Every Star in the Sky Read online

  I’m not sure if it’s real or imagined, but in the fleeting moments of consciousness before dreaming, I think I hear Leo say, “Anything for you.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “Check the reports again,” Leo shouts, face burning red as the summer sky.

  Kira rolls her eyes, “I feel that my mathematical prowess needs no questioning. I checked. Twice. There’s only twenty of us left, Leo. It’s over.”

  He slams a fist on the table, “No! It can’t… We’ve worked so hard. We were so goddamn close! This isn’t… this isn’t real.”

  Charlotte frowns, “Leo… just have faith. Everything happens for a reason. God is watching over us all--”

  “Charlotte, please,” Regan hisses, “There is no god. No god would let over eighty people die in a fire with no apparent cause. No god would have done this to Lynn. Take your hippie bullshit somewhere else.”

  Charlotte looks as though she’s been slapped in the face. Her mouth falls open and pain fills her eyes. She looks down at the floor.

  I want to say something, but there’s nothing to say.

  Lynn is dead.

  I saw nothing about her, I heard nothing about her. My own sister, who I barely knew, was dead, and there was nothing I could do about it. I would never really know her. What her life was like before this. What she thought about the world.

  I didn’t know my dead sister’s favorite color.

  “G-g-get along,” I plead. “We have to st-stick together right n-n-n--”

  “Stop stuttering, please,” Kira hisses, “I can’t stand it.”

  Reagan gets to her feet, a clenched fist at the ready. “Don’t talk shit about her. She can’t help it, for fuck’s sakes. Just shut the hell up, Kira. You think you’re so much better than everybody, and that you know everything, but you don’t. You know nothing about human compassion. You’re the most selfish, emotionless person I’ve ever met.”

  “Regan,” I whisper. I know she’s trying to defend me, I know all of her concern and fear and anger are pouring out all at once, and I love her the most. I just do. I don’t even know my other sisters. She’s the only sister I actually think of as a sister at this point in time.

  She looks down into my eyes and her form falls to a slouch in shame. “I can’t do this anymore,” she mutters, playing desperately with her hair when she sits down. Braiding, unbraiding, braiding again.

  But what else is there to do? Our world was sealed underground. And now it’s all gone. An empty castle of bones and ash.

  “Miss Rose?”

  I turn around and see that it’s Nick, and I immediately throw my arms around him and pull him in close. Everybody we played poker that day with died. Dave the bad better, Otto, my teacher. All of his friends and pseudo-family were gone.

  He’s sobbing violently. “I don’t know what to do now, Miss Rose. There’s nowhere else for me to go.”

  Where could he go? Where would we go? Of the few survivors remaining, most of them had already decided to leave. The trauma was too much.

  “Nick… What would make you happy?” Leo asks.

  His eyes well up with tears. “I miss my family.”

  “Then go to your family. I’ll give you a carriage ride and some money and food for your village.”

  “They… they don’t want me.”

  “Fuck that,” Brom says as he staggers over, his left foot wrapped to death in gauze and bandages and his right arm in a sling. “You’re my family, and Leo, you’re my family, and Rose, you’re my family. The Nightingales are all family. I’m not leaving a single one of you.”

  A group of haggard looking men stumble towards us. “Boss, we’re out. We can’t do this anymore. We’re broken, and this is over… There’s nothing left.”

  I see a flare of anger in Leo’s eyes, overcame by a slowly setting darkness. He has given up.

  “Okay,” he mumbles. “Thank you for your service.”

  “I should leave too, Leo. Too bad I can’t.”

  Leo looks up, and his eyes widen in shock. “Kitagawa?”

  Ren smiles, “I couldn’t ever leave you. I don’t know what I’d do with my free time. Plus, I have nowhere to go. But mostly… You might be a dick sometimes, but dammit Leo, you’re a leader. You have a vision, a passion, a purpose. I can’t say that for myself or 95% of anybody else on this planet. I’m staying.” He holds a hand out to Leo.

  Leo smiles gratefully, closing his eyes for a moment before he takes Ren’s hand. “Thank you, Kitagawa.”

