Page 79 of All the Chaos of Constellations
“Don’t play dumb with me, Firebane.” He shook his head, a barely perceptible smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “I know that look. Your scents mingle, a complexity only shared by mates. You can deny it all you want, but you’re in love with Novalise. And you’re a fool if you let her marry Drake Kalstrand.”
“You’re mistaken,” Asher answered coolly.
He wasnotin love with Novalise. Affection? Most likely. Desire? Absolutely. But not love.
Solarius closed the distance between them, his silver gaze glowing with power. “She deserves better than a fucking assassin.”
Asher shifted, uncomfortable. He was fully aware Novalise deserved to marry someone worthy of her, but that didn’t mean he merited such an honor. “I walk with shadows of my own.”
The Starstorm fae shook his head, his barely there smile fading. “Everyone battles their own demons. No one is purely good or evil, just as the line of morality has never been strictly black and white. All our souls are blurred with shades of gray.”
“And what of the stars?” Asher countered, his words dripping with sarcasm, agitated by having his objections toward love so easily rejected. “Do they not design the premise of our fate?”
Solarius scoffed, taking a step back. He leaned against a pillar wrapped in ivy and tiny red blossoms. “The stars never lie. But that doesn’t mean they’ve never been…misinterpreted.”
The absoluteness of his words caught Asher off guard. For as long as he could remember, House Celestine lived and breathed by the promise of the stars and celestial magic. To claim star readings weren’t always fact, to assume they were somehow misconceived or swayed, went against everything they accepted as truth.
It was unthinkable.
“Are you saying the Reader of Stars,” Asher ventured cautiously, “yourmother,was wrong?”
“I’m saying everyone makes mistakes.” Solarius shrugged nonchalantly. “And that star readings are the most basic form of celestial magic. Anyone can be taught how to do it, whether they possess Starstorm blood or not.”
Basic?
Confusion clouded Asher’s thoughts. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Wait. What?”
Solarius stole a glance over his shoulder, his keen gaze raking up and down the path of the gardens, ensuring no one was near. “Listen to me very carefully, Firebane, for I am only going to say this once, and I will not repeat myself. And if you ever make mention you heard this from me, I’ll deny it to my grave.”
Asher nodded once, solemn and resolute.
“My mother is not a true Starstorm. She married into the bloodline. My father taught her how to read the stars, but she was always too emotional to maintain any kind of indifference. She allowed her feelings to guide her instead of using the clarity of mind.” Solarius pushed off the pillar, the planes of his face hardening in the crawling shadows. “Do you really think someone of Novalise’s power was destined to be a simplereader?”
Asher considered his words, and images of Novalise seared the back of his mind. The bursts of starfire that exploded from her in his study, the loss of control she suffered when the starstorm overwhelmed her.
“No,” Solarius answered for him. “It was all a plan put into place by my mother to keep Novalise under lock and key. Except when it was time to enforce her premeditated reading onto Novalise, she couldn’t because the constellations were in chaos. Anyone who looked up at the sky that night would have known my mother was lying. There would have been too many witnesses for her to execute her scheme.”
“Novalise’s fate was your mother’s doing.” Asher’s thoughts were a collective whirlwind of understanding. The destiny Novalise had been promised at her birth was a fallacy. That dull predetermination—everlasting love—hardly matched the fiery spirit burning inside of her. “Trysta is manipulating her.”
“Now, don’t get me wrong. I love my mother, to an extent.” Solarius didn’t agree with Asher, but he didn’t outright deny his claims, either. “But wouldn’t it make more sense to ask yourself why she would want to hide Novalise’s true magic, a power that has been dormant within the Starstorm bloodline for hundreds of years?”
There had to be a logical reason.
Trysta used Novalise’s reading as a means to control her. But why? There must be something else, some deeper motivation for wanting to keep the truth of Novalise’s power a secret. Even if Ariesian was the lord of the house, Trysta wouldn’t willingly give up Novalise to Drake unless she planned to gain something in return. Something worthwhile. Like an alliance. As Novalise’s mother, she would have to sign the agreement as well. But no one in their right mind would ally themselves with the Shadowblade Assassin. He thrived on the malevolent and was too volatile, too untrustworthy. Not even a contract inked in blood would hold him to his word. In fact, the only one worse than Drake Kalstrand was…
Prince Aspen.
Trysta wouldn’t have worked so hard for so many years to keep Novalise’s magic hidden only to give it away because her daughter had to take a mate. She had plenty of suitors. There would be too much at stake, and Asher could almost guarantee the Prince of Aeramere was behind it all. Either Prince Aspen held something over Trysta Starstorm or she was working with him to help overthrow Queen Elowyn, with the assistance of Drake Kalstrand.
It was the only plausible explanation.
“Fates divine,” Asher muttered, pressing his hand to his forehead. He looked over at Solarius, and the fae’s face was completely devoid of any emotion. “You think your mother is conspiring with Prince Aspen?”
To this, Solarius only gave the slightest incline of his head.
Hells, it was worse than Asher thought. “And you know about Novalise’s abilities, about the starstorm.”
It wasn’t a question and they both knew it. Granted, Novalise had told him as much, but he wanted to glean as much information as possible from Solarius while he has the chance.
