Catching Stars Read online

  Copyright © CAYLA KEENAN 2017

  This edition published in 2018 by

  O F T O M E S P U B L I S H I N G

  U N I T E D K I N G D O M

  The right of CAYLA KEENAN to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in a retrieval system, in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real people, alive or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Cover art by Jo Painter

  Cover design by Eight Little Pages

  Interior book design by Eight Little Pages

  CONTENTS

  Prologue:

  Chapter One:

  Chapter Two:

  Chapter Three:

  Chapter Four:

  Chapter Five:

  Chapter Six:

  Chapter Seven:

  Chapter Eight:

  Chapter Nine:

  Chapter Ten:

  Chapter Eleven:

  Chapter Twelve:

  Chapter Thirteen:

  Chapter Fourteen:

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen:

  Chapter Seventeen:

  Chapter Eighteen:

  Chapter Nineteen:

  Chapter Twenty:

  Chapter Twenty-One:

  Chapter Twenty-Two:

  Chapter Twenty-Three:

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five:

  Chapter Twenty-Six:

  Chapter Twenty-Seven:

  Chapter Twenty-Eight:

  Chapter Twenty-Nine:

  Chapter Thirty:

  Chapter Thirty-One:

  Chapter Thirty-Two:

  Chapter Thirty-Three:

  Chapter Thirty-Four:

  Chapter Thirty-Five:

  Chapter Thirty-Six:

  Chapter Thirty-Seven:

  Chapter Thirty-Eight:

  Chapter Thirty-Nine:

  Chapter Forty:

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  DEDICATED TO MY DAD:

  MY VERY FIRST READER, WITHOUT WHOM I NEVER WOULD HAVE BEEN BRAVE ENOUGH TO SHARE THIS STORY.

  Prologue:

  Maddix

  Maddix wasn’t afraid of witches. There was no reason to be afraid. Everyone knew magic was dying. Even the Kingswitch, the most powerful sahir in their land—in any land—was rumored to be losing his abilities. The stories said something in their Oldlands, whatever gave them their magic, was dying and sucking the witches dry in the meantime. Though he had no way of knowing what was true, Maddix relished the thought that the sahir might one day be as mortal as the rest of them.

  Another widespread rumor suggested they were being called back into the Dark. It was common knowledge that the witches came from across the sea, but some said they sold their souls in return for power. Their starcursed magic had spread from generation to generation until it was a veritable plague throughout the Three Kingdoms. But now, their contract was up.

  How it happened didn’t matter to him. Maddix was of age and a proud member of the Kingsguard. He had only been given his pin a month ago, but it had been the proudest moment of his life. Finally, he was free to roam Pavaal as he pleased and would be given the respect he rightfully deserved. With any luck, he would rise quickly through the ranks; maybe even make it to Ayrie Palace. He had his whole life ahead of him, and Maddix didn’t need anything as troublesome as witches mucking it up.

  He didn’t understand why the King hadn’t taken a leaf from the Vandelian’s book and exiled the lot of them. Witches served no purpose; they hadn’t in centuries. For no reason but that they’d been born with magic, they lived in the Palace, basking in luxury and wanting for nothing. All the while, the rest of the Aestosi had to fight just to survive.

  As a child, he would sneak out of the Gull and watch as the Kingswitch and the other sahir from Ayrie Palace paraded through the merchant sectors, hoping that if he got close enough, their magic would rub off on him. He’d been young and stupid then. Now he knew better.

  It didn’t matter now—witches and their starcursed privilege. He was of age, a man with a profession that afforded him dignity and honor. Darek, his roommate in the barracks, said some of the Guards went their whole careers without any kind of magical incident. Maddix was confident he would be just as lucky. His star would look out for him, like it always had. Without it Maddix might have been like the other boys at Northside Orphanage, jumped into carrion gangs before they were even of age.

  At the moment, though, Maddix would suffer carrions and witches alike if it meant there was something to do. From sundown to sunup, he didn’t do much more than stand around and watch the empty streets. Sometimes he prowled around the block, but this tiny corner of the city was quiet in a way that drove Maddix out of his mind with boredom It was easy duty for greenblood Guards, but stars above, Maddix couldn’t imagine anything more tedious than guarding grain storehouses all night.

  It wasn’t as bad as guarding the nobility, with their well lit, scrupulously clean streets, but the merchant ring of the city wasn’t much better. The Gullet was where the real action happened, and only the toughest, most seasoned Guards took on the gang-ridden streets in the very heart of Pavaal. There, the Guard’s control was tenuous at best and the threat of violence hung in the air like the stench from the river. New Guards generally avoided it for their own safety.

  Maddix had requested the Gull as his assignment. He’d grown up in the slums, and there was no better place to cut his teeth than against the carrions. Naturally, that request had been denied, and Maddix had been posted with the merchants.

  “Ey, greenblood,” a senior patrolman said, rounding the corner. Maddix shook himself, emptying his head. “Report.”

  “Nothing out of the ordinary, sir,” Maddix said, snapping a textbook salute and fighting the urge to reach for the black star pendant that hung around his neck. It was just a bauble, found with him as an infant, but it was as good as any other good luck charm.

