The Heart is a Universe Read online

  The Heart Is a Universe

  Sherry Thomas

  Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  The Hidden Blade: an excerpt

  Chapter 1

  More Books by Sherry Thomas

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  The Heart Is a Universe

  * * *

  Sherry Thomas

  * * *

  www.sherrythomas.com

  [email protected]

  Sherry on Twitter

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  On the remote planet of Pax Cara lies the greatest secret of the universe. Once every generation, the inhabitants must offer up an exceptional young person—the Chosen One--who sacrifices his or her own life for the sake of that secret, and the planet itself.

  * * *

  But Vitalis, the current Chosen One, is desperate to break free of the yoke of destiny. An unexpected invitation to an aristocratic courtship summit seems to be the perfect opportunity for her escape. As soon as she arrives, however, she receives a proposal of marriage from the most eligible prince in existence.

  * * *

  Eleian of Terra Illustrata can have any woman he wants. Why has he set his sight on Vitalis, who, unless she manages to flee, will die in sixteen standard days? Is it as simple as he declares, “To know you as I’ve always wanted to, but never had the chance?” Or is he hiding an ulterior motive, one that could put her plans, her life, and her heart in jeopardy?

  * * *

  And can Vitalis truly say no to the man she has secretly loved all her life?

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  1

  The story began long ago, before the birth of the universe.

  Before the births and deaths of many older, greater universes.

  This is not, however, a narrative of the births and deaths of universes—though it might be that too. In the main it is about a man and a woman, their lives and circumstances.

  They met at a ball, an opulent affair held on a luxury liner. He was making his way to her and she was pretending that she hadn’t noticed, when his every move was eagerly followed by the entire gathering.

  The beau of the ball, if there was such a thing, the one who shook hearts as easily as a spring storm laid waste to the tender blossoms of May.

  She was not a tender blossom. She thought of herself as one of those twisted trees that grew on sheer cliff faces, a stubborn, lonely thing, not beautiful but splendid, because her entire existence hung on the edge of a precipice.

  Or rather, she had thought so, when she had believed wholeheartedly in her destiny as the Chosen One.

  Her existence on the edge had since become an exercise in desperation: each and every moment she felt as if she clung to a fraying rope, swamp beasts gathering in the ravine below, devouring one another while they waited for her to fall.

  Her panic did not show. She had long ago learned to keep her face smooth and her stance relaxed—no tight jaw or white knuckles to betray the inner tension. And her choice of attire further contributed to the image of the young heroine of Pax Cara: she was the only woman at the ball not in a fantastic concoction of silk and film, but in her dress uniform, a crisp, slim, short black tunic over equally crisp, slim black trousers, the enameled thornrose of her office pinned prominently above her breast.

  As she’d intended, the guests were agog at the sight of her. Yes, she played it well indeed, the role of the simple, serene martyr, giving up her life and all its brilliant promises to save her people from annihilation.

  Once, she’d basked in such attention. Now she broiled in it. This had been the part of the Task she’d loved the most—that was, before she’d come to hate the Task itself. She still got shivers, even at this late stage, from the way some people looked at her, in sincere, head-shaking admiration.

  And then there were others who watched her because she was the freak, a dead woman walking.

  Sixteen days—before she marched to her doom.

  “May I have this dance?”

  She turned around slowly. There were exactly nineteen mobilecams bobbing in the air about her. Several represented media outlets from her home planet of Pax Cara, the rest bore logos of the interstellar communication conglomerates that were on hand to cover the glamorous goings-on at ConsortCon, the short-name for the once-every-three-standard-year courtship summit hosted by the thirty-seven princely houses of the Sector.

  The event had once been exclusively aristocratic. Now the proceedings had become somewhat more democratic. Princes and princesses still predominated—they were guaranteed attendance by virtue of birth—but a smattering of plebeians had secured invitations by dint of their achievement.

  Or fame, as in her case.

  The mobilecams had been trained on her as she gazed up at the dance sphere, her expression the tranquil wistfulness she’d long ago perfected for such occasions. She knew what the voiceover would say, above heroic music played at a muted volume: What is going through the mind of this young woman, knowing that the fate of her people rests on her shoulders, that her life will end before it has fully begun, yet her name will live on forever?

  The man who had asked for the next dance had just as many mobilecams hovering around him. Eleian of Terra Illustrata, the most beloved prince in living memory, and the one person she resolutely did not want to meet.

  The heir of a non-ruling house, he’d come of age during a time of great instability for his thirty-system principality. A long civil war that had begun before he was born had produced a dictator who held power by brutal oppression. After the dictator’s death, chaos had threatened to reign once again.

  With almost unbearable courage—for his life could have been forfeit at any point—the young prince had stepped in and stood up to those who sought power solely for their own gain. Against all odds, he had guided his people back to their nearly forgotten tradition of representative government.

