Starglass

handed them to Silvan. He frowned at them—at me.

But there was no time for that. I took off running toward the lift.

“Terra!” I heard Silvan calling after me. “Terra!”

But I only slammed my hand against the panel, then stepped inside. The doors were already sliding closed when I shouted back. I don’t know if Silvan heard my hysterical, echoing words.

“She’s going to kill her!”

But I realized that it didn’t matter if he heard me. Not one bit.

He was behind me now, left alone in that dark room as the lift plunged down into the ship. It was as if the taut string that had held us together had finally been severed. I’d expected it to hurt, but it didn’t. It felt good. I knew then that I would never love him, that our marriage would never be sealed.

The doors slid open. What was revealed was nothing short of chaos. The stone pavilion around the lift was swarmed with citizens, who had descended upon the hospital and school and lab buildings in droves. They’d shattered every window, storming inside to liberate the computer terminals and gadgets and doodads from the oppression of their outlets. Only the library stood untouched, the stained glass dark and perfect in the evening light.

The crowd shifted and swayed around me like wheat stalks in a breeze. I waited until the crush of bodies parted—and then I surged forward.

The crowd stank of sweat and alcohol. Furious limbs surrounded me, jostling my body as I raced over the pavilion and toward the dome. At last my bare feet found the familiar cobblestone of the dome path. I jogged past the grain storage, barely noticing the people who poured out with arms piled high with ears of corn. Overhead, I knew that Zehava twinkled and shone—pinpricks of light illuminating the purple dark of her continents. I wanted nothing more than to stare up, to study the swirling blue oceans and the white clouds that passed over them. But there was no time for that. I ran forward.

At last I spotted a familiar face. Laurel Selberlicht. She and Deklan were running hand in hand across the green pasture before me. Each of them held sizable stones in their fists. Deklan’s hands were bloody. I couldn’t tell if the red that dripped from his knuckles was from his body or someone else’s. I watched, stunned, as they vaulted themselves over the pasture fence. They’d almost run right by me, but I shouted out to them.

“Laurel! Deklan! Have you seen Aleksandra Wolff?”

Laurel stopped, turning toward me. The frantic smile that had lit her lips fell. She lifted one hand—the one that was weighted by the stone—and pointed toward the desiccated fields.

“They say she took her mother there,” she said. I glanced doubtfully down between the rows of corn. Before I could answer, Deklan gave Laurel’s arm a tug and dragged her down the path.

I stood on the edge of the field, my hands balled into fists. The last time I’d run through the corn, I’d been with Koen. Back then my only worry had been getting him to press his lips to mine. Now I had bigger problems. Captain Wolff. Aleksandra. That knife she kept tied to her waist. My bare toes curled into the soil. I threw my weight back, readying myself.

And then I bolted forward.

Most years the rows would have been plowed under by now in preparation for the long, cold winter. This winter, our last on the ship, they’d been left high. I almost cursed myself to realize it—how the Council would have never left the cornfields in such a state if they’d truly intended for us to stay in the dome. A contingency plan—it had only ever been a contingency plan. Captain Wolff didn’t want to stay inside this dome any more than I did. Mara was wrong and Van was wrong and the Children of Abel were more wrong than any of them. How many little details had I ignored to believe the lies that Aleksandra had seeded among us so that she could put herself in a position of power?

The dry leaves rustled all around me, smothering every trace of noise beyond. There was no shouting. No sound of footfalls or glass shattering behind me. There was only my own breath and the papery-dry swishing of the stalks as I slipped through them.

And then, a voice. Captain Wolff’s voice. I’d heard it lift up over the gathered crowds a hundred times before. Now it was low, grave. I slowed to a stop.

“You can’t do this. Put the knife down, Alex.”

My chest still heaving from my sudden sprint, I turned toward the sound of their struggle. There was a rustle, and then I heard something heavy strike the frost-hard ground. I parted the leaves, peering forward. Aleksandra had wrapped her mother’s braid around her gloved fingers, forcing the captain down onto her knees. Captain Wolff lifted her scarred face to watch her daughter.

“They won’t follow you,” Captain Wolff said. “Not after they’ve discovered that you killed your own mother.”

“Good thing they won’t find out,” Aleksandra said. I saw her free hand flash down to her hip.

Move. Move, I told myself. I pushed forward through the corn, cupping my hands around my mouth, letting out a scream.

“No! Stop!”

But the sound of my voice was buried beneath Captain Wolff’s last gargled breath. Like a doll whose strings had been cut, she collapsed in the dirt. The last time this had happened, I’d taken off running. Now I just stood, frozen, staring down at her body. Her silver rope of hair lay twisted in an expanding pool of red.

Aleksandra didn’t see me, not at first. She was too busy wiping off the edge of her knife against her mother’s coat. I watched as she slid the blade down into her sheath. It fit neatly, as if it had never been disturbed at all.

Then she stood again, and her black eyes lifted. Once I’d thought that she was a younger, more beautiful version of her mother. But though her skin was indeed smooth and clear and without blemish, I now knew the truth.

“Oh, look,” she said, her hand moving toward her knife again. “A little bird. Better catch her before she sings.”

She took one step forward. Now I ran.

I ran harder and faster than I’d ever run before. My bare feet pounded against the cold soil; my breath came out in white bursts against the air. I could hear Aleksandra behind me, rattling the cornstalks as she passed. But I didn’t stop to think about that. I ran, and I ran, and I ran.

Soon I’d spilled out of the pastures. The cobblestones felt like ice against the soles of my feet. The path had grown crowded. I decided to use that to my advantage. I dodged between the bustling workers, who had lifted up their voices in a thudding chant. Hundreds of fists pumped the empty air—

“Stop the Council! Free Zehava! Stop the Council! Free Zehava!”

—but this time my own fingers remained firmly at my sides. I pushed through the crowd, stumbling out again only when I squeezed through the slats of the pasture fence.

Past the lambs, across the dewy soil, I ran. It wasn’t until I was halfway to the clock tower that I realized I had no place to go. The districts ahead were empty now. The people had taken to the fields, and they now followed Aleksandra, who would surely come for me soon. And I couldn’t very well return to Silvan, not after what I’d done to his father. I stumbled to a stop, searching the dome for an escape. But there was nowhere to go. I realized, for the first time, that the glass above might as well have been bars. And then my eyes reached up past the glass, and beyond.

Zehava. It sparkled under its triple moonlight like a whole new field of stars. Each point of light was a home, safe from the frantic bustle of the crowds around me. I stared up at Zehava, my mouth open. I hardly noticed the gaggle of teenagers who had spilled by me or how they wielded wrist-thick branches like clubs. My mind was on the people I’d seen on the screen up in that dusty command room. Not Hannah and the shuttle crew—the other ones, the strange ones. Tall and slender, their bodies had bent like reeds in the wind.

I knew a body like that one.

This dome held nothing but danger for me now. I’d forever be at the mercy of Aleksandra Wolff, the Children of Abel, their knives and clubs and fists. But I’d be safe on the surface below. I’d be safe on Zehava—safe in his arms.

I took off running again. Not toward the captain’s stateroom, where Silvan still waited for me, nor toward the clock tower, where Koen and Rachel had surely joined their hands already and said their vows. No, this time I