Amaranth grew up with her father constantly whispering in her ear, "The sinners are no longer saved." 

It was an old saying from the indigenous peoples of Anna Mae. The story went that, when Anna Mae was a discombobulated land made up of colonies, Bria Hungrian soldiers raided the subtropical highlands and the arid desert regions. Anna Maens were under Bria Hungrian rule for forty-three years. Bria Hungary combined the colonies and made Anna Mae a nation that looked like the rest of the world: enslaved indigenous peoples, big governments in capitals much more wealthy than the rest of the land, angry and quiet civilians, fast-growing technology. 

But the ancient Anna Maens were not like the rest of the world in this respect: they had a secret weapon.

When the Anna Maens used their weapon, it was during a time when Anna Mae itself was a flourishing country under the rule of Bria Hungrians. On the forty-third year of enslavement, the Anna Maens got their secret weapon ready, whispering, "The sinners are no longer saved, the sinners are no longer saved." 

They used their secret weapon and sent the world spinning on its axis.

"The sinners are no longer saved" was the only thing that remained after the Anna Maens used that weapon—that and a very slim number of survivors. Everything else was gone gone gone. 

Amaranth knew what this secret weapon was because her great-great-great-great-great grandmother created it. 

She currently sat at the end of a long conference table in a room with the other Board Members, Stevia Corro, and Stem Sankta, the commander of the Shifter army whose power was so influential she could strike down a strategy or an idea with a single "No." The walls of the room reflected stormy skies that twisted and jerked angrily, stained blue, indigo, and a black so dark that it made Amaranth want to cry. The ceiling looked like a garden sprouting upside-down emerald saplings and bright flower buds in a sea of black soil.

"And you're positive the psychic was dead? We didn't find a body," Sankta asked Stevia. Stem Sankta could have been made of ice: Her white hair was tied back in complicated Balalaikan braids down her back, her eyes were the color of a sky right before it snows, and her skin was so flaxen it was translucent—if Amaranth focused on Sankta's cheeks and neck long enough, she'd be able to see the thin twisted roads of blue-green veins that made up her insides. 

"You wouldn't have found a body," replied Stevia softly but not gently. "I touched her to make sure she was dead after the solar wind cleared out and she disintegrated. You saw her ashes." 

"And now we have absolutely no idea where that girl is because you let her run out of the room like a scared cockroach," Sankta accused. Despite her looks, her tone was all fire. 

"I was dealing with a dead psychic," Stevia snarled. 

"We haven't been able to find the girl," Amaranth interjected, hoping to ease the mounting tension between Sankta and Stevia. "But we'll keep searching. She can't have gone far, and it's execution day, so if she went down to Faevil she'll be faced with Bloom Officials. I gave descriptions of her in an earth letter I sent to the commander of executioners before I sent letters to you. I can't get in touch with her cousin, but I spoke to a nurse at Bria Hungary Northside Hospital who said Miss Stowe should be fully conscious and able to work something out with us in a few hours." 

"Aren't you scared this kid will kill us all with solar wind like she did to the psychic?" Sankem asked Amaranth. Amaranth had never seen him more angry in the past five hours than in the past twenty-five years she'd known him. His face had turned purple when he found out there was a space thief on the loose and had yet to return to its normal color. He could have filled buckets with the amounts of perspiration he'd shed today. 

"Stevia said it was an accident," Amaranth replied evenly, diplomatically. Diplomacy got people where they wanted. Diplomacy made things either almost right or completely right. "And she's a child. From what I've seen of her, she doesn't have any mass-murdering tendencies and she certainly doesn't seem like she knows what she's doing herself. I imagine she just thinks about stealing from space and doesn't think about what she wants to steal."  

"Stevia said there were dead snakes," Centurie said in a voice an inch above a whisper. 

Centurie, kind Centurie. Part fairy, he was the most even-minded of all of them, and Amaranth was incredibly thankful for his quiet yet extremely well-placed statements. He only spoke when absolutely necessary, and it was so hard to tell how he felt about all this because his stone-face, bland voice made him impossible to read. 

