“You will not speak of this night to anyone,” Nilsine said, voice echoing in Portia’s ears like the storm sirens which pierced the air when the sky turned green and the winds howled ferociously.
Portia would never have betrayed a star god’s divine decree, but the freedom to agree to it was taken from her. The way the nursery looked, her daughter’s face in the candlelight, and the flicker of starfire was locked away in the back of Portia’s mind, the edges of the memory already fading.
The memory was locked away, but the clarity of it wasn’t hers to hold on to over the years. In the wake of that midnight visit, with a world-breaking secret sleeping quietly where her daughter once lay, Portia grieved through the smiles she offered well-wishers at the star temple days later.
And when the star priest asked for her daughter’s name to record in Cosian’s nobility genealogy, Portia’s tongue shaped the sound of it with a hitch in her throat. “Caris Dhemlan.”
It wasn’t the name they had chosen, but it was the one they gave her.
In the end, Portia could do nothing but love her, as any mother would.
Four
EIMARILLE
“Would you care for some tea?”
Princess Eimarille Rourke ignored the question from the Daijalan ambassador and never looked away from the window of the private train carriage they traveled in, small gloved hands clasped tightly in her lap. The tips of her stained satin slippers barely touched the plush rug lining the floor.
The vast prairie fields of the Northern Plains stretched beyond the tracks they rode along as they headed west. The train had yet to make a stop, but Eimarille had overheard her captors discussing doing so that morning over a breakfast she hadn’t partaken in. Apparently they were due to pick up passengers in Istal, and soon, if the way the Daijalan guards were becoming more active at the other end of the train carriage was anything to go by.
“My dear, you must eat something.”
For all the ambassador’s formidable rhetoric, he would never be able to convince a princess to do what he wanted. Eimarille was nothing if not stubborn when the need arose, and she had no reason to give in to people her mother had told her never to trust.
Thinking of her mother brought tears to her eyes, and she sniffled delicately, wishing for privacy. She hadn’t been alone save the few minutes she was allowed to use the privy, and all the attention from the men around her made her uncomfortable.
“Give me a moment with her,” another voice said. Eimarille clenched her hands tighter together at the sound of it, ten years too young to understand what she felt for him was hatred in that moment.
She watched the Daijalan ambassador’s reflection in the glass, a ghostly shape that disappeared. The soft rustle of expensive clothes reached her ears as the man who had taken her from the palace sat across from her. The narrow table between them was set with delicate porcelain plates filled with all sorts of treats she had no desire to try. She knew it would taste like ash in her mouth, the way everything had since the fire.
“This is not how I thought we would meet, but you Rourkes have always been stubborn,” the man said.
Eimarille turned her head to look at him. At some point during their travel west, he had changed out of the black clothing he’d worn in the palace when he’d stolen her from all that she knew.
Now, he was dressed in gray trousers, a pressed white button-down shirt, and a deep blue waistcoat that matched his eyes. He wore no hat but carried a slim black cane in his ungloved hands. A thin gold chain was hooked to his waistcoat, the end of it disappearing into a pocket.
“How should we have met?” Eimarille asked in as prim a voice as she could muster.
“It does not matter now.” The man pulled a kerchief from his waistcoat pocket and offered it to her across the table with a coaxing smile. “You look like you need this.”
“I want nothing from you.”
“Everyone always wants something from me, my dear, but I give blessings how I see fit.” He waved the kerchief at her, eyes never leaving her face. “Take it. I insist.”
She didn’t know what compelled her to take the kerchief, but Eimarille found herself reaching for the soft white square of fabric. She used it to dab carefully at her eyes before crumpling it into a ball on her lap. “Who are you?”
He smiled, a faint quirk of his lips, but it never reached his eyes. “I’ve gone by many names over the years, but your generation would know me as Innes.”
Eimarille’s eyes widened fractionally, her gaze dropping briefly to the high collar of his shirt. “The Twilight Star?”
Innes leaned his cane against the wainscoting beneath the window. “Would you like proof?”
She hesitated only a moment before nodding. Innes undid the cravat around his throat, then the buttons on his waistcoat, and finally the top two of his shirt. The fabric was pulled aside, revealing the Viper constellation tattoo that stretched over the top of one pectoral, the glint of gold like the shine of starfire her mother used to command—like Eimarille was just beginning to master before everything exploded like an experiment gone wrong.
Innes pulled a slim device from his pocket and pressed a button on it. A blade snapped out, razor-sharp and thin. He pressed the edge to his skin and drew it down over the tattoo. What spilled out from the rapidly healing cut wasn’t red like her own blood, but a molten gold liquid. No mortal would ever carry poison in their veins how the star gods did.
“My lord,” Eimarille said faintly, half rising from her seat.
