Phoebe North - Starbreak

But the shuttle crew wasn’t so easily swayed.

“What if it’s uninhabited for a reason?” Aben asked. “How do we know we can settle there?”

“It doesn’t matter. We’ll be safe in the dome. It’s what it was designed for. Not for crazy, blind journeys back to a ruined planet.”

The dome. I thought of the honeycombed glass ceiling, the fields, so familiar, that now lay fallow in the winter cold. My heart hardened against the possibility. I couldn’t return there—not to fly off to Earth, and not to land beneath the Zehavan skies, either. I knew every blade of the Asherah ’s grass, every single crack in the cobblestone. It was less a home to me now and more a prison. No matter how crowded, no matter how full of bloodthirsty hunters, even the walled, foreign city of Raza Ait was better than returning to the ship.

Hostile was better than dead. New was better than old. Rebbe Davison seemed to think so too.

“We overthrew the Council so that we could be rid of the dome, Alex. You can’t really be suggesting—”

“We need to make do. This is our lot, Mordy.” His child’s nickname dripped from her lips with disdain. “Do you have a better idea?”

Rebbe Davison didn’t answer. He only wrung his hands, hesitating. So I answered. I spun to face Aleksandra.

“What if I do?” I asked, and then winced—my words surprising even me.

“You?” she asked. Her lips lifted, revealing pale gums. I firmed my chin.

“Yes, me. Who saved us when we were attacked by beasts?”

“I would have taken care of that if you—”

“But you didn’t. I know things, Aleksandra. Things about the planet that no one else knows.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Aleksandra said. She looked at the others, her dark eyes narrowed into slivers. “The dome is the only place where we’ll be safe.”

“That’s not true! In my dreams . . .” I began, but my words puttered off. Suddenly I wasn’t certain what had made me so bold. I wanted to be strong—because my boy was here in the city, all fragrant flesh and smoldering eyes; because of the way that Ettie looked to me, desperate and afraid as she stood at the edge of the cluster of adults. But I didn’t feel it. Aleksandra’s hot gaze hadn’t left me for a second.

“Dreams, Terra.” Laurel said at long last. Her eyes were filled to the brim with an apology. I knew, then, that she’d lost too much to ever put her faith in someone like me. “They were only dreams. And they didn’t stop Deklan from dying, did they? They didn’t help one bit.”

It wasn’t fair. I’d tried to lead them away from the beasts—to keep them on the path to the city, to keep them safe. But that didn’t matter to Laurel. All that mattered was Deklan, gone. She would have thrown me into the fire if it would get him back. I lowered my eyes, unable to escape everyone’s stares.

Aleksandra set her hands on her hips, and then let out a long, withering sigh. She turned away from me as her voice rang out through the muggy air.

“I think our best option is brute force. Tomorrow morning we launch a counterattack on the aliens. We rush through the city and return to my shuttle.”

“Alex,” I heard Rebbe Davison say. He was shaking his head, his eyes as big as a pair of saucers. “That’s absurd. We’ll never make it through the city—”

“It’s our best chance,” she said flatly. “Our only chance.”

I heard mumbles of agreement, assent. I knew then that it was useless. She’d captured their hearts long ago; now she held them too tightly in her thrall for someone like me to shake them free. So I didn’t raise any objections.

But that didn’t mean I wasn’t afraid as I stomped off toward the fire. Her plan wasn’t only dangerous for us—for my sister-in-law, for Rebbe Davison, for Laurel, and for Ettie. It might be dangerous for the translator, too. If Aleksandra had her way, he’d be tossed to the side like just another felled tree. The boy. My last, best hope.

I needed to save him. I needed to save us all.

“Vadix.”

Sitting in the tent alone, the light filtered in all yellow and white, I let myself say his name. Not for the first time, but for the first time intentionally. I pushed it out into the air like it was an amethyst sliver of truth, one that I had somehow missed for the first sixteen years of my life, one that I was only now awakening to.

“Vadix.” I stretched out the vowels, let the consonants buzz and then stop short on the tip of my tongue. “Vadix. Vadix.”

I couldn’t remember him speaking it. Not even in my dreams, as he wrapped his body around mine and drew his lips down the soft flesh of my neck. And yet still, I knew. He was Vadix, and he was real, and he was mine . How long had I lived in denial? Once I had told myself that they were only crazy, embarrassing dreams. Everyone had dreams, right? Rachel used to tell me about hers—she and Silvan, back in the alleyways behind her father’s store. Koen, too, had fallen victim to dreams that shamed him. Hot dreams, he’d said. Wild dreams.

I turned over on my stinking blankets. It was time I admitted the truth to myself. My dreams were nothing like Rachel’s dreams. And they weren’t like Koen’s, either. Both Koen and Rachel might have dreamed of boys, of kisses, of frantic flesh pressed to flesh. But their dreams had never invaded the waking world with such color or force. They never dreamed of constellations and then, only after, found those stars shining overhead. They never dreamed of boys who then walked into their lives, speaking foreign languages, their alien bodies fragrant as summer flowers. I really was different from the other Asherati. I was freakish. Weird.

Aleksandra knew it. She’d seen that difference in me and sneered. But maybe my difference wasn’t only a weakness. Maybe it could be a strength, too. After all, it had gotten us down from that mountain. And it had stopped the Ahadizhi from slaughtering us. I knew things. Things that Aleksandra didn’t. Things that she could never, ever know.

His body. His mouth. His name.

“Vadix.”

As I rose on shaking legs and pulled myself from the condensation-dusted tent, I saw Rebbe Davison break away from the others. He stood over me, staring into the fire—far enough away that it might have been coincidence or happenstance. When he spoke, it was out of the corner of his mouth.

“This is dreck, all of it. She’s going to get us killed.”

I watched her as she stood among them, proudly orating. Their eyes were wide at the prospect of freedom; smiles lifted their lips.

“Look at her,” I said. “She’s their leader. She was born for it. They’d follow her off a cliff.”

“Someone else could lead.”

His words spilled out into the humid air with all the levity of lead. I turned to look up at him, though his gaze was still fixed forward into the fire.

“What? Me?”

“Yes, you. You were right—you know things about this planet that no one else does. I don’t understand it, but I know how powerful you are. Necessary.”

I snorted. “Necessary? I’m not even a real botanist yet.”

“With the right people behind you,” Rebbe Davison said, his voice dipping down low, “you could be whatever you want.”

When I didn’t answer, Rebbe Davison bent over and tossed another log onto the fire. As the flames crackled and billowed, hiding us from the others, he flashed his gaze to me.

“Just think about it,” he said, then rushed off to rejoin the others.

I did. Me, a leader. I imagined myself dressed in wool, my shoulders squared, my hair combed straight. It was absurd. There had been days when I’d wanted to belong, to be swept up in the tide of the Children of Abel, to feel loved, supported, safe. But I’d never wanted power. I’d never even considered it.