Chapter 20 Vivid Imagination
Vivid Imagination
Aurora was quiet all through breakfast, unsure of how to act around the Starmaker.
She was certain he could hear her thoughts, certain he could feel the secrets within her in the beating of her heart and the knots in her stomach.
Every time she exhaled, she was scared the words I don’t want to lose you would echo through the room in a deafening scream.
That morning’s issue of Eternal Reverie stared back at her, mocking her.
BOLTING brIDE TO BE NEXT STARMAKER
Another reminder of what she was trying so hard to avoid.
She didn’t know why she cared so much. Most of the time she didn’t even like the Starmaker.
But every once in a while—and, if she was being honest, more regularly of late—a glance or something he said would make him temporarily tolerable.
Pleasant, even. It infuriated her, and it seemed that anger was the only emotion she was capable of showing, and so she sat silently at the opposite end of the table, keeping her eyes on the bowl in front of her.
Constance sat beside her, ignoring her own bowl in favor of watching Aurora, as if the animal, too, was reading her thoughts.
Aurora glared at her.
The Starmaker watched her with curiosity but said nothing, and it was perhaps the first time that Aurora was thankful he was fond of wordless meals.
After breakfast, Aurora hurried in front of the Starmaker and got situated in the sleigh, pulling a thick blanket up over her torso to keep warm.
When he sat down beside her, she did not meet his eyes and instead kept her gaze straight ahead.
The snow deer began moving, and Aurora was glad for the sound of their hooves in the snow and the wind in her hair.
“Are you cross with me?” the Starmaker asked, the first words he’d spoken to her since he’d greeted her at breakfast. It seemed the Starmaker could tire of silence after all.
Aurora didn’t want to answer because she didn’t know what to say. How could she tell him that her magic wasn’t progressing because she didn’t want him to become mortal? How could she admit that she didn’t know how to accept it?
She couldn’t—aside from the obvious reasons, she didn’t want the Starmaker to think she was saying something she wasn’t. She didn’t want him to think she had feelings for him when really her feelings were all tied up in the utter loneliness of the life ahead of her. She was almost certain of it.
“I’m just thinking about how I can do better today.”
“And what have you come up with?” the Starmaker asked, not sounding even remotely convinced in her ability to do so.
Aurora sighed. She couldn’t tell him about her most inconvenient realization, but she could tell him something true.
“When my sister was touched by the Frost, I dedicated every waking hour to her care. I researched herbs to give her and made sure a fire was always going. I gave her my portions of stew to ensure that her gut would be warm, and I pulled up her blankets each night when they came off as she slept.” Aurora watched the shadows that passed by the sleigh.
“During my worst moments, I wished I had never known my sister at all.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because for as long as I’ve loved my sister, I’ve lived in terror of losing her.”
Understanding seemed to pass over the Starmaker’s face. “And now it is a guarantee.”
Aurora swallowed hard. “Yes.” She paused, looking up at the Starmaker. “And when that happens, there will not be a single soul to help me through it.” Not even you, she thought.
The Starmaker was quiet for a long time before speaking again. “You are strong enough to survive it.”
“How do you know?” Aurora asked, so softly she wasn’t sure if she had spoken the words aloud.
“Because you’re stubborn, and while it is one of your more aggravating qualities, it will serve you well in this life.”
Aurora was stunned. “Those are your words of encouragement? That I’m stubborn?”
“Yes,” the Starmaker said. “The fact that you don’t like the answer doesn’t make it any less true.”
“You may be the least comforting person I’ve ever met.”
“You say that now, but tonight, when you are lying in your bed unable to sleep, you will think back to this conversation and realize that I’m right.”
“I assure you, I will not be thinking about you in my bed.”
The Starmaker gave her a sideways glance.
Though it was hard to tell in the darkness, she could have sworn a smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth, but before she could be sure, his face settled again into its usual sharp, humorless lines.
“That is not what I meant.” He paused. “If it were, you would know.”
Without warning, vivid images of the Starmaker tangled in her sheets sprang to life in her mind, and the harder she tried not to think about them, the more insistent they became.
