Chapter 21
Gwen stood in a familiar forest thick with ethereal fog. She followed the sound of crashing waves until she emerged at the edge of the wood. The rocky beach and vast black ocean were just as they’d always been in her dreams, but this felt—different.
Her head snapped to the left when she heard movement. She expected a wolf. A woman emerged instead.
The woman’s short purple hair matched her ethereal glowing eyes. She was small—smaller even than Gwen. She wore a black miniskirt, Van Halen T-shirt, leather jacket, and platform white leather boots over a pair of leggings covered in pictures of cartoon cats.
“Very curious,” the woman said with a smirk of amusement.
“Ominous.” Another woman suddenly appeared to her right. Her eyes were green but just as vibrant. She was much taller than the other woman and was draped in a simple dark green robe. Her curly golden hair cascaded all the way down to her waist.
“Unfinished,” a third added, stepping between the first two. Her eyes were yellow, and they pierced through Gwen like they could see far more than what was in front of her. She was broad and tall, like an Amazon, with long, straight dark brown hair and thick brows. She towered over the other two women and Gwen. Her dark red robes scraped along the forest floor as she came closer.
Gwen backed away as the three women descended on her. “Who are you?” she asked, not frightened, exactly, but nervous.
“Weavers,” they all answered in tandem.
Gwen blinked. She knew that word, she realized. She also knew what they were.
Celestial Weavers. The most ancient of beings.
“You’re a Star,” the green-eyed woman told her. Nor, the sower of fate and future.
“And flesh and bone,” the Amazon observed. Sága, the seer of all.
“So very curious,” the purple-haired woman repeated, this time with even more delight and intrigue than before. Eris, the artificer of chaos.
“Where am I?” Gwen asked, as if the answer were on the tip of her tongue. “What is this place?”
“Home,” they all three told her.
“Home?”
“You’re the Star of Umbra,” Nor told her.
“Behind you lies the Celestial Sea,” Sága added.
“Baffling,” Eris threw out with a mischievous smile.
Gwen turned to face the Sea behind her. The starlight over its surface didn’t reflect from above, but below. It all came back to her as she listened to the waves. Her heart swelled as she heard its call.
Home.
The three Celestial Stars of Umbra, Aether, and Terra had been plucked from the Celestial Sea by the ancients of Elfamé, the realm of faeries and elves. The three stars were eventually taken into the realm of man by the elder fae who settled there. It was ancient history, long forgotten by those who lived in the mortal realm now. Even the existence of Elfamé was only spoken of in legend.
Gwen had been away for so long she’d nearly forgotten.
The forest stirred. The whispers of the great tree of Moldorn inviting her back into the fold. This was where she belonged, where she’d always belonged.
“I can come home?” she asked with a stuttered breath.
“Yes,” one of them said behind her.
“If you wish it.”
Nor, Sága, and Eris were the three sisters who surveyed the mortal realm held within the roots of Moldorn. It was their weaving that kept the balance. It was the magick of all the Weavers that kept the dark things of the Abyss beyond Moldorn from consuming them all.
Gwen took a step closer to the Sea and stopped. She wanted to return. With nearly the whole of her being, she wished for it. But something else tugged at her. Someone she’d left behind.
She turned to face the sisters again. “Why did you let this happen?”
“We didn’t,” Sága told her.
“This path was not foreseen,” Nor added.
Gwen held out her hands and let the shadows flow over them. “How? How did I become this?” How had she become flesh and bone and blood?
“A mage,” Eris replied with clear amusement. “A descendent of the D?kk. He tried to consume your power but failed.”
“The spell was ancient magick, far beyond what he knew,” Nor elaborated.
“Others were coming, and he did not want to lose you,” Sága added. “So he hid you away in a child of his bloodline. A Daughter of Darkness and Shadows. He died before he could retrieve you.”
It seemed impossible, but she felt the truth in it. She was both the Star and Gwendolyn Moore.
Gwen let out a deep breath and looked over her shoulder to the sea. Once she’d become mortal, the Weavers had let her live as any other creature. Only there was one part she could not understand.
“The dreams? Were they your doing?” she asked.
“No,” Nor told her.
“Then how did I dream of him?” she pressed. “How could I have known?”
“You’re mortal but still a Star,” Eris snarked.
The other two women glared at their purple-haired sister in warning. She shrugged, silently telling them they knew she was right.
“You are connected to the vampires through magick,” Nor told her. “But only you can know why you dreamed of them. Why you dreamed of him.”
It wasn’t much of an answer, but Gwen understood. It was the Star of Umbra’s magick that had been used to create vampires. It was her magick that the D?kk fae had used to forge countless other spells. It was her magick they had used to open the portal to the Abyss all those centuries ago.
“Do you love him?” Eris asked, grasping her hands together in front of her.
“What?” Gwen snapped.
“Do. You. Love. Him?” she repeated, clearly anxious for a reply.
It was a strange notion. As a Star, she’d existed only as a primal source of magick. As a creature tied to a mortal body, she’d felt—everything.
She looked upon Eris, and the Weaver smiled coyly, her purple eyes flashing with magick. As if she knew exactly what Gwen was thinking.
“Yes,” she confessed with pride. “I do.” She and Sirus were entangled in something far beyond magick. Far beyond knowing. With him, she felt free and connected all at once.
“The chaos of love,” Eris mused with a dramatic sigh.
It was her love for Sirus that had pushed Gwen to sacrifice her mortal form without even knowing fully what she was doing. The choice had been selfish and easy. For him to live, she would have died a thousand times.
