Find Me Between the Stars by Iris Lake

Author:Iris Lake [Lake, Iris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-12-29T16:00:00+00:00

20

Orion

Neira was perched on her favorite spot in the house, a vine-threaded nook in the atrium so small she had to keep her knees tight against her chest just to make her tiny body fit.

The wool blanket she was bundled into was hanging over the edge like a fluffy little cloud on a patch of green sky. It was the blanket I used to drape over my shoulders every morning while shuffling around the kitchen making some tea before Neira confiscated it for herself.

I could always trust to find her here at night, trying to translate a passage about the dreamlands from the ancient language of the gods while wisps of ether danced at her fingertips until she was delirious with magic. And I would have to bring her dinner because she was terrible at eating three meals a day on her own, and I would feel disheartened thinking this was only because she hadn’t had the luxury of three meals a day most of her life.

Tonight, though, I’d come bearing something a little bit different.

Her face was hidden behind a massive, black tome, and when she finally acknowledged me, it was with a sulky glare. “What do you want?” she clipped.

She’d been like this for days now, punishing me for my silence with hers, and hers was a vindictive, resilient little thing.

But a confession, I knew, wouldn’t bring her any resolution, let alone peace. Burdening her with my mistakes was no better than grabbing a coil of chains and shackling her down for one more tragedy to play out. After all, she and I never had much problem with beginnings. Endings were the reason why we stood here, right now, staring at each other with brand-new faces. She and I were terrible at endings.

I approached and proffered the oblong box I kept in my hands. “Here.”

She narrowed her eyes on me. “What is it?”

“Open it.”

She placed it on the floor and got to her knees, her fingers tugging with simultaneous hesitancy and excitement at the velveteen ribbons, almost as if she’d never opened a present in her life before. The top unraveled and she frowned. “A dress.”

“The color of the forest as tradition dictates it.”

Her head bobbed up. “For The Hunt?”

I nodded and took courage on a deep breath. “I want to take you if you still want to go.”

Although I had never attended let alone participated in any of the kingdom’s seasonal celebrations, when I was younger, oftentimes, I would coax Ismene into telling me about them, partly to distract her from the fact that I hadn’t completed my assignments yet once again, but mostly because she had a way of spinning words like threads in a loom, and I could listen to her talk about such things for hours.

I had no need for drinking and dancing in my life. Gods knew my nights at the Nether were filled with all kinds of mortal pleasures and easy satisfactions without having to sanction the watchful eyes of the court,

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