  “Well… What are we going to do now?” Nick asks, eyes wide as he holds a blanket around his shoulders.

  “I guess the only thing we can do. We have to go to the palace.”

  “Anna and Grace,” I whisper, with the realization that I’ll get to see them again.

  When Leo hears his sister’s name, he shudders.

  The plague… she’s dying.

  I feel the air in my throat grow damp and heavy, like a leaden gas. We can save her. There has to be something, some way… We can still save her.

  I’m coming for you, Anna. Hang tight.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  By the time we get to the palace stables aboard our mounts, the sun is at its peak in a perfectly azure sky, free of cloud debris.

  A few stablehands, eyes wide with surprise when they see our ragtag band with the prince and candidate princess who were likely speculated to be dead, take the horses from us as though we are ghosts, though they can see the rosy flush of blood underneath our skin.

  I grow shaky as we near the palace, remembering the agony of being stripped and scrubbed and waxed.

  “Why did you help me, back then?” I whisper to Leo as we walk towards the palace gate. “In the baths?”

  He stares straight ahead. “I heard your voice.”

  “So… just because it was me?”

  “I think so, yes. I… nobody’s ever complimented my piano like that before. People have always said ‘that sounds nice,’ sure, but nobody knew what I was playing or who composed it. I just… you were surprising. Impressive. And I… I just felt this urgency. I don’t know. It was strange.”

  “I get scared,” I whisper. “I don’t understand life here. I’m used to hunting outside everyday. This isn’t my comfort zone. And I… there’s always been something wrong with me, too. I think. Like something in my head is out of place. I… I hate it.”

  He gently takes my hand in his, folding it like a flower within his warm grasp. He looks out into nothingness as he walks onward.

  “You are perfect, Jay Hart.”

  Suddenly my hand feels like fire and ice but my chest feels like warm sand, and I am a castle on the beach swept away by the waves in his voice. I look at every piece of him, trying to memorize his every feature and engrain it into the folds of my brain, press them away like flowers, forever. Then he can never leave, like everyone else.

  His forearms are strong and I can see the erect veins of his triceps. His shoulders are thick, and his sleeves are pulled up. The little brown hairs that brush over his skin look impossibly soft. And I see his broad chest, his dark chocolate hair, shaggy and windswept. His eyes like the blade of a sword. His jaw is hard and stern and tanned, all of his skin is lightly tanned, and he is perfect and gorgeous and I want every inch of him. I want to claim him as mine, because I am constantly reminded that he used to be a womanizer, and he shouldn’t care about me, and there are so many prettier girls that would do anything for a few minutes alone with this grecian god of a man.

  Why do I want him so badly? It’s not just liking him, and it’s not just lust. It’s my amplified emotions, and I am wearing glasses given to me by my brain and when I look at him, all I can see is a drug that I need, the air that I breathe.

  But he’s just a boy.

  And I’m just a girl.

  I am just a girl hopelessly obsessed with just a boy.

  And I hate it, and I hate myself. Why am I not stronger than this?

  The guards at the gate let
us in. My hands feel cold and empty and all I can see is fire. An underground headquarters lurching with fire, my best friend’s right side burnt away.

  I can’t help but start to cry, and all that I feel is desperation.

  Somebody is reaching for me, and I am surrounded by hands, and I fall to the ground.

  I open my eyes to another place entirely. I am sitting on a log in front of a fire, underneath a sky of indigo and starlight. Evan Olson is sitting next to me.

  I blink a few times. “Evan?”

  “Only to you,” he winks. “Jericho to everyone else. How are you holding up?”

  “Where am I?”

  He shrugs. “Doesn’t matter, really. Home to me. How are you holding up?” He repeats, more stern.

  “I don’t… I don’t know. I feel like I’m going crazy, Evan. You weren’t dead, and now you are, but that’s not even the weirdest thing. Over and over again I just have these moments of insanity. I don’t know what my emotions are doing and I don’t remember who I am or who I used to be… I don’t understand. I’m broken and nothing can fix me. I… I can’t keep doing this,” I say, feeling tears run out of one eye.

