Starcrossed

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    “All lies? You know this for certain?” the reporter pressed as soon as she saw Creon fall into his own conflicted thoughts. Creon noticed that she kept speaking in English, almost as if she was taunting him. “For years now, you, your mother, your whole family, say all these things are lies, but how do you know for true? Tell me, Creon, when is the last time you saw your father? I know he was not at your graduation from university.”
    Creon gritted his teeth. “My father is a very private man. He—”
    “Pssh!” she exclaimed derisively, cutting Creon off with an imperious wave of her hand. She shouldn’t have done that. “This is not privacy, this is lunacy! Can any man’s privacy mean so much that he would abandon his only son simply to stay out of the papers?”
    Creon’s hand shot out and he had her by the throat before she could even raise an arm in protest. She had such a tiny throat, so slender and fragile. Creon thought it was like holding a thin kitten in his hand. Her eyes blossomed with fear. The pupils opened up and reflex tears beaded on their dark surface like dew. She was lovely in terror—a perfect, pleading mask of alabaster white skin, wide eyes, and, best of all, her mouth, an open oval of red surprise like she was waiting to be kissed. Creon wanted to hold her like that for days, but a split second of enjoyment later he heard a snap.
    Like a switched-off TV, the light in her eyes contracted to pinpricks, and then went completely dark.
    Creon dumped her body in the water and ran back to the citadel so quickly no normal person could see him pass, even if they were standing inches away.
    Still shaking with a half-sickening thrill, he went straight up to his room, and froze when he opened the door. His mother was waiting for him. She was sitting next to his packed suitcase with her narrow, manicured hands folded neatly in her lap, holding something. Her head fell to the side as she stared at him. His mother only needed to look at him to know that the meeting that she had arranged, the meeting that was supposed to be nothing more than a polite gesture, had ended violently.
    “Did you have to kill her?” she asked seriously and without reproach. Mildred was nothing if not practical.
    “She provoked me,” Creon said as he moved past his mother and grabbed the handle of his suitcase. “Besides, it’s better this way and you know it.”
    Mildred dropped her eyes and nodded, accepting that her son was right. More than one reporter had “disappeared” over the years.
    “Given the situation, I approve of you leaving the country for a while.” She held up the plane ticket she had taken from the front pocket of his suitcase and waved it at him before he could bolt out of the room. He stopped dead, realizing that he had been caught. “What I don’t approve of is your choice of destination. What do you think you’re going to accomplish by going there? Your father forbade the Hundred to go anywhere near Nantucket.”
    He took a breath to calm himself down. It didn’t work. “It’s their fault we don’t have what is rightfully ours, it has to be, because all the other Houses are gone! I have to know how they can live with themselves when they’ve sentenced the rest of their family to inevitable death. Immortality is my birthright, and regardless of what my father allows or forbids, I will not sit back while they deny me that!”
    Creon shouldered his carry-on, wheedled the ticket out of his mother’s reluctant hands, and moved past her. He hurried down the ancient stone steps at the back of the citadel, his heart still pumping with excitement.
    Outside, there was a nondescript black sedan waiting. His mother’s driver was behind the wheel, ready to take him to the airport. Creon realized that Mildred had known all along that he would kill that girl. She had probably known he would do it the moment she arranged for Creon to meet her.
    “Son?” she called out to him from under the arched gate. “Did you kill her just to have a reason to leave?”
    He turned and faced her, forcing patience. “Did you send me there to kill her?”
    His mother smiled at him, but her eyes were far away and out of focus—thinking many thoughts at once. She walked toward him slowly, making him wait for her even though she had to know that he was vibrating with adrenaline. She stepped close to him and looked up into his face. Her elegantly sculpted lips were pulled tight in a thin line of