Please.
“I hear you, child,” Callisto said.
She drew his soul out of skin and bones, sending the ghost of him into the sky and the stars that shone beyond the brightness of the sun. The aether in her own veins burned in solidarity as he faded to nothing. Callisto curled her fingers against her palm and drew her hand away from the body.
Shouts reached her ears, and Callisto looked over her shoulder at the encroaching enemy line. The lead automaton came inexorably forward, its mechanical gears grinding and clanking together. Callisto straightened, striding down the length of the trench, bullets passing her by as dirt rose around her from another grenade hit.
“She doesn’t hear them, you know,” a deep voice said from behind her. “She never comes for them.”
Callisto rocked to a stop, reaching up with one hand to touch the Lion constellation tattoo wrapped around her throat. The heat of the golden lines always was a comfort amidst the surrounding death. “That is where you are wrong, brother. Aaralyn hears them; she merely chooses who to listen to.”
“You would listen to them all. One prayer brought you out of Solaria.”
Callisto narrowed her eyes before turning around to face her brother, the Midnight Star dressed in the clothes of a Urovan, thick arms crossed over his broad chest. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up to his elbows, revealing the golden lines of the Bear constellation tattoo that crawled over the back of his hands and fingers and up his forearms.
Xaxis had always been the most intimidating of their group, but his broad form and bearded visage hid a quiet gentleness few were ever privy to. Urova was a harsh land during the long winter months where the midnight sun never set and the cold was deadly. But his children had made it a home, and they worshipped him as a part of their way of life.
And now that way of life included war.
Explosions nearby that sent dirt and grass high into the air would have deafened anyone but them. Callisto barely noticed it, nor the dirt that fell like rain around them. “I hear my children’s prayers no matter where they walk. Aaralyn has her reasons for the ones she answers and the ones she must leave by the wayside.”
“She did the same during the Inferno.” Xaxis tilted his head to the side, studying her. “I hear you stole a prince.”
Callisto shrugged. “I stole nothing not freely given. I hear you delivered a Blade to the princess Innes claimed.”
“I’m not here to compare our mistakes.”
“I don’t consider helping our children a mistake.” Callisto jerked her head at the trenches and the dead resting at the bottom of them. “I consider this war Innes crafted the wrong road.”
Xaxis followed her gaze, his dark eyes taking in the battlefield. The prayers rising from the earth and metal war machines went unanswered in the face of Innes’ desire to find a way back to the stars they had all left behind Ages ago.
“He is tired of never dying.”
Callisto snorted at that. “We all died once, and we keep being reborn. Innes is not the only one who yearns to dance amongst the stars like our children when they reach the end of their roads. But we have our own roads, and they are never-ending. We swore we would walk them together, and now he seeks to tear us all apart. You aid him in that.”
Xaxis lifted a hand to stroke his fingers over the neatly trimmed beard that shadowed his features. He hadn’t yet shaved off the mark of winter, but she knew he would in due time. “He means well.”
At that, Callisto made a gesture with her hand, the movement of her fingers an insult of some kind, but she’d forgotten the meaning millennia ago. “He means to dictate progress through his children. Urova is not safe from his desires. You should know that by now.”
“Is it so wrong to want a different road?”
“And if his want kills our children? What then?”
“Then perhaps that is progress.”
Callisto snorted derisively and looked up at the haze of smoke stretched across the blue sky. “Progress won’t change the road we walk. You know that.”
Because Maricol was their home and their grave. They’d walked the land and sailed the seas and taught their children how to survive in this world that had saved them so long ago. They’d made a promise through the Ages to keep their feet on the earth and leave the stars alone.
“This war will end in some fashion. I will listen to the prayers that ask for my guidance,” Xaxis eventually said.
“When your people pray for deliverance from Daijal’s interference, you will know why Aaralyn only listens to some prayers.”
Xaxis inclined his head in her direction before the constellation tattoos bled gold and consumed him in starfire, the aether drawing him to some other place. Callisto eyed where her brother once stood before staying to watch the battle through, listening to prayers not meant for her but guiding those with broken roads to the stars anyway in the North Star’s absence.
Six
JOELLE