  “Your transformation is not over yet,” Evan says, taking my hand and smiling. It’s my right hand, so it should be bruised and scarred, but here it is clean and soft. It looks like regular skin.

  “What do you mean? Where am I-- why do you always have to be so cryptic! Why are you dead! You were alive. I saw you and felt you… there was nothing in your coffin. I’m positive that you are dead and that I am insane. And I am positive that I am… is it love? Am I falling in love? I don’t understand, Evan.”

  He smiles sadly. “There’s nothing wrong with you. You cannot diagnose ‘different.’ Personally, I would try to diagnose the ‘normal’ people. Archetypes are not very fun, I assure you.”

  “You made my sisters and I daggers.”

  “That I did. Notice how it fights back the darkness? That’s how opal works, you see. The intensity of the white, and the veins of rainbow. Beautiful stone, isn’t it?”

  “You’re a psychopath. You’ve never acted like this before.”

  He laughs, “Discovering the truth will do a great bit of damage to your sanity, I can assure you that much. But to answer your questions, we are in the realm in which I now live. It is a forest, and it’s cold and windy, but it’s always peaceful. There are others, but they are hidden from you because you are an outsider that I have pulled in. Now. What did you do with my letter?”

  “I… I gave it to Leo--”

  Oh shit.

  “And?”

  “It burned in the fire,” I say, trying to collect my breath.

  He smiles, “It was written by a madman anyway. I can tell you what you need to do, but you’re going to have to listen very carefully.”

  I nod earnestly, “Of course. Anything. Please, Evan.”

  He nods. “You must grow wings.”

  I get up and start to walk away. “You’re a fucking bastard, Evan. Don’t play with me right now. I can’t handle any more of this-- just tell me the fucking truth! I’m so, so sick of this. I don’t know if I can keep doing this, I’m losing my mind, I--”

  Evan grabs my wrist. “That wasn’t a riddle.” He sighs, long and deep. “Your spirit, everything about you, has told your DNA that you are an angel, of sorts. You have yet to transform. That’s the problem.”

  “I hate you,” I say, crying helplessly.

  He grits his teeth, “I know. I’m sorry. But I’m telling you the truth. Pray to Reya in the aviary in Rowena, and you will transform. The same goes for your sisters. That’s the only hope you have left. But Jay… the p--l---e ha-- f--l--en… d----t g-- i----r---re”

  His image is disintegrating before me, and soon, there is nothing left of Evan Olson. I wake up to bleak sunshine and worried faces over my head.

  “Rose? You okay?” Regan is asking as my vision stabilizes.

  I nod. “I’m sorry. I think I just got a little dizzy. I’m fine.”

  She pulls me up and everyone seems to breathe a collective sigh of relief except for Leo. His eyes are furrowed in concern, and he’s biting his lip.

  “Let’s get you inside. Just in case.”

  We enter the palace, and we hear the angry discord of a drunken piano in the distance. The grand hall is dark, and what once was a thriving metropolis is now a figurative bone yard.

  The clanging of piano hits my ears over and over again, a surging ocean of cacophony.

  I clamp my hands against my ears, driving out the sound.

  “It’s coming from your piano,” I whisper in Leo’s ear.

  He nods, gesturing for me to free my ears. He points at his own sword as he unsheathes it.

  Battle is coming.

  He puts a finger to his lips as he faces the group.

  Silence.

  Arm yourselves.

  Battle is coming.

  My left hand feels stiff but bloodthirsty on the hilt of my dagger. But who, exactly, are we battling? And how am I supposed to be capable of battling after… whatever just happened?

  As we approach the hallway that leads to the piano room, the odor of rotting flesh slaps me across the face.

  Charlotte groans and falls back a few steps.

  ‘You okay?’ I mouth.

  She shakes her head and points up at the ceiling.

  Dozens of bodies hang from the ceiling, hung there by marionette strings. A puppet show of the dead.

  I shiver and look down at the floor as we move closer and closer to the sound of the piano.

  He has fluffy black hair that surrounds his head like fog, and a halo of flies swarms around his cranium. His eyes are a piercing red in the darkness. He stares directly at us as he bangs his fists gleefully against the piano keys.

