I said goodbye to Serena in much the same way as Seth and Nate had, hoping to showcase the mature-soldier side to my nature. I wondered if I would ever command the battlefield like Serena had or treat the inheritance I’d been given with her level of reverence and bloodthirsty excitement.
Not that I wasn’t completely devoted to my future, Nate was right, I had school in the morning. And it was hard to picture a future that didn’t include friends, or even family save for Seth who would by then be my husband….
It was hard to see past the Valentine’s Dance in two weeks when I didn’t even have a dress picked out or any prospect of a date.
----
“I think we treat these…. feelings with caution for now,” Jupiter lectured over the breakfast table the next morning. “I’m not willing to rule them out completely, but there is a certain safety in numbers so to speak and right now the numbers are standing on the opposite side of the argument, Stella.”
It was very early, not even light yet, but my parents, Jupiter, Seth and I had all congregated around boxes of cereal and fresh milk bought from a farm down the road, to discuss last night’s African battle and my lingering bad feelings. Seth and I had returned very late last night, after the long journey from East Africa and now we were up, just hours later, trying to have coherent conversations and relay the now muddled details of the battle.
“And this is only the second time you’ve had these…. feelings?” My mother asked, wrapping a protective arm around me. She looked deeply concerned, as if we were discussing the possibility of me having cancer and not a case of mistaken instincts.
“Yes,” I nodded quickly, my unruly bedhead hair shaking out around my shoulders. I paused for a moment, wrapping it into a loose bun at the nape of my neck. “Ok, no it wasn’t the second time. Sometimes I get the same feeling when I’m not fighting…. When I’m just, I don’t know, just going about my daily life. But when I have the feeling then, it’s not nearly as strong and there is always something there to justify them, like a lone Shadow, or a few Shadows interfering with kids at school or something. After the last two fights, the feeling has been very intense, like whoever is behind it is organizing the latest attacks, orchestrating them in some way to find out what I’m capable of, or what we’re capable of.” I gestured between Seth and me with my pointer finger.
“It’s not that I don’t think they’re capable of something like that,” Jupiter jumped back in, his dull red eyes focused on the ceiling as if waiting for the right answer to just fall from the sky. “But, what unnerves me is that nobody else has noticed the same feelings, not even Seth and he has been present twice now. Nate and Serena are vetted fighters, used to feeling the Darkness from light years away….”
He trailed off, finally letting his eyes fall on my father’s and shrugging his shoulder as if there was nothing else he could do. My father stared at him for a moment as if deciding whether or not to trust Jupiter and then he turned to me apologetically.
“There really isn’t anything to do now anyway. If someone is out there watching you, then you’ll come face to face with them soon enough and if these feelings are just residual emotions from battle, they will disappear after a little more experience. We are not in a position to hunt down any Fallen right now, so our hands are virtually tied. We will treat these feelings with caution, like Jupiter said, but for now that’s all we can do. How does that sound Stella-bean?”
“That sounds great,” I agreed, although I didn’t put much effort into any enthusiasm. I knew there was nothing they could really do; I had known that from the beginning. I just wanted to be told I wasn’t crazy, which wasn’t exactly the answer I received. It was a more of a “gee, we sure hope you’re not crazy because all of our eggs are kind of in one basket here” situation.
“And we trust Serena and Nate?” Seth asked, clearing his throat afterward.
The kitchen was silent for a while after his pointed question. Jupiter looked thoughtfully at him, while my parents seemed to avoid looking at him altogether. Another Star’s loyalty should never be called into question because by that point usually we had been betrayed and then some. But at the same time we were operating in completely uncharted circumstances and even the High Council could not be trusted these days. So Seth did have a very legitimate reason for asking his questions.
Jupiter replied first and I had to wonder if he had less attachment to Serena and Nate simply because he wasn’t actually sent from Heaven, but more of a lone refugee that had survived the Darkness and was now hired by heaven to be a sort of consultant of all things Darkness-related.
“I have absolutely no reason to believe that they would be spies,” Jupiter declared with a certain finality. “That being said, they would make the best kind of spies….”
Seth smiled a little at Jupiter’s roundabout explanation and turned to me. “How about you, what do you feel about them?’
“I haven’t really known them that long,” I replied, not willing to say anything that could potentially be misguiding or misunderstood and by consequence condemn Nate and Serena. True, I had only known them for a short time, but they were amazing, skilled fighters that had not hesitated once last night no matter the skill level. And there lights were bright, blinding even.
But I had never been betrayed before, or even met a member of the Fallen. I wasn’t really much of an expert….