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….

“Stella, what do you feel?” Seth pressed, putting his strong, masculine hand over my heart.

“I feel like we can trust them, like they’re fighting the same battle we are,” I answered honestly, although if they were evil it might explain away the feelings I always got and their mysterious absence during my first battle.

“And they’re doing their job,” Jupiter grunted.

“So we trust them,” Seth announced and then so quietly I knew I was the only one who heard him, “at least for now.”

“Stella, keep us updated on any new developments with your…. feelings,” my dad instructed and I tried not to feel irritated with the way everyone kept pausing before they mentioned my weird feelings as if they should all be using air-quotes and snickering at the end of their sentences. “And for now we will proceed cautiously. Jupiter, you still haven’t heard from the High Council?”

Jupiter shook his head negatively, but before he could fully answer my father’s question the “Bat Phone” rang and he headed into the other room to garner his report from Serena and Nate, assuming because the phone rang that they had made it back home and to our or a closely- related time-zone.

I stood up and stretched, taking my empty cereal bowl over to the sink to rinse it out and Seth followed me. My parents fell into a serious, hushed conversation and I had to wonder if they were as worried about my mental health as I was.

Had the High Council traitor known somehow that I would be a loose cannon and that’s why there was a push to choose my parents for Earth, and me for the future Protector job?

I shuddered at the thought of being used because I was weak, or picked because I would never be able to fulfill my duties. My entire body bristled at the idea of someone not thinking I was up for the task and a Warrior instinct flared inside of me to prove them wrong. There were so many human stories about overcoming great odds: marathon runners who had lost both legs, blind piano players, paralyzed artists…. That’s what I would become, the crazy-Angel who should have been locked up in a home for the helpless but overcame adversity to fight evil instead.

Yep, might as well make an action movie out of it. Summer blockbuster, here I come….

“Hey, so I have a question for you,” Seth asked softly, pulling me out of my depressing daydream. “But can we go somewhere and talk?”

I looked up at him, not realizing I had taken his bowl from him and rinsed it out too. Oops, spacing out was so not an acceptable personality trait.

“Sure, what do you want to talk about?” I asked casually although the prospect both excited and terrified me. On the one hand, his sleep-styled hair was extremely attractive on him and his honey colored eyes still burned from the intensity of battle last night. My skin warmed into a soft glow just taking in his extremely stunning face. But on the other hand, I was fighting the attraction between us, holding on to the last remnants of youth and freedom I had left. And my almost kiss with Tristan still heated my blood faster than I could ever admit to myself. His body that close…. his warm breath against my face, his lips so close hung like an oppressive cloud of want and need anchoring me solidly to the ground.

“Well,” Seth continued, rubbing his palm against his jawline, “it’s not about any of this, if that makes you feel better.”

“It really does,” I smiled, and let him lead me into our family room.

“So, I know we are taking…. we are waiting to kind of claim this future that’s between us, at least until we’re eighteen and all….” Seth paused, looking around the cozy family room with our worn L-shaped couch and hanging picture frames of my youth. His eyes heated in just the tiniest of ways and a butterfly flapped its wings aggressively in my stomach and not in the giddy-girl kind of way, but in the holy-crap-where’s-he-going-with-this kind of way. He turned to me, his eyes holding my gaze prisoner and his hands reaching out for mine that reciprocated because I couldn’t think of a reason not to. “What I’m trying to ask is, will you go to the Valentine’s Dance with me?”

My breath rushed out of my mouth in an embarrassing sigh of relief. I hadn’t known what I was so afraid of, but apparently the Valentine’s Dance was definitely not it. “Yes, of course I will.” I smiled at him, enjoying the way his skin glowed naturally in response.

“You’re going to have to fill me in on the finer points of one of these things,” Seth confessed, his cheeks turning just the slightest shade of red. “I’ve never been to a dance before.”

“You’ll do fine,” I assured him. “Boys like you were made for high school dances.”

Chapter Thirteen

“We need to talk,” Piper declared after third period when we were putting our text books away to prepare for choir. Mead had a small chorus, with only twenty students from the whole high school and somehow Piper convinced me every year to join it. She promised a “choir letter” would look great on my college applications and I humored her since I knew she genuinely enjoyed the class and because I didn’t have the heart to inform her I wouldn’t be going to college.

“What about?” I asked, linking my arm with hers and pulling her toward the music room. This was the only class we walked to alone. Tristan, Rigley, Lincoln and even Seth all opted for weight training this hour. We were free to discuss whatever we wanted without their nosey little ears listening in on every word and phrase uttered between us.

“Lincoln asked me to the Valentine’s Dance,” Piper spat out as if the words almost pained her.