  “Lowell,” Leo growls, drawing his blade in front of himself protectively.

  The rest of us instinctively guard ourselves with our weapons as well.

  “Ah, welcome to the puppet show, my beautiful little audience,” he says, and his eyes seem to glow brighter in delight. “But let’s start the story with a little exposition, shall we?

  “Once upon a time, a little girl was spat out of Reya’s body. She was certainly beautiful, but what she lacked was any substance or sanity. She was practically an animal. Her name was Rose.”

  The ends of his red lips crawl up to his cheeks like black widows. I feel myself begin to shake, but I refuse to let him affect me.

  “She went through her entire life talking to nobody, just her poor old sweet mum. And then her daddy was slaughtered for her because she was feeble and couldn’t defend herself--”

  “Don’t listen to him, Jay!” Leo yells.

  Lowell slowly cocks his head to the side. “Now, I don’t believe I asked to be INTERRUPTED.”

  He shoves a blast of darkness out of his hand, and the black cobwebs bind Leo to the wall.

  “Le--” Nick begins before Brom places a hand over his mouth and looks at him sternly.

  We have to listen.

  We have to listen to every word.

  Lowell smiles. “Why, thank you, kind sir. Now, where were we. Oh, yes. Now, Rose slowly went insane after her father’s death, probably because she knew it was her fault that he was six feet under. She confined herself to her cottage, and the woods. She talked only to her mother and her dog for many years. She lost all control of her emotions, and she forgot who she was entirely. She was an empty shell of a girl, and therefore, she very quickly fell in love with a boy named Leon. She liked the way he looked at her, and she wanted to possess him the way a horse is bought and owned.”

  Leo stares at the floor with closed eyes, trying as hard as he can to block out the sound.

  “Because this girl, Rose, has been broken from the beginning, for she was never taught to love, and she feels nothing inside.”

  I feel tears beat against my eyelashes, “That’s not true!”

  He smiles, “Oh, but Rose, it is. Ev
ery last word of it. And then there’s Leo.”

  I see Leo’s eyes spark open from the corner of my eyes, filled with silvery dread.

  “No,” he says weakly.

  “SILENCE!” Lowell screams. “Leo was born spoiled and selfish. Born absolutely rotten. He never made friends and he cut everyone away from him so that they wouldn’t see the darkness of his inner self-- so that they wouldn’t see the monster he was and still is. He slept with dozens of girls, stealing their innocence and stomping on it with dirty shoes. He found love for the first time when little Jacob was born. His pride and joy.”

  Leon is staring helplessly, rocking back and forth in his prison.

  “Jacob died,” Lowell says, “Because Leon killed him.”

  “I DIDN’T MEAN TO,” Leo screams, helplessly fighting his webbed binding.

  Lowell’s cackle fills the room. “Oh, but Leon, you did. You wanted a life of sex and booze and glory. A child would only get in your way, no? So it was very simple. You fed him poisoned milk, and you relished his absence.”

  “I DIDN’T KNOW IT WAS POISONED, I DIDN’T KNOW! JULIAN WAS TRYING TO KILL DAD, AND I SWEAR I DIDN’T KNOW--”

  Lowell stands up, spreading his arms outward and overhead as he looks up to the ceiling of dead puppet people. “What do you think, my puppets? Is the audience being naughty and lying about their pasts?”

  Thousands of gleaming red eyes light up the ceiling overhead, and we are basked in a bloody glow.

  “YES, MASTER. THEY ARE LYING,” the puppets say all at once, their voices leathery and strained and high-pitched.

  Lowell scowls at us. “Attack.”

  We are surrounded by bodies on all sides with rotting flesh and yellow teeth, but they are very much alive, the puppet strings making their arms flail madly, lashing us with hidden blades.

  I cry out as I feel a blade in my cheek, and I run through the bodies, pushing through, searching for Leo. When I find him, his eyes are wide and black. He is visibly shaking, like small jolts of electricity are running through his body.

  “Lies, lies, lies, lies…” Leo repeats over and over. I need only press the opal blade to the web and it shatters, spitting Leo out onto the floor.