Soul of Stars Read online

  Dedication

  TO ALL OF THE FRIENDS I’VE FOUND

  ALONG THE WAY,

  AND ALL THE ONES LEFT TO FIND.

  Epigraph

  In a shrine of ancients past

  When the dark has stolen the throne,

  The Goddess holds the end of times

  And there she waits alone.

  And when she fails its heart will beat

  And consume the kingdom bright,

  For no soul lives to tell the tale

  Of a star to shine the light.

  —“The Goddess’s Legacy,”

  The Cantos of Light

  Map

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Map

  I: Starship

  Mellifare

  Ana

  Robb

  Ana

  Jax

  Emperor

  Robb

  Ana

  Robb

  Ana

  Jax

  Ana

  Robb

  Jax

  II: Starless

  Emperor

  Robb

  Ana

  Emperor

  Robb

  Jax

  Emperor

  Ana

  Robb

  Jax

  Ana

  Robb

  Emperor

  III: Starlit

  Ana

  Emperor

  Jax

  Ana

  Emperor

  Ana

  Jax

  Emperor

  IV: Starcrossed

  Di

  Ana

  Jax

  Robb

  Di

  Ana

  Di

  Robb

  Ana

  Robb

  Jax

  V: Stardust

  Ana

  Di

  Robb

  Di

  Robb

  Jax

  Ana

  Jax

  Ana

  Robb

  Di

  Ana

  Jax

  Ana

  Di

  Ana

  Robb

  Ana

  Robb

  Jax

  Di

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books by Ashley Poston

  Back Ads

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  I

  Starship

  Mellifare

  The tomb could only be opened with an iron key.

  Mellifare studied the intricate lock, tracing the curving metal rods and ancient cogs. From the carvings of the cycles of the moon above the door to the scriptures engraved in the lock itself, she was certain this was the entrance to not only a tomb, but the Goddess’s tomb—the one she had been searching for.

  They were deep underneath the shrine in the Iron Palace, where the nobility buried their important dead in stone coffins. She savored the musty, forgotten smell of this death-place for a quiet moment. She liked things better when they were dead. On the other side of this door was her heart, just as Father had said. He lay dead in one of the crypts in this shrine, along with the Grand Duchess, all of them freshly buried and sealed away like books in a library. The abbesses who had survived the assassination attempt on the Empress a few days ago led the mourning prayers in the shrine proper, although there was no one left to sing with them.

  Her optics flickered. She swayed, suddenly, but caught herself on the side of the wall to keep herself upright. A warning flared in the back of her head. She was running low on energy.

  The last few days had been especially taxing. The assassination, the fight after, letting the Empress escape—but what took the most of her power was—

  “Sister.”

  Him.

  The Empress had called him Di, but she had stolen that name away when she shredded his memories and installed him on the throne. He still wore his coronation cloak, as black as midnight, and his red hair was pulled back into a neat ponytail, clasped together with a golden toggle. With delicate silver stitches, he had sewn up that insufferable wound the Empress had given him on his left cheek.

  Quietly, he assessed her.

  “Are you well?” His voice was soft and melodic.

  She hated it.

  “Yes,” she hissed in reply, and stood from the wall. She had HIVE’d him, but she did not have enough power to rewrite him as she could the other Metals. They were simple—but he was made differently. If he had known a little more of what he could do before she tore apart his memories, she would not have had enough power to. He could have retaliated and—well, it did not matter.

  She would not be this weak for much longer.

  Behind the door, in the Goddess’s tomb, was her heart, and once she had it, she could tear this failing memory core out of her chest and return to her full power. And then she would—she would—

  It was best not to get ahead of herself.

  “The key, brother,” she said, outstretching her hand. He gingerly took the Iron Crown off his head and handed it over. She pressed it into the indention in the door, and the intricate locks began to whine and rotate.