But to love him as a mortal being was one thing—as a Star it was another. Celestial beings did not love in the way of others. Yet she could not deny the pang of sadness in her heart at the thought of never seeing him again.
“It’s done now,” Gwen told them.
“Is it?” Nor replied.
Gwen narrowed her eyes in confusion. “I am home.” She was back where she belonged. Her mortal body was no more. Even here in Moldorn, it was just an illusion of magick.
The Weavers looked at each other, then back at her.
“He’s trying to save you,” Sága told her with no emotion at all. “He’s trying to turn you into a vampire.”
Eris gasped in utter delight. “How romantic!” she shrieked with a squeal.
Gwen shook her head. “It will not work.”
It wasn’t possible. The spells the D?kk had forged to create vampires were fading in their absence. The magick in vampire blood had lost potency with each new vampire, until no more could be made. No matter how much he wished it, it did not mean it would work.
Yet Gwen felt the necrotic magicks skim the edges of what tethers remained of her mortal consciousness. She felt Sirus’s blood calling out to her. It was true. He was attempting to turn her into a vampire.
“It’s by your magick the vampires were created,” Nor reminded her.
“That doesn’t mean I can be turned into one,” Gwen replied sharply.
“Your body remains in the mortal realm,” Sága told her.
“You may return to the Sea if you wish,” Nor added.
“Or you could go back to him,” Eris finished with a wicked grin as she shoved her hands into the pockets of her jacket.
“I can’t,” Gwen repeated. “It’s impossible.”
Eris rolled her eyes and scoffed in a way that reminded Gwen very much of Levian when she thought Barith was being dense.
“You can,” Nor told her. “From your power, the vampires were made. You need only reweave the long-broken spell to suit you. You need only wish it.”
A tiny sliver of excitement skittered through Gwen as her mind whirled over how she could form the spell. If she did return, she would be something like a vampire, but not completely. She’d be something new.
Gwen tamped down her flutter of hope. “My presence is a risk,” she told the sisters. “The D?kk are not wholly destroyed.”
The D?kk fae had manipulated her magicks for their own gains and, she’d thought, to their destruction. She’d been wrong. “One of them lives in the Hall of Reflections. Trapped within a mirror.” Those silver eyes and that laugh were vivid in her memory now.
The three sisters looked at each other, and Gwen sensed them linger on Eris.
“We will watch,” Sága told her. “As we always do.”
“You need not fear,” Nor added.
“He’s nothing to worry about,” Eris chimed.
A wave of anxiousness struck her, and Gwen looked back over the Sea. The urge to return home was heavy on her heart. She’d been away so long. She closed her eyes. The call of the Sea was loud, but his was thunderous. Gwen didn’t know what would come of this choice, but she knew she wanted it, that she wanted him.
“I do love him,” she said.
Eris squealed with glee, bouncing on her toes in those high platform boots.
“You won’t remember,” Nor told her. “That you were here. Nor will you remember what you are.”
“But you will always be a Star,” Sága added. “Your magicks will remain bound inside you.”
Gwen nodded. She understood. Even as an immortal, she couldn’t use the full breadth of her powers and remain in physical form. It was why her mortal body had broken apart so easily. If she had released much more magick, her flesh would have dissipated into nothing but dust.
“You are sure this is what you wish?” Sága asked.
Gwen was sad to leave, but her heart swelled knowing she could return. What future lie ahead, Gwen assumed not even Sága could predict. She was anxious but ready. “Yes,” she told them. “I am sure.”
“Be well, Daughter of Destiny,” Nor told her.
“Be happy, Wielder of Shadows,” Sága added.
“Go get ’em, Cupcake,” Eris finished with a wink and a devilish smile.
Gwen let out a shallow, stuttered breath. She didn’t know why or how any of this had happened, but she was grateful that it had. “Thank you.”
All three of the sisters nodded.
With one final glance back at the Sea, Gwen began to mutter the spell that would bring her back to him. Her love.
Gwen’s eyes shot open. She gasped in a breath of cold air. The first thing she noticed was the heavy snowfall. The second, a pair of frost-blue eyes.
Sirus stared down into her face with a look of utter bewilderment. It was strange, she thought. She’d never seen him wear an expression that looked so—human.
A scream tore through the silence. It was only after Sirus’s face fell that Gwen realized it had come from her.
She was so overcome with pain, it felt almost distant. Like she was floating in her body more than living in it. Her back arched under the strain. She couldn’t control it.
Sirus’s look of shock shifted. “What have I done,” he breathed. There was no relief in his eyes—only torment.
Gwen was confused by his response and distracted by the pain. Why did she hurt so much? What had happened? Was she hurt?
She had to be, she figured. Maybe she was dying? But she didn’t feel like she was dying. She felt like she was changing.
The black fire of the priestess’s magick seeped into her consciousness, not burning away everything that had been before, but settling at the edges. Charring the rim of all that she was. It was a strange feeling.
Gwen looked into Sirus’s face. She wanted to tell him to not be afraid. That it was okay, that she was okay, but she couldn’t. As her body was burned by magick and rebuilt in shadow, all Gwen could do was focus on him.
Another scream tore through the dawn. The snow began to fall heavier.
Exhaustion took hold as the fire began to subside.
She was so tired.
Soon she would be able to tell him.
Gwen closed her eyes and breathed him in. Trees and spice. She felt peace.
Soon she would tell him everything, but not right now. Now she had to rest.