Star Mother (Star Mother #1)(72)

The Sun was setting when I returned to the cathedral, making the enormous church throw a cold shadow over me and half of Nediah behind me. It was poignant and poetic, as if Saiyon was trying to make a point to me, even though I knew it was just happenstance that I had approached the cathedral from the east.

The crowd had dispersed, and both the cathedral’s spire and its great torch remained cool. Crouching, I grasped the cellar door’s handle before filling myself with a deep, reassuring breath. I could not change the past, I could not control time, and I could not barter with the gods, but I could follow my heart, and thus my path was clear.

It was dark inside; the oil lamp had burned out. Panic had me stumbling down the short stairs, but Ristriel’s voice in the dark reassured me that he had not left. “You came back.”

My breath escaped in a sigh. “I promised I would.” I left the door cracked so I could have a sliver of light as I searched the things Quelline had left to see if anything was worth taking. The blanket was still good, but the rest was unsalvageable. My ring glinted on the stone, limned black. I was tempted to retrieve it—if nothing else, it would sell for a high price. But I worried that even turned to black, it would allow others to track us.

“We need to leave,” I whispered. “He knows you’re here. I’m worried the godlings He’ll send for you will destroy this place.” The battle with the moon nearly had.

Ristriel’s brows lowered. “But your family is here.”

“My family is there.” I pointed up. “And she likes you almost as much as I do. She intervened for you today.”

He blinked, speechless, as though he could not fathom two people caring about his welfare.

I took his hands. “Do you know where we can go?”

He pressed his lips together, taking a moment to think. I could almost see his thoughts spinning, his knowledge bending and stretching like taffy. “The Losoko Canyons.”

I had never heard of them. “Canyons?”

He nodded. “They’re one hundred seventy-three miles south of here. They run deep into the Earth, shadowed even at noonday.” A spark of hope lit his eyes. “Perhaps there, the Earth Mother’s power can conceal both of us.”

I bit the inside of my cheek. “That is a long way.”

“I will carry you whenever I can.”

Steeling myself, I said, “Let’s go now.”

Ristriel took my bags onto his shoulders. I left a quick note of gratitude beside the lamp before slipping outside and tugging the door gently closed. Behind me, the Sunlight snuffed out, pulling us into the moon’s kingdom. She made her slow climb into the sky, but the heavens were pocked with clouds, which would help us.

Her light beamed between a gap in the clouds, silver light spilling a few feet from us.

“Wait.” I grasped his elbow, stalling him. “Before we touch the moonlight.” I stood before him, my toes and chest an inch from his, my hands by my sides, my face turned defiantly upward.

For a being who had watched the world turn for thousands of years, he had an adorably na?ve and reserved expression on his face. “Ceris.” My name sounded like a long-kept secret.

I pressed a hand to his chest. He leaned into the touch. I drew even nearer to him before his eyes softened. “Ceris, we can’t.”

I didn’t budge. “Why not?”

His dark eyes dropped to my lips. “Because you are a star mother. You are His.”

I waited until he met my eyes again to say, “I am no one’s but my own.”

The waxing crescent moon slipped behind a cloud, darkening the city. His hands came under my jaw, fingers tunneling into my hair, and his mouth lowered to mine, cool and soft. His touch was like the morning after the first frost, or an early spring breeze. He smelled of winter storms and wide-open plains without a house or human in sight. His kiss ignited something in me, something exciting and deep that neither Caen nor Saiyon had been able to touch. Craving it, I pushed myself onto my toes, fearing for a heartbeat that my forwardness would startle him. But he pulled me closer, tilted and claimed me, and I surrendered to him, falling against him, parting my lips, exploring him as he explored me. Time and heaven ceased to exist. In that moment, the universe was only us, shadow and starlight, lovers dancing in wild grass under the violet haze of twilight.

And yet time waited for no one.

I drew away from him slowly, reluctantly, and peered into his lidded eyes. “I choose you, Ris.”

His expression was so sad, yet so joyous, it made me hurt. He kissed me again, fervent but brief, before breaking free to whisper, “We must run while we can.”

So we did, down the spiraling streets of Nediah, over arching bridges, around shops and pubs. Ristriel had to return my bags before we reached the broken city wall, when the moon again stole away his body. But once we passed the guards at the gate, a thick cloud favored us. Ristriel took me into his arms immediately, and we flew across the low hills and pastures surrounding Nediah.

I clung tightly to him, looking over his shoulder to keep the wind from my eyes, taking in the world as we swept by it: trees, gardens, valleys, creeks. We wove through brambles and thickets, passed over an ancient stone bridge crossing a fast-moving river bloated with spring runoff. Ristriel watched the moon carefully, and set me down just before the cloud moved so I would not fall.