Blood of a Thousand Stars

  An Imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  Penguin.com

  RAZORBILL & colophon is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  First published in the United States of America by Razorbill, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2018

  Copyright © 2018 Glasstown Entertainment and Rhoda Belleza

  Map by Diana Sousa

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA IS AVAILABLE

  Ebook ISBN: 9781101999158

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  Major Characters

  Planets

  Part One: The ReturnedOne: Kara

  Two: Rhiannon

  Three: Kara

  Four: Alyosha

  Five: Rhiannon

  Six: Alyosha

  Seven: Rhiannon

  Part Two: The AbandonedEight: Kara

  Nine: Rhiannon

  Ten: Alyosha

  Eleven: Kara

  Twelve: Rhiannon

  Thirteen: Alyosha

  Part Three: The CompromisedFourteen: Kara

  Fifteen: Rhiannon

  Sixteen: Kara

  Seventeen: Alyosha

  Eighteen: Kara

  Nineteen: Rhiannon

  Twenty: Kara

  Twenty-One: Rhiannon

  Twenty-Two: Rhiannon

  Part Four: The CrownedTwenty-Three: Kara

  Twenty-Four: Alyosha

  Twenty-Five: Rhiannon

  Twenty-Six: Kara

  Twenty-Seven: Kara

  Twenty-Eight: Rhiannon

  Twenty-Nine: Kara

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  For Dad

  MAJOR CHARACTERS

  KALUSIAN

  Rhiannon Ta’an:

  Princess, sole surviving heir to the ruling Ta’an dynasty

  Kara:

  Contested Ta’an princess and sister to Rhiannon

  Tai Simone Reyanna:

  Governess to Crown Princess Rhiannon

  Nero Cimna:

  Kalusian ambassador to the Crown Regent’s office

  WRAETAN

  Alyosha Myraz:

  Former UniForce soldier, former DroneVision star of The Revolutionary Boys

  Issa:

  Medic for the Wraetan Fontisian Coalition

  FONTISIAN

  Dahlen:

  Rogue warrior, associated with both the Order of the Light and Wraetan Fontisian Coalition

  Lahna:

  Soldier on behalf of the Order of the Light

  UNKNOWN

  The Fisherman:

  Outlaw in the galaxy’s Outer Belt

  PLANETS

  KALU:

  Most populated planet in the galaxy and ancestral home of the ruling Ta’an dynasty

  KALUSIAN TERRITORIES

  Navrum:

  Terraformed asteroid

  Rhesto:

  Larger moon of Kalu, the site of a nuclear plant before the Great War

  Tinoppa:

  Tiny asteroid equidistant from Kalu and Nau Fruma, home to the sacred crystals

  Chram:

  Dwarf planet allied to Kalu

  FONTIS:

  Largest planet in the galaxy

  FONTISIAN TERRITORIES

  Wraeta:

  Decimated planet, destroyed by a Kalusian attack ten years ago during the Great War

  NEUTRAL TERRITORIES

  Nau Fruma:

  Smaller moon of Kalu

  Portiis:

  Outlying planet

  Erawae:

  Domed city on an asteroid in the Bazorl Quadrant

  Part One:

  THE RETURNED

  “An organic memory is an act of creation, of re-creation in fact—and by definition an imperfect copy, corrupted by emotion and an overload of sensory details. A memory recalled via the cube, however, is the exact memory perfectly preserved. It’s argued such recollections are less visceral, or that something essential is lost. But it seems little cost for the truth in returning to the same moment, countless times, unchanged.”

  —G-1K Summit Appeal to the United Planets, the year 858

  ONE

  KARA

  IF Kara was hot up here, it must’ve been hell down in the packed square. All of Nau Fruma was on a labor strike, and from her vantage point, the protesters looked like a single living organism—angry, undulating. For a historically neutral moon, Nau Fruma was not exactly peaceful these days.

  Sweat stung Kara’s eyes as she scanned the crowd below. She wiped it away with the back of her hand, smearing the moondust that had settled on her skin.

  “Test,” she said to Pavel, the small droid who sat beside her. The heat made everything shimmer in the distance. “Six o’clock.”

  A bright white light flashed across the terra-cotta brick building directly behind them. It was gone in a split second. Kara scratched at the surface of the rusty coin, the one she’d carried around always. It hadn’t been anything more than a good-luck charm until Lydia told her otherwise.

  This binds you to your family. There’s history in this coin, she’d said with her dying breath.

  Kara blinked away the memory. “Again, Pavel: nine o’clock.”

  Pavel swiveled west and used a small mirror attachment to reflect the sunlight.

  “Again: two o’clock—”

  “All right, all right, take it easy,” Aly said as he climbed up the wire ladder that led to the roof. “You’re more intense than half the souls I came up with in basic.” He crouched down next to Kara, half-hidden by the ledge.

