Then, and only then, does the star speak again. It regards me with an almost pensive contemplation. Softer. More merciful.
You are as bitter as you are determined.
“Yes,” I pant, straightening. “I am.”
Yet, you know not what you ask for. You do not understand the price of my gift.
“It doesn’t matter. I will pay any cost.”
No, Kaelene Lambros.
My heart stutters?—
You cannot, for we must pay it together.
The light morphs again. It collapses in on itself, shrinking, all while its pulsing increases in frequency. Faster and faster, until the point of vibration.
And it begins to take the distinct shape of a four-pointed star.
“If that is what’s required,” I whisper, numb and awestruck, as I close the remaining distance between us. By the time the star stops shrinking, it’s barely bigger than my hand, solidified into something more physical. It almost looks like a glowing diamond, but the material is more unearthly. More…ethereal. It’s absolutely magnificent to behold. “Then I accept.”
With one last breath of confidence, I reach out to touch it.
At once, I’m sucked into a black hole.
Splitting pain consumes me for what feels like both an eternity and a millisecond. I’m bent, shaped, refined. Turned inside out and molded into something new. Something unrecognizable, beyond the thresholds I once knew with finality.
When I finally emerge again, I do not come gently.
I am reborn in a supernova.
PART III
“Innocence, Once Lost, Can Never Be Regained. Darkness, Once Gazed Upon, Can Never Be Lost.”
—JOHN MILTON
28
Hey asshole,
Are you not getting my letters?
It’s been like two months since anyone’s heard from you. I need to know you’re alive more often than that. Your dad needs to know you’re alive, too, and he doesn’t even know you’re in a country having a whole ass civil war (you’re welcome for that, btw).
Stop worrying us so much and tell me you’re not fucking dead.
— Jackie
KAE
“Why isn’t she conscious yet? It should be working by now,” A familiar voice, deep and laced with cold concern, asks someone. It’s backdropped by the steady, unmistakable beeping of a vital signs monitor, progressively becoming faster.
Is thatmyheart?
Where am I?
“The reversal was immediate,” a beautiful, musical voice replies in a hushed whisper… I don’t recognize that one. “She’s waking up now.”
