we gave a sigh of relief. It was one less thing to fear, one less thing to worry about.

Gwen motioned for me to take our mother’s knees, and together we carried her to her plain room, pallet bed, and itchy blanket. The only comfort in there was a painting of our parents on their wedding day that hung on the wall opposite her bed. We tucked her in and then stepped outside to talk without disturbing her.

“You need to visit more, Michael. She asks about you a lot.”

I folded my arms. “About me or our father?”

A pause. “Both of you. But you know how much she needs routine and normality. Your visits always make her feel better.”

I bit down on my tongue, hating the position my sister put me in. Unlike me, Gwen had inherited features from both our parents, our mother’s thick black hair and sun-kissed skin and the famous Kingman amber eyes, while I was almost a perfect replica of my father. It meant, unlike me, she could weave in and out of public scrutiny whenever she wanted to. Even her brand was obscured by the long sleeves of her asylum uniform.

“Please, Michael? Talk to her before you go. It’ll mean a lot to her.”

“Fine. I have something for her, anyway.” I went back in, sat down on the edge of her bed, ran my fingers through her hair, as she sat up, smiling. “Mother, how are you doing?”

She gave me a tight hug. Or tight as she could when she was all skin and bones. She had done nothing but lie in a bed for so long, her muscle had wasted away. “Oh. David, I’ve missed you so much. Where have you been? Did you return to the Warring States to meet with the cripple? Or did you have to head to the Gold Coast again?”

“Mother… ,” I whispered. “It’s me, Michael.”

Her eyes refocused and grew serious as she stared into mine. “Amber eyes, strong jawline, thin face, messy brown hair… Oh, Michael, I’m sorry… You just look so much like your father.”

She sobbed, and I returned her hug as best I could, silent. My mother, despite not being a Fabricator, had suffered a Forgotten’s fate, remembering nothing about her life save the occasional flash of memory of her world before my father killed the prince. Initially we had thought her memories had been manipulated by Darkness Fabrications, but no matter how many Light Fabricators we hired, there was no change. So, shortly after losing our father, we realized we had no parents to rely on anymore.

“Are you doing well? Are you eating well?” she said. “Do you have a woman in your life? You’ll be participating in the Endless Waltz soon. Will you attend Hollow Academy, as your father did?”

Sometimes… sometimes it was easier to lie to her than share our daily truth. It always upset her, and she wouldn’t remember it the following day.

“The Endless Waltz starts soon, and there are plenty of fine women out there you’d love to have as a daughter-in-law. And, yes, Mother, I’ll be attending Hollow Academy like Father. How else would I learn how to use Fabrications?”

“Good,” she said. “Your father was one of the most remarkable Fabricators I ever saw. I still remember the first Fabrication I ever saw him use. We were in my homeland, at a festival, and he entertained the children with fire he created from nothing. Have I told you how we met, Michael?”

“Mother, you look hungry,” I said as she paused for breath. My hands shook as I pulled out a small pouch of Deepwater seeds I’d imported from the Gold Coast. “I have something for you.”

She took the seeds from me and began to eat them with the shells still on. According to my research, Deepwater seeds could give the Forgotten moments of clarity. Usually around whatever magical incident had taken their memories. It wasn’t a complete cure, if there truly was one, but it might help us uncover a clue as to what had happened to her.

“Mother, forgive me for asking while you eat,” I began, “but do you remember what happened to Father?”

She hesitated, and my breath hitched. “What do you mean?”

“With Davey.”

Her eyes went wide. “Oh, I do. Oh, God, how could I forget? Davey’s birthday is soon! Did your father forget to get his gift? I swear, that man…”

A sword through the chest would have been more pleasant than those words. Another failure in a long line of failed cures.

I played with my father’s ring, my mind wandering as she told me again how they had met. The story never varied, but sometimes the details would change: this time my father had been a Fire Fabricator, though the time before he had been a Lightning Fabricator, and the time before that he had been a Metal Fabricator. My mother might love telling stories about my father, but it was impossible to tell which of them were true.

Even my own memories told me little of the man he had truly been. The only concrete memory I had was of the night before he murdered Davey Hollow. That night I had crept into his room and found him working on the balcony, piles of papers at his feet. He was always clean-shaven, but he looked so old and worn-out… and that night I saw a moment when he paused and looked up at the stars, mid–pencil stroke, and smiled. That moment never fit the narrative of the monster he had been, and I sometimes wondered if I’d invented the memory as a child to cope with everything that followed.

Whether I had invented it or not, I knew nothing about the man my father had really been, and probably never would. All I knew for certain was the title he carried: traitor. Earned after killing the king’s son in cold blood.

I promised myself I would never be like him.

I’d rather die than abandon my family.

Excerpted from The Kingdom of Liars, copyright © 2020 by Nick Martell.

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A Life No One Will Remember. A Story You Will Never Forget.

France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever—and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets.

Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.

But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.

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The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

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New York City
March 10, 2014

I.

The girl wakes up in someone else’s bed.

She lies there, perfectly still, tries to hold time like a breath in her chest; as if she can keep the clock from ticking forward, keep the boy beside her from waking, keep the memory of their night alive through sheer force of will.

She knows, of course, that she can’t. Knows that he’ll forget. They always do.

It isn’t his fault—it is never their faults.

The boy is still asleep, and she watches the slow rise and fall of his shoulders, the place where his dark hair curls against the nape of his neck, the scar along his ribs. Details long memorized.

His name is Toby.

Last night, she told him hers was Jess. She lied, but only because she can’t say her real name—one of the vicious little details tucked like nettles in the grass. Hidden barbs designed to sting. What is a person, if not the marks they leave behind? She has learned to step between the thorny weeds, but there are some cuts that cannot be avoided—a memory, a photograph, a name.

In the last month, she has been Claire, Zoe, Michelle—but two nights ago, when she was Elle, and they were closing down a late-night café after one of his gigs, Toby said that he was in love with a girl named Jess—he simply hadn’t met her yet.

So now, she is Jess.

Toby begins to stir, and she feels the old familiar ache in her chest as he stretches, rolls toward her—but doesn’t wake, not yet. His face is now inches from her, his lips parted in sleep, black curls shadowing his eyes, dark lashes against fair cheeks.

Once, the darkness teased the girl as they strolled along the Seine, told her that she had a “type,” insinuating that most of the men she chose—and even a few of the women—looked an awful lot like him.

The same dark hair, the same sharp eyes, the same etched features.

But that wasn’t fair.

After all, the darkness only looked the way he did because of her. She’d given him that shape, chosen what to make of him, what to see.

Don’t you remember, she told him then, when you were nothing but shadow and smoke?

Darling, he’d said in his soft, rich way, I was the night itself.

Now it is morning, in another city, another century, the bright sunlight cutting through the curtains, and Toby shifts again, rising up through the surface of sleep. And the girl who is—was—Jess holds her breath again as she tries to imagine a version of this day where he wakes, and sees her, and remembers.

Where he smiles, and strokes her cheek, and says, “Good morning.”

But it won’t happen like that, and she doesn’t want to see the familiar vacant expression, doesn’t want to watch as the boy tries to fill in the gaps where memories of her should be, witness as he pulls together his composure into practiced nonchalance. The girl has seen that performance often enough, knows the motions by heart, so instead she slides from the bed and pads barefoot out into the living room.

She catches her reflection in the hall mirror and notices what everyone notices: the seven freckles, scattered like a band of stars across her cheeks and nose.

Her own private constellation.

She leans forward and fogs the glass with her breath. Draws her fingertip through the cloud as she tries to write her name. A—d—
But she only gets as far as that before the letters dissolve. It’s not the medium—no matter how she tries to say her name, no matter how she tries to tell her story. And she has tried, in pencil, in ink, in paint, in blood.

Adeline.

Addie.

LaRue.

It is no use.

The letters crumble, or fade. The sounds die in her throat.

Her fingers fall away from the glass and she turns, surveying the living room.

Toby is a musician, and the signs of his art are everywhere.

In the instruments that lean against the walls. In the scribbled lines and notes scattered on tables—bars of half-remembered melodies mixed in with grocery lists and weekly to-do’s. But here and there, another hand—the flowers he’s started keeping on the kitchen sill, though he can’t remember when the habit started. The book on Rilke he doesn’t remember buying. The things that last, even when memories don’t.

