Chapter 33 A Discovery
A Discovery
Aurora had not given it enough thought at the time, the way the candy stripe phlox had turned from gray to pink on the day she had called Caspian beautiful.
She had been light-headed from her bleeding cut and distracted by the Starmaker, and the changing flower had not mystified her as it ought to have.
But now it demanded her attention, waking her from a restless sleep in the dead of night.
Why had it changed?
The most likely explanation was that it had been a trick of her mind. They’d been pulling away in a sleigh when she’d seen it, after all, and the petals were small, so she surely hadn’t been looking at the same bloom as she had been when she’d cut her neck. Perfectly reasonable.
And yet she couldn’t let go of it, and so she got out of bed, dressed in a rush, and had the sleigh prepared for her.
Aurora was calm as the snow deer pulled her to the edge of the woods where the phlox stretched out endlessly in either direction. The moon was full, creating enough light to illuminate the plants, and she didn’t stop the deer until she had reached the house she grew up in.
She kept her distance, not wanting to wake her family, and the ache in her chest seemed to pulse in time with the soft orange glow of the fire inside.
For a while, she just stood and watched it, but the nagging in her mind was incessant, and she finally turned away and walked to the phlox behind the house.
Aurora stopped at a patch of candy stripe that was entirely gray, set her lantern down, and pulled a red rose from her cloak.
The bloom was large and fragrant, and when Aurora touched a thorn to her finger, a single drop of blood appeared.
She took several deep breaths, trying not to look as the drop got bigger.
She knelt on the ground and shoved the snow aside, holding her finger above the roots, and then the drop fell to the earth.
She pulled a cloth from her cloak and quickly wiped her finger clean, and then she waited.
At first nothing happening, and Aurora tried to fight the disappointment in her gut.
At least she had tried. But then color seeped into the plant, the stems turning green before her eyes, faint but real.
Then, all at once, the petals burst to life, vibrant pink and crisp white crawling across the blooms in a show that took Aurora’s breath away.
She shook her head, not quite believing what she was seeing; perhaps she was dizzier from the blood than she’d realized.
It had been only a drop, after all. Was there truly that much magic inside her?
She walked several paces away and repeated the process, and sure enough, color returned to the flowers.
Aurora realized in a rush that her blood could feed the earth, fighting back the Frost. And because the magic in her veins was so potent, only a tiny amount was necessary. The mountain didn’t need Caspian—it could survive on her alone.
Aurora rushed back to the sleigh, her body vibrating with what she had learned.
She had never wanted any of this; she had dreamt of a comfortable life for herself and those she loved, but Caspian had awoken something in her, a desire for more.
She wanted to leave her mark on the world, wanted her own stories told throughout the ages.
There were many who believed that loneliness was the cost of an extraordinary life, but Aurora could not accept that.
She would not accept that.
The Sun had fallen in love with a human she could never be with, but Aurora was no Sun. And she would not spend her many years alone. Her stories would not be those of a heartbreaking, doomed love, but rather a love so strong it would outlive death.
Aurora hadn’t meant to bypass the glacier, to go straight to the castle instead of first pulling the light. But her mind was racing, and all she could think about was getting to Caspian’s library and reading every page of every book until she discovered a way to bring him back.
It was Caspian who had said there was so much magic here—that it was everywhere—and Aurora was intent on using it.
She’d thought she had accepted their fate, believed she could move forward and do what was required of her.
But she had been wrong. Seeing the phlox come back to life had induced a kind of frenzy inside of her, a panicked hope that perhaps she wouldn’t have to accept things as they were after all.
Her hope built and built and built, and by the time she reached the castle, it had grown so big it was impossible to see past, blocking out everything except her desire to bring Caspian back.
When she walked inside the grand entrance, it was dim and quiet, the only sound that of the statue’s hushed crying.
She looked up at it: the Sun and the Starmaker carved from stone, being pulled from each other, an impossible distance between them.
