Star Mother (Star Mother #1)(30)

We were quiet awhile, watching the moon slowly climb the night sky. I added a few sticks to the fire. Ristriel moved to the shadows, leaving the blanket to me, becoming solid once more.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to share my blanket with him; I’d known him for only a matter of hours, and he was a godling on the run from . . . something. Instead, I asked, “Are you cold?”

Ristriel didn’t reply.

Reaching into my bag, I grabbed a piece of bread and offered it to him. He gave it a longing look but then shook his head once more.

“Are you hungry?” I pressed.

“I do not need to eat.”

“But you still can.” I recalled the lavish feast I’d had with Sun. He was a full god, and even He could eat.

He hesitated, then reached a hoof into the moonlight. It shifted into the shape of a hand, which he then pulled back so it would turn solid. I gaped at the human-shaped hand jutting from the leg of the miniature horse. Trying to behave as though that were a normal thing, I leaned into the shadows to give him the bread. He looked at it with a sort of wonder only a toddler might have, then nibbled away, his expression thoughtful.

When he finished, I asked, “How did you know I was a star mother?” For every godling I came across, on Earth and in Sun’s palace, somehow knew me immediately. I had figured it was some sort of godly sense they had.

“Because of your starlight,” he said. “And because of your scars.”

I started. “S-Scars?”

He nodded. Then saw my face, and shrunk. “I’ve upset you.”

“I . . .” I didn’t know how to answer. I pulled up my sleeves, examining my arms in the firelight. “I . . . I don’t have any scars.” Stretch marks, certainly, but those were tucked away beneath my clothes.

“They’re not on your body but your spirit,” he explained, watching me, gauging my reaction.

I glanced over myself as though I would be able to see the marks. “Why do I have scars?”

He took a moment to answer, and I could tell he was choosing his words carefully. “If you thrust your hand into that fire, would it not hurt you?”

I glanced to the flames.

“You are a mortal woman who lay with the Sun and carried a star. Of course you have scars.”

It dawned on me then, the pitiful looks I got from Elta and Fosii and the others within the Palace of the Sun, even after my star was born. They could see the mutilation that I could not. I hugged myself, wondering what I looked like to them.

“Do not be ashamed, Ceris.” Ristriel spoke gently. “They are marks of your journey and your sacrifice.”

I supposed he was correct, but it was strange, knowing I was so marked beneath my skin.

“Look at the moon.”

I did. It hovered overhead, pocked in a way that almost formed a face. I had once likened demigods to bears, but the moon was a bear who could swallow cities whole if she so desired. The stories said that many godlings found refuge in her kingdom when they were cast out from Sun’s. And so the moon was the most powerful demigod of all. At least in all the lore I knew.

“She, too, is scarred. But she is beautiful.”

I lowered my arms. “She is.”

Ristriel stepped onto the blanket, turning half-ethereal. “She was once much larger than she is now, but the war has whittled her down.”

“War with whom?”

He looked at me, surprised I didn’t know. “With the Sun, of course. They have always battled over the heavens. Sun is older, and He resented her for stealing His light and encroaching on His territory. She resents Him for being what she is not, and hates Him even more for shrinking her, scarring her. But He is of the law and must enforce it. Such is His nature. The moon does not like being disregarded simply because she is young. Since she is less. They have warred and peaced for millennia. Like you, her scars mark her journey.”

I glanced up again, studying the gray splotches of the moon. I tried to imagine her as a flawless orb of silver light. Truthfully, there was beauty to her dimensions, despite the violence with which she had received them.

I shivered, my body remembering the pain of my spirit’s scars, and for a moment, I relived each and every one of them.

“Rest, Ceris.” Ristriel crossed the glade, ears pricking as he listened to the forest. “I will watch over you as you have watched over me. Nothing will harm you under my protection.”

As I lay down, using my second dress as a blanket, the fire warming my back, I realized that I believed him.



One would think that sleeping out of doors would make for a restless night, but I slept soundly beneath the stars. Ristriel, wholly solid and once again the size of a warhorse, roused me with his muzzle just before dawn.

“We should go. It isn’t wise to stay in one place for too long.”

Rubbing sleep from my eyes, I nodded and gathered my things, noticing with disdain that the little bit of dried meat I’d had with me had suddenly spoiled. I cast it aside and hefted my bags onto sore shoulders. It would have been nice to put them over Ristriel’s back, but Sun was quick to reclaim His kingdom, and my godling guide again became as the air, translucent the moment a Sunbeam touched his broad back. If last night had given me any clues, I believed he could change shape only when he was ethereal. It seemed, unless we found a building of some sort to enter, he would be ethereal for most of the day. I also wondered if his ghostliness would help him keep his promise. He could not hurt me if he could not touch me, though lack of physicality did not mean he couldn’t trick me.