Toby is a slow riser, so Addie makes herself tea—he doesn’t drink it, but it’s already there, in his cupboard, a tin of loose Ceylon, and a box of silk pouches. A relic of a late-night trip to the grocery store, a boy and a girl wandering the aisles, hand in hand, because they couldn’t sleep. Because she hadn’t been willing to let the night end. Wasn’t ready to let go.

She lifts the mug, inhales the scent as memories waft up to meet it.

A park in London. A patio in Prague. A team room in Edinburgh.

The past drawn like a silk sheet over the present.

It’s a cold morning in New York, the windows fogged with frost, so she pulls a blanket from the back of the couch and wraps it around her shoulders. A guitar case takes up one end of the sofa, and Toby’s cat takes up the other, so she perches on the piano bench instead.

The cat, also named Toby (“So I can talk to myself without it being weird…” he explained) looks at her as she blows on her tea.

She wonders if he remembers.

Her hands are warmer now, and she sets the mug on top of the piano and slides the cover up off the keys, stretches her fingers, and starts to play as softly as possible. In the bedroom, she can hear Toby-the-human stirring, and every inch of her, from skeleton to skin, tightens in dread.
This is the hardest part.

Addie could have left—should have left—slipped out when he was still asleep, when their morning was still an extension of their night, a moment trapped in amber. But it is too late now, so she closes her eyes and continues to play, keeps her head down as she hears his footsteps underneath the notes, keeps her fingers moving when she feels him in the doorway. He’ll stand there, taking in the scene, trying to piece together the timeline of last night, how it could have gone astray, when he could have met a girl and then taken her home, if he could have had too much drink, why he doesn’t remember any of it.

But she knows that Toby won’t interrupt her as long as she’s playing, so she savors the music for several more seconds before forcing herself to trail off, look up, pretend she doesn’t notice the confusion on his face.

“Morning,” she says, her voice cheerful, and her accent, once country French, now so faint that she hardly hears it.

“Uh, good morning,” he says, running a hand through his loose black curls, and to his credit, Toby looks the way he always does—a little dazed, and surprised to see a pretty girl sitting in his living room wearing nothing but a pair of underwear and his favorite band T-shirt beneath the blanket.

“Jess,” she says, supplying the name he can’t find, because it isn’t there. “It’s okay,” she says, “if you don’t remember.”
Toby blushes, and nudges Toby-the-cat out of the way as he sinks onto the couch cushions. “I’m sorry . . . this isn’t like me. I’m not that kind of guy.”

She smiles. “I’m not that kind of girl.”

He smiles, too, then, and it’s a line of light breaking the shadows of his face. He nods at the piano, and she wants him to say something like, “I didn’t know you could play,” but instead Toby says, “You’re really good,” and she is—it’s amazing what you can learn when you have the time.
“Thanks,” she says, running her fingertips across the keys.

Toby is restless now, escaping to the kitchen. “Coffee?” he asks, shuffling through the cupboards.

“I found tea.”

She starts to play a different song. Nothing intricate, just a strain of notes. The beginnings of something. She finds the melody, takes it up, lets its slip between her fingers as Toby ducks back into the room, a steaming cup in his hands.

“What was that?” he asks, eyes brightening in that way unique to artists—writers, painters, musicians, anyone prone to moments of inspiration. “It sounded familiar…”

A shrug. “You played it for me last night.”

It isn’t a lie, not exactly. He did play it for her. After she showed him.

“I did?” he says, brow furrowing. He’s already setting the coffee aside, reaching for a pencil and a notepad off the nearest table. “God—I must have been drunk.”

He shakes his head as he says it; Toby’s never been one of those songwriters who prefer to work under the influence.

“Do you remember more?” he asks, turning through the pad. She starts playing again, leading him through the notes. He doesn’t know it, but he’s been working on this song for weeks. Well, they have.

Together.

She smiles a little as she plays on. This is the grass between the nettles. A safe place to step. She can’t leave her own mark, but if she’s careful, she can give the mark to someone else. Nothing concrete, of course, but inspiration rarely is.

Toby’s got the guitar up now, balanced on one knee, and he follows her lead, murmuring to himself. That this is good, this is different, this is something. She stops playing, gets to her feet.

“I should go.”

The melody falls apart on the strings as Toby looks up. “What? But I don’t even know you.”

“Exactly,” she says, heading for the bedroom to collect her clothes.

“But I want to know you,” Toby says, setting down the guitar and trailing her through the apartment, and this is the moment when none of it feels fair, the only time she feels the wave of frustration threatening to break. Because she has spent weeks getting to know him. And he has spent hours forgetting her. “Slow down.”

She hates this part. She shouldn’t have lingered. Should have been out of sight as well as out of mind, but there’s always that nagging hope that this time, it will be different, that this time, they will remember.

I remember, says the darkness in her ear.

She shakes her head, forcing the voice away.

“Where’s the rush?” asks Toby. “At least let me make you breakfast.”

But she’s too tired to play the game again so soon, and so she lies instead, says there’s something she has to do, and doesn’t let herself stop moving, because if she does, she knows she won’t have the strength to start again, and the cycle will spin on, the affair beginning in the morning instead of at night. But it won’t be any easier when it ends, and if she has to start over, she’d rather be a meet-cute at a bar than the unremembered aftermath of a one-night stand.

It won’t matter, in a moment, anyways.

“Jess, wait,” Toby says, catching her hand. He fumbles for the right words, and then gives up, starts again. “I have a gig tonight, at the Alloway. You should come. It’s over on…”

She knows where it is, of course. That is where they met for the first time, and the fifth, and the ninth. And when she agrees to come, his smile is dazzling. It always is.

“Promise?” he asks.

“Promise.”

“I’ll see you there,” he says, the words full of hope as she turns and steps through the door. She looks back, and says, “Don’t forget me in the meantime.”

An old habit. A superstition. A plea.

Toby shakes his head. “How could I?”

She smiles, as if it’s just a joke.

But Addie knows, as she forces herself down the stairs, that it’s already happening—knows that by the time he closes the door, she’ll be gone.

Excerpted from The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, copyright © 2020 by V.E. Schwab.

The post V.E. Schwab Reads an Excerpt From The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue appeared first on Reactor.

Fitz has survived his first hazardous mission as king’s assassin, but is left little more than a cripple. Battered and bitter, he vows to abandon his oath to King Shrewd, remaining in the distant mountains. But love and events of terrible urgency draw him back to the court at Buckkeep, and into the deadly intrigues of the royal family.

Renewing their vicious attacks on the coast, the Red-Ship Raiders leave burned-out villages and demented victims in their wake. The kingdom is also under assault from within, as treachery threatens the throne of the ailing king. In this time of great danger, the fate of the kingdom may rest in Fitz’s hands—and his role in its salvation may require the ultimate sacrifice.

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Royal Assassin (the Illustrated Edition)

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Chapter 1
Siltbay

To be the King-in-Waiting, or the Queen-in-Waiting, is to firmly straddle the fence between responsibility and authority. It is said the position was created to satisfy the ambitions of an heir for power, while schooling him in the exercising of it. The eldest child in the royal family assumes this position upon the sixteenth birthday. From that day on, the King- or Queen-in-Waiting assumes a full share of responsibility for the running of the Six Duchies. Generally, he immediately assumes such duties as the ruling monarch cares least for, and these have varied greatly from reign to reign.

Under King Shrewd, Prince Chivalry first became king-in-waiting. To him, King Shrewd ceded over all that had to do with the borders and frontiers: warfare, negotiations and diplomacy, the discomforts of extended travel and the miserable conditions often encountered on the campaigns. When Chivalry abdicated and Prince Verity became king-in-waiting, he inherited all the uncertainties of the war with the Outislanders, and the civil unrest this situation created between the Inland and Coastal Duchies. All of these tasks were rendered more difficult in that, at any time, his decisions could be overridden by the King. Often he was left to cope with a situation not of his creating, armed only with options not of his choosing.

Even less tenable, perhaps, was the position of Queen-in-Waiting Kettricken. Her Mountain ways marked her as a foreigner in the Six Duchies court. In peaceful times, perhaps she would have been received with more tolerance. But the court at Buckkeep seethed with the general unrest of the Six Duchies. The Red-Ships from the Outislands harried our shoreline as they had not for generations, destroying far more than they stole. The first winter of Kettricken’s reign as queen-in-waiting saw also the first winter raiding we had ever experienced. The constant threat of raids, and the lingering torment of Forged ones in our midst, rocked the foundations of the Six Duchies. Confidence in the monarchy was low, and Kettricken had the unenviable position of being an unadmired king-in-waiting’s outlandish queen.

