Every Star in the Sky Page 11

  I raise a brow.

  “Put your eyebrow down, don’t look at me like that!”

  I raise the other brow.

  She laughs, “You’re a dork. Come on.” She opens the door.

  Three girls are sitting on two different beds. On the closest bed is a taller-looking girl with glasses, and long, straight, gleaming brown hair. She is reading a book and taking notes, her small pink lips parted, brows furrowed. She’s very slender, and her hair is parted straight down the middle.

  On the further bed, a girl with wavy chest-length silver hair is braiding the hair of another. Her fingers are gentle, her entire body in rhythm with the focus of her hair weaving. When she looks up for a moment, I see that her eyes are an amber color, like a strange shade of autumn sunshine. The girl sitting in front of her has long, daffodil-colored hair. It must fall to the back of her knees when it’s not braided, but she is short regardless. She can’t be more than five feet tall. Her eyes are a glassy blue, and everything about her looks cherubic, round and soft and undefined. She reminds me of the meadow spirits my mother used to tell me about-- fairies, I think they were called.

  Regan nudges me, like she wants me to say something.

  “Um, er, h-hi,” I manage. The three of them turn to look at me in unison, and the girl with the deer-brown hair is the first to know.

  “Sister,” she says.

  She walks up to me, poking at my arms and legs and examining my wounds and touching my hair. I look at Regan in concern but she just shrugs.

  “Yes, you’re her,” the girl says, “You’re Rose.” She smiles softly but only half of her mouth smiles, like the other half tried but was so awestruck it fell back down again. “I’m Kira. That’s Charlotte, and the little one is Lynn.”

  Charlotte’s smile is as wide and bright as the sun, even without showing her teeth, and as peaceful as a slow river on a summer night. Her expressions remind me of those buddhist monks I saw in one of dad’s ‘Asian culture’ books.

  “Greetings, sister,” Charlotte says. Her voice is like a song lark’s, or a heavy leaf fall in autumn. Rich and soft, light and mesmerizing. I notice the shape of her body-- wide and voluptuous, a waterfall of curving waves, full and bright like a lotus cupped in your hands.

  Lynn’s eyes look at all of the other reactions before she looks at me. “Wait… this is…”

  “Rosie!” She springs out of bed, her braid falling out of place, and she latches herself in a hug around me. “I knew you’d come for us, Rosie! Charlotte and Kira and Regan always said ‘Lynn, don’t get your hopes up, it’s been a long time and she’s probably not coming’ but I TOLD them, I knew that you would! I knew you’d find us. Or that Leon would find you. If he didn’t and you got lost someplace I was going to have to find you myself! I love Leon. He’s always so nice to me and he’ll bring me chocolate milk from the palace-- it’s so good! You’ll have to try some. Oh man, you look tired, Rosie! Will you get to stay in our room?”

  I don’t know how to handle Lynn all at once, but she makes my heart feel warm and whole.

  Charlotte strides over as well, her feet feathers on a floor of clouds. She wraps herself around me. “Rose.” I try desperately not to drown in her cleavage, but it feels so impossibly perfect to be hugging a sister I didn’t know existed until a few days ago.

  Kira, still seeming a little wary, shakes my hand. I understood immediately; she just seemed much more private and reserved, and not as visibly loving. Sort of like Regan, in a way. I would have to earn her trust and affection before we could truly be sisters.

  “You have been experiencing a great deal of trauma, haven’t you,” Kira says. It is very obviously a statement, and not a question in the slightest.

  I look at the floor and nod, “I’ve been dealing with some emotions I don’t really understand. But I am here to help the cause however I can. It’s… it’s really great to meet all of you.”

  “The pleasure is ours. What has Leon told you about our mission?” Kira says. I’m not sure whether she’s testing me or if she wants to fill me in if I end up missing any bullet points.

  The image of his full lips and warm breath right in front of me leaps unbidden into my head. I shake the thought out. “He said we’re trying to cure the plague, destroy the crow people, and defeat Calico Exodus.”

  “And do you know what part we, as sisters, play?”