She saw herself running her fingers over his Sun’s mark, saw him reaching for her jaw and pressing his mouth to hers, feeling his warmth in the deepest parts of herself.
She saw it with such clarity that she had to close her eyes against it, which only made things worse.
She was horrified when she caught herself wondering what he tasted like, what his bare skin felt like to touch.
A blush was spreading across Aurora’s cheeks, and she was flustered by the way his words and the images they’d conjured skipped around in her core like stones over water.
She gripped the blanket tighter and tilted her head to the sky, studying the trees with such vigor that her neck began to ache.
She wished on every star in the sky that he couldn’t feel the quickening of her heart, but even if that was the case, she knew that her stretching silence told the Starmaker exactly what she was thinking, and for a brief moment, she considered launching herself from the sleigh.
“You need a release,” the Starmaker said.
Aurora’s jaw fell open, and a furious heat sparked in her center that made her squirm in her seat. “I beg your pardon?” she choked out.
“Something that enables you to let go of your fear of grief so that you may live in the present.”
Aurora tried to remove the stunned expression from her face and let the Starmaker’s intended meaning douse the fire in her gut, as he was clearly not experiencing the visions of heavy breathing and hungry touches that Aurora was.
But she was too slow, and the Starmaker spoke again.
“You need to make more progress, Aurora.”
“I know that,” she snapped, exhaling sharply.
“Fine.”
The snow deer slowed when they reached the glacier, and by the time Aurora stepped out of the sleigh and walked to the lamppost in the center of the ice field, she had managed to slow her heart back to normal, though not without effort.
The cold of the morning helped, and when the Starmaker took her hand and stretched his free arm toward the peaks of Reverie, Aurora was ready to receive her portion of the light.
He paused. “Perhaps we should give Tilly her gift tonight?”
Aurora was surprised by the question, and it made her heart ache, how much he loved the angel. “I would like that.”
The Starmaker nodded, and Aurora was about to close her eyes when something moved in the shadow of the trees, distracting her—perhaps a wild animal or one of the snow deer.
But then the Starmaker began speaking, and Aurora was pulled back to the glacier.
His voice was like magic itself, causing her eyes to flutter closed and her body to tense as she awaited the Sun, a reflex she had no control over.
Then, in one brilliant moment, light poured between the peaks and raced over Reverie to greet the Starmaker.
Aurora felt his hand tense in hers, and she knew instantly that something wasn’t right.
She opened her eyes just in time to see the light pass through the Starmaker as if he didn’t even exist, nothing more than air—and it all barreled straight into her chest, along with even more of the Starmaker’s magic.
The force of it sent her flying through the air, her entire body burning from the heat.
With her connection to the Starmaker lost, the Sun snapped back to him, but the damage was already done.
Once, when Aurora was young, she had knocked a pot of boiling water off the stove, and some of it had splashed onto her arm.
Her skin had turned red and angry, rising up in protest, and Aurora had cried for hours, the pain incessant.
She felt the same pain now, except it wasn’t only on her arm—it was everywhere, her skin and her muscles and her organs and bones.
She gasped, her vision blurring as the world spun around her.
The Starmaker ran toward her, but his steps were stilted and uneven, and she realized in a rush that he, too, was hurt.
So much of his magic had already passed to Aurora—too much—and yet the Sun had slammed into him with such strength that he would have needed all of it to handle the blow.
It was a wonder he was standing at all, and watching him, Aurora knew they were running out of time.
If she couldn’t learn to hold more of the light soon, the Starmaker would be entirely drained of his magic before Aurora was capable of caring for Reverie on her own.
The Starmaker continued toward her, taking one labored step after the next, and Aurora could see how painful it was for him.
She tried to get to him, to push herself off the ground and rush to his side, but she was too weak, and she watched as the Starmaker fell to his knees and collapsed on the ground.
Aurora called out to him, but the sound was so small that the snow swallowed it up, never meeting the Starmaker’s ears.
She thought she was reaching for him, but she wasn’t sure.
The world spun faster and faster until finally, the whole thing went dark.