Star Mother (Star Mother #1)(59)

And she was buried here as well.

Shivers coursed up my arms and down my legs. I whirled around, looking at the cathedral through new eyes, its aisles and arches suddenly like a maze I was trapped in. I retraced my steps as the choir started another song. Near the apse, I found a cleverly hidden passageway that led down into the cathedral’s basement.

Into the crypt.

I descended the stairs, the air growing significantly colder.

Below, everything was solid, common stone. Large shelves had been carved into the wall, some holding coffins, others bearing exposed bones.

Agradaise was not hard to find. Her tomb was above the floor, in a fine coffin made from magnificent marble limned with gold. How far the people had gone to mine it, I couldn’t guess. It was raised on a stone dais, surrounded by the same golden cords protecting her likeness upstairs, though these were braided together to make them thicker. Like my statue in Endwever, the edges of the coffin were worn and smooth from the passing of thousands, if not millions, of hands. She had lain down here for twelve hundred years, after all.

“Agradaise,” I whispered, hoping I pronounced her name right. I would not think of lifting the lid—I would find a skeleton there, perhaps laid with a crown and glass roses. But I did lift my hand to the smooth marble edge of her casket. If I said her name to Saiyon, would He remember anything about her? How many star mothers had passed between her time and mine?

Running my fingers across the cool stone, I whispered, “Agradaise, I wish I had known you.”

And then my vision burned white.





CHAPTER 17

I was still in the cathedral. The stone remained firm under my feet.

The musty smell lingered in my nose, and the chill slid beneath my clothes.

But my mind was elsewhere.

Everything around me was white and pearlescent, not unlike starlight. Not unlike Saiyon’s palace, for there was nothing, and yet at the same time everything. I could sense forms around me too bright to behold. I heard distant peals of laughter and something like birdsong but distinctly other. The presence of deities and spirits enfolded my skin like warm breaths.

It was so overwhelming, so utterly beautiful, I began to cry.

A figure broke away from the others and moved toward me, her visage just as bright as everything else, yet her form had more definition. Like she was allowing me to see past her glory, similar to what Saiyon did. Her face was comparable to the bust, but here it looked ageless, beautiful, without flaw or blemish. Without any of the cares of the world.

“I have heard of you, Ceris.” Her voice was music no mortal could hope to compose. “I would have liked to meet you.”

I blinked, but the tears continued to stream down my face, like I stared at Saiyon in His full power. “Are we not meeting now?”

She reached forward and touched my chin, though her fingers were insubstantial. “You are lovely and strong. You will look after our stars until we meet them again, won’t you?”

I realized at that moment, clear as dawn, that I was peeking into the great hereafter promised to star mothers, though I had not the

power to fully behold it.

Reaching up, I wiped my sleeve across my eyes. But when I opened them again, the crypt surrounded me. The stone seemed so plain, so lifeless, compared to my vision. The marble I had just found exquisite seemed made of dust. Everything was too dark, too shadowed, too cold.

Even Saiyon’s palace could not compare to what I had seen, and now that it had been taken from me, I felt empty.

I pressed one palm, then another, against the coffin.

“Agradaise?” I whispered, willing her to return. Grasping for another peek into that beautiful paradise surrounding her. Were my parents there, my sisters? Caen?

Nothing happened.

“Agradaise?” My voice echoed between the stone walls.

Stepping over the yellow cords, I threw my body onto the coffin.

Pressed my forehead to it. “Agradaise, come back! Please, I beg you. Answer my questions!”

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?