Civil unrest divided the court as the Inland Duchies voiced their resentment at taxes to protect a coastline they did not share. The Coastal Duchies cried out for warships and soldiers and an effective way to battle the Raiders that always struck where we were least prepared. Inland-bred Prince Regal sought to gather power to himself by courting the Inland Dukes with gifts and social attentions. King-in-Waiting Verity, convinced that his Skill was no longer sufficient to hold the Raiders at bay, put his attentions to building warships to guard the Coastal Duchies, with little time for his new queen. Over all, King Shrewd crouched like a great spider, endeavoring to keep power spread among himself and his sons, to keep all in balance and the Six Duchies intact.

* * *

I awakened to someone touching my forehead. With an annoyed grunt, I turned my head aside from the touch. My blankets were weltered around me; I fought my way clear of their restraint and then sat up to see who had dared disturb me. King Shrewd’s fool perched anxiously on a chair beside my bed. I stared at him wildly, and he drew back from my look. Uneasiness assailed me.

The Fool should have been back in Buckkeep, with the King, many miles and days from here. I had never known him to leave the King’s side for more than a few hours or a night’s rest. That he was here boded no good. The Fool was my friend, as much as his strangeness allowed him to be friends with anyone. But a visit from him always had a purpose, and such purposes were seldom trivial or pleasant. He looked as weary as I had ever seen him. He wore an unfamiliar motley of greens and reds and carried a fool’s scepter with a rat’s head on it. The gay garments contrasted too strongly with his colorless skin. They made him a translucent candle wreathed in holly. His clothing seemed more substantial than he did. His fine pale hair floated from the confines of his cap like a drowned man’s hair in seawater, while the dancing flames of the fireplace shone in his eyes. I rubbed my gritty eyes and pushed some of the hair back from my face. My hair was damp; I’d been sweating in my sleep.

“Hello,” I managed. “I didn’t expect to see you here.” My mouth felt dry, my tongue thick and sour. I’d been sick, I recalled. The details seemed hazy.

“Where else?” He looked at me woefully. “For every hour you’ve slept, the less rested you seem. Lie back, my lord. Let me make you comfortable.” He plucked at my pillows fussily, but I waved him away. Something was wrong here. Never had he spoken me so fair. Friends we were, but the Fool’s words to me were always as pithy and sour as half-ripened fruit. If this sudden kindness was a show of pity, I wanted none of it.

I glanced down at my embroidered nightshirt, at the rich bedcovers. Something seemed odd about them. I was too tired and weak to puzzle it out. “What are you doing here?” I asked him.

He took a breath and sighed. “I am tending you. Watching over you while you sleep. I know you think it foolish, but then, I am the Fool. You know then that I must be foolish. Yet you ask me this same thing every time you awake. Let me then propose something wiser. I beg you, my lord, let me send for another healer.”

I leaned back against my pillows. They were sweat damp, and smelled sour to me. I knew I could ask the Fool to change them and he would. But I would just sweat anew if he did. It was useless. I clutched at my covers with gnarled fingers. I asked him bluntly, “Why have you come here?”

He took my hand in his and patted it. “My lord, I mistrust this sudden weakness. You seem to take no good from this healer’s ministrations. I fear that his knowledge is much smaller than his opinion of it.”

“Burrich?” I asked incredulously.

“Burrich? Would that he were here, my lord! He may be the stablemaster, but for all that, I warrant he is more of a healer than this Wallace who doses and sweats you.”

“Wallace? Burrich is not here?”

The Fool’s face grew graver. “No, my king. He remained in the Mountains, as well you know.”

“Your king,” I said, and attempted to laugh. “Such mockery.”

“Never, my lord,” he said gently. “Never.” His tenderness confused me. This was not the Fool I knew, full of twisting words and riddles, of sly jabs and puns and cunning insults. I felt suddenly stretched thin as old rope, and as frayed. Still, I tried to piece things together. “Then I am in Buckkeep?”

He nodded slowly. “Of course you are.” Worry pinched his mouth.

I was silent, plumbing the full depth of my betrayal. Somehow I had been returned to Buckkeep. Against my will. Burrich had not even seen fit to accompany me.

“Let me get you some food,” the Fool begged me. “You always feel better after you have eaten.” He rose. “I brought it up hours ago. I’ve kept it warm by the hearth.”

My eyes followed him wearily. At the big hearth he crouched, to coach a covered tureen away from the edge of the fire. He lifted the lid and I smelled rich beef stew. He began to ladle it into a bowl. It had been months since I’d had beef. In the Mountains, it was all venison and mutton and goat’s flesh. My eyes wandered wearily about the room. The heavy tapestries, the massive wooden chairs. The heavy stones of the fireplace, the richly worked bed hangings. I knew this place. This was the King’s bedchamber at Buckkeep. Why was I here, in the King’s own bed? I tried to ask the Fool, but another spoke with my lips. “I know too many things, Fool. I can no longer stop myself from knowing them. Sometimes it is as if another controlled my will, and pushed my mind where I would rather it did not go. My walls are breached. It all pours in like a tide.” I drew a deep breath, but I could not stave it off. First a chill tingling, then as if I were immersed in a swift flowing of cold water. “A rising tide,” I gasped. “Bearing ships. Red-keeled ships . . .”

The Fool’s eyes widened in alarm. “In this season, Your Majesty? Surely not! Not in winter!”

My breath was pressed tight in my chest. I struggled to speak. “The winter has crept in too softly. She has spared us both her storms and her protection. Look. Look out there, across the water. See? They come. They come from the fog.”

I lifted my arm to point. The Fool came hastily, to stand beside me. He crouched to peer where I pointed, but I knew he could not see. Still, he loyally placed a hesitant hand on my thin shoulder, and stared as if he could will away the walls and the miles that stood between him and my vision. I longed to be as blind as he. I clasped the long-fingered pale hand that rested on my shoulder. For a moment I looked down at my withered hand, at the royal signet ring that clung to a bony finger behind a swollen knuckle. Then my reluctant gaze was drawn up and my vision taken afar.

My pointing hand indicated the quiet harbor. I struggled to sit up taller, to see more. The darkened town spread out before me like a patchwork of houses and roads. Fog lay in hollows and was thick upon the bay. Weather change coming, I thought to myself. Something stirred in the air that chilled me, cooling the old sweat on my skin so that I shivered. Despite the blackness of the night and the fog, I had no difficulty in seeing everything perfectly. Skill watching I told myself, and then wondered. I could not Skill, not predictably, not usefully.

But as I watched, two ships broke out of the mists and emerged into the sleeping harbor. I forgot what I could or could not do. They were sleek and trim, those ships, and though they were black under the moonlight, I knew their keels were red. Red-Ship Raiders from the Outislands. The ships moved like knives through the wavelets, cutting their way clear of the fog, slicing into the protected water of the harbor like a thin blade slicing into a pig’s belly. The oars moved silently, in perfect unison, oarlocks muffled with rags. They came alongside the docks as boldly as honest merchants come to trade. From the first boat, a sailor leaped lightly, carrying a line to make fast to a piling. An oarsman fended her off the dock until the aft line was thrown and made fast as well. All so calmly, so blatantly. The second ship was following their example. The dreaded Red-Ships had come into town, bold as gulls, and tied up at their victims’ home dock.

No sentry cried out. No watchman blew a horn, or threw a torch onto a waiting heap of pitchpine to kindle a signal fire. I looked for them, and instantly found them. Heads on chests, they were idling at their posts. Good woolen homespun had gone from gray to red sopping up the blood of their slit throats. Their killers had come quietly, overland, sure of each sentry post, to silence every watcher. No one would warn the sleeping town.

There had not been that many sentries. There was not much to this little town, scarce enough to deserve a dot on the map. The town had counted on the humbleness of its possessions to shelter it from raids such as this. Good wool they grew there, and they spun a fine yarn, it was true. They harvested and smoked the salmon that came right up their river, and the apples here were tiny but sweet, and they made a good wine. There was a fine clam beach to the west of town. These were the riches of Siltbay, and if they were not great, they were enough to make life treasured by those who lived here. Surely, though, they were not worth coming after with a torch and a blade. What sane man would think a keg of apple wine or a rack of smoked salmon worth a raider’s time?

