After I transformed, for the first and last time, I avoided Elia for two weeks. It was too raw. I couldn't carry her disappointment with my own - and I was almost drowning in disappointment. How was I supposed to tell her about my own weakness - and, more than that, tell her that Jonah was going to be her beta?
She wasn't allowed to come over to my house anymore, but she had tried, anyway.
"Lee," she yelled angrily at the front door, "I don't know what happened but you're not leaving me in the dark like this! You can't just disappear on me! I'm not going to let you!"
I gripped my arms so tightly that they bruised. I was only a few feet away, listening to her from the living room, but it felt like a mountain range had widened between us. She was still her. She'd already transformed over a year ago. But I was not me any more. I was defunct, a defect, damaged goods, and she would be happier if she forgot I ever breathed.
"Lee, I don't care," she continued, still angry and insistent, but more desperate, "Whatever it is, I don't care. I'm still here, stupid, and you're not gonna get rid of me."
She left, after that, and the next day I went over to her house. I told her about my first, messed up shift: the way my bones broke, and I bled, and cried, and how the half-transformation made me throw up for hours. I told her about how my canines pushed forward, but my skull wouldn't extend, so the teeth overfilled my mouth in a gory mess of pain and blood and vomit. I told her that the transformation itself wasn't as bad as what came after. Knowing that I'm stunted, and having to face dad, and having to tell her.
She said, "Oh, goddess, Lee."
She hugged me tightly, cradling my head in the crook of her neck. And even though I knew it was weak and wrong, I cried, again.
"You will always be my beta, Lee," Elia said, "it doesn't matter. It's you and I. We don't disappear on each other."
And then she died.
—
Elia is dead. She has been, for almost a month now.
And yet here Luna Dixon is, crying, and it feels like only hours since I heard the news.
"Who," I ask, urgency burning in my chest, "are you talking about? What is the Order of the Third Star?"
Luna Dixon shakes her head violently. "They - my mate, my Andrew, Alpha Dixon, he - " she dissolves in a fit of gasping breaths.
I look around nervously. Does she need water, or something?
"Luna Dixon, please, you're safe."
She nods, swallows, grips wildly at her clothes with shaking hands.
"The Order of the Third Star?" I encourage, kind of wanting to shake the answers out of her.
"Yes. It was the Order. They killed. Killed her. Andrew said - he said - "
Her eyes gleam. She looks like a wild animal, cornered by a predator.
"He said," Luna Dixon continues hysterically, "he said Cordelia did something wrong. He said he - he had to tell the Order, or else our entire family would get in trouble."
"What did she do wrong?"
"He wouldn't tell me. He said - he said it was wrong. So he told the Order, and they, they."
She looks like she's going to start crying again. I stand up quickly and move to the door.
"Will you go find Prince Orion for me, please?" I ask the guard as calmly as possible. "Tell him I asked if he could come to my office."
"Is something wrong, Princess?"
Luna Dixon sniffs loudly from behind me.
"No. It's not a- an emergency, or anything."
Luna Dixon looks slightly more calm by the time I sit back down.
"Luna Dixon," I begin, "I need you to tell me what the Order of the Third Star is."
"Andrew. . . " she begins, "he's an important figure. At the top. We believe - for the moon goddess." She sways in her chair. Is she going to pass out?
"The Order took us in. Taught us. The Order is for truth."
This seems to be all she wants to say.
"Who are you talking about?"
I wonder if she even heard me. Suddenly, new tears are shining bright on her beautiful face.
"He's gone!" she cries, "He's gone with them! I was supposed - to wait, to pretend like he was still here, like normal - but with Cordelia gone - and it never sat right with me - they killed my daughter, they killed my Cordelia!"
The color suddenly drains from her face.
"They're going to kill me," she whispers, her voice almost too soft to understand. Her unfocused eyes drift from my desk to the window behind me. "They're going to kill me."
She's really starting to freak me out. When the door opens, I jump - but it's just Orion.
"Lee - " he begins, but then looks at the mess of Luna Dixon and stills. For a moment, he just stands, confused, in the doorway.
"You're going to be okay," I tell her.
Orion walks forward, calm authority radiating out from him like sun rays.
