Page 12 of A Sea of Fate and Starfire

I exhaled. Swallowed. Curled my fingers into my hips hard enough to pinch. “Yes.”

I expected a tug. A pull. The force of a broken tether like the one I’d felt on the mountain. But nothing happened.

Love stepped aside, though she’d not been in my way to begin with, gesturing down the silver dust path with the sweep of her arm.

“I didn’t feel anything,” I said, my feet suddenly too leaden to move. Shouldn’t I have felt the break of my cordae?

The Fate leveled me with a gleaming stare. “You will.” And then, with her nebulas swirling, she simply faded into the twinkling vault above.

Death nudged me again, swinging toward the path. I took a step, and he followed, wings in line with my feet. My leg trembled as I walked, though Love had stolen all sensation from my limb. Numbness seeped into my bone instead, odd and disjointed and eerie, though I didn’t stop to study it.

I moved as fast as I dared over loose ground. Silver dust flew from under my feet. Glinting, sparkling, disappearing. Death matched my pace with easy strokes, wings smooth as he flew beside me. The ashy path lifted where he passed over it. Made of the same glitter, the dusted floor seemed to reach for him, falling away as he drifted over it.

Hours passed. The glimmering star at the top of my timepiece slowly moved right. Down. Left. And back up. We didn’t stop. The path wound above and below and sideways, a road that turned for no reason. We passed under a fiery star sitting close enough to warm my skin, tiny planets and debris floating in its orbit. I wiped my brow when we finally left its heat, its blazing roar a soft wail in my ears long after it had gone.

Death stayed beside me. He slowed when I slowed, stopped when I stopped, surged when I darted ahead. If there is a more loyal companion than Death, I’m not sure I’ve met them, but I found myself comforted at the thought that he flew with me now. That the same silver-dusted being had flown beside Kye, even if it had been a single beat of its wings.

An astral storm loomed ahead. I watched it warily as we drew closer, a feral cloud of frost and vapor, lit from within by arrowheads of light. Shooting stars.

If the Abyssi hadn’t killed me, the bolts of fire that fell ahead certainly would. Death never wavered, unafraid of crossing underneath them. But as I neared the haze, I slowed. Silver dusted my face and hair, the burning ashes of what were once stars. Ashes of Time and Truth and Love.

Elusive scents gathered in the air, almost too faint to grasp. The scent of rain on ancient stone, mingling with the prickling tang of sea salt. A hint of smoke, of fire burning for eons, mixed with something sweet and fleeting like blossoms in the spring. Summoning the remaining strands of my courage, I walked through the silver brume. Into destiny unfolding one fateful breath at a time.

And I did not look back.

7

Maren

Imoved slowly at first, cautious at my obscured vision. My timepiece vanished. Love had warned me of the burning cosmos, but I’m not sure any spoken warning could match the celestial discord ahead. Cracks of lightning robbed me of anything but pale hues as the stars crashed into one another. They lit in instant wonder, shuttering out the same breath, leaving my pupils desperate for light again.

I could see them sometimes, when they tumbled close enough. Watching them was like watching mountains fall, though I knew they were larger than any mountain I’d ever seen. Planets circled the shooting stars around me, some of them with their own little moons. Mihauna had been the goddess I’d spent my life praying to, but watching the warring stars here, she suddenly felt very small.

I pushed on, a mouse sneaking through the grass under a blazing battlefield. Until two of them collided in the path ahead. Two white, radiant giants, etched in living fire.

They sent the silver path scattering as easily as a sigh aimed at a dusty book, and took my only means of travel with them. The trail dissolved to nothing ahead, nothing but the night sky and countless stars below, a drop into the eternal. I stumbled back to avoid tilting completely over the edge.

The thunder that followed their collision sent me to my knees, hands over my ears, a rattle in my chest and lungs and veins that remained after the crash had ended. But then a shockwave knocked me flat. Lines of heat left everything a blurry, dancing whir, my arms and cheeks singed and stinging from the fire, branding my skin with charred flesh. Death forced his wing under my arm and into my neck, pushing me to my feet.

I swayed, struggling to find balance. Tears from the heat carved through the smeared ash on my cheeks. Death glided into the backs of my thighs, but I dug my heels in. “There’s nowhere to go,” I shouted over the noise of the flaming massacre, pointing at the broken trail. Burning fragments of the stars lay ahead, debris of the cosmos. “The pathway is gone!”

Death drifted forward, tilting back at me. I shook my head, but he flew on, sailing where the ash ran out. It gathered under him, pulling back into place by his flight.

Another boom behind us threw me forward, two more stars colliding behind my back. My fingers raked the glittering dust, hair blown over my head and into my eyes, the backs of my calves as scalded as my arms. I scrambled upright and Death hovered forward, the trail returning for him, his eyes locked on me.

There was one way out of the cosmos. I had to trust Death.

“Okay,” I yelled, shaking the burn from my arms. “Okay. But you’d better not let me fall.”

Death soared ahead, waiting.

The only option was to run and hope we weren’t hit. Lingering heat waves spun around me in the first few sprinted steps, the ash path drawing itself together under Death’s wings. He carved ahead, bridging the gap to the silver that waited ahead, but I was only a step behind.

Stars flew. My arms swung. My legs pumped. Death vaulted to the right, and the road of ash curved to follow him just as a burning giant plummeted into our path. I skidded to change my trajectory, leaning into the silver to drag my fingers through hot dust as flames from the star licked down my side. The edges of my byssus dress curled and smoked fire, blisters on my leg rising in a line, but I managed to return to my feet. And then we ran again, until my skin was too tight with heat to move, my throat cracked and bleeding from inhaling smoke.

I paused, desperate for water. Maybe a human could have kept running. I was a siren, born for the sea. My hair and dress had long since dried, but I’d heard the ocean still swishing in the basin of Kye’s baldric as I ran.

Death swept back to me as I unbuckled it, tossing the sword down to the sand and upending the baldric over my head. No more than a handful drizzled into my crown, but Mihauna, what a sweet handful it was. Cool and clean as it dripped down to my chin, even as the salt burned where it found blood.