Page 96 of House of Salt and Sorrows
“I know you’re not.”
He squeezed my hands once, effectively crushing any bit of hope I had within me.
“You were right, back in the solarium. I shouldn’t have known your sisters’ names. No one ever speaks of them. But…I’ve met them…and I can promise you—they are not ghosts.”
I stilled. “You what?”
He cleared his throat. “The Sanctum is divided into different regions, each place a separate haven for the god or goddess it houses. To show Mother his devotion, Pontus built her a palace of moonstone in the Brine with him. It’s where I grew up, thoroughly doted upon, a strange half-mortal child. But as I got older, and it became obvious that I didn’t have the same talents as my other half siblings, some of that charm wore off.”
He rubbed at the back of his neck.
“It sounds lonely,” I said, wanting to commiserate but also desperate to hear more about my sisters.
“It was. Mother was gone quite a bit, looking after all this. And there was no one there who was like me. All I had for company was the souls of the departed.” He offered a little smile. “I explored every inch of the Brine, talking to whomever I came across, listening to their stories, and one day I found Ava. She’s so striking, with her black hair and pale skin. She told me about her life before. About her sisters. About you. Later on, when Octavia came, she brought new stories with her. Then Elizabeth.”
I tried to wrap my head around the sheer incredibility of the conversation. “So…when you met me at the wharf, you already knew who I was?”
He nodded. “I hoped so. You look just like Ava. Then you said your name and confirmed it.”
“What else did they tell you about me?”
“Ava said you were about my age, a little younger, maybe. She said you loved to play the piano and run about the estate, pretending to be a sea captain on your boat.”
A blush crept across my cheeks, warm and pink. “I wasn’t more than six then.”
“Elizabeth told me all about the sea turtles.”
“That’s how you knew.”
He had the decency to look chagrined. “Yes…But this is how I know you’re not being haunted. Your sisters are in the Brine, happy and at peace. They’re not trapped here, with unfinished business. Whatever you’ve been seeing, it isn’t ghosts.”
“But tonight it was Rosalie and Ligeia—you don’t know if they’re in the Brine. And Verity, she’s seen them too. She’s made the most terrible pictures. And they look just like them. How do you explain that? She’s too young to remember Ava and Octavia.”
He leaned back against the stone wall. “It could be somethingelse.”
I focused on his choice of word: something.
A line of women entered the abbey, interrupting us. They wore long ice-blue robes, the color of moonlight, with hoods up to conceal their faces. There were an even dozen, holding out lanterns of mercury glass. Charms of silver stars and golden moons hung from their corded belts, tinkling like chimes as they passed. Though most were focused on the altar, one girl at the end, younger than the rest of the group, glanced over at us with curiosity. Recognizing Cassius, she immediately dipped her head in reverence.
“Versia’s postulants. The Sisters of the Night. They live at the abbey, tending to the wishing wall and paying homage to my mother. They’re about to begin their first service of the day. Come with me.” Cassius drew me away from their ceremony.
“Why seven?” I asked, gazing back to the moon windows as we paused on the steps leading out into a courtyard.
“What do you mean?”
“House of Seven Moons. Seven windows. I assume each one holds a different phase of the moon?” He nodded. “But there are eight phases.”
“There’s no window for the full moon. See how they are arranged? Those are the quarter moons,” he said, pointing, “and the gibbous and crescents. And in the middle—that’s the new moon. At the full moon, Versia’s postulants blow out every candle in the abbey to let the light wash over everything from up there.” He gestured to the open roof.
I imagined it at night, with silvery moonlight raining down on the pale gray stones sprinkled with metallic flecks. How they must shimmer.
“What a lovely sight.”
“I’ll take you, if you like. At the two solstices, crowds come to the abbey to celebrate the night. It’s much like Churning, but for Versia and the People of the Stars. There’s a wall deeper in the abbey that holds hundreds of tiny candles. Each person takes one and makes a wish.”
“What happens then?”
“Later that night, everyone gathers here with their wish candles. They light paper lanterns, sending them floating into the sky. They glow and sparkle, drifting higher and higher until they join the heavens. The People of the Stars believe that in the coming months, if they see a shooting star, it’s their wish on its way back to them.”
