Page 29 of Starchaser
Will reaches for him, but Henry shakes free of his grip.
“Henry, wait!” I call out, but he doesn’t turn around, and Will makes no further attempt to stop his brother as the conservatory door slams shut in his wake.
An uneasy feeling slithers down my spine, and while I agree with Henry’s reaction—while I think he’s justified in feeling this way—Will’s admission brings to mind a question I can’t ignore. “So couldn’t you just do that with every member of the Order until you’ve found the spy?” I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. “And what about the princess? Couldn’t you justpersuadeLeo to tell you if she’s actually possessed?”
Titus snorts, his arms folded as he leans against the trunk of the old oak. “As if William’s magic were any match for the queenof Underlings,” he says, picking at the blood under his fingernails. “No offense, mate.”
“It’s true,” Will says with a sigh. “My power is limited. We rely on the Order’s marks—on our enchanted tattoos—to reveal dishonest intentions, but with all magic there are… loopholes. With persuasion, I cannot always guarantee that whatever Order member I interrogate isn’t protected by an enchantment of some kind. Ever since the gift of persuasion started to manifest in bonewielders in the past couple of centuries, people have invented new, clever means of dispelling it.” He glances at my bracelet. “Much like the one you wear on your wrist.”
I touch the bracelet, running my thumb over the soft, worn leather, a fresh wave of anger rising up in me at the thought of Will using his magic to make me sleep. “But you’re able to persuade me.”
“That’s because your bracelet protects againstUnderlingcompulsion,” he explains with a grimace. “Not bonewielder persuasion.”
A long silence stretches out between us, and I find that whatever anger I might have felt a moment ago has been replaced by a sick feeling in my gut.
“How did you find out?” I ask Killian, turning my back to Will, cutting him out of the circle completely. “About the spy?”
“An elite member of the Order passed on the information just after the king announced his plans for you,” Killian answers, his brow furrowing. “They’ve asked me to inform you that further instructions will be given when you arrive at Castle Grim.”
I blink, struggling to process what he’s just said. “Who is this elite member of the Order?”
“There are only a few of them.” It’s Will who answers, and I turn on instinct to find him shifting in his stance. I realize I’ve never seen him this uncomfortable. “No one knows how manyexactly, and no one knows their real names, but the elite consist mostly of humans and Myths.”
He reaches for me, again, but I step toward Killian, just out of his grasp, turning my back to him once more. “Who?” I ask him, as if prompted by something deep within—as if spurred by some invisible force, though I can’t begin to understand the feeling in my chest when Killian seems to notice the urgency in my voice, the way his keen eyes seem to realize something has shifted in me at the mention of this elite member of the Order.
Killian answers, his voice almost reverent, “We received our orders from a Nightweaver by the name of Dawnrender.”
The world is a black-and-whitephotograph. I focus on this thought as Mother recites Father’s burial rites from Captain Gregory’s Psalter, in the same spot where we memorialized Owen. In most of—if not all—the books Father gifted us, there would be photographs of animals, or cities, or recipes, all inked in black and white. Stark, and shaded, and lifeless. An impression of the real thing. A moment forever frozen in time.
“… may the Stars proclaim its glory!” Mother concludes, lifting her hand in the air—two fingers pointed at the sky in lieu of a pistol.
My siblings and I follow suit, and out of the corner of my eye, I notice Killian lift his hand as well. He and the Castor family insisted on joining us, along with Jack, Sybil, and Boris, the chauffeur.
Titus and his Bloodknights already began the trek to the trainstation, leaving behind Flynn and Gabriel, who keep a respectable distance from our small gathering, watching from afar.
Our train to Jade is scheduled to depart shortly after sunrise, and as Mother dismisses us, only a thin pink line peeks over the cliffs that encircle the valley. The sun has yet to rise as our group disperses, all headed back down the hill toward Bludgrave, where our trunks have been loaded into the convoy of motor carriages waiting to take us to the station.
Will looks as if he intends to walk with me, attempting to catch my eye from where he starts down the hill with Annie by his side, but I hang back, making my way to where Mother stands at the top of the hill, her face turned toward the horizon, smiling despite the tears that streak her weathered face.
“Out with it,” she says, shooting me a sideways glance. With the wind casting her hair behind her, she looks as if she were standing at the helm of theLightbringer.
I gnaw on the inside of my cheek, my hands balled into tight fists at my sides. I open my mouth—close it. Everything she and Father ever told me was a lie—who we are, what we are, where we come from. Now, Father is gone, and while I know that Owen is still alive, Mother has lost her husband and believes she’s lost her son, too.
So what can I say? And how can I tell her what I know without revealing that Owen is alive—that he’s working for Morana? I know I’m part Nightweaver—a bloodletter. I know that I’m cursed. I know that if I don’t find a cure, I will die and she will have lost a daughter to the Underlings as well. What more can she tell me, and how will it change the fact that no matter what happens, I must face this alone?
I want to tell her that I know the truth and that while I can’t bring Father back, I am going to save Owen. I’m going to save usall. I’m going to make the king and queen pay, and by the time I’m through, both Underlings and Nightweavers alike will come to fear the name Aster Oberon.
“He won’t have died in vain,” is what I say instead.
Mother watches the sun rise, flurries of snow catching in her eyelashes. “I know,” she says quietly. She takes something from her coat pocket, and at first glance, I think that somehow Mother holds Captain Shade’s medallion. But as she slips the gilded chain over my neck, my hands cup a small gold pocket watch. “It was your father’s,” she whispers, her eyes brimming with unshed tears. “Go ahead, open it.”
My hands tremble as I run my fingers over the hand-engraved script on its face.
There is still time to chase another star.
I swallow around the ache in my throat as I recognize Father’s handwriting—as I trace the words he wrote there—and open the lid to discover there’s more to the pocket watch than meets the eye.
Inside is a compass on one side, a timepiece on the other.
