Yuri studied him, his gaze too focused. It made Star squirm, but he refused to pull away. “Do you have shadows that give you magic?” Yuri asked.
“Yes,” Star admitted. “You and I are the beginning and the end.”
“If you freed them, what would happen?”
“They would scatter through the worlds,” Star answered, though he knew it wasn’t the answer Yuri wanted.
“And to you?”
“My power would fade. I couldn’t hold the world between. We would have to pick a realm and settle there.” He let out a long breath, his heart aching with the admission. “You’d eventually die. We all would. Though some of us would live longer than others.”
“But death is a cycle, right? So, we’d be reborn?” Yuri asked.
“Yes. And have to find each other again. Which will be much harder to do between worlds.”
Yuri blinked and stared into the distance for a short amount of time, processing the information. Something pulled from his memory giving him clarity. “I collected the shadows in the past?”
“Yes,” Star said.
“To gain power,” Yuri said. “To find all of you.”
“Yes. But I will always find you. No matter which life we are in.” He would always be willing to carry the darkness. “It’s nothing now. Not like it was…”
Yuri stared at him, and Star wished he could still hear what Yuri thought. “But traveling to other worlds for short periods of time should be okay, right? I won’t age decades overnight?”
“No,” Lucian agreed. “And we are the same. I am part human. Theo and Radu may be another species, but we will all age when we step outside of the realm between. There are no true immortals anymore. Not even the new incarnations of the previous archangels.”
“Does it hurt you to hold the realm between together?” Yuri asked Star.
“No. It helps that Raphael, Uriel, and Michael have added power to it. But I keep it small because I don’t have to use much to create our little paradise. I only want it for us. Some place we can be together and safe.”
“Why didn’t Gabriel just create something like that?” Yuri asked. “Why go through all he did?”
“Because it wasn’t a place away that he wanted. It was power, control, and worship,” Radu said. “He created a world of rotting flesh and worms to always be above them. Now he doesn’t have enough magic left to open a door to dream about another realm. The shadows won’t come to him because he is death, not life.”
“Why would we ever want to leave then?” Theo asked. “Why would we want to age and die?”
“To learn,” Yuri answered. “To evolve. To step into the next adventure. Our realm only changes if we change it, right?”
Star winced. If Yuri ever vanished from his arms, he would unravel.
“I’m not saying I want that. At least not right now. But it happened in the past, right?” Yuri asked.
“Our time together was never all that peaceful…”
“Boring,” Lucian added. “However will the great and mighty Morningstar ever live without the glorious battles that made him a renowned general?”
“Asshole,” Star muttered.
Yuri smiled. “Excitement? I can see that being a thing. Our little space between is quiet. But if we take brief visits around to other places, it will give us time to explore, and take a very long time for us to age. Am I understanding that correctly?”
“Yes,” Radu said.
“Or you can gather shadows,” Lucian added. “Which would give you power. If you started slowly, learned control, you couldadd power to our world between or manipulate other worlds. You will always be the catalyst, even if you’re only the human shell of him right now.”
“But that will attract more of the darkness,” Radu added. “Once you call them, they will seek others. It, too, is a cycle. You will hunger. We can feed you, but that will take away from our energy. Right now, we only have to feed Star.”
“I take very little,” Star said.