  There was a sharp crack, and the door split open, revealing a staircase down into darkness. Anticipation tasted sharp on her tongue as she snatched the glowlight from a nearby Messier’s belt and stepped down into the depths of the tomb.

  As she reached the bottom, she listened for her heart to call her. The sweet sound of it beating.

  There was silence.

  In the center of the tomb sat an intricate stone coffin, dozens of trinkets laid around it on the floor. Vases and relics, golden standing candelabras and pouches of copper coins from long ago with a long-dead Emperor on their faces. In two strides she made it to the coffin and shoved open the lid. It clattered to the ground, revealing—

  Nothing.

  Not the Goddess. Not her bones. Not the heart—

  Nothing.

  Her face twisted in anger.

  With a feral shriek, she shoved over an ancient stone statue of the Goddess and spun on her heels, her eyes crackling red with fury.

  Where was it?

  Had the Goddess stolen it already? Or was it in a different tomb? The prophecy had pointed to where the Goddess rested, and that was here, but her heart was not. She gritted her teeth, hating to be made a fool of.

  The Emperor, at the top of the stairs, gave her a curious look. “Sister?—”

  “Burn it to the ground—the entire shrine. I want nothing but cinders.”

  “But—”

  She extended her hand and the invisible strings of the HIVE wrapped around his code. With a twist of her finger, she rewrote his hesitation into obedience.

  “Yes, sister,” he said.

  From the sanctuary of the shrine came an abbess in an opulent silver robe, two abbots fresh from an Iron Shrine on Cerces a step behind her. They should have stayed on Cerces. The abbess’s eyes widened as she saw the opened tomb behind them.

  “Your Excellence! You aren’t allowed to be back here!” she cried frantically to the Emperor. “This is the resting place of our beloved Goddess! She is—”

  “She is not here,” the Emperor replied.

  Then, from behind the abbess, a Messier grabbed the old woman by the head and with a twist snapped her neck. The abbots shrieked and stumbled over their own feet as they fled the sanctuary. Two Messiers cut them down before they could escape.

  Mellifare picked up one of the candles on a picket stand and tossed it behind the pulpit and onto the purple tapestries of the Goddess’s story. It lit up in a wh
oosh. Fire crept along the curtains and reached into the rafters, crackling and popping, a sound that reminded her so pleasantly of the fire that had torched the North Tower seven years ago. There was something about fire that soothed her—the way it devoured, leaving nothing but ash in its wake.

  A blank slate to start anew.

  As Mellifare and the Emperor left the shrine, the flames caught on the banners of the Goddess, scorched the icons, melted a thousand candles, and burned it all away.

  Ana

  “I should have let you burn,” a voice whispered across her ear.

  Ana quickly glanced over her shoulder, but the street was empty and dark, save for a group of people warming themselves by a thermal heater. She swallowed the fear lodged in her throat.

  E0S hovered beside her and beeped curiously. She shook her head.

  “It’s nothing,” she told the small bot, and pulled her thick fur-lined cloak around her tightly. The voice was nothing even though it sounded like her best friend. It was nothing even though he had tried to kill her six months ago.

  E0S didn’t believe her, and she really didn’t believe herself, either.

  A bone-deep chill wind swept through the narrow streets, ruffling her short black hair, and she shivered. She hated the cold—almost as much as she hated flash-frozen fruits and corsets.

  But she couldn’t bring herself to hate Neon City.

  It was on Eros, but it didn’t feel like the rest of the dreamy, green landscape. Located in the southern quadrant of the planet, Neon City constantly smelled like damp cement, sewage, and fresh rain, but from a distance the city was beautiful—outlined in lights that reflected in the puddles and through the mists that drifted along the streets. Buildings jutted up into the sky like piercing daggers, slick and glittery with rain. It gave the city an eerie, haunted radiance. In the outskirts where Ana walked, darkness clung to the streets.