  “Just trying to prep,” she said, pocketing the coin. He had no idea how militant Lydia had been. The woman Kara had thought was her mother had a consummate work ethic. Language testing. Survival training. Ways to smuggle credits, and how to get a good read on a person. Kara had thought it was absurd and paranoid, which showed how much she knew. It had paid off, in a way. Kara had survived, even if Lydia hadn’t.

  “You keep ‘prepping’ and someone down there might notice our little operation.”

  “They’re too busy watching the picket line.”

  It had been two days since Kara and Aly had gotten to Nau Fruma, and just one day since Empress Rhiannon Ta’an had come forward to announce she was alive. Since Nau Fruma was a moon of Kalu, news of her return home was all over the holos. Kara would have been relieved about her sister’s safe return, but the holos were also buzzing with the newest speculation: where Josselyn Ta’an was. Rhiannon’s older sister.

  If anyone in the u
niverse knew the answer to that question, it was Kara.

  Because Kara was Josselyn. Or she had been once, even if she didn’t remember.

  After informing the galaxy that she was alive, Rhee had outed Kara, offering a reward for her safe return.

  Actually, she had offered a reward for Josselyn, the missing royal sister and rightful empress, the one who everyone believed had died all those years ago in a spacecraft explosion, along with the rest of the Ta’an family.

  Maybe Kara should’ve been moved by the gesture. She didn’t have a single memory before the age of twelve. Lydia had told her it was a cube malfunction; Kara had believed it all those years, and filled in the big white blank space of her mind with made-up scenarios. And she’d gotten so good at it that soon she was spinning entire tales, fabricating alternate lives on the spot while kids at parties nodded their heads, wide-eyed and amazed.

  Underneath all the lies she’d told, the lies she’d been told, she had a true family and a real home—but what did blood really matter? Rhiannon was a stranger in every other sense of the word, and seeing her on the holos brought on a slew of feelings about a lot of people, most of them dead and gone. Lydia, the scientist who had harbored her. Her actual parents, the late Emperor and Empress of Kalu, whom she hardly remembered. And Rhiannon, the girl who’d come back from the dead, who was in the process of assuming her crown . . . while Kara crouched on a hot roof hiding for her life.

  Aly unscrewed a canteen and took a big gulp, his head tipped back, his mouth parted. Kara turned away and tried to focus. She squinted at the doorway across the way. Her bangs fell into her face, and she pawed at them, annoyed.

  “These will help,” Aly said. From his messenger bag he pulled out a bulky hunk of black metal that looked like two cups attached side by side. “They’re called binoculars. Vintage military gear. They magnify your vision.”

  Apparently you could find anything on the black market. She took the binoculars and put them to her eyes. They were heavier than they looked, and everything came out blurry and small. “They don’t work.”

  “You have them upside-down,” he said, shaking his head and grinning in that way that made her forget her life was on fire.

  “I knew that,” she lied. Kara put the device to her eyes and immediately regretted it. The view was disorienting, claustrophobic, too narrow. She could only see a small cluster of people at a time. She ripped it away from her face and nearly dropped it.

  “Whoa,” Aly said, grabbing it from her hand. “Everything okay?”

  She shook her head. “I feel kind of dizzy.” She realized she had a headache, a light pulsing behind her eye. It wasn’t the binoculars. The meds Lydia had given her were running low. Kara had been taking them for years; Lydia told her the pills were to help manage the severe headaches and nightmares from her cube malfunction. And even if they treated her symptoms just fine, Kara had discovered that the cause was a lie.

  The pills did help with the headaches, but they were DNA suppressors too, meant to skew Josselyn’s features—Lydia’s own biological design, if Kara had to guess. For the last couple of weeks she’d been weaning herself off by taking half doses, then quarter doses, to fractions of a pill every other day. This morning she’d broken a pill apart without a knife, and most of it crumbled to dust.

  Kara had almost cried. Not that she could tell you why. There was something about the end of one simple routine that tethered you to your past. Even if it was a lie.

  “You take it,” Kara said, handing the binoculars back. “Narrate for me.”

  “Well, you’re not missing much,” he said, staring into the binoculars. “Just a bunch of pissed-off Nauies.” He rubbed the back of his neck like he always did when he was thinking. His shirt lifted up to reveal a strip of dark skin, his belly button a tiny outie, dimples on the inside of either hip.

  “Are you well, Kara? I detect a sudden but minor change in your skin color.” Pavel’s eyelights went red. “The medical bible says this is a common physiological reaction to emotional stressors. Blood vessels open wide, flooding the skin with blood and reddening the face.”

  “It’s called blushing,” Aly said. He’d dropped the binoculars; the corners of his mouth had turned up just slightly.

