Page 19 of A Sea of Fate and Starfire

“She will only be a moment,” the female said.

The air cracked softly behind us, and I caught only the brief sight of silver-dust wings streak through before disappearing again, as though an owl had entered through an invisible pocket and left again. An old man stood in its place, blinking at us with watery eyes.

A small crowd drew him in, voices soft but excited. The man walked away, age dropping off him with each step. His back straightened; hair thickened, teeth brightened. The small crowd rounded a corner out of sight.

Kye squeezed my hand.

“Was your mother here to meet you?” I asked.

He responded with a caress of his thumb over the back of my hand. “Yes.”

I glanced at him, wondering if there was more. He’d once told me he’d seen her in the water of Neris Island. That she’d sent him back. He’s always been elusive when speaking about his mother.

But then, I suppose, so had I.

Another quiet crack, the faint sound of paws scampering over the stone like a pup set loose. A small boy stood where the man had landed the moment before. No one waited to greet him. It was clear he didn’t recognize me, but he stared back, a hopeful question in his eyes. A cold spark trickled down my neck.

“Theia will see you now,” the attendant at the curtain said.

I tore my gaze from the boy as we followed her inside. We left him standing in the center of the moonstone floor, alone.

Night-blooming flowers waited on the other side of the curtain. They were the first thing I noticed. Pots and planters of them, their blooms heavy and pale. There must have been hundreds.

I almost missed the woman watering them, her back to us. A pool of shallow water lay in the center of the room, not unlike what I might have found in the Juile colony, and the fabric of her dress streamed from her shoulders, long enough that it sifted over the surface of the pool. The deep corners of her shoulder blades shifted as she lifted her glass watering can.

“The third Steward,” she said, resting her can on a stone table and turning to face us.

Theia was tall. Graceful and curved, her frame a feminine hymn of dips and swells. She straightened, clasping her hands gently together expectantly as she studied me. Her umber skin gleamed, rich and dark, light bouncing from the sculpted edge of her cheek. Sleek black hair draped off her shoulders like strands of silk.

An overwhelming urge to bow settled over my bones. In the corner of my eye, Kye tilted his head forward. I shook the feeling away, lengthening my neck instead.

“I was unsure, when I sent that message through your mother’s eclipse, whether I’d someday find you standing here,” she said.

A firm snap stirred in her words, a smooth command layered through them. Again, that need to bend skittered through me, but I hardened my jaw. Any softness that might have been in Theia’s moonbeam gaze cooled. “Ask what you need to. I know the question that brings you here.”

If you know it, why should I ask?

I shuffled the insolent words to the corner of my mind. “I completed your task.”

She watched me smoothly. “Did you.” It wasn’t a question.

“Yes.” I was aware the word left my mouth with an abrasive edge, the flick of my tongue a sharp blade. “When can we go back?”

“To the realm of mortals?”

“Yes.”

Theia reached for her glass watering can once more. “To form a Triad, you must become a team. Complete my errand. Work with those who have also been sent here by a Morai candle.”

“An errand?” My nostrils flared. Kye opened an eye towards me, though he kept his thoughts silent as I curled my fists. “I did what you asked. We all did.”

“Calm, child. Soak in the lunar energy. Restore yourself.”

All my life, I’d worshipped Mihauna. Worked in my gardens on the nights she was full. Offered her prayers and thanks. Followed her light without question or thought. Just for her to lead me to Kye’s death. To a broken cordae. Abandoning my colony, bargaining with Darkness, standing here with no idea what comes next while she watered her thousands of moon-forsaken flowers.

Heat stroked my edges, the same impatience I’d tried to suffocate when dealing with the god of shadow.

“When you are sent back, you’ll arrive only a few moments before Death took him,” Theia said, not even bothering to look at Kye, or even use his name. “I won’t send you back into battle without healing you first. Time is not relative here the way it is on mortal ground. You lose nothing by completing a simple request.”