  It had been six months since Di’s ascension to the Iron Throne. Six months since he’d almost killed her when he drove a lightsword through her stomach—no, she couldn’t think about that. Wouldn’t. Or the scar on her stomach would throb, and she would remember the HIVE red of his eyes, and the way he whispered so softly against her ear, “You should have burned.”

  And Di—her Di—was lost to the HIVE forever.

  She barely even understood what the HIVE was—part AI, part brainwashing virus. Lord Rasovant had created it to subdue difficult Metals, but the program stripped them of their thoughts, their memories . . . everything. Until they were nothing more than puppets. It wasn’t until the palace that Ana realized Lord Rasovant didn’t control the HIVE at all, but something else did.

  The Great Dark.

  She didn’t know what form it took—an AI, a person, a monster—but she had seen something terrible in the red of Di’s eyes as he slid the blade into her stomach.

  Another gust of wind rushed through the street, picking up pieces of trash and dried leaves, and blew her hood off.

  She and E0S passed an Iron Shrine, hollowed and burned out, like dozens of others in the kingdom. No one had found the arsonist yet, but the Emperor, and the Ironbloods on the Iron Council, blamed rogue Metals—just like they blamed rogue Metals for her assassination. In the wake of her death, the Emperor had HIVE’d so many more Metals than ever before, creating an army of thoughtless soldiers.

  In response, Siege and her fleet had created sanctuaries: places where Metals, and those who supported them, could go to be safe.

  Or, at least, safer.

  The front doors of the Iron Shrine had been blown open, hanging charred on their hinges, the temple itself a gutted corpse, blackened and ash swept, and the holy tombs beneath it were desecrated. The building had stood for almost a thousand years, and even after the fire it still stood. Rogue Metals wouldn’t burn a shrine for nothing—ransack a tomb without taking anything out of it.

  It didn’t make sense to Ana.

  The HIVE was behind it, she was sure of it. The fires started soon after the Emperor took the throne, and every shrine was destroyed in the same way—the pattern was too exact. The HIVE was searching for something.

  But what it was, she couldn’t figure out.

  A small group of people huddled inside, around a low-burning flame in a trash can. A lively fiddle carried across the wind, filled with voices in holy songs. It reminded her of the tunes Wick used to play and Riggs sang off-key—when she would pull Di out of whatever boring medical book he had been engrossed in and they’d dance.

  Or attempt to.

  Metals weren’t very good at dancing.

  Her ears perked at the familiar sound of footsteps—Messiers.

  “Scatter!” a girl cried, and the group split in different directions, jumping out of the burned windows and between the crumbling walls.

  She quickly pulled up the hood of her cloak and slipped into the shadowed stoop of a house, E0S ducking into her cloak. The patrol grew near, and she slipped her hand into her inner coat pocket, fingertips brushing against the small cubed memory core—Di’s—the size of a plum and cold to the touch.

  She held her breath as the Messiers passed. Pristine blue uniforms, universal blue eyes, polished boots, and polished metal faces.

  When they were gone, she slumped against the door, her breath rushing out of her lips in a puff of frost.

  She tapped the comm-link clasped to her cloak and traveled on down the street toward her destination. “There’s a patrol in the slums tonight, but I’m almost at the coordinates.”

  For a moment, there was only static in her earpiece, and then her captain said, “Of course there is. Probably there to arrest another Metal. Be cautious, darling. Robb, Jax, check in?”

  “We’re standing by” came Robb’s distinctly Erosian accent.

  There was the soft murmur of voices in the background. Robb and Jax were gambling nearby in one of the slum’s bars.

  “Jax, don’t let him bet too much,” the captain added.

  Jax gave a playful gasp through the comm-link. “Robb? Never. He’s a saint with money.”

  “Yeah, with spending it,” Lenda, the Dossier’s gunnery lead, groused.

  Laughter filled Ana’s earpiece, and it set her nerves steady. “I’ll let you know if anything goes sideways.”

  The captain added, “And be careful. If it weren’t for Starbright expressly wanting to see you alone, I’d be down there myself.”