  “You’re a rat.” Kara nudged Pavel with the tip of her boot so that he rolled back with the force. She felt herself flushing more. “I’ll open up that head of yours and rearrange all the inside bits,” she threatened.

  “Better watch out, little man.”

  “This is humor, correct?” Pavel’s eyelights had gone red. “Because theoretically we’re not too far off. There’s new research to suggest that cube-to-cube transfers could be enhanced. Nearby neural pathways can give and receive the info without even being prepped, without even—”

  Aly dropped the hand with the binoculars. “All right, P,” he said, all the playfulness drained from his voice. “Chill out. She was just kidding.”

  “Have him try me,” Kara tried to joke, but the mood had already shifted. Aly knew she didn’t like talking about their cubes. The mere mention put her on edge, reminded her they had all turned theirs off in case Nero was trying to track them right now.

  Aly closed the gap between them and slid his palm into hers. She tried to ignore the way it lit her skin on fire. “You okay?” he asked.

  “I’m fine,” she said, slipping her hand out of his grasp.

  Aly gave her that look he made when he was trying to get a read on her—the slight pout in his full lips, his brown eyes opened wide so his thick lashes fanned out. He had a cut across his left eyebrow, the same spot where he’d nicked it when he was younger—but this time around, it had been the kid, Julian, who’d done it to Aly.

  Julian hadn’t exactly been thrilled when they landed on his doorstep looking for the Lancer. In fact, he got so intense that he’d caused a scene, calling them thieves and managing to get a jab in when Aly was trying to hold him down. But as soon as help came, all they did was scold Julian and apologize to Kara and Aly, who did their damnedest to keep their faces hidden. Apparently Julian had acted up after his dad died, and his being known as a hothead worked in their favor.

  Since then, Aly, Kara, and Pavel had been trailing him, but they kept their distance. Julian was their only connecting thread to the Lancer and the information he should have given her before his death. Kara was sure it had to do with the location of the overwriter—the same technology that Lydia had used to hack into Kara’s cube and erase her memories of being Josselyn.

  The same technology Lydia had told her about before she died. The technology that Kara wanted to destroy.

  But first she had to find it, and they didn’t have a whole lot to go on. The three of them had combed all available information about the G-1K summits, where the galaxy’s scientists got together to develop the cube—but nothing concrete turned up in any of the policies, ethical standards, reports, or updates. Kara even did a deep dive into the conspiracy theories about the overwriter, and some suggested a kind of prototype had been developed in the Outer Belt, which functioned by deleting simple memories stored on people’s cubes via a giant shared network that rivaled UniForce’s. But Kara already knew that, since it was her memories that had once been removed—and it didn’t give her any new information. There had always been rumors. They needed something concrete. And their only lead was Julian.

  Now, Kara waited for Julian to leave the dojo, like he did every afternoon. She squinted back down at the crowd. Today, she would finally get inside.

  “If I could choose any superpower, I’d read your mind,” Aly said.

  “You don’t want to be in there.” She shook her head. “It’s all messed up.”

  “I want to see all of it. Even the messed-up parts,” Aly told her. He moved closer so that their shoulders were touching. “Especially the messed-up parts.”

  Kara fought the urge to loo
k over at him but gave in anyway.

  “Your eyes,” he said softly, their lips a breath apart. She looked at that little spot at the center of his upper lip—where it dipped in just so. “They’re changing color again.”

  Kara blinked. The rest of the world rushed back in; she felt like she’d woken up from a spell.

  “Pavel!” she called back, and demanded his mirror when he rolled close, bringing it to her face.

  “I didn’t mean anything . . .” Aly had started to say. But Kara shook her head. She saw it: the golden hue of her left iris, the tiny specks of green dotting the center.

  “They haven’t changed that much,” Aly said, backtracking.

  Kara’s tongue felt thick. They had changed. She was different. The faint headache suddenly became an intense throbbing behind her right eye. She fished the eye drops out of her pocket; they had quick-fix DNA-suppression properties to keep her eyes the same color. The liquid burned when she dropped it on her cornea.

  “Hey,” Aly said, taking her hand again. “I don’t know why I even said anything. I can barely tell.”

  She didn’t pull away this time, but looked down at the way their fingers interlaced—and how his knuckles were red and raw from everything he’d been through in the last few weeks. It felt like a lifetime had passed since they met on the zeppelin. The world was at war. Everything had changed, including her face.

  “You’re a terrible liar,” she said.

  “Four o’clock!” Pavel announced.

  Aly squeezed her hand. “We’re done with the drills, P,” he called behind them.

  “Not a drill. Target at four o’clock.”

  Kara ripped the binoculars from Aly’s hand and looked in the direction Pavel had called. There was Julian, exiting a structure, with his telltale slouch. Kara locked eyes for a fleeting moment with Aly before they gathered their things and each threw their duhatj on.