Page 213 of The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King

Raihn looked a little pale. I wondered if he was having the same thoughts, about luck and all the ways ours could have been different. I touched his hand without thinking, sliding over his rough skin. He flipped his palm up, fingers closing loosely around mine.

My eyes fell to the bedspread, and Alya’s weathered, bony hands sitting atop it. The sight struck me with another dizzying wave of familiarity.

Those hands.

I remembered holding those hands, long ago.

Yours are so much more wrinkly than mama’s.

That’s not very polite, Oraya.

“I lived with you,” I blurted out.

Alya’s brow twitched. Only the faintest hint of surprise. “I didn’t think you would remember that. You were very, very young.” She looked around the little bedroom. “You were born here, actually. In this room. That… that was a hard day. Wasn’t sure if either of you would make it. I was doing everything I could to heal you both, but…”

She blinked, as if clearing away the past. “I haven’t felt that way in a long, long time. Not until he showed up yesterday. Brings back... a lot of memories.”

Goddess, I never thought I would ever have someone look at me the way she was now. With the nostalgic affection of a shared past.

I had so many questions. “How did—why—” And then, finally, “My mother...”

My voice trailed off. I didn’t even know what I wanted to know first.

Everything. Anything.

A smile softened the hard lines of Alya’s mouth. “She was wonderful. And she was obnoxious.”

“She was an acolyte of Acaeja, too.”

I didn’t know why I was so eager to say that—to demonstrate that I knew something about her.

“Yes. It was her idea, actually. We were both young, growing up here, in the human districts of Vartana. And this life is a hard one, for humans in Obitraes. Vartana isn’t as bad as Sivrinaj or Salinae, but there are limits to what a human can do with their lives in this kingdom. Alana never accepted that, though. She was ambitious. A dangerous quality for someone in her position. She was blessed with a touch for magic, and rather than pursuing the arts of Nyaxia, knowing she could never be more than passable at it, she decided to go in a different direction.”

“Acaeja,” I said, and Alya nodded.

“Yes. The only other god that would allow their gifts to be used by someone in Obitraes, even a human. But it was about more than that for Alana. She liked that Acaeja was the Goddess of Lost Things. She felt like we were all lost. Needed someone to guide us back. Eventually, I came to believe it, too, and studied alongside her.”

Without meaning to, I’d started leaning across the bed, as if to get close enough to absorb the words into my skin. With each one, I painted color into that old ink portrait of my mother.

“So my mother was... a healer?” I asked.

“No, I was always the better healer. She didn’t have the patience for it. Besides, I think it was too small for her. She wanted something big. Somethinggrand. She experimented with sorcery, with seering.” Alya laughed a little. “I always used to be after her for choosing the most useless skills to focus on. She told me they’d be useful one day, just wait.”

Then the smile went cold. “I suppose that turned out to be true. When word got around that Vincent was looking for seers.”

She said Vincent’s name like a curse, something dirty to be expelled.

My eagerness snuffed out like a candle, leaving behind only dread.

So many things I needed to know.

So many things I did not want to hear.

“No one could stop her,” Alya went on. “She wanted something more than this place, this life. So she went to Sivrinaj and offered herself up to him. She told us this was her chance at becoming something important. Money. Safety. Not just for her, she said, but for all of us.” She shook her head. “I begged her not to go,” she murmured. “But there was no reasoning with her.”

I clasped my hands together, knuckles white. My body had gone rigid, like I was bracing for a blow. Maybe Raihn sensed this, because he put his hand on my back, and Mother, I was so grateful for that single steadying touch.

I had cursed Vincent in my own head countless times. Screamed into my pillow in rage and hurt over the things he had done to me, the lies he had told me.

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