“Here,” her husband croaked out from somewhere behind her.
Portia shoved herself to her feet, hissing when she put weight on her twisted ankle. The boots she wore would have to be enough support for the moment until they could get back to Cosian. Emmitt caught her when her ankle wouldn’t support her weight all the way, and Portia huddled against him, too numb from terror to even think about crying.
“Where is she?” Portia rasped, voice coming out tinny through the gas mask she wore.
Emmitt wasn’t wearing his, and the ledgers he’d tried to save and had abandoned were indistinguishable from the ash of bodies drifting on the breeze. No one else from the group who’d traveled out with them was alive, but their daughter had to be.
“Caris!” Emmitt shouted as he tugged Portia along with him.
They made their way to where Caris had last been sighted, finding her sprawled on the dry, cracked earth, the shrubs nearest her blackened to char. When Portia brushed against one, the entire thing crumbled to the ground, a dusty outline of a once living plant.
She yanked herself free of Emmitt’s arms, falling to her knees beside their daughter. She pulled Caris’ unconscious form into her arms, rocking her the way Portia had done when she was younger and the magic growing inside her pained her more than growth spurts. Emmitt kneeled on Caris’ other side, holding Caris’ lax hand in one of his.
Portia undid her gas mask, and Emmitt took it from her before she could drop it to the ground. She patted Caris’ cheek with a firm hand, calling her name with increasing desperation. Caris was so pale, and the blood trickling from her nose stood out so brightly. When Portia tried to wipe it away with the sleeve of her blouse, it smeared over Caris’ cheek like badly applied rouge.
“Caris,” she said desperately, shaking her daughter to try to wake her up.
“She sleeps.”
The woman’s voice that came from behind them had Portia crying out in surprise even as Emmitt raised his pistol to aim over Portia’s shoulder. His hand was steady, years working with intricate machinery and delicate gears giving him better control than Portia had in the moment. Her pistol was—somewhere. Empty and useless. She hadn’t cared about much of anything except her daughter after the starfire burned.
Emmitt’s eyes went wide, lips parting in shock. He didn’t pull the trigger, though he did lower the gun. Portia finally found the wherewithal to take her eyes off her daughter in favor of their impossible visitor.
The North Star stood amongst the charred earth, wearing the robes of a star priest and a headdress that framed her skull like a halo as much as her thick auburn hair did. The golden circles and spikes dripped starfire around her body, the same white-hot burn that Caris had summoned in defense of them. She was like a vision, all hazy heat on the horizon, a figment of Portia’s imagination or mind magic pushed through the aether—she couldn’t decide.
Aaralyn held Portia’s gaze as the star god walked ever closer, the weight of her presence heavier than the hot summer air that shimmered all around them. Memory dragged itself from the depths of Portia’s mind, a blurred face shadowed in a nursery finally coming into sharp relief after so many years.
“Your brethren gave us our daughter,” Portia said.
“And I gave Nilsine my country’s future,” Aaralyn replied. “But Caris can’t be known just yet.”
Aaralyn stood over Portia, and the hand the North Star seemingly placed on Portia’s head sent ice trickling down her spine. Portia’s eyes watered as she stared up at the apex star god who guided the whole of Maricol but had chosen Ashion as her children so long ago.
“My lady.”
Aaralyn smiled, and maybe someone else could find comfort in it, but Portia only felt a creeping sense of unease settling in her bones. “Keep her secret for a little while longer.”
Portia stared at the blackened ground that stretched around them. “She called starfire. How do we explain that?”
Her voice came out no louder than a whisper. Even this far east, in the middle of nowhere, she knew the risk of what giving voice to that fact meant. Magic was found in every country, wielded by magicians and star priests, but those that commanded starfire were few and far between. Ashion’s royal genealogies had dwindled to one name after the Inferno, even if the count was wrong.
Portia tucked that thought away, buried it deep, and tried to forget. What mind magic that lingered inside her helped with that, or perhaps it was Aaralyn’s doing. All Portia knew was she came back to herself, thoughts murky and gaze blurred, in the motor carriage with Emmitt in the back seat and Caris slumped between them.
“Mama?” Caris groaned.
Portia raised a hand to cradle her daughter’s head against her shoulder, everything that had happened sleeting through her mind, too quick to make sense of.
Everything but Aaralyn’s promise as the star god drove them back to Cosian, real and solid and dressed as a warden now, her words from before an echo in Portia’s mind.
“Trust me, child. No one will see the truth unless I will it.”
Fourteen
JOELLE
Joelle Kimathi of the House of Kimathi had borne much grief in her years, but nothing was so bitter as the loss of her grandchild who had married into the House of Sa’Liandel. She mourned Nicca, but she mourned the loss of an avenue to power more.
“Why have you not called for a blood feud?” Karima demanded, hazel eyes bloodshot from the tears she’d cried every day for months since Nicca’s death.