"Luna Dixon," he begins, leaning down to look at her, "what is the matter?"
But Luna Dixon is beyond us. Her eyes look past us, unseeing. One last, cold tear falls from her chin.
—
"You really don't know who she was talking about?" I ask Orion desperately.
For ten minutes, Orion and I had tried to communicate with Luna Dixon. She may as well have been dead. Orion told the guards to take her into protective custody, and she had enough life in her to stand and walk on her own. Now, we're in King Alaric's office. I'm sitting, feeling strangely weak from the encounter, but Orion is pacing the floor, agitated energy filling his frame.
"No," he says shortly. He doesn't look very happy about this fact. "Did Cordelia say anything about them to you?"
My shoulders sink.
"It had been weeks since I'd seen Cordelia when she died."
Orion nods, somehow both sympathetic and calculating.
"Why didn't you see her for such a long time before it happened?" he asks me.
"My father," I begin. Orion's jaw instinctively tightens, but it doesn't scare me anymore. "He - I started my job, here, and in exchange I wasn't allowed to see her any more. He didn't like me having friends. It was too easy for them to notice that something was wrong."
"But why didn't he do that before?" Orion says, frustrated.
I tilt my head to the side.
"If your father didn't want you to see Cordelia anymore, why didn't he just stop you years ago? He obviously," Orion growls, "wouldn't care about what you wanted."
"I don't - I don't know," I confess, "he wasn't always - we were friends, Elia and I, when I was younger, before the whole mess started. It would be too suspicious if I just stopped seeing her suddenly, for no reason."
"When did he tell you to stop?"
"The day before the ball, I think," I say, shaking my head like it can knock the timeline into place. It's been so long.
Orion's pacing makes another round. He folds his hands behind his back.
All of this thinking of Elia is hurting my heart. The last time I had seen her -
"After the Ball," I say, softly, "she was so scared. I didn't understand - everything was happening so quickly. I didn't understand why she was so - afraid."
She was more than afraid. She was terrified. I thought it had just been fear for me. But it must have been more than that. She must have seen something awful. She had left me, alone, at the party. She never would've done that unless something was wrong.
"She found something, during that ball," I say, and the hollow tenor of my voice surprises even myself, "something Dad didn't want me to know."
It suddenly feels like the room is shifting, sending the floorboards into sprawling confusion.
"That's probably why he let me take he job at all," I continue, and horror now coats the passiveness in my tone. "He wanted me to get away from Elia because something was going to happen at the Ball. He knew."
How much did he know? What did he do?
"Well," King Alaric announces as he walks in, "Alpha Dixon is no where to be found."
I realize Orion has stopped pacing. Now, he simply looks at me, and something flashes in his eyes that I think, momentarily, might be fear.
"Orion," King Alaric says. He hesitates, like he's about to break bad news. It makes my skin crawl.
"We do have information on the Order of the Third Star."
Orion's head cracks in his direction.
The King looks at me grimly. "Follow me. It's with our archivist."
So the King, the Crown Prince, and I rush through the Palace.
"How long have you known about this?" Orion asks his father. I'm out of breath running after them, but I strain to hear his response.
"The Order is a terrorist organization," the King says smoothly rather than answer him. "Religious extremists. No mass killings. In fact, they rarely claimed any murders."
"And when," Orion says forcefully, "were you going to tell me about this?"
"They haven't been active in years." The King is definitive, but calm. "If Cordelia Dixon was killed by them, it will be the first public act from them in a very long time."
We finally stop. The archives are huge. It is a room more expansive than any I'd ever seen - larger than the throne room. Shelves upon shelves reach up to more shelves on a second - maybe even third - level.
The archivist King Alaric was speaking of is an older man with a bald patch named Delta Windsor. When the King mentions the Order, he becomes immediately intrigued.
Orion stands close to me. The idea that my father might be connected to what's happening obviously put him on edge. I'm happy he's so close. I feel, somehow, inches away from disaster. How could I have thought that I would ever get away from all of this?
"Have you ever heard of the Knight of the Third Star?" Delta Windsor asks me and Orion, eyes slight with excitement. I blink at him. What a strange thing to ask.