  “Your Highness,” she said with a searing admiration. And envy. And a resentment that almost choked her.

  His had been true valor, whereas hers was but the appearance of it.

  And he had survived.

  “My lady.” He inclined his head.

  She was a commoner. But here the media had taken to calling her a prince of her people, and styled her accordingly.

  The mobilecams swarmed close, eager to capture her reaction. What would they see? She had not practiced for this, for dealing with the one man whose very existence reminded her of the fraud she was—and the traitor she planned to be.

  “Will you honor me with this dance?” he repeated his request.

  “The honor will be mine,” she said.

  Mobilecams were not allowed inside the dance sphere. At least there would not be a record of the excruciating minutes she would spend in his company.

  The dance sphere, fifty meters across, shimmered above them. From the outside it looked as if it were made of water, a giant, perfectly round drop, grey and pearlescent. Long pale shapes undulated inside, weightless dancers soaring and swooping.

  She placed her hand on his arm. The mobilecams parted and they walked together toward the center of the ballroom, where couples from the previous dance were dropping out of the sphere in pairs, messily festooned—some fairly mummified—in ribbon streamers. Dancers and ribbon streamers both appeared shockingly vibrant, afte
r the elegant but anemic shadows they had cast upon the surface of dance sphere.

  A few dancers wobbled as they landed. One stumbled back a step. She observed the more successful exits. Future traitor or not, she was here as a representative of her people and she was not going to fall on her face.

  A young male attendant with an awed gaze held out a tray of folded ribbon streamers toward her. She chose a brilliant red streamer and presented it to Eleian of Terra Illustrata. Light hues conveyed interest. Deep hues, respect—the deeper the shade, the greater the respect.

  In return he presented her with a white ribbon. Instantly, the hum of conversation hushed. The mobilecams all but blocked out the light overhead as they jostled to get a better shot.

  Like gravitational waves expanding outward from the collision of massive singularities, shock ripped through her. Of course she’d expected a light-colored streamer from him—a man did not ask a woman to dance to express his respect. And white, on its own, was but another light color of no greater significance.

  Except he was wearing white. When a man—or a woman for that matter—presented a streamer the same color as his attire, it constituted a proposal of marriage.

  She tamped down her dismay and did her best not to gape at the prince, who looked at her calmly, as if he hadn’t done anything completely demented.

  The attendant cleared his throat, reminding her that she had yet to respond. She lifted her right arm a fraction of a centimeter and caught herself: the right arm was the only polite response to a show of interest, but in this it would signal her acceptance of his proposal. Instead she extended her left wrist for the attendant to tie the ribbon streamer, to indicate that she would give the proposal every consideration.

  For this particular dance, the attendant informed them, another royal scion had yielded the place of honor: she and Eleian of Terra Illustrata would ascend into the dance sphere at the head of the line. They stepped onto a small platform and faced each other. The stranger who wished to marry her studied her openly, with a curiosity that felt benign, but was no less penetrating for its apparent kindness.

  He was not, strictly speaking, the most gorgeous man she’d ever met. But he had extraordinarily appealing features, the kind that would make one turn to him first in a crowd of strangers, whether to seek help for a broken landglider or a broken nation.

  A burden-carrier. The rare breed who said yes to impossible tasks and succeeded somehow; the mythical hero who in more primitive times would have inspired humble petitioners to journey for months—years—to lay their troubles at his blessed feet.

  She’d once wanted to be that. Sometimes she still did.

  Her half of the platform rose first. There was an odd ticklish feeling on her face as she moved into the dance sphere. She closed her eyes instinctively.

  From the outside, the gravity-free interior of the sphere had looked watery, like an early morning sky that promised rain. But when she opened her eyes again, she was bathed in light that was the plush gold of sunset on an oxygen-rich world.

  A dodecahedron frame built of translucent struts provided anchors inside the enclosed space. She pushed off the nearest strut and sailed upward.

  Half way across the sphere she turned around and let out the still-folded ribbon streamer she held in her hand. It jetted in her wake, a long white contrail. She would look very stark, she thought, a woman in black and white, receding and unsmiling.

  His loose-fitting tunic billowed about him, all tension and drama. The color of it, a dense, relentless white, metamorphosed into a hue that was warm and luminous in the golden saturation of the dance sphere.

  He let fly the red streamer—and not simply set one end free, as she had done, but impelled it forward in a great spiral that framed him as he glided toward her.

  She had several choices in how to proceed: she could lead him on a merry chase around the dance sphere; she could reverse direction on a nearby strut and meet him half way; or, since his velocity was greater, she could continue on her current trajectory and let him catch up.

