Star Mother (Star Mother #1)(53)

It took me a moment to realize it was not the dawn that had woken me, but Sun Himself.

I startled into alertness and sat up, noting the forest around me was bathed in shades of night. And Ristriel—Ristriel was gone.

“What did you do to him?” I launched to my feet, heart in my throat.

Sun raised a golden eyebrow. “To whom?”

My wits rushed to make sense of the situation. The Sun was here. Ristriel must have sensed Him coming, like before, and vanished. Yar and Shu had not yet reported to Him. I did not know Sun as well as I should, but like Ristriel, He was honest, and not one to play games. He did not know.

My eyes adjusted, I lowered my hand. “I-I’m sorry, nothing. Just a bad dream.”

Sun hummed deep in His throat. “One of the many gifts of mortals.”

I had been searching the woods, wondering if that metallic glitter was still there, or if Ristriel might pop up his head, but Sun’s comment jerked my attention back to Him. “Dreams?”

He held out a hand as though offering me something. “Immortals do not need sleep, and so We do not dream. I have always found the idea of a theater of the mind fascinating, and yet it is one thing I cannot, and will not, understand.”

“I didn’t know.” Though it made sense. “They can be very . . . peculiar. Sometimes they are pleasant, sometimes they are scary, other times they are simply . . . there. And they are not always remembered.”

He nodded. “Why have you deactivated your ring?”

Flushing, I glanced down at my hand. I twisted the golden loop so the amber band shone across its center. How Sun found me, I wasn’t sure, but we had not ventured far from Tarnos, where the ring had last been active. My burst of starlight had likely played a role as well. “I-I tinker with it sometimes. I must not have realized.” The lie felt thick on my tongue.

The Sun gazed up at the sky. “I have little time, Ceris. Please, will you come with Me?”

And Sun was so earnest, I nodded. He offered me His elbow. I hesitated, fighting the impulse to turn around, to look for Ristriel. I took His elbow. He was hot to the touch, like a raging fever, but like before, His heat did not harm me. It was quite pleasant, after a chilly night in the wood.

The Sun lifted His foot as if He were climbing a staircase, and the world shifted around us. I did not feel it, like I had when Ristriel brought me to my daughter. There was no dizzying sensation, no falling, no wind in my hair. I simply was one place and then I was another, a tunnel of light like a tilting hallway, never ending.

“Tell me of your dream,” Sun asked.

I flushed, my lie spinning webs around me. I could not remember my dreams from the night before, so I grasped the first segments of one I could remember. “I was a cat, but then I was not.”

He glanced down at me, confusion wrinkling the golden skin between His eyebrows.

“That is, I started the dream as a cat, but then I was someone else, watching the cat,” I explained. “And there was a ball of string I could not unwind, and it was increasingly frustrating, until I realized it was cheese carved to look like a ball of string.” I laughed; it seemed so much stranger said out loud. Remembering my earlier excuse, however, I made up the rest. “And then there was a great wolf chasing me, and my owner was trying to fight him off, and . . . I woke up.”

The Sun seemed content with my explanation. “Strange, indeed. I would love to hear more of your dreams.”

“I do not think we have the time to cover them all. Besides, the longer you live away from a dream, the harder it becomes to remember.”

He waited a breath before speaking. “If you were to be with Me, Ceris, you could tell Me of your dreams every morning.”

I shrunk into myself, feeling guilt of all things. Like I was being dishonest with Him—technically I had been—even though I had promised Him nothing.

“Sun, I don’t know if—”

“Saiyon,” He urged gently. “You may call Me Saiyon.”

My earlier thought dropped into the tunnel of light, forgotten. “Not ‘Satto’?” That was what many in His palace had called Him.

“I have many names.” He lifted His other hand and placed it atop mine, where I held the crook of His arm. “Saiyon was my first.”

A mix of cold and heat swirled in my belly. I felt like I had been entrusted with something sacred, and that made me feel loved, special. There were very, very few who knew this name, as I would later learn. I was . . . touched.

“Would you like to see the heavens?” He spoke more quietly now, His voice reverent. “I will show them to you, if you wish.”

I gaped at Him, His broad and powerful features. “I-I thought it was too dangerous.”

“The danger is held off, for now, but it won’t be long before it resurfaces. I would show you the kingdom. And our daughter, if you wish.”

Surril! Her name sang in my very bones, but the glee of reuniting with her flashed to fear. Would she tell her father that I had already been to see her? Would I have to falsify my reaction and make it seem like my first?

Would Saiyon accept that I had found another celestial creature to take me, and leave it at that? Would He be angry, thinking I’d endangered myself?

If He truly cared about me, would any of it matter?

Squeezing Saiyon’s arm, I nodded my consent.