  “With over a million coppers on your head?” Ana pointed out wryly. “I don’t think so—no offense, Captain.”

  “We all have baggage,” Talle, who must’ve been in the cockpit with Siege and Lenda, chimed in through the comm-link.

  “I’ll be careful—on iron and stars,” she promised them, and tapped the small star-shaped comm-link on her lapel to disconnect.

  The coordinates pointed to somewhere on the edge of Neon City and near the shore of Lake Leer. The buildings were rusted, and the only light came from tired neon signs and the cold glow of fluorescent bulbs. Ana came to a stop at the end of the street, surrounded by single-level buildings that looked old and feeble and weatherworn.

  The appointed address was an abandoned shop across the street. The dying neon sign above flickered, spitting colors across the vacant street in short, sporadic bursts.

  Her heart sank a little.

  It must have been a coat shop once, but there was only one left on display. It hung tattered on a mannequin, a ghost of its former self, the red wool faded to a dull grayish pink, its lacy cuffs yellowing, brassy buttons clouded over with age. But, in better condition, it would have been the exact kind of coat she once dreamed about—red as blood, its shoulders chromed in gold, buttons polished, and cut sleek.

  Behind it, standing so very still, was a shape in the window. The neon light flickered against them. Tall and humanoid.

  It had to be Starbright.

  She tapped her lapel, E0S hovering at her shoulder. “Robb, Jax? I found them.”

  After a moment, her captain said,
“Careful, darling.”

  Of course she would be—she had to be.

  But after two months cooped up in the infirmary, a month of rehabilitation, and three more of hiding and running and hiding some more, she was no closer to finding out what the HIVE wanted or how to find the AI that commanded it—commanded Di, and Mellifare, and the countless Messiers—and defeat it. She’d grown tired of running.

  She couldn’t anymore. There was a restlessness inside her that grew every day she sat still.

  Tapping her comm-link off again, she told E0S, “Stay out here and keep a lookout,” and jiggled the handle of the shop door. To her surprise, it eased open. This was either the right place, or a trap.

  She hoped it wasn’t the latter.

  “Hello?” she called.

  No one answered.

  She squinted, willing her eyes to adjust to the darkness, but still she couldn’t see anything. “Hello?” she called louder, and stepped through the doorway. “I’m not here to hurt you. You sent for me. I’m An—”

  The front door slammed shut, and static filled her earpiece.

  Startled, she recoiled deeper into the shop, reaching for her pistol, when she felt it.

  At first it was a gentle tug on the metal bits of her coat—the metal buckles and zippers and cuff links and weapons on her—before an electromagnet above her grabbed them with such force that it picked her up off the ground and slammed her into the ceiling. It held tight to the daggers in her boots, the twin pistols under her arms, even the rings in her ears, leaving her suctioned against the magnetic plate on the ceiling—which hurt like mad.

  Of course it was a trap.

  “Goddess’s spark,” she cursed as she tried to pry her arms off the metal plates, but she couldn’t due to the pull on her favorite heart-shaped cuff links. She couldn’t even reach her comm-link to call for Robb and Jax.

  “This was designed to catch Messiers,” the shadow said in a monotonous voice, “but it seems you have a lot of metal on you as well.”

  Robb

  Robb sincerely hoped whatever Ana was walking into wasn’t a trap.

  He and Jax were waiting in a small bar about three streets over from the address, playing a few rounds of Wicked Luck with the locals.

  The LowBar was aptly named. It was small and dark, the gray walls rusted from a leaky irrigation pipe in the building above them. Mechanics, ship workers, and hired hands alike milled about, drinking and gambling, the stench of motor oil and sea salt strong from Lake Leer. Neons on the ceiling pulsed in gentle waves—it felt like being underwater. Before, when Robb had been a Valerio, he wouldn’t have even thought to step into this part of Neon City, afraid some orphan pickpocket would clean him out. But now he dared someone to find a copper anywhere on him.