But these were Red-Ships, and they did not come to raid for wealth or treasures. They were not after prize breeding cattle or even women for wives or boys for galley slaves. The wool-fat sheep would be mutilated and slaughtered, the smoked salmon trampled underfoot, the warehouses of fleeces and wines torched. They would take hostages, yes, but only to Forge them. The Forge magic would leave them less than human, bereft of all emotions and any but the most basic thoughts. The Raiders would not keep these hostages, but would abandon them here, to work their debilitating anguish upon those who had loved them and called them kin. Stripped of every human sensitivity, Forged ones would scour their homeland as pitilessly as wolverines. This setting of our own kin to prey upon us as Forged ones was the Outislanders’ cruelest weapon. This I already knew as I watched. I had seen the aftermath of other raids.

I watched the tide of death rise to inundate the little town. The Outislander pirates leaped from the ship to the docks and flowed up into the village. They trickled silently up the streets in bands of twos and threes, as deadly as poison unfurling in wine. Some few paused to search the other vessels tied to the dock. Most of the boats were small open dories, but there were two larger fishing vessels and one trader. Their crews met swift death. Their frantic struggles were as pathetic as fowl flapping and squawking when a weasel gets into the chicken house. They called out to me with voices full of blood. The thick fog gulped their cries greedily. It made the death of a sailor no more than the keening of a seabird. Afterward, the boats were torched, carelessly, with no thought to their value as spoils. These Raiders took no real booty. Perhaps a handful of coins if easily found, or a necklace from the body of one they had raped and killed, but little more than that.

I could do nothing except watch. I coughed heavily, then found a breath to speak. “If only I could understand them,” I said to the Fool. “If only I knew what they wanted. There is no sense to these Red-Ships. How can we fight those who war for a reason they will not divulge? But if I could understand them . . .”

The Fool pursed his pale lips and considered. “They partake of the madness of he who drives them. They can only be understood if you share that madness. I myself have no wish to understand them. Understanding them will not stop them.”

“No.” I did not want to watch the village. I had seen this nightmare too often. But only a heartless man could have turned away as if it were a poorly staged puppet show. The least I could do for my people was watch them die. It also was the most I could do for them. I was sick and a cripple, an old man far away. No more could be expected from me. So I watched.

I watched the little town awaken from soft sleep to the rough grip of a strange hand on the throat or breast, to a knife over a cradle, or the sudden cry of a child dragged from sleep. Lights began to flicker and glow throughout the village; some were candles kindled on hearing a neighbor’s outcry; others were torches or burning houses. Although the Red-Ships had terrorized the Six Duchies for over a year, for this folk it became completely real tonight. They had thought they were prepared. They had heard the horror stories, and resolved never to let it happen to them. But still the houses burned and the screams rose to the night sky as if borne on the smoke.

“Speak, Fool,” I commanded hoarsely. “Remember forward for me. What do they say about Siltbay? A raid on Siltbay, in winter.”

He took a shuddering breath. “It is not easy, nor clear.” He hesitated. “All wavers, all is change still. Too much is in flux, Your Majesty. The future spills out in all directions there.”

“Speak any you can see,” I commanded.

“They made a song about this town,” the Fool observed hollowly. He gripped my shoulder still; through my nightshirt, the clutch of his long, strong fingers was cold. A trembling passed between us and I felt how he labored to continue standing beside me. “When it is sung in a tavern, with the refrain hammered out to the beat of ale mugs upon a table, none of this seems so bad. One can imagine the brave stand these folk made, going down fighting rather than surrendering. Not one, not one single person, was taken alive and Forged. Not one.” The Fool paused. A hysterical note mingled with the levity he forced into his voice. “Of course, when you’re drinking and singing, you don’t see the blood. Or smell the burning flesh. Or hear the screams. But that’s understandable. Have you ever tried to find a rhyme for ‘dismembered child’? Someone once tried ‘remembered wild’ but the verse still didn’t quite scan.” There is no merriment in his banter. His bitter jests can shield neither him nor me. He falls silent once more, my prisoner doomed to share his painful knowledge with me.

I witness in silence. No verse would tell of a parent pushing a poison pellet into a child’s mouth to keep him from the Raiders. No one could sing of children crying out with the cramps of the swift, harsh poison, or the women who were raped as they lay dying. No rhyme nor melody could bear the weight of telling of archers whose truest arrows slew captured kinfolk before they could be dragged away. I peered into the interior of a burning house. Through the flames, I watched a ten-year-old boy bare his throat for the slash of his mother’s knife. He held the body of his baby sister, strangled already, for the Red-Ships had come, and no loving brother would give her to either the Raiders or the voracious flames. I saw the mother’s eyes as she lifted her children’s bodies and carried them into the flames with her. Such things are better not remembered. But I was not spared the knowledge. It was my duty to know these things, and to recall them.

Not all died. Some fled into the surrounding fields and forests. I saw one young man take four children under the docks with him, to cling in the chill water to the barnacled pilings until the Raiders left. Others tried to flee and were slain as they ran. I saw a woman in a nightgown slip from a house. Flames were already running up the side of the building. She carried one child in her arms and another clung to her skirts and followed her. Even in the darkness, the light from the burning huts woke burnished highlights in her hair. She glanced about fearfully, but the long knife she carried in her free hand was up and at the ready. I caught a glimpse of a small mouth set grimly, eyes narrowed fiercely. Then, for an instant, I saw that proud profile limned against firelight. “Molly!” I gasped. I reached a clawed hand to her. She lifted a door and shooed the children down into a root cellar behind the blazing home. She lowered the door silently over them all. Safe?

No. They came around the corner, two of them. One carried an ax. They were walking slowly, swaggering and laughing aloud. The soot that smeared their faces made their teeth and the whites of their eyes stand out. One was a woman. She was very beautiful, laughing as she strode. Fearless. Her hair was braided back with silver wire. The flames winked red in it. The Raiders advanced to the door of the root cellar, and the one swung his ax in a great arcing blow. The ax bit deep into the wood. I heard the terrified cry of a child. “Molly!” I shrieked. I scrabbled from my bed, but had no strength to stand. I crawled toward her.

The door gave way, and the Raiders laughed. One died laughing as Molly came leaping through the shattered remnants of the door to put her long knife into his throat. But the beautiful woman with the shining silver in her hair had a sword. And as Molly struggled to pull her knife clear of the dying man, that sword was falling, falling, falling.

At that instant something gave way in the burning house with a sharp crack. The structure swayed and then fell in a shower of sparks and an upburst of roaring flames. A curtain of fire soared up between me and the root cellar. I could see nothing through that inferno. Had it fallen across the door of the root cellar and the Raiders attacking it? I could not see. I lunged forth, reaching out for Molly.

But in an instant, all was gone. There was no burning house, no pillaged town, no violated harbor, no Red-Ships. Only myself, crouching by the hearth. I had thrust my hand into the fire and my fingers clutched a coal. The Fool cried out and seized my wrist to pull my hand from the fire. I shook him off, then looked at my blistered fingers dully.

“My king,” the Fool said woefully. He knelt beside me, carefully moved the tureen of soup by my knee. He moistened a napkin in the wine he had poured for my meal, and folded it over my fingers. I let him. I could not feel the burned skin for the great wound inside me. His worried eyes stared into mine. I could scarcely see him. He seemed an insubstantial thing, with the faltering flames of the fireplace showing in his colorless eyes. A shadow like all the other shadows that came to torment me.

My burned fingers throbbed suddenly. I clutched them in my other hand. What had I been doing, what had I been thinking? The Skill had come on me like a fit, and then departed, leaving me as drained as an empty glass. Weariness flowed in to fill me, and pain rode it like a horse. I struggled to retain what I had seen. “What woman was that? Is she important?”

“Ah.” The Fool seemed even wearier, but struggled to gather himself. “A woman at Siltbay?” He paused as if racking his brains. “No. I have nothing. It is all a muddle, my king. So hard to know.”

“Molly has no children,” I told him. “It could not have been her.”

“Molly?”

“Her name is Molly?” I demanded. My head throbbed. Anger suddenly possessed me. “Why do you torment me like this?”

“My lord, I know of no Molly. Come. Come back to your bed, and I will bring you some food.”

He helped me to my feet and I tolerated his touch. I found my voice. I floated, the focus of my eyes coming and going. One moment I could feel his hand on my arm, the next it seemed as if I dreamed the room and the men who spoke there. I managed to speak. “I have to know if that was Molly. I have to know if she is dying. Fool, I have to know.”

