House of Salt and Sorrows(79)

“Why seven?” I asked, gazing back to the moon windows as we paused on the steps leading out into a courtyard.

“What do you mean?”

“House of Seven Moons. Seven windows. I assume each one holds a different phase of the moon?” He nodded. “But there are eight phases.”

“There’s no window for the full moon. See how they are arranged? Those are the quarter moons,” he said, pointing, “and the gibbous and crescents. And in the middle—that’s the new moon. At the full moon, Versia’s postulants blow out every candle in the abbey to let the light wash over everything from up there.” He gestured to the open roof.

I imagined it at night, with silvery moonlight raining down on the pale gray stones sprinkled with metallic flecks. How they must shimmer.

“What a lovely sight.”

“I’ll take you, if you like. At the two solstices, crowds come to the abbey to celebrate the night. It’s much like Churning, but for Versia and the People of the Stars. There’s a wall deeper in the abbey that holds hundreds of tiny candles. Each person takes one and makes a wish.”

“What happens then?”

“Later that night, everyone gathers here with their wish candles. They light paper lanterns, sending them floating into the sky. They glow and sparkle, drifting higher and higher until they join the heavens. The People of the Stars believe that in the coming months, if they see a shooting star, it’s their wish on its way back to them.”

My mouth curled up, picturing the sky lit with hundreds of tiny flames. “I’d love to see that.”

“The next solstice is only a month away. You must start thinking of a very important wish.”

He led me through a set of arches, showing me the view beyond the abbey. A rocky point stretched into the sea, sharp and jagged. The water below was warm green topped with foamy whitecaps. So different from the dark and deep Kaleic.

“That’s where I release my lantern. It keeps it away from the rest of the group so I don’t lose sight of it. I like keeping an eye on my lantern for as long as I can.” He looked back at me with a shy smile. “If you come with me, you can release yours there too. I wouldn’t mind if our wishes got twisted up in each other.”

Two lanterns twirling together in the dark night to join the stars. It made such a beautiful image in my mind, I wanted to send them up right now. I’d wish for…What would I wish for?

I wanted the killer to be found and for my sisters to stop dying. I wanted Morella to have a safe delivery and healthy twins. I wanted Camille to marry someone and start a family. If I wasn’t second in line anymore, I could figure out what I was meant to do with my life. I studied Cassius’s profile, enjoying the way the strange light played off his cheekbones.

In that moment, more than anything, I wanted him to kiss me again.

“Have any of your wishes ever come back?”

His smile suddenly turned bashful, and the tips of his ears glowed pink. “I met the girl who taught turtles to swim with the waves, didn’t I?”

Cassius brought his hands up, cradling my cheeks, and pressed a tender kiss to my forehead. I tilted my chin, and his lips were on mine, soft and achingly sweet. I ran my fingers up his chest, letting them linger on the back of his neck and twist into his dark curls.

“All my years of imagining you,” he murmured, leaving a trail of kisses across my face, “and you are so much more than I ever could have dreamt of…. You smell like sunlight,” he whispered against my mouth.

“Sunlight has a smell?” I asked, gasping as he planted a kiss in the hollow of my throat.

“Oh yes,” he assured me. “All my life has been moonlight and the stars. I can smell the sunlight racing through your veins from across a room. Sunlight and heat and salt. Always the salt.”

I cupped my hands around his cheeks, bringing his mouth to mine and silencing him. I nipped at his lower lip, surprised by my own daring. The kiss intensified then, and I opened my mouth, letting my tongue venture out to find his. He tasted crisp and cool, like the night’s dew across the garden or the first bite of a shiny green apple.

A shot of desire raced through me, burning my limbs like lightning. His hands snaked around my waist, pulling me flush against him, as when he first brought us here.

Fighting against every impulse sailing through my body, I pulled away, breaking the kiss, thoroughly breathless. “How did we get here?” I asked, desperately trying to rein in my heartbeat. It pounded, singing Cassius’s name through my veins so loudly, I was sure he could hear it. “Did we…did we fly?”

Cassius let out a bark of laughter and turned, showing me his back. “Do you see wings?”

“I don’t know what else to call it. You didn’t even have to use a door.”

His eyebrow quirked. “A door?”

“We use the one in the Grotto. To get to the balls.”

His head tilted. “I don’t…I don’t understand.”

“There’s a door we discovered on Salten. Pontus uses it to travel quickly through our world. We’ve been using it to leave the island.”

A flock of birds burst from the facade above us, a flutter of wings and chirps, breaking the intensity of Cassius’s stare.

“What’s it like, this door?”

I stepped down into the courtyard, feeling as though I’d said something wrong. “It’s at Pontus’s shrine. You twist his trident and the door just…appears.”