Innes smiled at her in the glow of starfire that dripped off his shoulders like a cape, bleeding aether from his Viper constellation tattoo. “Wife.”
She looked away from him, looked up at a ceiling that could have doubled as the night sky behind the dust and dirt and grime of their past. “This world isn’t meant to be owned how you wish.”
“You would deny our children progress.”
“I would deny them nothing, but your dream will be their nightmare.” Aaralyn met his gaze once more, the love in his eyes as steadfast as his hate. “Our hope of leaving has long been dead. Do not try to resurrect it like a revenant. That way only lies madness.”
Innes stepped forward, hands reaching for hers, and she let him take them. His grip was firm and familiar, as was the tired smile on his face. When he pressed his forehead to hers, she couldn’t help but close her eyes.
“We are the stars that guide, and you guided us here, forever the captain of my heart, but this world was never meant to be our home.”
His power tugged at hers, drawing her upward through the long-ago safety of that underground home and back to the surface of dangers that would never die. The cold changed, that ancient quiet replaced by the sound of the wind and a city waking up. A burning heat to her left that chased away the chill of below had Aaralyn opening her eyes and pulling back.
The starfire throne burned at the center of the park that had grown up around it in the last two decades. The new palace was close by and walled off for privacy, but the old broken throne room remained accessible as a reminder of what a country had lost and could regain.
The throne that every king and queen of the Rourke bloodline had sat on burned with starfire that never went out. The glass cupola above it was supported by iron pillars, the space between them open so people could see the remnants of all that was left of the old palace. The old marble floor was streaked with ashes from the people who still sought to claim the power of rulership denied to them by her decree.
“Maricol was our lighthouse in a storm,” Aaralyn said, letting her husband go. She took a step back, looking away from the starfire throne to meet Innes’ gaze once more beneath the dawn’s encroaching light. “Our miracle.”
Innes skimmed the knuckles of one hand down her cheek. “Our grave.”
He wasn’t wrong, but they’d long since accepted their roads. “And for your anguish, you would damn the world.”
“My only goal is to rebuild it through our children, to give them a chance to see the stars one day, to know what we once knew.”
She gave him a pitying look, and that deep well of love in his eyes faded into something bitter and angry and mournful. Aaralyn caught his wrist in her hand, pulling his away from her face. “Husband, don’t you remember? We ran from that future once before and promised each other never to strive for it again.”
“You cannot kill progress.”
“Progress has many roads, and I will not let our children walk yours.”
Innes wrenched his hand free, walking away from her as was his habit these last few centuries. Ever since Daijal had cleaved itself of Ashion, he had cleaved himself from her. She missed him—she always would—but she would not give up Maricol without a fight.
It was, after all, the only home they had left.