The Fool sighed heavily. “It is not a thing I can command, my king. You know that. Like your visions, mine rule me, not the reverse. I cannot pluck a thread from the tapestry, but must look where my eyes are pointed. The future, my king, is like a current in a channel. I cannot tell you where one drop of water goes, but I can tell you where the flow is strongest.”

“A woman at Siltbay,” I insisted. Part of me pitied my poor fool, but another part insisted. “I would not have seen her so clearly if she were not important. Try. Who was she?”

“She is significant?”

“Yes. I am sure of it. Oh, yes.”

The Fool sat cross-legged on the floor. He put his long thin fingers to his temples and pressed as if trying to open a door. “I know not. I don’t understand. . . . All is a muddle, all is a crossroads. The tracks are trampled, the scents gone awry. . . .” He looked up at me. Somehow I had stood, but he sat on the floor at my feet, looking up at me. His pale eyes goggled in his eggshell face. He swayed from the strain, smiled foolishly. He considered his rat scepter, went nose to nose with it. “Did you know any such Molly, Ratsy? No? I didn’t think you would. Perhaps he should ask someone more in a position to know. The worms, perhaps.” A silly giggling seized him. Useless creature. Silly riddling soothsayer. Well, he could not help what he was. I left him and walked slowly back to my bed. I sat on the edge of it.

I found I was shaking as if with an ague. A seizure, I told myself. I must calm myself or risk a seizure. Did I want the Fool to see me twitching and gasping? I didn’t care. Nothing mattered, except finding out if that was my Molly, and if so, had she perished? I had to know. I had to know if she had died, and if she had died, how she had died. Never had the knowing of something been so essential to me.

The Fool crouched on the rug like a pale toad. He wet his lips and smiled at me. Pain sometimes can wring such a smile from a man. “It’s a very glad song, the one they sing about Siltbay,” he observed. “A triumphant song. The villagers won, you see. Didn’t win life for themselves, no, but clean death. Well, death anyway. Death, not Forging. At least that’s something. Something to make a song about and hold on to these days. That’s how it is in Six Duchies now. We kill our own so the Raiders can’t, and then we make victory songs about it. Amazing what folk will take comfort in when there’s nothing else to hold on to.”

My vision softened. I knew suddenly that I dreamed. “I’m not even here,” I said faintly. “This is a dream. I dream that I am King Shrewd.”

He held his pale hand up to the firelight, considered the bones limned so plainly in the thin flesh. “If you say so, my liege, it must be so. I, too, then, dream you are King Shrewd. If I pinch you, perhaps, shall I awaken myself?”

I looked down at my hands. They were old and scarred. I closed them, watched veins and tendons bulge beneath the papery surface, felt the sandy resistance of my own swollen knuckles. I’m an old man now, I thought to myself. This is what it really feels like to be old. Not sick, where one might get better. Old. When each day can only be more difficult, each month is another burden to the body. Everything was slipping sideways. I had thought, briefly, that I was fifteen. From somewhere came the scent of scorching flesh and burning hair. No, rich beef stew. No, Jonqui’s healing incense. The mingling scents made me nauseous. I had lost track of who I was, of what was important. I scrabbled at the slippery logic, trying to surmount it. It was hopeless. “I don’t know,” I whispered. “I don’t understand any of this.”

“Ah,” said the Fool. “As I told you. You can only understand a thing when you become it.”

“Is this what it means to be King Shrewd, then?” I demanded. It shook me to my core. I had never seen him like this, racked by the pains of age but still relentlessly confronted by the pains of his subjects. “Is this what he must endure, day after day?”

“I fear it is, my liege,” the Fool replied gently. “Come. Let me help you back into your bed. Surely, tomorrow you will feel better.”

“No. We both know I will not.” I did not speak those terrible words. They came from King Shrewd’s lips, and I heard them, and knew that this was the debilitating truth King Shrewd bore every day. I was so terribly tired. Every part of me ached. I had not known that flesh could be so heavy, that the mere bending of a finger could demand a painful effort. I wanted to rest. To sleep again. Was it I, or Shrewd? I should let the Fool put me to bed, let my king have his rest. But the Fool kept holding that one key morsel of information just above my snapping jaws. He juggled away the one mote of knowledge I must possess to be whole.

“Did she die there?” I demanded.

He looked at me sadly. He stooped abruptly, picked up his rat scepter again. A tiny pearl of a tear trickled down Ratsy’s cheek. He focused on it and his eyes went afar again, wandering across a tundra of pain. He spoke in a whisper. “A woman in Siltbay. A drop of water in the current of all the women of Siltbay. What might have befallen her? Did she die? Yes. No. Badly burned, but alive. Her arm severed at the shoulder. Cornered and raped while they killed her children, but left alive. Sort of.” The Fool’s eyes became even emptier. It was as if he read aloud from a roster. His voice had no inflection. “Roasted alive with the children when the burning structure fell on them. Took poison as soon as her husband awoke her. Choked to death on smoke. And died of an infection in a sword wound only a few days later. Died of a sword thrust. Strangled on her own blood as she was raped. Cut her own throat after she had killed the children while Raiders were hacking her door down. Survived, and gave birth to a Raider’s child the next summer. Was found wandering days later, badly burned, but recalling nothing. Had her face burned and her hands hacked off, but lived a short—”

“Stop!” I commanded him. “Stop it! I beg you, stop.”

He paused and drew a breath. His eyes came back to me, focused on me. “Stop it?” He sighed. He put his face into his hands, spoke through muffling fingers. “Stop it? So shrieked the women of Siltbay. But it is done already, my liege. We cannot stop what’s already happening. Once it’s come to pass, it’s too late.” He lifted his face from his hands. He looked very weary.

“Please,” I begged him. “Cannot you tell me of the one woman I saw?” I suddenly could not recall her name, only that she was very important to me.

He shook his head, and the small silver bells on his cap jingled wearily. “The only way to find out would be to go there.” He looked up at me. “If you command it, I shall do so.”

“Summon Verity,” I told him instead. “I have instructions for him.”

“Our soldiers cannot arrive in time to stop this raid,” he reminded me. “Only to help to douse the fires and assist the folk there in picking from the ruins what is left to them.”

“Then so they shall do,” I said heavily.

“First, let me help you return to your bed, my king. Before you take a chill. And let me bring you food.”

“No, Fool,” I told him sadly. “Shall I eat and be warm, while the bodies of children are cooling in the mud? Fetch me instead my robe and buskins. And then be off to find Verity.”

The Fool stood his ground boldly. “Do you think the discomfort you inflict on yourself will give even one child another breath, my liege? What happened at Siltbay is done. Why must you suffer?”

“Why must I suffer?” I found a smile for the Fool. “Surely that is the same question that every inhabitant of Siltbay asked tonight of the fog. I suffer, my fool, because they did. Because I am king. But more, because I am a man, and I saw what happened there. Consider it, Fool. What if every man in the Six Duchies said to himself, ‘Well, the worst that can befall them has already happened. Why should I give up my meal and warm bed to concern myself with it?’ Fool, by the blood that is in me, these are my folk. Do I suffer more tonight than any one of them did? What is the pain and trembling of one man compared with what happened at Siltbay? Why should I shelter myself while my folk are slaughtered like cattle?”

“But two words are all I need say to Prince Verity.” The Fool vexed me with more words. “ ‘Raiders’ and ‘Siltbay,’ and he knows as much as any man needs to. Let me rest you in your bed, my lord, and then I shall race to him with those words.”

“No.” A fresh cloud of pain blossomed in the back of my skull. It tried to push the sense from my thoughts, but I held firm. I forced my body to walk to the chair beside the hearth. I managed to lower myself into it. “I spent my youth defining the borders of the Six Duchies to any who challenged them. Should my life be too valuable to risk now, when there is so little left of it, and all of that riddled with pain? No, Fool. Fetch my son to me at once. He shall Skill for me, since my own strength for it is at an end this night. Together, we shall consider what we see, and make our decisions as to what must be done. Now go. GO!”

The Fool’s feet pattered on the stone floor as he fled.

I was left alone with myself. Myselves. I put my hands to my temples. I felt a painful smile crease my face as I found myself. So, boy. There you are. My king slowly turned his attention to me. He was weary, but he reached his Skill toward me to touch my mind as softly as blowing spiderweb. I reached clumsily, attempting to complete the Skill bond and it all went awry. Our contact tattered, fraying apart like rotten cloth. And then he was gone.

