The Gloom Between Stars by Piper CJ

Author:Piper CJ
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sourcebooks

* * *

There come intervals in one’s life when they realize how profoundly different their experience is from that of those around them. A child who has grown up in poverty may not realize their family’s status until visiting the home of someone wealthy. After a lifetime of drinking liquor alone, it might take the observations of strangers telling someone that turning bright red from the alcohol is abnormal before they understand they’re allergic to their favorite drink. The inner circle knew Nox had hoped that Tanith might have one of these moments when spending time with someone of mixed blood, encountering her own biases and internalized hatred. Amaris was having exactly such an experience now as she matched Yazlyn’s pace, awkwardly fumbling for conversation as she realized she’d never had a woman for a friend.

Not only had Nox been Amaris’s only friend, but Farleigh had cultivated such an alienating environment that Nox had become her only family, her beloved, her peer, her lifeline, her lone exposure to the world, her everything. Her friendships since escaping the orphanage had been exclusively male.

The walk through Gwydir truly was breathtaking, which gave her somewhere to direct her nervous energy.

Amaris had seen a few towns, from Yelagin and Stone to Priory and Aubade. But the labradorite of Castle Gwydir shimmered throughout the city. The very cobblestones glimmered with the twinkle of the captured night sky. While most of the buildings were composed of a similar stone, the lively painted signs, glows of firelight, variety of windows, and colorful cloaks and furs of the northerners kept the city from feeling anything but gloomy. While Yazlyn could have flown them, they’d walked so that she could soak in the sights, and soak them in she did. Her eyes had darted with childlike wonder as she took in every nook and cranny.

“I can’t believe neither you nor Nox has even asked about leaving the castle,” Yazlyn commented on their walk.

Amaris’s face twisted contemplatively. “I went from an orphanage to an isolated keep in the mountains. I’ve been primed to stay put. And I suppose with Nox…”

The Selkie had been a keep of its own, though both Amaris and Yazlyn let the topic drift on the turn-of-the-season wind.

Amaris’s legs burned from her earlier run. Gwydir was a rather hilly city in and of itself. It sprawled over steep inclines and roads with one large, dark river separating the castle grounds from the surrounding city. It created a natural moat between the royal family’s property and the citizens of Gwydir. Yet Amaris had a sense that the moat was unneeded. The city’s energy was one of warmth and acceptance, even if the temperature was anything but.

Raascot’s capital city was fresh with the pines and evergreen brush dusted with snow blossoms that decorated the streets and lined the fronts of shops. Amaris had borrowed a heavy gray fur-lined cloak from Yazlyn as they set out onto the town, walking until snowflakes began to twinkle down from the cloudy night sky.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.