Chapter 10 An Amusing Plight #3
Aurora was glad she would never have to carry a burden like that, and she was even more thankful that the Sun had chosen to do so.
Even now, with everything that had happened, Aurora still cherished the stories.
She was devoted to this mountain and captivated by the way it was sustained by magic that arose from an unimaginable love.
The Starmaker’s words rushed back to her then, and she felt her cheeks flush in the bitter cold.
If that is the only love you have ever experienced, then I am sorry for you.
The Starmaker began speaking, relieving Aurora of the thought, uttering words that she could not understand and wasn’t sure she wanted to.
“Give me your hand,” the Starmaker said in a low voice that held little of the sternness she had come to expect.
At first Aurora didn’t move, keeping her hands in her cloak, not wanting to touch him.
He exhaled hard before turning to face her.
“You and I need to be joined while you learn; you were able to call to the Sun on your own last night because the moon diminishes the power of the light, but now there is no moon acting as intermediary. There is a direct line between you and the Sun, and at the beginning I will need to pull the majority of the heat away from you. Otherwise you will be overwhelmed by it.”
Aurora hesitated. She wasn’t sure if she was more afraid of the pain or of officially beginning her role, and it felt almost impossible to give her hand to the Starmaker.
She looked up the valley toward the lights and wondered if one of them belonged to Farren’s house.
Her cottage was too far away to see from here, but she pictured her family, cozy and warm, and missed them so much that it nearly took her breath away.
It was that image—the one of her family—that gave her the strength she needed to move. She would do this for them.
Slowly, Aurora removed her hand from her cloak, and though it shook, she gave it to the Starmaker.
As soon as her hand brushed his, he gripped it tightly. “You will want to pull away from me when you first feel the heat,” the Starmaker said. “Don’t.”
Aurora’s heart slammed against her ribs, and she tried to still her body, but the shaking only got worse.
She looked up at the mountain, past the village and toward the sharp, jagged peaks that blocked Reverie from the Sun.
Everything was dark. Still. Quiet. Then, all at once, sunlight cut through the peaks and began rolling toward them.
Aurora had never seen anything like it, and her eyes filled with tears at the sheer beauty of it.
She watched with wonder as light slid over the village and moved across the valley where they stood.
It was an avalanche of blazing yellow, magnificent to behold, and for one beat of her heart, she stopped shaking and just enjoyed the show.
Then the Sun reached her.
Heat shot through her body in an unbearable surge, searing agony that forced a scream from her lips as she squeezed her eyes shut against the pain.
She tried to run, to pull her hand free of the Starmaker’s grasp and get out of the light, but the harder she pulled, the tighter the Starmaker held on.
The mountain was glistening, coming to life in the sunshine, but Aurora’s vision blurred, and she could see nothing.
She bit down on her cheek hard and tasted blood, and the fire inside her continued to rage.
She sank to her knees to get closer to the snow, and mercifully, the Starmaker knelt with her.
She lay down on the ground on her stomach and buried her face in the cold, and still the Starmaker kept her hand firmly in his, even as she writhed on the earth.
Then, finally, she stopped trying to pull away.
The snow was the only thing keeping Aurora conscious, and she moved her free arm out of her cloak so her bare skin could touch it, and with that, her breathing began to slow.
It was only then that Aurora realized the Starmaker was rubbing her back, a soft circular motion like her mother used to make when she’d put her down for naps as a young girl.
She didn’t dare move or speak, scared that if the motion stopped, the pain would burn her alive, leaving nothing more than a husk on Reverie’s glacier.
Aurora wasn’t sure how long they stayed that way, but by the time she sat up, the pain had subsided and she felt as if she could breathe again.
The Starmaker was quick to remove his palm from her back, then he slowly let go of her entirely.
Her hand felt so cold without him holding it, and she moved it beneath her cloak.
The Starmaker stood, and Aurora watched as he walked toward the gold lamppost and stepped up onto the small platform at the base of it.
The edge of the light was clutched firmly in his hand, and he hung it from a small hook in the lantern, securing its place over Reverie, stretching it out like a sheer piece of glimmering fabric between the Sun and the lamppost.
“The worst is over,” he said as he made his way back to her.
He did not help Aurora to her feet, and she wondered if she had imagined his hand on her back, if she’d been so delirious from the pain that she’d made the whole thing up as a way to cope.
“Now that the sunlight covers Reverie, our biggest job is done for the day. We are also responsible for tending to any magic that has gone awry, and several times a week we will patrol the woods to ensure that the Frost isn’t encroaching on the village. ”
Aurora stared at him, barely hearing the words he spoke. “I have never experienced pain like that before, and you expect me to move on as if nothing has happened?”
“I told you, the worst is over.”
“If you think I will continue to come out here with you each and every day, you are quite mistaken.”
The Starmaker turned to her, his golden eyes more vibrant in the daylight. “You will continue to do so, because you will die if you don’t.”
Aurora didn’t want to believe him. She wanted to dismiss it as a scare tactic, a way to ensure that she stepped into her role as peacefully as possible, but after what she’d just felt, she knew he was right. This magic could kill her.
“A rather odd consequence if I am meant to develop an affection for the Sun, is it not?”
“Magic has a cost, as does everything else in the world worth having.”
Aurora paused, watching the Starmaker. “And yet the only thing you have in your life is magic. It seems you have decided these other things you speak of are not worth their cost.”
The Starmaker took a step closer to Aurora. “I have lived many lifetimes and paid many prices. To think you know me because you have spent a day in my castle would be a mistake.”
“And to think you know me because I was chosen by the Sun would be a mistake.”
“That is where we differ, Miss Finch,” the Starmaker said, turning toward the sleigh. “I do not think of you at all.”
* * *
The Starmaker
The Starmaker had never had a way with words, but even he knew I do not think of you at all had been a particularly bad choice. He was not used to being spoken to with such impertinence, and he found it deeply aggravating the way the Starmaker Rising made assumptions about who he was.
Still, the words had been unnecessary and—more notably—untrue.
Perhaps that was what aggravated him most.
He knew that she would come to hate him if he could not find a way to be more civil, and yet hatred was so far superior to the alternative that he could not bring himself to apologize.
The Starmaker’s own mentor had been brusque and impassive, and it had still been exceedingly difficult for him when the man had died.
He could only imagine how much worse it would have been had the Starmaker felt an affinity for him.
It was a cost, the Starmaker was sure, he’d been glad not to pay.
Of course, marrying the girl was not something he had planned on, but it would complicate things only if he let it, and he would not. Of that he was certain.
And so he said nothing to his fiancée, content to let her hate him.