AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The book.
It still weighed heavily against my chest, its presence eating away at me. Now would be an ideal opportunity to delve in, if only for a few pages while Jude was cooking. Who knew if I’d get the chance this evening like I’d originally planned? Exhaustion was already calling me, so the time would have to be now.
And holy hells, did I have the perfect lighting, like my dream with Grandmother but muted.
After peering over my shoulder and finding Jude busy picking up kindling, I wandered around the trunk of the mighty oak at the center of the glen and rested my back against the coarse bark. Reaching into my jacket, I pulled out the tome, propping it against my bent knees.
Here goes nothing, Grandmother. I glanced to the sky as if she were peering down at me, watching all my blunders.
She’d said the answers would be in here.
Suddenly, my chest constricted. For some reason, I wondered if I even wanted to know the truth. Knowledge had a way of altering one’s world, and sometimes not in a good way.
Yep. I still want to know.
Shaking my head with a quivering exhale, I flipped open the pages with haste.
The last chapter I’d read was about Raina falling in love with a mortal man, one she’d gifted with immortality. But when the goddess couldn’t remain with him during the day, when the people had needed her light, her lover had become greedy.
Returning to where I’d left off, I continued reading…
Forever young, Raina’s once mortal lover shone with dewy youth and innocence, but his heart was anything but. The man who had fallen for the sun was no longer content with only having her when night fell. He craved his newfound influence and Raina, but jealousy crept its way into his foul heart.
He wished for power himself.
If he could steal the essence the Earth God, Arlo, had gifted her, the man could free his love from her shackles and then consume the divinity she hardly seemed to appreciate.
So, when the goddess busied herself with her duties, he journeyed to Arlo’s temple near the capital, pleading for the god’s help. Having been bitter for decades and envying the people’s love for the luminous Sun Goddess, Arlo appeared before him, offering knowledge that would prove useful to his plan.
Raina’s lover would have to extract her gift—the light within her soul that burned eternal. It required a dagger crafted of pure moonshine, found in the center of a meadow nearly impossible for any human to find.
Arlo sliced open his palm, allowing his blood to drop onto a single black bloom in the ephemeral meadow of color. An onyx dagger capable of cutting an immortal’s flesh rose from the roots, and the god bestowed his gift on Raina’s lover. All he had to do was pierce her heart, and her power would be his. She wouldn’t die, but she would become mortal.
But the man, so eager in his pursuit to have everything, made a fatal mistake.
What he didn’t realize was that when he unbound his lover’s power, he would have no control over where her essence went.
So, on the following evening, as Raina descended from the heavens on a cloud of silk, her lover waited with the dagger behind his back. The goddess, having no clue as to what he’d planned, raced into his arms. Just as their bodies met, a bolt of pain seared across her chest—her love had driven the moonshine dagger into her heart.
With wide eyes, she gasped, pleading for an answer as to why he would betray her so. But the mortal simply drove the blade in deeper, watching the devastation line her amber eyes in silver, the pieces of her holy soul split into three.
As if just realizing what he had done, the man quickly grabbed at one of the bursts of light before it could drift into the night. As his hand enclosed around the orb, as the ray of pure sunshine seeped into his skin, his black heart absorbed a fragment of the woman he’d claimed to love.
The second piece shot out across the realm before he could capture it. The ray would travel across the realm until it found a host of its own—an unsuspecting mortal destined to be born on what had been the longest day of the year.
But the final piece, the greatest fragment of her power, refused to leave the Sun Goddess. And while she held onto her last remaining light, her heart broke with betrayal. Even with a drop of her magic left, the dagger had rendered her all but mortal.
The man proclaimed his feelings for her, desperately attempting to convince the fallen goddess that this was better. That he could feel her inside his soul, and that, in that way, they would never be apart.
But it was too late.
Raina, with the last drop of her gifts, vanished into the darkness that soon plagued the kingdom.
From that moment on, the sun never did rise again, and the kingdom of Asidia and its peoples were cursed to live beneath an infinite moon, the realm surrounded by a poisonous mist.
The trees turned black, flowers wilted, and the earth shriveled, Arlo unable to mend what he’d helped break. The early days were the harshest, but the people pushed on, forced to survive without their beloved goddess watching over them.
Try as he might, Raina’s traitorous lover could not expose the goddess, the woman he’d shattered. He spent the rest of his days obsessed, searching a midnight kingdom so he could reunite with Raina and convince her of his affection, for he had realized too late the error of his ways.