The statue didn’t often cry, but it had done so constantly since Caspian’s death.
Aurora turned away and lit a candle, hurrying to the library with soft footsteps.
She had many hours of work ahead of her, and she did not want to be interrupted by the staff.
The hallways were silent, awaiting the arrival of the light, and Aurora resented the way the palace was still so magical, still so vibrant.
Perhaps that was why she failed to pull the sunlight that day: because she felt the whole mountain should still be in mourning, just as she was.
It wasn’t a conscious decision, though—rather more like a task that had slipped through the cracks of her mind.
And once it happened the first time, it made the second and third and fourth easier.
There was a nagging in the back of her mind, telling her she was forgetting something, but she was so focused on the books in the library that she did not give it the attention it deserved.
On the fifth day, Aurora was splayed out on the soft rug, surrounded by piles of books.
She was reading everything she could on the magic of Reverie, the connection to the Sun, and the way the land had changed when each Starmaker was buried.
At her request, Mr. Burgess sent her new books each morning to supplement the materials in Caspian’s library, and Aurora turned page after page, looking for anything that hinted at a living Starmaker giving their blood to the mountain, but there was nothing.
There had to be. She just hadn’t found it yet.
Aurora was so caught up in her reading that she didn’t hear the way the staff whispered, worried they may never see the light again.
Ina brought her plates of food, and Aurora ate just enough to keep her mind going.
When she slept, it was in the library on a pile of blankets, and only for a few hours at a time.
She read and wrote and read and wrote, and when she needed a break, she stood and walked in circles, never leaving the room.
Aurora paid no attention to the way her body was failing without the use of her magic, ignoring the pain as if it were simply an itch. Constance stayed close by, hopping nervously around the library, watching Aurora as if ensuring she didn’t fade away.
When Ina came with supper on the seventh night, Aurora did not look up from her reading. Ina set the tray down, but she did not leave. She stood before Aurora until the Starmaker finally noticed her, blinking up at her as if trying to adjust to the light.
“What is it, Ina?” she asked, dipping her head once more to her book.
“It is the light, Your Radiance.” Ina’s voice was gentle and hesitant, and she knelt down in front of Aurora. “We have not seen it in quite a while.”
Aurora rubbed her eyes. Her vision was blurry from all the reading she’d done, and she hadn’t realized how badly her head was aching. “I will get to it,” she said, taking a piece of bread from the tray and gulping it down in two bites. “I just need to finish what I’m doing first.”
“May I ask what it is you’re doing?”
Aurora answered without looking up. “No.”
Ina swallowed. “Your Radiance, you are the Starmaker. Surely there is nothing more important than that.”
Aurora looked at Ina with such intensity that her eyes blazed more than the crackling fire. “What I am is a grieving widow. Now, please leave me be.”
Ina did not move for several breaths, but Aurora had already gone back to her reading and did not notice when she was once again alone.
When she couldn’t find any information on whether the blood of a living Starmaker could indeed sustain the land, at least for a time, she began reading up on immortality.
It was a complicated matter; the Sun—a truly immortal being—had given a human part of her immortality.
And that immortality transferred from Starmaker to Starmaker, a seemingly movable force that could be shared like a pot of tea.
It had to mean something.
Aurora rubbed her temples, her head throbbing. She continued to pore over book after book, scribbling down half ideas and sparks of inspiration, anything that could lead her to a breakthrough.
Immortality. Blood. Transferable. Body. Magic. Glare Lines. Phlox.
The more she read, the less the ache in her chest took her breath away. The more she wrote, the less the stabbing in her gut mattered. It was her own kind of medicine, and she was dulling the pain as much as she could.
When a fresh set of books arrived at the palace from the bookshop, Aurora tore into them immediately, and a small white envelope fell from the stack. She picked it up, hoping the owner had some family lore to share or some whispers he had heard that might help her, but it was nothing of the sort.
Your Radiance,