I hunkered alone on the floor of my bedchamber in the Mountain Kingdom, uncomfortably close to the hearth fire. I was fifteen, and my nightclothes were soft and clean. The fire in the hearth had burned low. My blistered fingers throbbed angrily. The beginnings of a Skill headache pulsed in my temples.

I moved slowly, cautiously as I rose. Like an old man? No. Like a young man whose health was still mending. I knew the difference now.

My soft, clean bed beckoned, like a soft clean tomorrow.

I refused them both. I took the chair by the hearth and stared into the flames, pondering.

When Burrich came at first light to bid me farewell, I was ready to ride with him.

Excerpted from Royal Assassin (the Illustrated Edition), copyright © 2020 by Robin Hobb.

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We’re excited to share an excerpt from Sarah Henning’s The Princess Will Save You, a YA fantasy adventure inspired by The Princess Bride—available July 7th from Tor Teen.

When her warrior father, King Sendoa, mysteriously dies, Princess Amarande of Ardenia is given what would hardly be considered a choice: Marry a stranger at sixteen or lose control of her family’s crown.

But Amarande was raised to be a warrior—not a sacrifice.

In an attempt to force her choice, a neighboring kingdom kidnaps her true love, stable boy Luca. With her kingdom on the brink of civil war and no one to trust, she’ll need all her skill to save him, her future, and her kingdom.

Chapter 1

The whisper and clang of steel rang out over the foothills of Ardenia, a princess and a pauper meeting swords.

Left. Right. Cross. High cut. Mid-cross. Hanging parry. Stab.

“You’ve been practicing,” the princess accused the boy with a laugh that played across the little meadow they called theirs. The palace grounds of the Itspi had plenty of rolling land but not much that provided privacy. But this patch of mostly flat earth surrounded on three sides by fragrant juniper trees was one they’d claimed long ago as children.

It was an open secret within the castle that Princess Amarande of Ardenia spent far too much of her time here and with this boy. Luca. It hadn’t been anything to worry about until recently.

“Simply trying to avoid a devastating injury.”

“Come, Luca, I think you want to do more than avoid injury.” She tilted her head as their swords met at chest height, their faces and flushed cheeks inches apart. They were dressed alike— training breeches, tunic, chest and wrist armor, but their heads bare. The princess’s auburn hair had already begun to abandon her hasty braid, swirling in curled wisps about her face. “I think you want to win.”

At this, Luca only grinned, dimples flashing as he lunged forward. His sword—blunt for practice but still hard-as-nails Basilican steel—tapped Amarande against the waist, right under the protection of her chest plate. A warning of what could be done for
real.

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The Princess Will Save You

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The Princess Will Save You

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“Always, Princess.”

“Then let’s make things more exciting, shall we?”

She’d phrased it as a question, but Luca knew better. Better than anyone. Luca, who ran her father’s stable. Who had as much a right to call the palace home as Amarande herself. He drew his sword back, high guard stance and ready to block—just as General Koldo had shown him in a moment of pity for the boy who dared tussle with the Warrior King’s daughter.

Still, he wasn’t quick enough.

Before his sword was in place, Amarande had bent to her boot and in a lightning strike launched a small knife straight for his face. It wasn’t a dull practice blade. It was real—the one she’d carried since before she’d learned her letters. Lessons from King Sendoa’s soldiers had always been just as important as anything her tutors managed to teach her. Blunt swords could bruise and hack, but this knife could split, slice, cut.

Luca moved just in time, sword useless and weak hand up, fingers quick enough to catch the last inch of the knife’s hilt. This he’d practiced, too.

In the space of a blink, he had the blade flipped in his palm and shot it right back at her. He aimed to miss, of course, but it was a left-handed throw and not as accurate. Thus, it came far too close, snagging the leather of her shoulder guard and sending her flat on her back in the grass.

“Ama,” he whispered, dropping his sword. Taking a tentative step toward her.

Again, a mistake.

From the ground, Amarande swung a leg hard, kicking his feet out from under him. Luca flew up and then back, landing in a heap, the wind and her name knocked out of him. Before he could even attempt to right himself, the princess was sitting atop his stomach, her knees locking his arms against his heaving ribs. One arm ran stiff across his chest plate, right under his collarbone, further pinning him in place; the other held the knife at striking distance.

Before his next breath, he could be dead.

“You have been practicing.”

She said it with admiration, but a tight-lipped type of triumph crossed the princess’s face. She examined her prey, trapped as he was—it was amazing what small but mighty could do to a boy even as strong as this one.

A smear of dirt streaked across Luca’s forehead and up into his short black hair. Sweat ran in a single rivulet from one temple, snaking around his long lashes and down his cheek, pausing only briefly to dip into the shadow of a dimple as he gritted his teeth in a smile. His eyes regarded the knife in the princess’s hand, an inch from his throat.

And then those eyes, the golden color of sun on snow at dawn, lifted to hers and Amarande felt her heart melt like wax near a flame. The fighting tension of her body fled until the knife was still an inch from his throat but not a threat. Luca’s fingers brushed her cheek, sweeping a lock of windblown hair behind her ear.

Growing up, the privacy of the meadow had given room for her to share lemon cake stolen from the kitchens and for him to calm her when the king went off on another journey with his regiments and beloved Koldo, keeping the kingdoms of the Sand and Sky safe by answering every ally’s call. But for the last year, there’d been this.

Something almost tangible sat between them—responsibility, expectations, rules. The same inescapable things that had rendered the amusement in their earlier words heavy and misshapen.

Amarande straightened, removing her arm from his chest. Luca raised himself onto his elbows. Their eyes remained locked as his lips parted, and Amarande wondered if he’d actually say it. That he felt it, too, and that she wasn’t the only one carrying an unspeakable hope thick in her gut.

Instead, he said, “Of course I practice—I fight you.”

As she found the words to answer him, a shout went up from well beyond their meadow, the call of welcome bells clanging across the grounds. Clearly Amarande’s father had returned from his solstice charity, empty-handed after delivering fruit and bread to mining families along the Ardenian border with the Torrent up to where it joined with Pyrenee. She would have to go soon—wash up for dinner by his side, listening to stories of sweet-faced mountain children running down dirt tracks after his horse, songs trailing. Someday, when the Warlord no longer reigned, maybe he’d let her go with him.

But for now, for this moment, she wanted to be nowhere other than with Luca.

Yet they were interrupted again—a rider coming over the hill. Amarande’s training came back to her in a rush, her father having engrained it in her since the day he put a tiny wooden sword in her hand and began to share the things all living warriors knew.

Beware or be dead.

Make the first mark.

A warrior made is a warrior alive.

The first tenet whispered in her ear, and the princess shot to her feet, the abandoned knife now clutched in her fingertips. The castle grounds weren’t dangerous, but preparation paid off.

The rider scrambled down the steepest part of the hill, a tough grade before hitting the flat of their meadow. Not armored—in riding gear only—he flew toward them on a dappled mare with wild legs. It was then that Amarande recognized that it wasn’t a he, it was a she—General Koldo, the king’s best friend and second. She was the leader of his army as much as she was Amarande’s surrogate mother, and the princess had never seen her with a note of fear on her sun-mottled face. And yet there it was as she came closer, braid flying out behind her as the horse’s hooves kicked up plumes of rust-dirt dust.

“Ama!” The dam broke on the panic rising within Amarande.

Koldo called her Ama in private, alone, but never in front of anyone else, even Luca, who used the nickname in the same way. With the general, she was always “Princess” in a space such as this.

The fact that Koldo broke her own protocol was just as terrifying as the fear that rode her tone.

Luca felt it, too, tensing at Amarande’s side. His fingers brushed hers as if he wanted to grab them, to give her an anchor for the blow that they both could see coming.

Koldo reached them and before she even dismounted, the princess registered tear tracks on her dusty cheeks. Amarande’s heart began to fail before the words were even out, breath seeping out of her lungs, until all of her had evaporated into the mountain air. She watched the words fall from Koldo’s lips outside of herself, above, shattered.

“The king is dead.”

Chapter 2

In a single breath, everything had changed.

One moment King Sendoa was sipping from his ancient water-skin, the next a gruff cough, and death. The whole of it so quick, he fell from his horse’s saddle in a royal heap, no one fast enough to realize he needed saving, let alone catch him.