  I shake my head.

  “We are the ones who must kill the sons of Deno. Nobody’s power but our own can stop the Crow Lords-- that’s their official name, you know. But, for example, if one of the Nightingales were to slash at one of the Crow Lords, it wouldn’t hit them. There would be no wound to show for it. But if one of us does the same action, it will result in a wound. We hope that it will prove fatal.”

  “Who are they?” I don’t really know how to phrase the question. “Er, their names, I mean. What are their names. What are they like?”

  “We know very little about their personalities besides the fact that they’re all substantially evil, as they were born to be, and they each have their own ‘power,’ similar to us. Lowell, son of trickery. Peregrine, son of seduction. Hawthorne, son of destruction. Jericho, son of emptiness. And their leader, Calico. Son of madness.”

  I didn’t know meeting my long-lost sisters would be so serious right away.

  “Evan-- er, I mean, Jericho, is dead,” I say.

  “What? Have you already killed one?” Kira asks. Lynn clings to Charlotte’s long, flowing sleeves, looking nervous.

  “No. I think he… I think he killed himself.”

  “Well this is… this is… unprecedented. How do you know?”

  How am I supposed to explain? “We were best friends for a very long time. He said he was in love with me. And he left me a note in his coffin, and four opal daggers to match mine. I’m fairly sure he’s dead.”

  Kira grabs my shoulders. “Where’s that letter?”

  I squint, trying to remember. “I… Oh! I gave it to Leon.”

  “Get the letter.”

  “I… Um… Okay. Where’s his room?”

  Lynn takes my hand, “Come on, Rosie! I’ll show ya right to him!”

  His door is black, and I can hear piano music coming from inside his room. I think it’s ‘Silent Night.’

  “I’ll be back,” I tell her. She grins at me, nodding in eagerness as she skips back to her room.

  I take a deep breath and knock on the door. Nothing.

  I try again.

  Nothing.

  Frustrated, I turn the handle and am glad to find it open. The room is dimly lit, but he’s not in here.

  “Leon? Hello? It’s Rose-- er, Jay. Er…” I’m glad he’s not there to hear me sound like a total idiot. I see a handle glimmering in the candlelight and I open it, which leads me down a very small corridor that opens into a room lit only by moonlight from above. Leon is, indeed, playing ‘Silent Night.’ He’s wearing a dirty white v-neck and gray sweatpants, and his feet are bare. His right hand caresses the keys while his left holds a bottle of beer to his lips.

  He doesn’t notice me, but his music… I can hear every sad person’s tears across the world in his music, like his piano is infused with human pain and sorrow. It elicits such a strong feeling of soul that the world falls away completely.

  “Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright. Round yon virgin mother and child, holy infant so tender and mild--”

  The crash of a bottle on the floor brings me away from the trance of singing, and his right hand accidentally flops awkwardly over the keys.

  “Jay.” He stares directly into my eyes. I don’t know what emotion I’m supposed to be reading from him. I can’t tell if it’s anger, fear, surprise, or nothing at all. “Why are you here.” His words slur together like cobwebs in a wet bush.

  “Why are you drunk?” I ask. I can’t help it. I hadn’t properly steeled myself for the word ‘drunk,’ so when it slips out of my mouth my heart leaps in my chest and everyt
hing stings and knocks me back.

  “The loneliness isn’t so bad if I can drink it away,” he mumbles.

  I have the strangest urge to touch his lips with my fingers. They look so soft and warm.

  Like his hands feel.

  “There are at least a hundred people here. There’s no reason to be lonely,” I say softly.

  He slams a fist on the keys, a burst of angry discord. “Nobody gets it. I’m the leader. I can’t be running around being friends with everybody. I have a job to do.”

  “There’s more to life than this,” I say. “There’s more than making the world right when you can’t even make yourself right.”

  He glares at me, “There’s not a damn thing wrong with me.”

  “You’re drunk,” I say, “You need to sleep, maybe. I can talk to you in the morning. But it doesn’t have to be this way, Leon.”

  I turn around to head out the door.

