Page 30 of Starchaser
“I’ve never seen this before,” I manage to say, my voice thick.
Mother’s smile twists, tears pooling on her chin, and I realize she’s staring at me in that perceptive way only a mother can. “I thought he’d lost it years ago,” she admits. “Killian said it was all they recovered from the fire.” She frowns, but an odd spark of hope lights her gaze. “Strange, how the things we lose find their way back to us when we least expect it.”
She reaches up, her forefinger and thumb brushing my earlobe, and my heart sinks.
“Someone must have taken them,” I say, remembering the pearl earrings she gave me at the Reckoning Day ball. My stomach twists into knots, and I realize I haven’t thought of them since Iwoke up on Shade’s ship. “Before Father…” I clear my throat, try again. “Father said something odd that night. He said he gave you those earrings. But our belongings were confiscated the day we came ashore. How did you manage to bring them here with you?”
Mother tilts her head, pushing a strand of hair behind my ear as she searches my face, her expression unreadable. “Are you sure there isn’t something else you’d like to ask me?”
I can feel it then. Can see it in her eyes—hear it in her voice. She wants me to ask her about everything—about my Nightweaver blood, about our enchanted trinkets, about my curse.
“There is, actually,” I say quickly before I can change my mind. “What can you tell me about—”
“Mother!” Elsie cries, and I turn to see her trudging back up the hill, her cheeks flushed from the cold. Albert races after her, shouting for her to wait, but Elsie appears determined to reach us before he can catch her. “Mother, we’re going to miss the train!”
Mother greets Elsie with a patient smile. “Then I suppose we’d better hurry!” she calls down to her. She turns to me then, her smile wavering. “Keep this close,” she says, closing the pocket watch and covering my hands with hers. Her gaze meets mine, full of answers to questions I haven’t even begun to ask. “You can do anything, Aster. Anything at all. You need only believe you can.”
Elsie reaches us, panting for breath, just as Albert catches her arm.
“I told her—” Albert starts.
“It’s all right,” Mother says, quirking a brow. “You three go on,” she adds, turning to face the horizon once more, and my chest deflates because the moment for questions and answers has passed. “I’ll be right behind you.”
In one hand, I take Elsie’s gloved fingers in mine, and withthe other, I cling to the pocket watch—the compass—as we follow Albert back down the hill.
There is still time to chase another star.
The words pierce my heart so violently I’m surprised I don’t leave a trail of blood in the snow. Even if, at the end of all this, when we’ve found the cure and the king and queen have been brought to justice and Titus finally gives me the medallion—once my family is safe, and we are free, and I have more time… what then?
I’ve spent my whole life fighting. I’m not sure who I am without a foe to defeat, a war to wage, or a battle to win.
If I am who I choose to be, then what will I choose when I’m free to become… anything?
“Az?” Elsie says, drawing me out of my thoughts. “We’ll come back, right? This is our home now, isn’t it?”
I squeeze her hand as we make our way toward the iron gate at the end of the drive. “Would you like to come back here?”
Elsie pauses, glancing over her shoulder at Bludgrave Manor, now empty behind us. “Do I have a choice?”
I hesitate. “What if you did? What would you choose?”
Her brow furrows, lips pursing. “I think…” She turns to face the open gate, where the carriage waits to take us far, far from Bludgrave Manor, and she smiles. “I think I’d like to live on a ship again, wouldn’t you?”
I hold fast to the cold metal of the compass, my father’s handwriting digging into the skin of my palm, as I look down at my little sister, her face full of wishes and dreams and the promise of tomorrow. I’m doing this for my family. For my people.
For Elsie.
“I’d like that,” I tell her, forcing a smile. “I’d like that very much.”
I never thought I wouldgrow accustomed to the jostle of a train as it hurtles down the tracks, but as I pace the length of Titus’s compartment, I find the cadence somewhat soothing. If I were to close my eyes, I might even think I were back on theLightbringer, rocked by the cradle of the Western Sea. But the roaring blizzard that rages just outside my window and the white-capped mountains in the distance are a brutal reminder of my situation.
“Perhaps you would have rather walked to Jade,” Flynn says, his voice muffled by his scarlet helmet.
I was separated from my family as we boarded the train, escorted by Flynn and Gabriel to Titus’s private compartment. Albert shed a tear as the Bloodknights blocked my path, urging me in the opposite direction, but I caught Mother’s eye as they led me away—noted the subtle nod of her head, the way she flickeda glance at the compass tucked safely beneath the collar of my dress.
I can’t help but think she was trying to tell me something, and even now it rests heavily over my heart. But if the compass is more than just a simple trinket, I can’t risk revealing it to the Bloodknights.
“I just want to see my family,” I say, wishing Titus would return my daggers to me already. People seem to listen better with a blade pressed to their throats.
