Chapter 16 Starburn
Starburn
“Up, up, lazybones!” Kai’s voice rang out as she flung open the curtains, flooding the room with morning light.
Ignoring her, I pulled the covers over my head and turned my back to the wall of windows. I was exhausted and, honestly, really didn’t want to face another day—or Endymion.
Gods, what had even happened between the two of us last night? He’d valenned us back to the residence wing, then wished me a goodnight before making the fastest exit I’d ever seen.
One moment I was nestled in tightly under my covers; the next, sunlight and cooler air assaulted my senses as Kai whipped away my sheets. “Up.”
“Why?” I groused, draping an arm over my eyes and blindly reaching for the sheets—only to come up empty. “What time is it?
“Time to get up.”
I rolled my eyes, not that she could see it. “But I’ve barely slept.”
“That’s what happens when you’re up all hours of the night doing stars knows what, Nyleeria.”
Nyleeria! She used my name. I sat upright and found her at the foot of the bed with a bony hand on her hip, staring down her long nose at me with the no-nonsense look that would make others wither.
Smiling brightly, I popped up on my knees and slid across the bed, throwing my arms around her. “Thank you. And… I’m sorry.”
She huffed, then relented, giving me a quick squeeze before holding me at arm’s length. “Yes, well, Lord Endymion gave all of us a ‘what for’ this morning. Apparently, you weren’t only cranky with me yesterday.” She looked at me with an accusatory brow.
Ignoring her silent accusation, I said, “Why did you get the what for when I was the problem?”
“He doesn’t think it’s supportive for us to treat you… well, like you’re not one of us.”
I heaved a deep sigh and shut down the flit of emotions in my chest at what he’d done before it became a flutter.
Kai rolled her eyes at me, and I could have hugged her again for how normal it was.
“Now, if you’re going to be one of us—and treated as such—you need to stop avoiding the mirrors.”
“I don’t,” I said a little too quickly.
She raised a brow and put her hand back on her hip, tilting into it slightly. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed you avoiding even the smallest glance, or how you cringe if I touch your ears. This is who you are now, Nyleeria, and there’s no point in avoiding it.”
Despite the truth in her words, blood drained from my face as my body turned leaden.
“Come.” She turned her back on me and began walking toward the bathroom.
I sat back on my heels, my heart beating furiously as I tried to move, only to realize I was incapable of moving, as if she was asking me to walk myself to the gallows.
Turning with a slight scowl, she assessed me for a moment before her features softened and she retraced her steps back to me. “What is it?”
My head tilted down and focused on my hands as they fidgeted with my nightshirt.
“Nyleeria?”
“I’m… afraid,” I admitted, my voice barely above a whisper, and I lifted my eyes to hers, braced for admonishment.
Her head tilted in confusion. “Of a mirror?”
“Of it all being… real,” I whispered.
“I see.” She paused, assessing me, before she nodded once as if making a decision. “My mother always said denial is a fool’s gambit. For denying yourself the truth only imprisons you in an illusion that no one else can see; while sacrificing your only chance at freedom.”
They were heavy words that could’ve only been spoken from someone who’d made that sacrifice one too many times themselves. “Your mother sounds like a wise woman.”
“She was.”
My heart ached from the truth those simple words revealed: that her mother had been claimed by Father Death.
She held out her hand to me. “Come, let’s shatter your illusion together.”
Tentatively, I slipped my hand in hers as I stepped off the bed, feeling every bony facet as she wrapped it around mine, and let her lead me forward.
Despite myself, my eyelids locked so tight when I was finally positioned in front of the mirror that my face scrunched from the effort.
With every moment that passed, my heartbeat got louder in my ears as I worked up the courage to look.
Just open your eyes. You’ve faced a na’li and survived. You’re the spark, for gods’ sake.
I sensed Kai’s firm presence behind me a pace or so off while I tried desperately to step off the edge until finally, I dredged up enough courage and opened my eyes.
A small gasp slipped past my lips as I beheld the reflection in the mirror.
I took a small step forward.
It was me, to be sure, but it looked as if the mirror had placed some sort of glamor on me that took away every imperfection I’d once had. My hand fluttered up to my face, feeling it as I reconciled what I saw.
My facial features were what drew my attention first and the ones that shocked me the most. I was me, but not—as if I’d matured into a woman overnight.
