Free Starbright (The Starbright Series) by Rachel Higginson Page A

the half window and then waited for me to join him. When I was halfway through the window, he reached up and held me by the waist so that he could slowly lift me to the floor. The gesture was familiar and practiced and even if he realized I didn’t need his help, it was still comforting that he wanted to give it to me .
                  I beamed at him when my feet touched the floor, turning to face him again and plant a kiss on his cheek. “I’m sorry this is weird,” I whispered quickly, before Seth joined us . “I was so excited for you guys to meet, I didn’t think that it might be…. awkward for you both .”
                  “Stel, it’s fine. I promise,” Tristan smiled back at me , and his eyes told me he was sincere. Whew. “Now tell me what happened, and why he’s here to begin with.”
                  “Ok, so last night, on my way home, I was kind of…. attacked,” I explained as Seth made the jump from window ledge to concrete floor. The boy’s locker room of Mead High S chool sat below ground and smelled like dirty feet. The old lockers, two half-lockers stacked on top of each other, made tunnels in the dim light leading through a maze of discarded jockstraps and assorted athletic cleats. An even dingier community shower took up one side of the room, encased by a tile wall, with two entrances. A bathroom connected to the showers, but I had yet t o find the courage to explore the inside of those stalls .
                  “Attacked?” Tristan stepped forward, instinctively wrapping his arms around me . “Why didn’t you call me?”
                  “I’m sorry, I thought about it…. b ut there was nothing you could do, really….” I cringed, knowing he would hate the truth to the answer. I quickly continued to explain , hoping he would forget that he wasn’t a part of my war, well not in the army sense of things. “Anyway, there were hundreds of Shadows and they came out of nowhere. They destroyed my car and then, well, I don’t know what they planned to do with me, because it would have taken a lot more of them to kill me than that,” I rambled, a character trait Tristan was accustomed to. He waited patiently for me to gather my thoughts and finish . “Anyway, I scared them away with my whole S tar-power thing and then Seth and Jupiter, my weapon’s trainer, showed up and kind of saved the day. They did the actual killing of S hadows, while I had just been content to scatter them.”
                  I noticed Seth try to hide his smug smirk when I talked about him saving the day, but it was obvious he was proud of his battlefield accomplishment last night . I glanced over at him and winked, which was something I had actually never done to a boy before and smiled. He should be proud.
    “But you did do an excellent job of scattering them,” he praised me indulgently .
                  “Why did they attack you in the first place? I thought no one knew who you were or that you were here? Do they usually attack people like that? Or, uh… S tars like that? ” Tristan asked seriously , clearly not taking comfort in the fact that Seth had taken so many Shadows out so quickly . Tristan had known the truth about me since we were ten years old. I had come right out and told him everything about my orig ins, my destiny on this planet and my future role in saving E arth from the legions of Darkness one day when we were climbing hay bales on his family’s farm . It had been hard for him to listen to as a ten year old boy , tasked with keeping the secrets of H eaven con fidential. But he had believed immediately. Not just because the topic was raised when he asked her why I glowed every time he teased me and not because he had seen the proof I wasn’t human but because our friendship was everything to him , and to me. E ven at ten he knew I couldn’t lie to him .
                  “No, they