  “Wait.”

  I stop in my tracks and refuse to turn around, when I feel him. His breath on the back of my neck, lips dangerously close. One of his feet is set between the two of mine, and he wraps his arms around me, laying his chin on the top of my head.

  I feel a silent fire in my blood. My arms begin to shake imperceptibly, and my breathing staggers. He is everywhere, all around me, and his breath smells like alcohol but he also smells like forests and horses and music.

  There is music in everything.

  My eyes flutter shut as he holds me, pulling me close to his chest.

  “Sometimes I look at you and the way you look at things,” he whispers, “And it seems like, out of everything in this world, on this planet, you are the one thing that makes sense.”

  “I don’t think you’re real,” I confess.

  “And what makes you say that?” He asks, breathing soft and shallow, barely there at all.

  “I feel so different when I’m around you. It… it’s…”

  “You’re uncomfortable,” he says, “Around me. I make you uncomfortable.”

  “Y-y-yes.”

  “I make your heart beat faster.”

  He turns me around and he’s looking right into me and I wonder if he really is drunk or if his intensity supersedes reasoning.

  “Yes,” I confess.

  “I make your palms sweat.”

  “Not really.”

  He laughs, “Your honesty is so beautiful. You’re like Debussy’s Clair de Lune. Somehow simple and complicated and soft and tender, and when I see you, everytime I see you, all I want to do is play piano for you.”

  “Could you play piano for me now?” I whisper. “Clair de Lune?”

  He slowly lets go of me, but he takes my hand and brings me over to the piano with him. “Sit,” he says, patting the empty space on the bench beside him.

  I sit, and he plays.

  Every note is so deliberate, tender, full of life. The notes echo through my head like butterflies in a snowglobe and I want to live in the preciousness of this moment forever. I find myself leaning against him, breathing him in, and he plays no different than before. I feel the muscles in his arm move fluidly as he plays beneath my head, and I am baptized in some holy moonlight and piano and Leon ceremony that’s happening and I don’t understand anything, but I feel everything, and the only word I can think of is the word ‘infinity.’

  When he’s done, I see that he’s crying. I don’t know why he is, and I didn’t know it was possible for him to cry, but he somehow looks even more beautiful in his tender vulnerability.

  I take the opportunity to touch his lips. They’re perfectly soft, like cotton, just like I hoped they’d be. I smile, and he smiles through his tears.

  “If I weren’t drunk, I would kiss you,” he says quietly.

  “I don’t think you really are drunk,” I say back.

  His eyes narrow. “Get up.”

  I obey.

  He puts his hands on my shoulders and runs them down the length of my arms, painstakingly slow. The deep stirring of arousal tears my world apart, and I want to press myself against him, I want to be a part of him, I would do absolutely anything just to--

  He pins my arms against the wall and his entire body has trapped me in heaven, rubbing against me, and he presses his warm, soft lips to mine with the ferocity of a predator and I kiss him back, our lips two oceans without distance between us. He fingers the hem of my shirt just enough to lift it so that he can touch my stomach and I am the sand and he is the wave that takes the sand away.

  I kiss him madly, and I’ve never kissed a boy but I think I’m doing it right because he moans in pleasure and pulls my pelvis close to him, his hands slowly moving lower on my back.

  I feel his lips breathing life into the nape of my neck, and he kisses up to my ear. “You are so damn gorgeous,” he breathes, and he kisses me nearly angrily for a few more moments, his lips desperate and ever searching, his hands desperate and ever-roaming, the world is not enough for him, he wants everything that I have and don’t have and our bodies are quiet hurricanes when he pulls away.

  “I’m sorry,” he chokes.

  “Why… why did you stop?”

  “I can’t do this to you. I can’t do this to me. We can’t do this.”

  “Go back. Please. And forget about me. I will only hurt you, Jay. Please, just… just forget. Forget everything.”

  I shake my head, “Leon, I don’t understa--”

  “You don’t need to understand!” He yells at me, slamming a fist on the top of the mahogany piano. The sound reverberates through the room, a deep bang, and I may as well have been stabbed in that moment.

