Star’s Guardian Book One by Odette C. Bell

Author:Odette C. Bell [Bell, Odette C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Odette C. Bell

Chapter Nine

Grace

Everything… was imploding.

There’s never any safety in this multiverse. Remember that. That’s what my grandfather had always told me. The one cruel lesson he had imparted over and over again. It’s what had hardened me to the realities of life as a child, what’d enabled me to pick myself up, even after his brutal sacrifice.

A lesson Lieutenant Round had clearly never learned. It didn’t matter that he was a Guardian, had no consequence that he would’ve fought some of the most ferocious fiends in this multiverse. He had too much trust, and importantly, too much belief in his own power.

I don’t know what possessed me to grab his arm and yank him back, had no clue why I chose to save him. Some cruel part of my mind just said let him go first. Let him take on the Maw. Maybe it would buy me some time. But something had been activated within me – this protector I could not shut off. The same woman who’d chosen to throw herself into the path of that black cloud of death rather than let that scientist die.

And that part rose to the fore so violently now, you could’ve tamped it down with a god’s hand, but it would’ve just bitten back.

All it took was for me to yank Lieutenant Round back for something to catch up in his head. There was another screech. Lord knows what he thought it was. Maybe the station coming to his aid? But hadn’t he heard the utter possessive, dark note of rage and death? He did now. And he jolted toward me.

He grabbed me up by the hip.

The only path we could take was forward toward the Maw or back up the ladder into that mysterious black room. I doubt he’d take me there.

He’d fight the Maw. If he got the chance.

Everything came tumbling back in. I thought I’d changed, that I’d become a protector. All I’d become was blind to my true past and true future. I was nothing but cannon fodder. Food for a higher being.

I could pretend all I wanted, banter with the lieutenant even. I could save someone here or there. But in the end, nothing would count, because the end had always been set in stone. Or should I say blood?

I shook against the lieutenant as he clearly came to terms with what was happening. “Get up the ladder now,” he commanded me with a quick breath as he abruptly dropped me. “Try to get back into that room. Whatever you do, don’t open the trapdoor after you get inside.”

This couldn’t work. I surely wouldn’t have the strength to break through the trapdoor on my own. He’d know that.

But critically, would he have the strength to defeat the Maw? Maybe he was starting to catch up to the unusual circumstances that had brought us here, or maybe just the pitch in the Maw’s voice, because the competent, arrogant lieutenant who thought he could take on a god and win, shook.

Half a second later, the Maw became visible.

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