47. Chapter Forty-Seven
There was a terrible chill in the air. It was unlike a winter storm, unlike the touch of death. It was, put simply, cold.
The sort of numbing cold that woke me at night. The sort of bone-chilling freeze I feared would never end. Myrthana had faded into the darkness, and when I looked down at my arms after the starlight sizzled into my skin, I saw blood streaming into the shapes of constellations. Before my eyes, I was scarred with rust-colored ink that tarnished my body in symbols I had never fathomed.
In omens from the stars I feared were irreversible.
Ahead of me was a path of celestial orbs, bouncing back and forth as if egging me to follow. I wondered if this was what death felt like—if this was what death truly was. An endless path that I hobbled down, a sinking feeling settling in my gut. I felt distant, the warmth I’d taken for granted absent.
I feared what that absence meant.
I feared what this darkness held.
More than anything else—anything else in this world—I feared I had spent a life fighting people with the barrier I’d built so high, a life obsessed with selfish, mortal desires, and not enough time admiring what could so easily be lost.
Not enough time. There never would be.
Each step forward ushered more stars forward, spiraling off the floor and into an endless void above my head, eventually fading into the unknown. I watched in awe, recalling how it felt to touch them in the planetarium outside Novus’ castle, the warmth that bled through the cracks of my fingers—the power it drew.
I flipped my palm over, eyeing the star-shaped scar I so often forgot etched into my skin, stained red like the rest of the symbols across my body. The pain had been agonizing that night, like a hook digging deep into the meat of my palm. I closed my eyes, remembering the tug of something beyond that starlight.
And then I looked back at the stars ebbing off the floor.
This wasn’t the first time I’d been lost in this celestial void. I could do this.
The road ahead was endless, but these stars…these stars held secrets. Would it be the sort that guided me home? The sort that broke me free? It was like grasping at straws, but even that was too much. I was grasping at nothing. I scoffed and kept onward, hastening my pace to see if I could outrun the stars, to evade the darkness.
It was all consuming, and no matter which way I looked, I saw nothing but utter blackness, with stark dots of starlight breaking up the shadows. Each step echoed louder, louder, before laughter echoed above me.
Ominous, hushed voices spiraled around my head. Sweat lined my brow as I pushed further—that, alongside my racing heart, was the only thing convincing me I was still alive. Hope was waning, but I had my humanity driving me onward. My foot smashed into the impossible, invisible ground, cracks shooting out from the force of my sprint.
The stars wavered, and slowly, the essence of light wavered on the other side. My lungs were failing me, my chest tightening as my heart leapt into my throat, but I kept going.
But the shadows had hands. They grappled onto me and forced me backward, and I screamed as my body was flung back one thousand paces.
Two thousand, even.
I soared across an infinite void until it was so dark, I knew not what was up or what was down. When my body slowed, and my vision settled into the spotted void, I found a dozen other eyes staring back at me. Some had cinders burning in them, while the others were gray as ash, but each held ethereal power in their glare. It was akin to the burning glare of the Elders.
They had no faces, but they were the hands controlling me. They were the holders of fate. They were my reckoning.
The Celestiate Sacrifice lives—
It was a collective voice, though not of man, woman, or animal. It simply was—an echo that belonged not to a soul, but to an idea.
—and the Celestiate sacrifice cries.
I’d been suspended in the air, slowed by hands I could no longer see. Slowly, gilded threads spiraled from their eyes and wrapped around my wrists, my legs—it was suffocating. Akin to the torture Sólkon had put me through…akin to the darkest nights of my life.
The gods are displeased with Myrthana’s vivification—but our sacrifice does not believe in her power. What does she believe in?
The collective voice hummed, as if they were separate entities speaking amongst each other. When I saw the Elders, my initial instinct was to compare them to the gods—something thrown around so casually, so helplessly, yet never admired. Never studied. Never worshiped.
No, fae and mortal monarchs alike had taken that role, of crown, blade, and faith.
They waited, and it was then I realized they expected my answer. Valued it, perhaps. It was such a heavy question—one I wasn’t sure I knew the answer to. “I believe in family,” I rasped, air choking out of me. “I believe in…in fairness, in honesty. Love.”
A romantic, came the voice with flaming eyes, and then the thread went taught, forcing my arms straight at my side and my ankles together. A lying romantic.
I sputtered out my gasp. “I am not lying—”
What does she believe in?
I paused as the eyes started to shift, circling me. A trail of starlight followed the ashen eyes, and fire chased after fire.
Together, it was the blazing harmony of chaos.
“I…I…” The air was getting stuck in my chest—not from nerves or panic, but from suffocation. I dipped my head back and rolled my shoulders, trying anything to ease the feeling of my lungs collapsing in on themselves. The glyphs that had freshly scarred my body started to burn, and flashes of my agony raced to the forefront of my mind—the answers to my biggest question.
What if. What if he had done what I feared? What if he had laid waste to my body in ways that would forever ruin me—my trust, my heart, my consent? I opened my eyes wide and saw nothing but Casynox’s body slumped in shadow. Had he been murdered? Had he found a way to break free when I failed him in his greatest time of need?
The threads started to tighten on my body, breaking the skin and drawing blood.
No. Sólkon…Julius…Yenira…they could all betray me. They could prove to me that even the strongest love was capable of turning bitter. But they would not harm Eero, Casynox, Sapphire, Azalea. I refused. I forbade it.
I choked on a sob, I choked on the air, just choked. “Revenge—”
The constricting, gilded strings snapped apart, and my body was freed, the air rushing back into my lungs. Those faceless eyes spiraled faster and faster until the starlight blurred with the flames, until I saw nothing but impossible light.
To touch our light is to live forever.
When my palm stung, I lifted it and looked at the glowing scar. It lifted off my skin, burning brighter than the sun.
To accept our light is to accept our trial—a Celestiate reborn, to take the place of a bitter heart and rebuild the torn tapestry of the known realms.
I scraped a finger over the scar and winced before lifting my gaze back to the spiraling starlight. I reached for it slowly, every part of my body trembling.
To accept your fate is to accept a celestial reaping.
So I accepted the call and let the gods return my soul to the shell of my body, starlight coloring a pool of blood beneath my body. I woke with a gasp, my body free of scars.
Every single scar.
I had been bled dry and left to rot. I had escaped death—but I was not alone in that feat.
The circular stone door ahead of me was open, and Yenira had vanished. The silver dagger was left on the floor in front of me, shiny surface colored vermillion red.
I’d been given a second chance—a true one—and as my bloody hand grabbed the handle of the dagger, I didn’t intend to let my revival go forgotten. This time, I would not let the unknown win.