  I back up, terrified, my body ceasing to function. I am frozen in time.

  “Go,” he says quietly.

  I can’t move.

  He grabs a half-drunk bottle of beer and throws it on the hard floor, “Get out! Go!” He screams.

  I run. I run outside, into the stables, and I breathe in the horses and I try to forget everything I’ve ever known about Prince Leon, third son.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I want desperately to see Anna and Grace. I need them. And I need them to know that I’m alive and, physically, very much okay. I hope they’re not worried… I’m tired of letting people down.

  But my heart hurts and I don’t want to move from my little bed I made out of hay bales and grain sacks. And I don’t know the way back.

  Honestly, I’m just sick and scared and terrified, and I want to fall asleep for a very long time.

  I wish, last night, I had done something to hurt him. I wish I could’ve taken the shards of glass that he threw at my feet and tossed them at his face like shurikens. I wish I could’ve told him that he was ugly and cruel. I wish I would never have to see him or think about him again.

  But I know that I can do none of these things. I would be lying to him, and the feelings within me, flames that refuse to die down or even waver. He will forever be a part of me and I don’t know how to sever him off.

  I never thought I could look at a boy and think about sex and think in my head that it sounded like a good idea, the right thing to do. I’ve never craved another person.

  And now I want to use my body in ways that torture him and drive him off the brink of sanity. I want my body and my lips and my eyes, my voice and my laughter and the sound of my feet on the floor, I want them to haunt him, and I want him to see me in his nightmares.

  But I also just want to sit next to him, while he plays Claire de Lune, and says that I am his music.

  I don’t know whether I’m supposed to be crying or not, but I’m not. I don’t understand who or where I am. I don’t understand the way life is unraveling and I think the part of me that processes feelings and turns them into reactions is broken, and now can only spit out bipolar stoicism.

  I am slipping away.

  Reaching for hands that I cannot find.

  I go down to the mess hall, ignoring the sound and the greetings from the people I now know. I load up on pancakes and ta
ke a glass of orange juice. I stuff myself with pancakes and sausage until I feel like I could barf at any second. I race out of the room and find a women’s bathroom so I can throw up breakfast, flush it down, and pretend that nothing happened.

  “R-Rosie?” Lynn is standing in the doorway, cupping the button of her Nightingale’s cape with a porcelain hand. “Are you okay? We were gonna train today, if you… wanna join us?” She gives me a hopeful smile and it makes me feel sick again.

  “I’m really sick. I overdosed on pancakes,” I mumble, feeling dizzy. I have to clutch the door of the bathroom stall to stay upright.

  “Rosie, something’s wrong. I’m worried.”

  Half of me wants to curl up with a book and pretend I’m someplace else, but I doubt that treating my symptoms with escapism will help the problem, and I also doubt that locking myself in a room is going to make Lynn feel okay. If she thinks I don’t want to be a part of the family… If my sisters decide I’m weak… I can’t let that happen.

  “Let me change. Where are we meeting?”

  Her face lights up, eyes glittering with happiness and hope. “The training room downstairs. I can’t wait to train with my sister.”

  I nod, “The feeling is-- oh shit.”

  I rush to the toilet to empty my stomach again. I manage to stagger back out, the world around me fuzzy and gray.

  “Mutual,” I mutter.

  After I get dressed, I head down to the training room. Regan is bench pressing, Charlotte is doing yoga, and Kira and Lynn are jogging around an indoor track. The facility is actually beautiful.

  The beauty shatters and turns into something ethereal as I see him come down the stairs, the lines beneath his eyes gray and heavy. Four others of about his stature follow him, shifting uncomfortably from side to side as my sisters and I gather across from them.

  “Gonna be doing our normal exercises, and then for some special practice, we’ll be doing sword practice and hand-to-hand combat.” Leon’s eyes are clouded with red webs and haziness, and he’s perpetually rubbing his left eye.

  Regan smirks, “Old man’s drunk again. Maybe get a little gentler on the bottle, Leo.”