It was the king’s heart, some said, drumming to a stop. Maybe his blood, gone haywire in his brain. Or his lungs, an old illness creeping up in the altitude.

Amarande didn’t believe any of it.

When the dust and chaos of that day settled and the next came, General Koldo stood in the too-bright light of midafternoon in the sitting room of the princess’s chambers. Amarande was curled up, barefoot on the golden cushions of a long divan, still in the clothing she was wearing when it all crumbled. Only her chest plate and boots were missing, ripped off the second she’d thrown herself into her quarters.

She’d begged Luca to stay, and he did, with her at every moment, only leaving to tend to the horses. He greeted Koldo with a nod from his spot on the other end of the divan.

“The Royal Council requests your presence, Ama.” Koldo’s voice wasn’t what one would call soft or gentle. It was battle tested and measured. But just the drop of her nickname at the end of the sentence made the princess want to run into Koldo’s arms and stain her full garnet-and-gold regalia with tears. The word “Ama” on the general’s lips would forever sound different, no matter how many times she’d said it before. “If you do not feel well enough, I can propose a time tomorrow.”

The princess swallowed, willing her parched tongue to work. She wasn’t accustomed to the way so many tears could leave a person with nothing left.

“No, no, I’ll go.”

Koldo had met with the council only an hour after returning to the castle with the news of Sendoa’s death on her lips. In many ways she was closer to the king than even Amarande herself—if she could discuss castle business after such a shock, so could Amarande.

It was what leaders did.

Though Amarande wanted Luca to come with them, it was not allowed, and so he departed to ready the stable for the hordes of equine funeral guests. When he was gone, the maids appeared, and the princess shrugged on a clean dress: shiny black with a lace bodice and long sleeves, as was the style. Rather than dainty slippers, she strapped on her boots, the knife she kept there pressed into her skin in a way that grounded her. The scuffed toes of each boot peeked out from the dress’s hem, but comfort and preparation trumped fashion.

The Royal Council of Ardenia met in the North Tower of the Itspi, the whole northern wing set aside for matters of state. The glittering sandstone walls of her home pressed in on Amarande as she walked shoulder to shoulder with Koldo. The familiar corners and edges felt like both too much and not enough. She could relish the Itspi’s embrace or be crushed under the weight of the walls— either was possible. Nothing felt right without her father here.

The great garnet-studded doors of the council room were thrown open. As the princess and the general entered, they were greeted by Councilor Satordi, de facto leader of the council and the Warrior King’s top advisor.

“Princess Amarande, General Koldo, welcome,” Satordi said from his seat. Amarande had always seen all members of the council stand when her father entered the room. Yet Satordi and the other two councilors, silver-haired Garbine and rosy-cheeked Joseba, stayed seated at the table that dominated the room. The three of them were the image of melted candle tapers at the great table, with their gold-and-white silken robes weeping from their shoulders. Behind them, tapestries of kings past covered the walls in dark-woven judgment. The only illumination was backlight from windows, ringing the council in the halo of late afternoon.

The councilor gestured before him. “Please, sit, and we shall begin.”

There were chairs carved with the thick tracing of a tiger’s head— Ardenia’s sigil—meant for guests, but they were apart from the table, not pulled up as for equals to the council. Amarande’s stomach dropped at the implications. Still, she didn’t make a statement by pulling a chair close to the table, nor did she stride over to the chair reserved for her father, on the north curve of the oval.

In her estimation, no man would ever be worthy of sitting there.

Though deprived of sleep and sustenance, Amarande willed herself to stand before them, rather than sit apart as a guest. Koldo stayed pin straight by her side but slightly behind, much like she did when accompanying Sendoa into any lion’s den.

When Satordi realized they weren’t going to sit, he folded his fingers and continued. “We have much to discuss.”

Yes, they did.

First and foremost: succession.

The laws had it that in the Kingdom of Ardenia, succession fell along the male line, but that possibility had ended with her father. There was no male heir of which to speak—no uncles, cousins, nephews. Only the sixteen-year-old girl King Sendoa had raised in his image in the years since Amarande’s mother gained the nickname the Runaway Queen.

Because of it, with Sendoa’s last breath, Amarande had not only lost her father; she’d also lost her independence.

The laws were clear: To rule, she must be wed.

Meaning her title and Ardenia itself were now items to be bought, bartered, stolen.

For the good of her people.

For the gain of valuable pastures and stunning mountains, for diamonds mined for trade and gold pieces, for armored men and women whose only peer was death itself.

And no king in the Sand and Sky could let such a prize go to another.

On the great table that sat between the council and its princess lay a scroll, its wax seal crumbling, freshly opened but as recognizable as it was predictable. A marriage contract, likely from their closest neighbor, Pyrenee.

Soon there would be three, the other kingdoms of the union— Basilica and Myrcell—sending riders ahead of their royal funeral processions, jockeying to gain the council’s attention. Stars, she nearly expected a contract from the mysterious Warlord who ran the Torrent, because the windfall was too delicious—no kingdom on the continent of the Sand and Sky had left a sole female heir in a thousand years.

The king had not invited her to the council room for much of her childhood, but he’d made it a point to bring her along in the past year, extending her leadership training beyond the sparring arena and weapons armory and into the political landscape. Therefore, the council knew her better now than ever, and she them. Still, Satordi’s demeanor, though respectful, had the quality of a mentor who wished for his student to listen, not participate. That, combined with the certitude that the council had purposefully not stood or placed a chair at the table for her, set a particular tone.

And so, despite her exhaustion, Princess Amarande decided to set her own.

The princess’s eyes swept from the marriage contract to Satordi’s face. “Before we discuss matters of succession, I believe we first must address the formation of an investigation into King Sendoa’s murder.”

The shoulders under each of the councilors’ robes stiffened. As usual, Satordi spoke for the group. In Amarande’s time in this room with her father, it had become clear to her that proximity to power had made this man believe he had more of it than he truly did.

“Princess Amarande,” Satordi began, that tone of his sharpening. “You are well aware that the exalted Medikua Aritza has examined the king’s body and has found no evidence of foul play, as seconded by General Koldo, who was by his side the entire day and did not witness anything untoward.”

Amarande didn’t bother to spare a glance toward the general. Yes, she knew that a natural death was Koldo’s official estimation, and that she had been the one who watched the king’s life leave him in real time. The councilor was using Koldo here, dangling their love for each other in front of the princess and hoping she’d bite.

He should’ve known better.

“Medikua Aritza is a gifted healer and indeed exalted, but she is not aware of all the possible methods of attack.” This was true— the highest medicine woman in the land made it a point not to know about political intrigue purely for the sake of wanting to be completely unbiased when someone threw gold pieces at her for a potion. “General Koldo is a gifted warrior, but that doesn’t mean she’s always correct. Even to her experienced eye, the stoppage of a heart from poison would appear the same as the stoppage of a heart from natural causes.”

Koldo nodded, her long brunette braid slithering across her garnet cloak broach. “Council, that is an accurate assessment. I have never witnessed a man die from natural causes. I agree with the princess on this matter.”

The general took a slight step forward so that she and the princess stood precisely shoulder to shoulder before the table, a front.

“I realize that both of you were closer to the king than I.” Councilor Garbine stood, the fire within her a low, ever-present boil. “And therefore I realize it may be as difficult as his death itself to admit to yourselves that sometimes devastating moments happen in unspectacular ways.”

Amarande and Koldo said nothing.

The gray-haired woman smiled at the princess, all the heat in her eyes, her hands brought in front almost as if in prayer to the stars. “Your Highness, did you want your father to come home with a sword run through his back? Relieved of his head? Or not at all, turned to ashes in a Torrent fire pit?”

Amarande swallowed. “No, but I find any of those scenarios easier to believe than that the strongest man in the Sand and Sky keeled over in his saddle from nothing at all.”

Garbine’s lips parted in reply, but Satordi held out a hand to stop her, standing himself with an impatient sigh. “We cannot afford to upset every kingdom on the continent chasing down something we cannot prove. It will disturb our allies.”

Garbine and Joseba nodded, the long game playing out in their minds. The contract on the table seemed to catch all the windows’ light.

“Are we to simply accept what happened?” Amarande’s voice was still calm and polite, but something was lit from the ashes of who she’d been since the news, and it burned beneath.

“Yes, Princess,” Satordi answered, clipped. “At this moment in time we will accept it because we have much more pressing matters to discuss.”