"It seemed like Lydia tried to kill her," Stevia added. "I saw Lilly's expression when I told her it was Lydia on the other side of that door. She was terrified." 

"I don't care what happened," Sankta said. "All I care about is finding her because if Storm gets to her first he'll use her to destroy the world, and he already found one way to get into Elliott Way so there is no doubt he'll get in here again. She also broke the law by lying about her magic." 

"So that's it?" Stevia asked, smoke curling from her clenched fists. Amaranth, Sankem, and Centurie all exchanged looks as if to say We're the bosses of her, we should stop her before she says something to the commander of Shifter armies that she'll regret, but none of them had the chance to speak up, because Stevia leaped on with more heat in her voice than her magical fire. "Lilly can steal from space and she's automatically the key for world destruction? You're proposing that we just kill her on the spot the next time we see her, nevermind the fact that she's a promising soldier and a good kid—"

Sankta shot to her feet so fast that her high-backed chair clattered on its legs. Stevia stood up, too, and the two women faced each other, nose-to-nose, one all pale and one all dark. Amaranth, Sankem, and Centurie exchanged another look with each other, and their body language was clear—even Centurie's. Stevia chose this battle with Stem Sankta. 

Sankta hissed, "This is exactly what happened with Storm." 

Stevia spat, "We're talking about murdering a child only because Storm wants her magic. You can't solve everything with murder, because you're exactly right: look at Storm." 

Sankta growled back, "Who the hell do you think you are, arguing with me over something you have no control over? I'll slit that girl's throat myself and make you—" 

They never found out what Sankta was going to make Stevia do, because at that moment, the double doors swung open, and Lillian Cart Ci stepped into the room. 

She looked so small compared to the rest of the adults in the room, with her tangled blond curls framing a face contorted into extreme worry and her trembling hands laced together like she didn't quite know what to do with them. 

Amaranth stood up. Sankem and Centurie followed suit. Sankta's back was to Amaranth, but Amaranth could see the tightening of Sankta's slender shoulders beneath her red army shirt. 

"I can steal from space," Lilly said, and her voice sounded mechanical, like she'd rehearsed the line a thousand times. "And I'm scared I'm going to end up destroying the world." 

***

In the city outside of Elliott Way, Desidonna shed her outer clothes like skins. 

It was hot. 

Her skin sizzled to the touch. Sweat gathered along her browbone and jawline, dripped down her back, pooled into the clothes of her slip. The executioners had just left with their thermoses of tea and their cloths full of biscuits—always stealing her biscuits—and now she was left alone with her imps in her very crowded house. 

The heat transfigured her blood into fire. Her lungs turned oxygen to smoke. 

This had only happened twice in her lifetime. The first time had been when the sky rained diamonds that slit the throats of men, women, and children, right before Storm made his flamboyant debut as world's-most-dangerous-storm-creator. The second time had been mere weeks ago when eleven monsters unearthed themselves to the world. 

She only overheated hours before a catastrophe. And not just any catastrophe: a catastrophe that would eventually make the stars whisper. 

Desidonna stomped through her house, her imps watching her with their big black eyes and ugly crooked noses, and ended up outside on her front porch. The sun's early afternoon rays slammed into her and she hissed, white smoke pluming up from her skin. 

Soaked in perspiration, slip clinging to her large body, Desidonna unhooked an orange dreamcatcher from the ceiling of her screened-in porch, nearly staggered over a gutted old couch she no longer had any use for, and slunk back into her house. 

She collapsed on the floor of her living room. 

Her hands shook. The world whirled around her and she felt like she was looking through a hundred different-sized shards of glass. Her mind reeled with flashes of blood and guts and gore and secret weapons and the words the sinners are no longer saved, the sinners are no longer saved. 

Desidonna tore the dreamcatcher's strings apart and in her mind she saw tsunamis, water, waves, drowning, choking, salt.  

The sinners are no longer saved. 

A hundred million miles above her, the stars began to whisper.