At twenty-one I wasn’t a child anymore, but the soft roundness of lingering adolescence was now replaced with the feminine elegance of a woman in her late twenties or early thirties at most. I wasn’t frozen in time as a human; I was frozen in time as a fully mature High Fae female.
Next, my focus landed on my eyes, which had always been a topic of conversation, but as fae… they were breathtaking. Green and blue interlaced as if the ocean and grassy planes could be separate no more.
I stepped back, taking in all of me. Again, I was the same as before but matured. All awkwardness gone as if I’d come into myself.
Even my hair was a richer color. I twisted to the side and noticed that my breasts weren’t necessarily larger, but fuller, adding to my overall figure. But of all the things I noticed, my ears were the last, as if human ears wouldn’t have belonged.
“I’m…” The words caught in my throat.
“Stunning. Even by High Fae standards,” Kai supplied in a sharp, matter-of-fact tone.
“I was going to say fae.” I chuckled.
As I continued to stare at my reflection, I realized she was right. The familiar stranger looking back at me was devastatingly beautiful.
Shortly after Kai left, a sense of deep contentment radiated from me as I visited Fenyte before making my way to the dining room in a half-hearted search of breakfast with my nose in a book.
“Oooof.” A whoosh of breath left me as I collided with a towering figure. We were pressed up against each other for the briefest of moments before they took a quick step back.
“Are you okay?” Endymion’s familiar voice asked with hands out, eyes scanning me for injuries.
I slid the book shut but didn’t answer him.
Not because I wasn’t okay—I was perfectly fine.
But at what I beheld. It was Endymion, yes, but not the one I’d shared whispered truths and haunting memories.
No, this was the male who’d been forged into a weapon since childhood, clad in scaled warrior leathers, daggers sheathed, the hilt of his sword peeking out over his right shoulder—and although the sight of him was heart-stopping, there was something more to him that I hadn’t noted since solstice.
It took a heartbeat or two for me to clue in that my chest hummed in his presence again as if awakened by his very existence, and I somehow knew his powers were at their full, lethal strength.
“Nyleeria?” he said, brows furrowed.
I shook my head. “Sorry. You’re. I’m. No. Yes, I mean. I’m okay.”
Stars, I couldn’t have made it more awkward if I tried.
He looked at me as if burrowing into my soul, making the world fade away like it had last night, and although every facet of my magic craved his mere existence to wrap its comfort around me again, the irrevocably damaged part of me took a small step back.
I looked him over again, understanding what I hadn’t a moment before. “You’re going back, aren’t you?” I’d already known the truth before the words left my lips.
Shadows entered his eyes. “Yes.”
“Why?” I found myself asking as my heart sank to a flurry of emotions I refused to acknowledge.
He glanced over my shoulder, and I became acutely aware of just how busy the intersection was.
Stepping past me, he opened a door to what appeared to be a sparsely decorated antechamber that led into some sort of greenery.
I slipped past him, doing everything I could to ignore the intoxicating scent of soft leather layered with the honeyed resin of an Ancient Forest that emanated from him.
The door clicked behind me as I turned to face him, and my grip instinctively tightened on the book in my arms as the cool mask of the second-in-command stared down at me, as if he needed to distance himself from this conversation. From me.
I hated that side of him. And maybe I was projecting, but it reminded me too much of the facade I’d used when convincing myself that I was okay with Thaddeus pulling from me a second time—or maybe it reminded me of the infinite masks I’d been faced with while living in the human palace.
“Is this the mask you don in the Autumn Court?” I asked, indicating the lethal tool they’d sharpened him to be.
His jaw ticked. “This”—he gestured to himself—"is who I am. And the Autumn Court is where I belong." His tone cold was practiced even.
“Is it?” I challenged, taking a half-step toward him, somehow unable to accept his words as truth, and it had me remembering the moment I’d first laid eyes on him, how I couldn’t reconcile him with autumn.
“Yes, it is,” he said, leaving no room for discussion. “Either way, even being tapped, I should’ve returned yesterday. Caius sent word claiming he required my assistance, but I’ve already stayed too long. I am Wymond’s highest-ranking commander, and I belong at his side.”
There was nothing new in what he said, but I found myself frantically grasping for a reason for him to stay, and I wasn’t sure if it was spurred by fear for him or if I feared his absence—that last thought was the more unsettling of the two.