Star Mother (Star Mother #1)(59)

The crypt remained cold, still, and quiet. But I did not weep more.

I didn’t feel anything.



It was dark when I emerged from the cathedral. The choir was gone. There was a woman, perhaps a steward, polishing the pipes of an organ, but I didn’t ask if she knew anyone by the name of Parros. I didn’t want to speak or be spoken to. I felt so displaced, so out of my element, my mind couldn’t make sense of it. Even more so than when I had reappeared in Endwever only to discover it was not the same little town I had left.

I had seen what my fate should have been, and it scarred my mind the way Saiyon had scarred my spirit. And I didn’t understand. I couldn’t comprehend why I had survived when every other star mother before me had passed on. I didn’t know where my family was, or where they would end up. Where I would end up.

The Earth Mother seemed too solid, too dreary, too cold. I didn’t want to be there anymore. Ristriel had promised I wouldn’t be alone, but he couldn’t stay with me, not if I stayed in Nediah. And even if I managed to find the closest thing I had to kin, our blood would be so different, they’d be strangers, just like everyone else. They wouldn’t look like me, or my sister, or remember me or her. Even my own daughter was forever away, unreachable by my own means.

I didn’t belong here. I had glimpsed the place I was meant to be, and I ached for it like I had always been there until this moment, when I was cruelly ripped away. I didn’t understand how the afterlives worked. What if I found myself as alone after death as I was now? What if I was cursed to always be alone?

“Ceris?”

I looked up, only then taking in my surroundings. Cobblestones under my feet, dimly lit by a single window of what looked like a cobbler’s shop. My feet were dragging in the gutter. The road was mostly empty, save for two gentlemen laughing about something down the way. There was the distant sound of music, perhaps from a local pub, but I couldn’t tell where it might be.

And it was cold. So very cold.

Hugging myself, I turned toward Ristriel. The moon hung in the east, shining on his head and shoulders. The rest of him was solid. A passerby likely wouldn’t notice the difference.

I took a deep breath to steel myself, but it came with a shudder. A look of pain washed over Ristriel’s face. He moved toward me and took my hand, pulling me closer to the cobbler shop until he was out of the moonlight.

Then he held me, and my heart broke, fresh tears coming to my eyes. I leaned into him, smelling snow and autumn skies, my own heat reflecting back to me. His shirt was soft. Had it always been that way, or had he made it soft for me?

“What happened?” he asked. “What did they say?”

I shook my head against his shoulder. “No one spoke to me. No one living.”

Pulling back just enough to see my face, Ristriel asked, “What?”

“Agradaise’s tomb is in there,” I whispered. “Star mother. And I saw her. She spoke to me somehow. I saw the hereafter where she lived, and I knew I was meant to be there. My family was meant to be there. But I don’t know if they went there, or if I will, or if I’ll ever see them again.” Sniffing, I wiped my eyes with the pad of my thumb. “I’m lost, Ris. I’m lost, and I don’t know where to go.”

He didn’t answer immediately. His chest rose and fell, and I rose and fell with it. “We will find them.”

“But are they even mine to find?” I gripped his shirt tightly in my fist. “Only so I can watch them die, over and over . . . and over.”

Another shuddering breath shook me. I turned my head into Ristriel’s neck, but he stepped away, leaving me even colder than I was before. I looked at him, confused, but he didn’t return my gaze. He looked at the cobblestones, beyond them.

“I’m so sorry, Ceris.”

Again I wiped my eyes. “You are the only constant I have.”

But he shook his head. “I am not.” He stepped away from the wall, his hands in tight fists at his sides, and looked upward, every inch the picture of a man supplicating heaven. “Do you know how time works, Ceris?”

I blinked, uncertain I had heard him correctly. Clearing my throat, I answered, “Of course I do. Sixty seconds in a minute, sixty minutes in an hour, twenty-four hours in a day. Three months to a season, four seasons to a year—”

He shook his head, and my voice cut off.

“Mortals have depicted time in many ways.” He looked just beyond me, his dark eyes boring into another plane. “Circle, loops, falling sand . . . but time isn’t like that at all. Time is like music. Imagine the keys of a harpsichord, or the strings of a harp, only they play ever higher and ever lower, never ceasing. Eternal music. Time is like that.

“Time is a realm beyond our own. It is not a god or a being, but a piece of the universe itself. It is older than all else and yet has no age. It is an endless orchestra, for every living creature and spirit has a song.

“When I escaped—” He paused, throat working, choosing his words with care. “When I broke my chains and fled, I fled into the chords of time. Time is more eternal than those who would capture me. Time makes others forget. I thought . . . if I could lose myself in time, or take enough of it, they would forget about me, and I would be free.”

My heart cracked at the story, and I moved toward him, but he lifted a stiff hand, stopping me.