“Glasses, Quaid!” Aric yells. “Now!”
But before he can take them off, another archway turns to sand. Five. We’re down to five.
Quaid throws his glasses at Nyx, and a third door opens.
Now it’s my turn. But I don’t know how to give up the essence of myself. So I don’t do anything, and it’s during this hesitation that the fourth door disintegrates.
And now there are just enough.
Nyx walks over to me, placing a hand on my cheek, and gazes down into my eyes. “You will shine brighter in their lives than you ever could in the heavens. Give it up, little Star. Give me, the mother of the twinkling night, your station in the sky.”
Then she opens her mouth and I feel something come loose inside me. The next thing I know, my mouth is opening too. And I watch as a glittering bit of light comes out and hovers in the air between the goddess and me.
I reach for it, wanting to hold it in my hand. To feel the gift the gods gave me. Because I never knew it was there.
But Nyx leans in and gobbles it up!
She ate my light!
Then, the whole room begins to shake and she flies upward, into the twirling night sky, and the last thing I see of this world before Quaid pushes me through my open archway to Paradise, is an eighth sister lighting up inside the Pleiades cluster.
Everything goes dark.
My world becomes emptiness.
And I knew it. I knew it! I knew there was something fishy about that bitchy goddess! She’s probably evil! She did rip me out of Olympus, took my memories of my true self, and left me for dead in the mortal?—
But before I can finish my internal rant, the brightest of light flashes, blinding me so I have to put my hands over my eyes. I start to spin. Slowly, at first. But as I begin to rise up into the air, the spinning becomes faster, and faster, until I am a vortex of starlight.
I open my eyes, looking up at a night sky above me.
Twinkling stars make patterns in the chaos.
Three moons shine brightly, but each are in a different stage of luminosity. One is big and dull, but also full. The second is bright and small, and in the shape of a crescent. The third is only half lit, but you can see the rocky terrain, even with the naked eye.
I am transfixed by the beauty of it all, not paying any attention to what’s below me until Quaid yells, “Holy shit, Star! Get your ass down here before you fall out of the fucking sky!”
I look down and there they are!
All three of my guys!
Declan laughing like a lunatic, dancing around like a fool, because he has grown a massive set of fluffy gold wings!
Aric is looking down at himself in awe, because he’s now wearing the shiniest set of golden armor the heavens have ever seen.
And Quaid, always so bossy and demanding, is looking up at me with glowing eyes! Gold, like Declan’s wings and Aric’s armor.
Which makes me sigh.
Because we’re really a team now.
We’re really together. We even match.
I start to descend, making a lazy, twirling vortex until my feet are on the ground. But when I look at my guys, they are not looking at me, but at something above my head.
“What’s wrong, is my hair messed up? Did I go gray, or something? I wouldn’t put it past that stupid Nyx.” And then I’m ranting again, just like I was in the darkness.
But Aric points to my head, while Quaid puts a hand over my mouth, and Declan says, “Look up, Star. You’re…twinkling.”