  “Good work,” the other man said, clapping Maddix on the shoulder. “You’re the greenie who requested the Gull, didn’t ye?”

  “Yes, sir,” Maddix replied, still holding the salute in place.

  “At ease,” the patrolman said with a chuckle. “Good for you. That’s the kind of spine we need in the Guard these days. You keep this up and you’ll make rank in no time.”

  It occurred to him that the senior Guardsman might have been poking fun, but having his dream said aloud for all the sky to hear made Maddix stand straighter. He glanced at the man’s face, seeking to thank him by name, but darkness swathed most of it in shadow, and Maddix was sure he would have remembered an officer with a shiny scar on his top lip.

  “Thank you, sir,” Maddix said, puffing out his chest. The Guardsman nodded and inclined his head before marching out of sight.

  You’ll make rank in no time. The words echoed in Maddix’s ears, buoying him through the rest of his shift. Some of his classmates envied Maddix’s easy post, but he couldn’t wait to be reassigned. Maddix couldn’t prove himself in combat if he never saw any.

  Not that Aestos had seen an actual war in years. Centuries, even. Vandel and Kaddah, the kingdoms to the north, had been embroiled in a shadowy war for as long as Maddix could remember, though Aestos had never been brought into the conflict. No one wanted to go to battle with a kingdom with witches instead of a standing army. They would
decimate anyone in their path with their Dark magic, and so Vandel and Kaddah left Aestos well enough alone.

  Settling against a warehouse wall, Maddix thought of glory on the battlefield. He had grown up on stories of Aestos, before the witches came from their homeland across the sea. The Aestosi had been warriors then, fighting off warlords and invaders who wanted to steal their land. Kaddah had been plagued by famine and drought for as long as anyone could remember, and Vandel was mountainous and inhospitable. Aestos had plenty of fertile farmlands and more than enough food, something the neighboring kingdoms sorely lacked. Warrior kings led deadly armies into battle to defend their borders, and only the strong survived. They were feared and revered throughout the Three Kingdoms. It was nothing like today, where decadence chipped away at their fearsome reputation.

  Maddix entertained himself with fantasies of being born in a different age, of fighting invaders and usurpers, instead of standing around and waiting for something exciting to happen.

  A loud clatter shook him out of his thoughts and Maddix jerked upright, unsheathing the sword at his hip.

  “Bleedin’ stars!” an unfamiliar voice shouted from just around the corner. Maddix lurched into motion, his heart breaking into a gallop. Finally, something to report. A chance to prove he was worth more than just watching warehouses.

  “Hey!” Maddix yelled, announcing himself. At first glance, it looked as though the alleyway was empty, save for one man. He had fallen onto the cobbled streets, his arms clutching his middle like he was trying to hold himself together. Frothy blood foamed out of his mouth.

  Maddix blinked and another figure appeared in the cramped alley. A dark hood obscured its features, and the shadows around it seemed to writhe and dance like living things. Faces appeared in the swirling darkness, drowning souls gasping for air, each one twisted in screams of agony.

  “Help me,” the man gasped, and Maddix finally tore his eyes off the shadows, holding his sword at the ready.

  “You there!” Maddix shouted at the hooded creature, trying to keep his voice from trembling. “Stop, in the name of the King!” The figure turned towards him, and Maddix’s heart dropped into his boots. There was no face under the hood, nothing human, just an empty void.

  Demon, Maddix thought, his mind flooding with terror. Ice gripped his insides and froze the breath in his lungs. All his thoughts of proving himself and making rank vanished. The figure shifted, and it was across the alley in the blink of an eye, all without making a sound.

  Maddix tried to run, tried to call out for help, but he couldn’t force his legs into motion. As the creature came closer, the darkness receded enough to reveal red eyes that glowed like embers. Somehow, Maddix shook off the icy stillness and struck out with his weapon. The demon didn’t flinch or stumble, standing perfectly still as the steel passed through it as if it were as insubstantial as smoke. Its eyes glowed red, and a clawed hand reached out, seizing Maddix by the throat. He choked, fighting the grip on his neck, but the hand lifted him off the ground with terrifying ease.

  “Stop,” Maddix wheezed, black spots dancing across his vision. His legs kicked uselessly. “Please.”

  The hooded figure only drew him closer, crimson eyes aglow, and Maddix’s skin blistered where the demon touched him. He was burning, without smoke or fire, burning from the inside out.

  Without warning, the creature released its grip, and Maddix fell to the ground. He landed on his side and pain cracked through his chest. Maddix forced himself to breathe and his ribs protested; at least one was broken, maybe two. It didn’t matter. He had to move, and he had to move now. With the last bit of strength he had left, Maddix crawled along the pockmarked street to where he’d dropped his sword.

  Something came down hard on his wrist, and he heard the crack as the small bones broke. The pain was a distant thing, as though it wasn’t his at all. Somewhere, someone was screaming. It might have been him. The fire within him surged anew, driving him into the smallest corner of his mind and trapping him there.

