Chapter 18
Orra climbed the steps, letting her hands run over the vines that still grew from the night she’d used her power to kill so many and save so few.
She’d felt peace in that moment that she was doing what the Sun wanted, but now she let the events replay through her mind, second-guessing all she’d done.
Helping Aeliana and these people had been the right thing to do, and yet she’d interfered.
It went against all she knew, and it delayed all her goals.
And yet it had been the Sun’s will. Hadn’t it?
She might have been able to get the stone’s location from Mayvus, but now that Mayvus was gone, Orra had no more leads to follow.
She made her way through Mayvus’ rooms, ignoring the mess left behind from battle and the care for the wounded.
No one else dared spend time in the northern keep because of its instability, but Orra longed for its precarious balcony.
Not only could she guarantee solitude under the Stars and Sun, but she almost welcomed the keep’s demise.
After a thousand years of being grounded on the earth, she was ready to return to the Sun, if it would even welcome her.
She stepped out on the balcony, tracing the faint lines of ash left from the Stars who had retrieved starlocks the night of the battle.
Eventually, she settled in the dark outline of where Jasperus’ body had been burned up.
Where Reyna had rejected her as a peer once more.
She could still smell the heat and smoke coming from her former friend, could still sense her ethereal presence as if her stardust lingered.
But Reyna and the others had abandoned her. They had given up on her ability to redeem herself, and they wanted nothing to do with her.
She lay there, studying the static stars and their constellations, waiting for her old friends to begin their dance.
Andreas made his entrance, a slow buzzing loop, like a bee circling a flower for its honey.
Lumina had a more abrupt approach, jolting through the sky in sporadic patterns.
Reyna was as graceful as always, the smooth lines of her dance a pure form of art.
Several others joined in, making Orra feel the loss of companionship with a heaviness that only highlighted how much she was bound by gravity in this form.
She had once treasured the ability to take on this body and fellowship with the people, but she’d never thought she would have to give up her space in the sky.
She’d never thought she would lose her relationship with the Sun.
A tightness squeezed in her gut, then spread out to her limbs until her entire body grew tense. She sat up, evaluating the way the tension felt like a string wound in an instrument, taut and plucked. Humming with its vibration.
This was far more than grief.
She placed a hand over the braid tied around her wrist like a bracelet, letting its hum reverberate through her fingers.
Someone was touching the stone.