Page 91 of Secrets and Starlight

They shone overhead, bright even in this confusing place.

Now that I’d been taught how to listen, it was easy to hear the stars sing. Their voices wrapped together, ethereal with elongated tones, their chorus an invitation to draw down my strength. Power streamed into me, collecting in the center of my heart, a malleable silver light.

At my chest, I grew a little star of my own. I gripped the tether tight, flooding it with all that I knew of my shadow prince. Every detail of his past, every moment we shared, and every imprint on my skin. I filled the star with his being.

“Zayne.”

The light collected and grew, and finally satisfied, I sent it above the labyrinth hedges. The starlight shifted and bounced. The hedges around me changed, the path growing wider as the light led the way.

Renewed, I hurried after, Ninti racing at my heels.

Zayne

The darkness was complete, and it swallowed me whole.

Whoever Zayne was, he wasn’t me, wasn’t this.

This. A shell, a spirit without a soul.

Time lost all meaning as I drifted again.

Gloom was stagnation, the end of vitality.

She was a darkness more complete than death.

Her mind too stunned by its mending to notice me.

My purpose to her spent. There was no more.

Her mists became my entire world.

Everything became nothing.

Drifting.

Lost.

Gone.

A light.

I knew that star.

The mists thinned.

The star invited me closer.

It tugged at my chest.

It told me who I was.

“Zayne.”

That name.

I tried to reply.

I swallowed fog.

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