Chapter 1 Hunter
HUNTER
Fire scorched Atlas’s lungs.
The Celestial breathed through it, not feeling a hint of pain, even as ash stained his clothes and filled his body with every inhale.
He had only one thing in mind.
Her.
The cityscape was cloaked in ash, tendrils of smoke puffed in mushroom-like clouds, obscuring his vision. He was the only living thing for miles—except for her. He sensed her heartbeat and her breath, a twin to his own, shallow and light as she struggled to take in air.
Each one grew fainter and fainter.
Atlas ran past smoking ruins, past Rogues feasting on bodies in the streets.
The stone-like appearance of the Rogues was threaded through with pulsing blue energy.
One Rogue loomed nearby, its clawed fists crashing through the brick of a house.
No screams or cries for help came from within—the owners had already perished from proximity to the explosions.
The energy emitted from the Nova in the area was deadly.
The Rogue’s pointed head butted against the roof of the house, making shingles crumble as rubble fell to the soot-stained concrete streets.
Atlas ignored it, even as the Rogue tugged a dead woman from inside.
Her skin was pale, threaded through with veins of blue from the excess of Nova, brown hair limp, half-fallen in her face as the Rogue bent down and held the woman like a ragdoll in its rocky grip.
Atlas knew what was going to happen before he saw it.
He turned his head just in time. The obscene rip as the Rogue tore the woman in two echoed around him. He kept walking, but the sounds of the Rogue feasting upon the woman’s flesh followed him.
That could easily have been her.
The grey smoke dissipated for only a minute, long enough to reveal a house at the very end of the street.
Picture perfect. A white picket fence, a green manicured lawn.
But the tranquility of such a life was nowhere to be found, tainted by ash and the trilling calls and ear-splitting screeches of the Rogues.
A smaller, midlevel, obsidian-colored Rogue ran forward on its hands and feet, jaw hanging open with a cry as its nostrils flared, scenting fresh meat. Atlas wasn’t prey to the Rogues, but they still sensed his heartbeat. And that was more than enough to gain their attention.
Atlas didn’t let himself feel fear. He merely raised a hand, and a ball of white light knocked the Rogue off its path, forcing it to slam into the side of a house, taking down a mailbox and leaving a trail of ash on the lawn.
It got up, snapping its jaws at him. Atlas raised a brow, letting the pure Nova within him seep out in a halo of light around him. The Rogue shrank back, sensing his power. He was not prey to this Rogue, but a predator.
Atlas smiled.
The Rogue disappeared into the smoke, but that did not mean she was safe. Far from it.
He walked up the sidewalk leading to the house, eyes scouring the ash-coated lawn. A severed arm lay near a swing set, tendrils of ribbon-like flesh hanging from the end of the limb. Next to it, a red mass of intestines curled around the lower half of a body.
The door hung from the hinges, blasted open.
Atlas sidestepped the broken bits of wood, pieces snagging on his long, dark coat.
The house was filled with smoke, the dark light of the television flickering, static illuminating the dust in the air.
Sparks zapped around the tangled cords. Atlas followed the bloody footprints tracked on the hardwood floor, heart in his throat.
Not yet. She was not dead yet. She couldn’t be. He would have felt it.
He’d felt every one of her deaths.
Grief did not crush him, as if a tether was cut, leaving him to drift upward.
So she still lived.
And so too did his resolve to find her in this life.
Walking down the dark hallway, he found her parents’ room. The sheets were soaked in gore, the corpse atop it barely recognizable as a man. A woman was face down on the ground beside the bed—her mother, Atlas assumed. He entered their room and turned the body over with the tip of his boot.
No. Her mother didn’t have a face anymore.
It had been torn off by the Rogues.
Even to one as numb to death as he, Atlas still felt a brief flash of sorrow at the sight.
Not for her dead parents—a Soul Searcher would be in the area soon and collect them to take them back to the Stars… But for her, and the heartbreak this would surely cause.
Could the one he searched for not catch a break? If Atlas had been able to find her sooner, maybe this could have been prevented. Maybe she could have been loved. Safe.
Howls and ear-splitting screeches filled the night air as his boots lightly crunched over broken wood and shattered glass on the floor.
At the very end of the hall, a closed door.
It was painted purple, the paint chipping around the handle.
He huffed, thick emotion tightening his throat as his hand closed around the handle.