Amarande hadn’t thought her request a difficult one—in fact, she’d believed it would be the natural course—and therefore hadn’t planned for a fight. But her body was suddenly ready for one. The princess drove her heels into the marble tile, strong legs grounding her further, all muscles rigid from her calves—the right one tense against the knife in her boot—to the curve of her jaw. “I see nothing more important.”

Satordi rapped a knuckle on the table and blinked at Amarande.

“Because you refuse to see. There is much more to ruling than what is right in front of your face.” He threw his arms wide, dark brows pulled tight. “Your father’s death is in the past. The future of Ardenia needs your focus now. I implore you. You want to be a ruler? Act like it. Hear me.”

Amarande’s jaw clenched. She said nothing. Koldo stood silent at her side.

After a pause long enough to ensure he’d regained control, Satordi continued, immediately addressing the matters he thought more pressing. “We have received a generous proposal for your hand from Pyrenee. It is simply a preliminary offer and more will likely come. The real negotiations will begin once each royal party arrives for King Sendoa’s funeral.”

The princess took a thin breath through her nose before delivering her stony reply. “I’m not marrying.”

“Why resist marriage, Princess?” Garbine asked. “That is your responsibility as princess of the Sand and Sky—it must happen eventually. Why not now, when your kingdom needs you?”

Easy for Garbine to say, when she’d chosen those robes over the ability to wed. Purposely giving up one’s freedom to love was completely different from being born with it already stolen away. Even worse—what if acceptance of an offer meant not only no chance at love but also aligning herself with the nobility who had killed her father?

“Yes, my kingdom needs me. Not some usurper king, who may have had a hand in the death of his predecessor, all the while forcing his queen into a relationship that benefits only him. How is that good for Ardenia? How can a man chosen via contract and council have the best interests of Ardenia closer to his heart than myself? Surely my father worked with you to account for that—he wouldn’t have allowed it.”

Now Joseba stood—thick eyebrows knitted together, fingers twisted in a calm knot. He was barely older than the princess herself, and he’d only been a councilor since the death of his great-uncle two years hence. He was baby-faced and his innate kindness still intact, yet to be completely dismantled by Satordi. “Your father did not… object to the process, Princess.”

“Because he didn’t expect to be murdered,” Amarande spat. Satordi gave an exasperated sigh, but the princess ignored it and continued. “I want time. I want what is best for my people. Change the law and allow me to rule outright, not rush into some marriage that will hand my father’s beloved land and his daughter over to someone who only wants it for personal gain. Diamonds and soldiers and location—we all know what is so attractive to outsiders about our home.”

Joseba pursed his lips before continuing, measured. “Time is a pleasant notion, Your Highness, but it doesn’t shield Ardenia from its current vulnerability. Without a contract in place soon, Ardenia will be seen as headless—”

“‘Seen’ being the operative word, Councilor. Others’ lack of vision is not our problem,” the princess said, and then turned to the rest of the group. “We all know the Itspi’s foundation consists of laws, decrees, and directives mixed with mortar and stone. Surely there’s precedent for who rules after a king’s death and before the marriage of his daughter? If not his own blood, then whom? If there’s not precedence for that in enough statutes to swallow a millennium, surely my father had a plan. He always had a plan.”

She looked each one of them in the eye. “What is his plan?”

After a long pause, Joseba’s tongue stumbled over the words, though he knew the answer. “It’s designated in the king’s will that General Koldo be the regent.”

The eye contact the three councilors made with Koldo told the princess that this was not a surprise to the general. It was, however, a surprise to her. This must have been discussed in the meeting they’d had in those hours after the news, while she was a wreck of shock, haunting her chambers with Luca by her side.

And no one, not even Koldo, had thought to tell her.

Amarande swallowed, face placid, not daring to give herself away with a sideways glance to the general. Still, she angled herself toward Koldo and reached up to give her a hearty pat on the back. “See there? We’re far from headless. And with a female in charge of the throne. Was that so hard?”

She said it with all the confidence she could muster, thick with irony, though a tiny voice in her head wondered why her father hadn’t simply assigned her regency and circumvented the whole succession problem. There had to be a reason, but at that moment Amarande was too relieved by Koldo’s new reality to care.

The princess addressed the general. “General Koldo, as regent, you must agree that an investigation into King Sendoa’s death is warranted before we rush into a marriage contract with possible suspects?”

“Of course. I will see to it at once.”

“Thank you, General Koldo. You display such loyalty and leadership. The Kingdom of Ardenia is in debt of your service.”

Three thin sighs came from behind the great table.

“Your Highness, we’re still vulnerable,” Joseba continued in his soft way, cheeks a ripe red. “Regency is meant to be a temporary solution. Not to mention outsiders will see this as martial law— unstable.”

Amarande nearly laughed. “Was my father not called the Warrior King—the ruler of the most powerful army on the continent? Was that martial law?”

Satordi ignored the princess, continuing Joseba’s argument. “Not to mention primitive. Reckless. Weak.”

“Weak,” Amarande echoed, no longer able to hide her anger and disappointment. Every spark within her had become a flame, the haze of the past day burned off, her grief reinforcing her words, her stance, the directness of her tone. “The law is what makes us vulnerable, Councilor. Change the law. Allow a queen to rule in her own right.”

Satordi couldn’t allow that statement to stand. “Princess, you must marry. This is not up for discussion.”

“My mother married for position and left. Left my father and me and never returned.” All three faces behind the table closed up—the Runaway Queen was never spoken of. The king hadn’t allowed it. Amarande speaking of her in front of them trotted a piece of King Sendoa into the room that his advisors never saw. To her surprise, Koldo tensed, too, though she knew all of this and more.

“Though he’d learned to love her, she’d never learned to love him. And it broke his soul to know that she couldn’t bear life with him. He was not enough. I was not enough.” Amarande’s voice had become too loud in her own ears. She swallowed and reset, her tone quieter yet still fierce. Sharp. Splitting. “Never mind what her absence did to my childhood, because she taught me something. I will not give anyone my hand without love on both sides of the contract. I refuse to be broken for status or prodded by duty. I deserve that—Ardenia deserves that.”

She took a step forward and wiped the contract off the polished table, letting it flutter to the marble tile. “If my father’s fine choice of a regent is seen as weak, then change the law and let me lead. Marriage can wait.”

Joseba scuttled around the table and lunged for the fallen contract, as if it would lose its validity if it sat discarded too long. Satordi spoke again as soon as the parchment was safe in the councilor’s soft palms. “Your Highness, to amend the law, we must have the approval of the entire union of the Sand and Sky. It can’t simply be changed on a whim.”

“Stars, Satordi! You’ve had fifteen years of a ruler without a wife. Fifteen years of knowing a male heir wasn’t in Ardenia’s future. Fifteen years to get the union votes and rewrite the laws. Yet you didn’t.”

Yet my father didn’t.

A new tendril of anger snaked up from the pit of Amarande’s stomach, cold water on her flame. She took a deep breath.

“My father’s blood flows in my veins—that’s what is so precious to this kingdom. To this line. To these contracts. I have that blood—what does it matter if I’m a girl? What’s more important? The blood or the law?”

Satordi stuttered, standard answer not getting the strongest start. “The laws of the paternal line were written centuries ago to fortify—”

“‘Fortify’ means to strengthen, does it not? How does this law strengthen the Ardenian position by handing our throne to someone who may have had a hand in murdering our king, rather than delivering it to a ruler of his own blood?”

Amarande let that sit for a moment, watching the council fumble for an answer that didn’t come. “My father commanded the largest army in the Sand and Sky, and you’re saying that, though I am his child, I can’t do so because of my sex? Never mind the fact that my father installed a woman as my regent.”

“Well—”

“Men do not have a monopoly on strength. My father believed that—Koldo was his second-in-command for a reason. And he made sure I knew that—or have you forgotten that my father trained me from the time I could walk to hold a sword, throw a knife, track prey?”

Satordi stiffened. “No one has forgotten that, Princess.”

“Good. Then you know what you’re up against if you want me to agree to this contract or any of the others you’re awaiting. I will always fight for the future of Ardenia. And I expect this council and its regent to fight, too.”

And with that, Princess Amarande turned on her boot heel—meeting adjourned. She nodded at Koldo, who tipped her chin back, and took for the now-closed doors while leaving the regent and the council with the only words she truly wanted them to remember.

“Change the law.”

Excerpted from The Princess Will Save You, copyright © 2020 by Sarah Henning.

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