  She chose the last. A few seconds later, he was by her side. As he was about to sail past her, his right arm reached across her midsection. Forward momentum converted to angular velocity. They spun gently to the opening notes of a slow helix, revolving around each other, a wide red-and-white coil of ribbon streamers about them.

  She put her hands on his shoulders and looked into his eyes. He had lovely eyes, intelligent and empathetic. But she did not miss the determination beneath all that courtly sweetness: he was a man who achieved what he wanted. Peace, democracy, and now, her?

  But she failed to see what he could gain by marrying her. She had no pedigree, wealth, or connections—none that would matter to him, in any case. And though she was the most honored person on Pax Cara, compared to Terra Illustrata, Pax Cara was but an insignificant backwater settlement.

  They changed directions every time they came up against the frame of the dance sphere, and changed holds every time they changed directions. Occasionally she glimpsed the ballroom floor above her, the milling crowd of guests like stalactites; but she trained in a gyroscope regularly, so neither her head nor her stomach rebelled.

  “My name is Eleian,” he said, as if she didn’t already know.

  “Vitalis,” she replied.

  “It’s a beautiful name.”

  There were other dancers inside the sphere now, dozens of them. Ribbons fluttered in their paths, bands of agate and tourmaline. They caressed her face, cool and swift as undersea creatures—or what she imagined undersea creatures must be like, since the oceans of Pax Cara were off-limits to the inhabitants of the planet.

  “Why do you wish to marry me, Eleian of Terra Illustrata?” she said, without further preamble.

  “Because you are brave and I admire courage,” said one of the most courageous men of her generation.

  She didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed that he of all people did not see her for who she truly was. She almost wished he’d said he admired her looks instead; she was a pretty enough woman. As shallow a virtue as beauty was, it was honest to a degree, unlike her courage, or the lack thereof.

  “Do you have some sort of fetish?” She was no stranger to emotional fetishes, either her own or those of her admirers. “I’m sorry to ask such a question, but we’re speaking of the rest of my life here.”

  All sixteen days of it. She laughed, a short, dry cackle at her own morbidity.

  He shook his head. “The death you face holds no appeal for me—sexual or otherwise. I’ve come too close to death too many times; I’ve had enough.”

  She believed him. There were those who sought the excitement of living on the edge. But as far as she knew, after the tumultuous years of Terra Illustrata’s power transition, he’d led a hermit’s life, away from the glare of the limelight, and performed no further feats of conspicuous heroism.

  “Then why?” Why would anyone want to marry a woman whose only value was in her imminent death?

  “The Quiet Girl,” he said.

  The Quiet Girl was a documentary film about her, shot ten years ago, when she’d been seventeen. It had been produced as a summer project by a pair of student filmmakers and submitted to a Sector-wide vis-media festival on a lark. To the surprise of everyone involved, the film had been selected for inclusion at the festival; to their further shock, it had won the grand prize.

  The film’s subsequent dissemination had garnered Vitalis a degree of interstellar fame previously unheard of on Pax Cara. She’d turned down each and every one of the invitations to go off-world that poured in. Modesty, or at least the appearance of it, was an important part of her persona.

  But she had enjoyed it, the fame, and the adulation that had come with it.

  “What about The Quiet Girl?” She hoped he didn’t hear the tremor in her voice.

  “I saw it when I was nineteen—and struggling with the course of my life. I had my own remote refuge. Our princely hold of Mundi Lum
inare was at peace. I did not need to involve myself in distant political turmoil. Moreover, I was afraid: I’d had little dealing with the darker side of life.

  “I was inclined toward cowardice until I watched your story. Your determination and wisdom shamed me. And you faced certain death, whereas I faced only the possibility of bodily harm.”

  Stop, she wanted to say. Stop. That girl no longer exists.

  But she listened with a stark hunger.

  “And whenever I thought my courage might fail me, I would watch it again. I can recite word for word what you said near the end of the film: ‘I’d have liked to live a thousand years. And yet I can’t say I regret being chosen for the Task. I live more incandescently because of it. And I’m not afraid to die when I have lived so.’”

  She had put on The Quiet Girl within the past year, hoping to find a renewal of courage in her unquestioning bravery of old. But all she had felt, as she’d watched herself give that little speech, had been a numb despair.

  He brought them into a closer spin. “It would be a privilege if you would accept my suit and allow me to share your days.”

  Her days. All sixteen of them, unless she managed her escape.

  The summit took place on a palace-class Intergalactica liner moored approximately half an astronomical unit from Terra Antiqua, the primary moon of which hosted the largest transit nexus this half of the Sector. And while getting into the summit was difficult, getting out was less complicated. The liner was equipped with hoppers, in case princely staff needed to run errands planet-side, as the liner itself could hardly be expected to house engagement mementos that would appeal to every taste.