Atlas pushed open the door.
His black eyes scoured the room, searching for her.
Quiet.
He held his breath.
There.
The tiniest sound of labored breathing.
He made his steps silent as he rounded the side of her bed, finding a girl splayed on the ground. Death clung to her.
Brown hair pooled on the floor, streaks of blood on the carpet under her. Her frilly white top clung to her in tatters, soaked in scarlet from the red claw marks on her stomach.
Faint lines of blue were threaded under her skin from the Nova in the area.
"No," Atlas breathed.
He knelt beside her, uncaring of the blood that quickly soaked his black pants and the edges of his coat. His hand hovered over her chest, not touching, just feeling. Her pulse was weak. Growing weaker by the second.
She couldn’t die. Not in this life.
Not while they, too, lived.
He growled in frustration, even while her pulse grew lighter.
Faint.
One beat. A pause. Another.
The pauses grew longer.
"No." Atlas felt traitorous tears burn behind his lids. He had not cried in almost a century—the last time had been because of her.
He knew what he would have to do.
"Do not die, Vesperin Vox," Atlas whispered. His palms spanned out, hovering over her chest as he pushed Nova into her heart, forcing the beats to strengthen.
Her heart immediately took to the pure, Celestial-touched Nova—not the corrupted, twisted type that radiated from the Rogues—he was forcing into her.
Soft lights of it sparked around them. His lip curled.
It had better not attract the attention of the Rogues.
He would be safe from them, but not her—not yet.
As he continued to push the pure Nova into her, something strange happened.
The locks of brown hair changed. From the roots to the tips of the strands, the color shifted from a light brown to a stark white. The blue under her skin pulsed with threads of white, almost the same shade as the small sparks of his Nova permeating the room.
He pushed more Nova into her, sweat beading on his brow.
"Come on," he chanted, "come on."
Then, the corrupted Nova flowing through her veins disappeared, the glow within her leaving her with skin paler than death and hair leached of all color.
But still, she did not stir. Her breaths grew even, her heartbeat steadied.
And Atlas sat back on his heels, breathing a sigh of relief.
"Vesperin, you never make it easy for me, do you?" His words were quiet, barely audible even to his own ears.
It was done.
In her heart, she now held Nova—the power of the Celestials.
Coveted so much that it had been artificially crafted by the humans, but no one could replicate something so perfect as a gift from a god.
It had turned twisted, mutated into something so evil that it was responsible for the monsters that had done this to her.
Not only did his Nova make her heart beat and pump blood through her veins, but it also gave her a gift—his near immunity to the Rogue’s sense for his godly Nova. As a Celestial, Atlas was hardly the weak meal they usually hunted.
No, he was the predator. And now, so was she.
It was done.
She would be safe.
And Atlas must leave her.
His fingers flexed. He hadn’t realized his palms still hovered, untouching, over her chest.
Slowly, he took her limp, cold hand in his own, flashes of a million lives and years and experiences sweeping over him from that one touch, alone. It had been so long since he’d felt her skin against his.
"Vesperin. Vesperin." The sound of her name made Atlas weak. It was always the same in every life—the name of her Soul. He held her hand against his lips, breathing in her addictive scent.
Names were tethers to Souls, spanning lives. As intrinsic to a Soul as desires or wishes, names were what designated them when they went to the Stars.
"Know that I am always watching," Atlas murmured against her flesh, tracing over the strong, steady pulse on the inside of her wrist.
He laid her hand gently by her side and stood, staring down at her now white hair.
The wounds on her stomach had disappeared, as if they’d never been there to begin with.
He knew the ignorant doctors that came to her aid would assume it was the awakening of her Stella—Aether—that healed her, and not his gift to her.
The Hunters were near. And he sensed Soul Searchers—they would have a long night of reaping ahead. Atlas could not be seen here.
"Goodbye, Star of mine. I’ll see you soon, but you won’t see me. Not for some time."
"I’m not messing around. Give it to me!" Vesperin Vox reached for the sealed letter in Kit’s raised hand, straining on her tiptoes as she tried to grab it from him.
Kit’s lips curved into a wry smirk, the silver medals on his Fleet uniform gleaming in the fluorescent lighting of the kitchen.
"Not so fast, sprite," Kit said. The stiffness of his gloves crinkled as he held the letter firmly, while his other hand settled low on her stomach, keeping her away from him.