Star Mother (Star Mother #1)(70)

He stiffened and winced, affected by injuries I couldn’t perceive. “Never.”

“But you have never corrected me, either.”

His eyes met mine, knowing.

I let out a long breath. “You are not a godling.”

He hesitated for several heartbeats. For a moment I thought we were back to our old game, me dying to know the truth and him evading it. But instead he answered, “No, I am not.”

I’d known as much, yet hearing his confirmation spiked alertness in me. “Then what are you?” Surely he wasn’t a demon. He was much too kind for that.

Ristriel considered for a moment. “By the classifications you would understand, I am a demigod.”

My heart thudded a little harder. A demigod. The second-most-powerful celestial being. So many questions filled my mind, but the loudest was the one Saiyon had told me to ask. Ask him why this war started. Ask him how it is his doing.

“The war,” I began, but Ristriel took up my hand, staying me.

“I will tell you everything you want to know.” His eyes were so deep, so endless, so sad. “Even if it angers you.”

My throat tightened. I forced it to swallow. “I’m not angry. Not anymore.”

His lips twitched again. “Did He tell you already?”

Shaking my head, I said, “He only told me to ask.” But it seemed Ristriel would have revealed the truth either way.

“It is my doing, this war.” His voice was husky, just above a whisper. “I am the one who prevented it. And because I escaped, they war with one another again.”

I shook my head, confused. “Ristriel, who are you?”

“You asked me, before, who gave me my name.”

One who is chained. That was what Father Meely’s book had read. We’d been interrupted before he could tell me.

“The Sun God named me,” he went on. “But mortals gave me a name as well. They called me ‘Twilight.’”

A shiver coursed its way from my crown to the backs of my knees and up again. Twilight. Twilight.

Gods in heavens, it all made sense. The night came on so suddenly now; I had thought it strange, in the back of my mind, but never examined it. But I remembered. Before the torch lit in the church in Endwever, before I ever met Saiyon . . . I remember the dim indigo light that covered the sky after the Sun had set, and before the moon rose. I remember having more warning before darkness fell. I remembered him.

And I had the distinct impression that I was the only mortal left who did.

“It’s as I told you . . .” Ristriel pressed into the cool stone at his back. “I was created by a shard of the dark side of the moon and the Earth Mother. But neither of them claimed me. I was reckless in my youth, unguided and unsure of myself. The Sun won His war and captured me, chaining me in the veil between His kingdom and hers, so the moon could never again assail Him at times of strife, when He is split and weakened.”

I gaped at him, but I couldn’t close my mouth. He had told me how the moon had stolen her light. I felt like I was outside of my body, a third party listening to a story I could never have fathomed on my own. A demigod created by accident, forced to guard the space between kingdoms . . . it was beyond any fairy tale.

It was no wonder he knew the geography of Earth so well. He’d watched it from the sky for . . . how long? Millennia, surely. I could not think of a single tale or fable in which there was no twilight.

“The power of the stars held me in my prison.” He was whispering now, watching his hands again. “And I . . . I couldn’t . . . be there anymore. I was alone, save for just after Sunset and before Sunrise. Then I could see the Earth Mother and Her mortals for a short while. Learn their habits, their names . . . but they never noticed me. But Moon’s and Sun’s powers would press against me and send me back into the darkness.”

He pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes and curled around himself.

Pushing myself onto my knees, I put my arms around him, comforting him as he had comforted me in the dark streets. My mind reeled, trying to imagine . . .

Darkness. He’d lived in darkness, alone and lonely, as stronger gods and demigods rose in the heavens.

I thought of Saiyon, and the considerate things He’d done for me, the way He’d tucked my hand in the crook of His arm. Could He really be so cruel?

“And then a star died.” He kept his hands where they were. “A star died, and my chains loosened, and I ran. I stole time and hid on the Earth Mother. I don’t think She even knows who I am, She’s slept so long . . .”

“Ris.”

He was somewhere far away, somewhere dark and lonely, somewhere I couldn’t reach him.

I waited, squeezed tighter, then spoke his name again. “Ris.”

He didn’t respond.

I let a glimmer of starlight seep through my skin, and an indigo sheen rippled across his skin and clothes. “Ristriel.”

He lifted his head, his expression so vulnerable, so childlike, so mortal.

“The war is not your fault,” I admonished, pulling back to better see his face. “They have struck against each other since before your creation. Their war is what created you in the first place.”

I tried to find more words. You didn’t deserve that. But they all seemed so weak, so small. Not enough.

I ran my palms down his arms, resting them at his elbows. “Thank you, for telling me.”