I say, "Of course," at the same time Orion says, "No."
Orion and King Alaric both look at me with the same surprised expression. Even Delta Windsor looks shocked.
"I-I mean," I stutter, "it's just a fairy-tale. A bedtime story."
"Lee," Orion says quietly, "That's not a normal bedtime story."
My nervous smile turns cold on my face. It was Dad, after all, who had given me my bedtime stories. It hits me with horrifying certainty that he did know something about Elia's death. Maybe he even ordered it.
"Princess Lee," Delta Windsor says, "what exactly do you know about the Knight of the Third Star?"
King Alaric and Orion are still staring at me. I clear my throat.
"Well - it starts with the Moon Goddess, right? She was in love with a man, but the Sun, her husband, was jealous."
Orion nods suddenly. I smile, relieved that he realized he knows the story.
"So the Sun tried to destroy the man," Orion picks up, "and in her grief, the Goddess turned the man into a wolf just before he died. She was able to save him, and so he walked the earth as a wolf in the day, hiding from the Sun, and at night he was able to be with the Moon Goddess. Their children are werewolves."
I shake my head, astounded. "That's not how it goes."
King Alaric and Orion share a baffled look.
"The Sun kills the man," I retort, feeling strangely attacked. "And the Goddess was so enraged that she created an army to attack him. They were the Stars. There were three main, like, generals, I guess. The first two were afraid of the Sun, and they refused to fight."
I wince slightly. I had often seen the similarities between myself and the two stars.
"The Third Star, though," I resume shakily, "was willing to die for her, so he battled the Sun and won. He killed the Sun. I mean, not literally, obviously, because we still have the sun, but. You know. And the Goddess was so impressed by him that she made him her Knight, and sent him to roam the earth as her protector. Realizing that he was far superior to the human man in speed and strength, she falls in love with him, and their kids are the werewolves."
Orion forehead is wrinkled in confusion. Delta Windsor just nods, a speculative look still on his face.
"Yes," he says dryly, "that's basically it."
"That's really not how everyone knows the story?" I croak weakly. I wish that they would stop looking at me like that, all pity and confusion.
"Have you ever heard of the Order of the Third Star?" Windsor asks.
I shake my head.
Windsor sighs. "We really know very little about them. Who is allowed in the group, how it's structured, what they want. We just know that they align themselves with the Knight of the Third Star."
"I bet I know someone who can tell us more," Orion says bitterly. "Good thing we haven't killed him yet."
My blood slows like sludge in my veins. Instinctively, my shoulders curl inwards.
My father.
I had forgotten. Tomorrow morning, he will be executed.
In my mind, he was already dead.
"They're transporting him today. They might already be at the execution center," King Alaric states. "I'll have them stay the execution. Give me a moment."
Only half-seeming to listen to his father, Orion steps closer to me, picking up my hands in his.
"It's okay," he whispers, "it's okay. You don't have to talk to him. You don't even have to see him. Father will handle it. I will stay with you the entire time."
I nod my head, but I can feel the blood still draining from my face. The door closes behind the King, and I can hear him delivering a stern order.
"I'll stay with - "
Orion's voice is cut off by blaring sirens.
And then everything erupts.
I can't breathe, suddenly, and I wonder, for a second, where all of the air in the room has gone. But then I realize that Orion has crushed me to his chest so tightly that it's cutting off my air supply, and that he's running so quickly that I doubt I could catch my breath if it was an option.
The landscape blurs, hallways meshing together. I think I hear people shouting, guards running, the panic of a catastrophe bursting into life like a firework. Instinctively, my hands tighten around Orion's shirt, and though I am momentarily confused, I still find some relief that my mate is here in the midst of this disaster. Safe, for now, no matter what's happening.
Orion shouts an order, gruff and angry like I've never heard him. His hands are gripping me too tightly and his fingertips are digging into my skin. It's painful enough that something clicks in my brain, and it's suddenly clear even though the world is still blurring around me.
I close my eyes. I focus on the ringing that is building in my ears, and I swallow the tears that are coating my throat.
Because, somehow, I know what these sirens are for. My voice is too quiet to be heard, but I still say the words.
"He's gone," I rasp, "He's escaped."
Dad.