Stella Luminara's Arc

Chapter 6 of 2

Lady Celestia lifted one gloved hand and beckoned. Stella crossed the stone path toward the fountain. Her heart slammed. The noblewoman's silver necklace shimmered at her throat, the green star charm catching the fairy lights. One wrong word about who Stella really was, and the guards would drag her out before she ever touched it. She stopped an arm's length away and dipped her head, the way a guest of rank might greet a host. "I don't know your face," Lady Celestia said. Her black eyes swept the sharp purple gown. "And I know every face here." Stella smiled. She did not name a house or a home she could not prove. "You know the faces that repeat," she said. "I'd rather be the one you can't place." She kept her voice slow and warm, the pageant voice, the one built to move a room. "Your necklace found me from across the garden. I had to see it up close." The noblewoman's guarded look softened into pride. She loved the piece more than she distrusted the stranger. "It was made for me alone," she said, and turned the charm so it flashed. That was the opening. Stella stepped in as if to admire the star. She let one hand rise to the clasp, praising the metal, the cut, the glow. Her other hand slipped a second necklace from her sleeve, a replica she had strung the night before from Zara's scarf beads. She unhooked the real clasp with two fingers while Lady Celestia watched her own reflection in the fountain, not Stella's hands. The swap took three breaths. The true necklace slid into Stella's palm. The fake settled against the noblewoman's throat, close enough to fool a proud woman who never doubted her own jewels. "Stunning," Stella said, and meant the theft. "Wear it well tonight." Lady Celestia touched the fake and smiled at it. "I always do." She drifted off toward her other guests, none the wiser. Stella walked out through the guarded gate with the star charm hidden in her fist. The moment she cleared the lights, Kade pushed off a wall where he'd been waiting. His white hair fell over black eyes. He wore trouble like a jacket and never took it off. "Well?" he said. Stella opened her hand. The green star glowed against her pink skin. Kade almost smiled. At the edge of the garden, Zara stepped from the dark. Short white hair, purple skin, arms crossed, watching like the theft had been her own. She held up the battered blue power cell, its light pulsing in the black. "You actually did it," Zara said. She traded the cell for the necklace. "Now fix your ship and get off my planet." Stella closed her hands around the cell. The crown was one working engine away. But Zara's smile lingered too long, and Stella knew a woman who dealt in stolen things never let go clean.