  “Rise,” the creature said in a voice that rasped like a snake’s. Maddix’s body rose of its own accord, yanked upwards like a stiff-jointed marionette. Something compelled his arms into motion, and Maddix picked up his sword.

  Locked within his own skin, Maddix screamed and fought, but he was helpless against the magic that possessed him. Maddix’s hands gripped the hilt of his sword, holding it out towards the man cowering in a puddle of his own blood.

  No. The thought was hazy and unfocused as Maddix’s arm rose above his head and came down again. There was some distant pain, but he was more focused on the mess he’d made of the man’s chest.

  Blood was everywhere: on the street, on the walls of the adjacent buildings—some had even splattered onto Maddix’s otherwise spotless uniform. No, the thought again, unable to take his eyes off of the corpse. The man he’d killed. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to.

  It didn’t matter.

  The creature turned towards Maddix again, and somehow, beneath the smoky darkness and glowing red eyes, he could see a pale scar slicing the demon’s upper lip. Then, he couldn’t see at all.

  THE DEMON LET him go three days later. Sometimes he was conscious, trapped in that tiny corner of his mind. The creature made him watch, forced him to see himself being moved like a chess piece and unable to stop it.

  He killed three more people while the demon controlled him, and every time he woke up, there was more blood on his hands. Maddix was sure the nightmare would never end, and he would be the demon’s puppet until starvation or exhaustion killed him.

  On the third day, Maddix opened his eyes, and the demon was gone. His body was his own again, and after almost three days of numbness, every breath was agony. His stomach cramped as he tried to move, sending shooting pains through his midsection. Maddix groaned, clutching his midsection. He tried to shout for help, but his voice would not obey him. Minutes after waking up, Maddix succumbed to unconsciousness with his face tilted towards the sky.

  Maddix was half dead and covered in the blood of the people he’d killed when he was found lying unconscious in the street. When he finally came to, he was bound and chained in a windowless room, dripping with the freezing water that had been used to rouse him. Two Guardsmen glared down at him, the rage in their eyes reserved for the worst kinds of carrion scum.

  He had been charged with multiple counts of murder. Under the demon’s control, Maddix had killed four people in cold blood. He tried to tell them about the demon, tried to explain that he had been possessed. He was a victim in this too. They had to believe him—he was one of them for the stars’ sake!

  They didn’t. Nothing in the Three Kingdoms had the ability to climb into a man’s mind and take over his body, not even the witches. The very mention of that kind of Darkness was blasphemy.

  “You’re a disgrace to the uniform,” the Guard snarled. Maddix tried to protest, but the man drove his fist into Maddix’s gut, and the air exploded from his lungs. He spent six days in that cell before word got back to him. The evidence had been overwhelming and the verdict swift and final. The King himself had passed the sentence, to be carried out at a time of his choosing.

  For the murders of four of the King’s subjects, Maddix Kell was sentenced to death.

  Chapter One:

  Jayin

  Pavaal was humming. A tense, nervous energy hung in the air like smoke. There wasn’t a shortage of criminals in the capitol, but public executions had been all but outlawed. Then again, this was the first time a greenblood Guard had ever gone rogue and massacred four people. Serial murder had a tendency to stick in a city’s memory, though the actual killings occurred years ago.

  Jayin found the hypocrisy laughable. Kids in carrion gangs killed each other every day, and the Kingsguard routinely beat criminals to death in lockup, but the King chose to make an example out of a mad boy.

  At first, no one had cared that a dockworker was slaughtered in the street, his body hacked to pieces
and left to rot in the gang-infested heart of the capitol. The man was a known gambler and patronized many unsavory establishments in the Gullet. No one batted so much as an eye at his death. But the next day a merchant woman turned up dead, her chest slashed to ribbons. That had gotten some attention. Merchants lived comfortably in their riverside villas. Even the least successful ones had lives far better than any inhabitant of the Gull. Though they were in close proximity—in the approximate half-circle that made up Pavaal, their sector wedged between the noble ring and the slums—the merchants didn’t fear the violence that stalked the streets as sure as any gang. They were protected.

  They were supposed to be, anyway.

  Over the next three days, a carrion boy and a witch were murdered in the exact same manner. The Guard had no leads. People began to panic, and it didn’t look like the killer was going to stop.

  Until Maddix Kell was discovered lying in the street, drenched in the blood of his victims. Justice had been swift. The boy had been arrested and thrown into the deepest hole in the kingdom to rot. Some whispered that he had been possessed, forced to kill by some Dark being, though most maintained that he’d simply gone mad.

  What utter nonsense, Jayin thought. There were only a handful of mindwitches capable of possession—only one that she knew of—and Maddix Kell’s killing spree had lasted three whole days. Jayin didn’t know of anyone who could maintain that kind of magic for that long. Magic only went so far. If someone learned to turn humans into puppets, Jayin would have heard something.

  She would already be running.

  Just a day ago, the city had buzzed with anticipation for the execution, but overnight the atmosphere had changed. After two years of rotting in the dark, Maddix Kell escaped. Jayin had to appreciate his timing. The King had waited two years to kill Kell—His Majesty was waiting for the perfect time to boost public morale. In these times of hardship, nothing mollified the people like watching a boy hang.