Star Mother (Star Mother #1)(9)

I worried my lip and peered up at the glorious sky. “And if I don’t take the chance now, I won’t be able to later?”

“No. The law must be honored.”

I hugged myself and slowly drew my gaze from the stars.

“I will hurt you.” His voice was hushed, but the words startled me. “I do not wish to, but I will. Such is the manner of my existence.”

My heart pounded. Not quickly as it had before, but hard, like my chest was an unwanted wall in a cottage that needed to be torn down.

He was giving me a chance to leave. To go home. Surely I could ask for a crown of light or some other favor to show my people that I was not unwanted. To bring them honor without forsaking my life.

But honor wasn’t the true reason I’d come.

“I’ll stay.” My quietness slid under His own. “I’ve made my choice. I will stay.”

He had no reaction to my statement beyond a simple nod. His expression was bright and hard to read, but it seemed . . . sad? But why would a god such as the Sun be sad that a mortal woman had willingly answered His call?

“Come.” He stepped away from the window light, and it faded behind Him. As we moved forward, the not-walls shifted around us.

“This is the most I can withhold my power, the simplest form I can take.”

He didn’t touch me, but walked with the air of a king, as He should. I followed Him two steps before croaking, “Now?” I turned and peered up at the stars overhead, then curled in on myself, abashed for having been so bold with a god.

Thankfully, the Sun was not put out. “Time may be eternal, but it should not be wasted.”

I swallowed against a dry throat. He was right. What reason was there to wait? The Sun would not court me—I was a mere mortal. I would be star mother, and I knew very little of what would become of me beyond that. But I knew there was no quaint cottage awaiting me, nor would there ever be a marriage wreath hung over my bed.

Feigning courage I didn’t feel, I straightened, clasped my hands behind my back, and bowed. “I am ready.”

His voice was not as encompassing when He said, “I wish to thank you for your service, and also ask your forgiveness.”

I didn’t entirely understand what He meant just then. The space changed—I sensed it, though I didn’t see it happen. Were I to describe it visually, our surroundings would sound exactly the same as where we’d just met. And yet it was different. The silence was more complete, like a circle, and senses I didn’t know I possessed came awake within me, noticing things beyond smells and sounds and sights. There was something deeply intimate about this place, and in my heart, I readied to complete my task. The Sun had waited days already. A star needed to be born.

I didn’t grasp His request for forgiveness until He touched me. It was a searing touch against my arm, like hot iron pressed to my skin, but the instinct that told me to jerk away was muted, suppressed. My sense of direction faltered, and there was no up or down, no left or right. And then that touch was everywhere, everywhere, across every particle of my being, and then deep, deep inside me, lighting me like a pyre, scorching and peeling and crumbling.

I think I screamed. I must have. But it’s hard to remember, even now. Neither can I recall the end of it, for after the consummation, there was only darkness.





CHAPTER 4

When the darkness ended, I found myself in another room much like the first two, yet very different. I was surrounded by not-walls and rested on a large not-bed. Everything was tinted crystal and pink. It took me several days to leave my bed and its canopy long enough to notice that even here there was no ceiling, only an endless night sky filled with stars.

I should have been ash. I should have burned to smoke and floated away into the heavens. But I was still me, the strange, crystalline version of me that existed in this place.

It was there in that room, in that bed, when I finally let myself mourn. I cried for Caen. For my love for him, for my sacrifice, for the future and family we would never have. I felt his loss most keenly of all, and though I had chosen this path for him, I anguished over what I had sacrificed.

Second, I mourned for myself. I mourned being alone in a strange place. I mourned my happy, playful self, because I was sure she had been scorched away along with my innocence. I mourned the emptiness of my room, for I had given of myself freely, and yet there was no man or god to lie beside me in bed, to stroke my hair and love me, to cherish me for what we had given each other. I saw no one but the servants—two unfamiliar godlings who gave me pitiful and sympathetic looks as they saw to my physical needs—and they did not speak to me. They did their work and nothing else. I had thought myself alone before, while surrounded by family, but I had never known true loneliness until I became a star mother.

My loneliness led me to mourn my family, however different we were from one another. We had loved one another, in the end. In the days immediately following my consummation with the Sun, I would have given anything to have my sister Pasha scowl at me, or Idlysi argue with me, or to be with my mother, even if she was apathetic to my presence. I thought of the way my father had reacted after I had volunteered, how unexpected his show of emotion had been, and I wept.

After that, I mourned my home. My friends, my forest, all the things that had been familiar to me since infancy. I would never see them again.

I craved company most of all, even the Sun’s company, and yet I feared it all the same. What if His seed didn’t take, and I would have to . . . be with him a second time? I didn’t think I could bear it.