Chapter 33 A Discovery #2
I am writing to you on behalf of many shopkeepers from the village square.
We cannot adequately convey the depth of our condolences for the loss of our fourth Starmaker, may he rest in warmth.
While it is surely not our place to suggest how you should grieve, we must make you aware that with the loss of the light, the Frost is creeping out beyond the forest, and it is only a matter of time before it reaches not only the village square but homes and livestock as well.
All of our candy stripe phlox are now gray.
This will be my last delivery of books for the time being. I hope you find what you are seeking, but more urgently, I hope you remember your place in Reverie and bring us some much-needed light.
Yours in service,
Oliver T. Burgess
Aurora shook her head and tossed the note aside.
How could the people who claimed to have loved the Starmaker urge her to do the very thing that had killed him?
Pulling the light had brought Caspian to his end, and going back to that glacier and hanging the light from the lamppost felt almost as impossible as Reverie’s existence in the first place.
She wanted to ask Caspian how he’d done it, how he’d gotten up just two days after his mentor’s death to pull in the light, and it felt so unfair that she could not. He was the only one who could help her, yet he was lying unmoving in a marble casket, awaiting burial.
Aurora got back to work. She fought against the pain ravaging her insides because she couldn’t distinguish it from her grief, and she didn’t understand how weak she was becoming because her mind would not allow her to think of it.
She was not sure how much more time passed before the door of the library swung open and Elsie walked in with a fierce expression on her face. It could have been hours, or it could have been days.
“Elsie?” Aurora asked, blinking at the figure standing in the doorway, wondering if perhaps she was imagining it. She couldn’t remember the last time she had slept, and it was plausible that her mind was tricking her.
“Yes, sister, it’s me. Now get up.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Get up,” Elsie said again, moving to Aurora’s spot on the floor and yanking her up by her arm.
“Why are you doing this?” Aurora’s words sounded almost like a cry, and when she got to her feet, her sister had to steady her. She swayed left, then right as all the blood rushed away from her head, and she fell back to the floor.
“Because our home is closest to the woods. It is our home and our family that will be touched by the Frost first.” Elsie spoke to her sister as if she weren’t piled in a heap on the floor, pulling her to standing once again.
Aurora tried to resist, tried to sink back to the ground, but Elsie held on tight.
“Don’t tell me you’re as worked up over a little darkness as everyone else. It has only been a few days; the Frost does not move that quickly.”
Elsie looked shocked, but her expression softened as she studied Aurora’s appearance, her sister’s tangled hair and the dark circles beneath her eyes. “Sister, it has been more than a fortnight.”
“What?” Aurora asked, looking helplessly around the library, taking in all the books scattered across the floor, the blankets that served as a bed.
“Impossible,” she whispered, though she wasn’t convinced.
She tried to think back over the hours and days since Caspian’s death, but they all seemed to run into each other, just one long stretch of night.
Elsie pulled her sister close, wrapping her arms around Aurora so tightly that Aurora could feel herself being forced back together, and when she tried to resist, to hold on to her anger and apathy, Elsie held her tighter still.
“Leave me alone!” Aurora shouted, trying to break free, but Elsie’s grip was strong.
“I will not leave you,” Elsie said.
“You will! That is the problem. You and Mama and Aspen and Evander will all leave, and I will be left with no one.” Aurora struggled against her sister’s hold until she no longer had the strength, until all of the fight drained out of her.
“I will lose you all.” Aurora gasped, and then a violent sob tore from her throat and echoed through the library, bouncing off the walls.
Elsie ran her hand over Aurora’s hair and whispered softly in her ear, clutching her as she sobbed, and Aurora clung to her because she was sure she could not stand on her own.
When Aurora had no more tears to cry, she slowly pulled away, and Elsie led her out of the library and back to her bedroom. “You need to sleep,” she said.
“The Sun,” Aurora replied, staring out her balcony doors at the endless night sky.
“I need to pull the Sun.” It was then that she realized how ill she felt, and she knew it was the magic building up in her system, causing her body to shut down.
She was thankful to be at the castle, surrounded by magic that kept her alive, but even magic had its limits.
If Elsie had not come, Aurora wondered if she would have let her magic kill her without ever even knowing what was happening.
“Yes, you do. But after you sleep.”
“Will you still be here when I wake?”
“Yes.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
It was only then that Aurora climbed into her bed, pulled up the covers, and closed her eyes. She did not dream that night, not of Caspian or the Sun or the Frost. Instead, as she slept, her mind worked through each and every page she had read, filing away the important bits for safekeeping.