Soul of Stars by Ashley Poston

Author:Ashley Poston
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-05-19T16:00:00+00:00

Ana

Only she could go after the heart. It couldn’t be anyone else.

She kept telling herself that as she drove from the outskirts of Calavan into the wilds of Eros, toward the coordinates on her holo-pad. In the distance, the Bavania Range rose up like spiked ridges on a monstrous backbone, white-capped with snow. The shrine was nestled at the foot of one of those mountains. So close, and yet so far.

She would find the heart and destroy it before the Great Dark could get it. Somehow. The skysailer hummed quietly as she skimmed across the grassy road overgrown with weeds and brambles.

She tried a few times to contact the Dossier—Lenda, at least—but every time she tried, her comm-link just gave a crackle—jammed. Or broken.

When the trees began to swallow up the road, she banked the skysailer up and skimmed the tree line. The wind had a chill to it, but the sun was high and the air smelled fresh and clean, and her hands were clammy with sweat. The chill in the air—the smell of winter—reminded her of the time the Dossier escorted an ex-con from the city-state of Tavenktcha on Iliad to the northern quadrant to Neon City on Eros.

He had been an imposing man, as thick as two men. He had a braided red beard that reached halfway down the front of his barrel chest, and it glowed with optics the way Siege’s did, although Ana much preferred the way they looped into her curls. Di had not trusted him from the start.

“Shh,” she had shushed, hoping Redbeard hadn’t heard. “The captain trusts him, so we should, too. Stop being a worrier. You’ll get wrinkles.”

Di blinked at her. “I am more likely to rust—I believe my components are freezing, it is so cold out here.”

She laughed. “You can’t even feel the cold. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Metal Popsicle.”

“No, but what will happen when all of this frost thaws?” he had asked. “The condensation will get into my hardware and I will short circuit and rust and you will need a new partner.”

Grinning, with her hands shoved into her pockets for warmth, she bumped her shoulder against his. “Nah, I’d just fix you.”

He had been wearing his favorite coat—sage-colored leather with fasteners up the side, his hood pulled over his head to help disguise that he was a Metal. She liked to remember him best like this. Moonlit eyes and a dent on his forehead from where she ran him over in a skysailer and a set to his mouth that was never argumentative—but also never approval. She liked to remember that moment on the frozen docks of the city-state Tavenktcha, if only to remember the way the evening light shone across the slats of his face and reflected off his frosted cheeks.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t want a new partner?” he had asked. “Someone else you could run over with a skysailer?”

She gave a mock gasp. “You’re still on that? It was an accident! I thought it was in park!”

“I believe that.

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