The Midnight Star

  Then Lucent takes a step toward the queen. “Just this once,” she echoes.

  All my wealth, power, territories, military might . . . none of it matters now. She has gone, and with her shall I go.

  —Final letter of King Delamore to his general

  Adelina Amouteru

  Gray clouds blanket the skies the next morning, clear warnings of snow, stretching as far as the horizon. As Maeve leads two riders out ahead to check our path, I sit with Magiano, chewing on strips of dried meat and hard bread. Around a nearby fire, Raffaele sits with his cloak gathered tightly about him, talking in low voices with Lucent. Teren sits alone, ignoring us all.

  Magiano is in a dark mood, no doubt brought on by the cold and gloom. Without his joy, I find myself fending off the whispers in my head more than ever, struggling to stay sane. You will lose yourselves in the snow and wilds, they are saying. You will never return. Beside me, Violetta lies unconscious, shivering uncontrollably, under a pile of furs and blankets. Hard as it is to see her like this, I am glad that she is shivering. It tells me that she is still alive. I reach out and rest my hand on the furs.

  “At this rate,” Magiano mutters, pulling me out of the depths of my thoughts, “we won’t see blue sky again until we leave this place.” He turns his eyes to the sky and utters a loud, mournful sigh. “What I wouldn’t give for a little Merroutas warmth and gaiety.”

  Maeve and her riders return as we are finishing our breakfast. “The paths are covered with ice,” she says as we load our packs onto our horses. She catches Lucent’s eyes for a moment, and something unspoken passes between them. “But they are otherwise clear. The snow breakers have already been through.” I notice the queen touch Lucent’s boot briefly before heading to her own mount. There is a new closeness between them.

  Nearby, Magiano and Raffaele help me secure Violetta on a stretcher behind two of Maeve’s horses. She stirs restlessly as we go, murmuring something that I can’t understand. Her markings look darker now, almost black, as if Moritas were slowly claiming her body for the Underworld. I grit my teeth at the sight.

  Magiano watches me as I stand beside Violetta’s stretcher. “She’ll make it,” he says, placing a hand on my arm, but I can hear the doubt in his voice.

  As we near the paths that lead into the first mountains, the narrowness of the valleys starts to funnel the wind, so it bites our cheeks and cuts through every gap in our clothing. I tie my hood down tight over my head and try to pull my cloak higher to cover the lower half of my face. Even then, my breath freezes against the cloth, creating a patch of white frost. With the wind come the whispers, howling against my ears with every blast. Their words are such a jumble, I can’t understand what they’re saying, but they send my heart racing until my shoulders sag from exhaustion. Now and then, I think I see dark silhouettes standing in the crevices of the mountains, watching us with sightless eyes. I can only see them in the edges of my vision—when I turn my head, they vanish.

  Magiano continues to frown at the sky. “Is it just me, or is the sky turning darker?” He nods up at the clouds. “The clouds aren’t growing any thicker—it just seems as if the day were passing more rapidly than it should.”

  I glance up too. He’s right. What should be the light of a midday sun hidden behind clouds looks instead like the sun is already setting. The shadows in the valley deepen as we go, stretching around us in muted shapes as the mountain ranges around us turn steeper. The path beneath our horses’ hooves crunches with frost and ice.

  I lose track of how many hours we travel in this strange twilight. We all stay quiet. I ride behind Violetta’s stretcher so I can keep her in my sights. Now and then, her eyes open, gray and uneasy, but they never seem to focus on anything or anyone. It is as if she has already gone somewhere else.

  She’s still here, I tell myself. But the whispers in my mind now sound like they are the wind, drowning out my thoughts, and my exhaustion and worry settle into a frenetic beating in my heart. This must be the way the origin’s pull is affecting me.

  That night, a night that seems to fall prematurely, we stop in a hollow that shelters us partly from the elements. The wind is furious in this narrow pass, making it impossible for us to pitch a proper camp. Our horses are listless too, huddled together for warmth close to the fire we’ve built.

  “The early twilight will come more frequently in the days ahead,” Raffaele says as we all gather around him. He draws one curved line through the dirt with a stick, then notes several spots along it, including our location. “We are getting closer.” He points to a spot at the top of the path, nestled between two mountains. “The Dark of Night.”

  Raffaele speaks with calm and grace, as he always does, but even his voice seems to carry underneath it a current of doubt. My hand lingers on top of the furs blanketing Violetta, who stirs uneasily in her fevered sleep. We are headed toward a realm known only in legends and folktales. What will happen when we arrive?

  “The laws of our world may bend and stretch there,” Raffaele says after a moment. “Things may not be as they appear. We’ll need to be careful.” At this, he glances my way. “I feel the pull of this place. Can you?”

  I nod. Around me, the others do the same. My gaze wanders to where Teren sits a short distance away, his cloak undone, seemingly oblivious to the cold. He is methodically sharpening his sword and knives. My whispers are growing stronger, while an air of darkness seems to hover around Magiano. Violetta is fading, and Raffaele’s senses are being overwhelmed by threads of energy from every direction. What must Teren feel here, so close to the origin? Will this journey drive him even closer to madness?

  Before we settle in to rest for the night, I ask Maeve to set up extra sentries around Teren. Even then, I still find myself waking at odd hours and looking in Teren’s direction, wondering whether I will see him snap.

  The dawn never seems to arrive the next morning. Instead, the world lightens only into the dim twilight we’d experienced the day before, leaving the landscape frightening in its darkness. A light snow has started to fall, sprinkling a coating of white all around us. Magiano sleeps pressed next to me, one arm draped over my shoulders. My whispers are loud this morning, restless and roaring and without end. When I look behind us, I see nothing but the trail of our footprints leading off into the lonely mountains. I see the same up ahead. In my periphery, illusions of dark silhouettes continue to hover, my own ghosts that refuse to leave me alone.

  I shake fresh snow from my hair, then rise carefully so as not to wake Magiano. I stretch my sore limbs. Only a few sentries posted by Maeve are also awake, standing some distance away, their attention fixed on the bleak terrain surrounding us. I look around at the scene, realizing that, if I wanted to, I could eliminate them all in this moment of weakness.

  Do it.

  The whispers are so strong this morning that I almost follow their orders. I scowl, shake my head, and press my hands to my temples. Why are they suddenly so insistent? We must be edging very close to the Dark of Night. Trying to ignore them, I rub my hands and decide to wander in a circle around the camp. Teren’s not in his sleeping area—this sends a note of panic through me before I notice him standing several paces past the sentries, his face tilted at the heavens in prayer. I watch him for a short time, then head to where Violetta is asleep.

  When I reach her cot, I kneel beside her. Her dark hair is frozen into clumps, and her pallid skin looks almost frosted. It’s far too cold here for her to handle; we’ll need to find extra furs. She can have mine before we need to stop again, but even then, I’m not sure if that will be enough.

  “Violetta,” I whisper, gently touching her shoulder.

  She doesn’t stir.

  I hesitate, then remove one of my gloves and touch her cheek with the back of my hand. Her skin is ice cold. No warm breaths come from her.

  The whispers surround me, but I force them violently away. Sur
ely she’s breathing—this must be an illusion. I’m creating a nightmare for myself again. I will wake over and over until Magiano rouses me from this dream. I shake her again, this time harder. “Violetta,” I say, louder. My voice catches Raffaele’s attention nearby. He sits up and looks in my direction. Then his eyes go to Violetta. The immediate expression on his face confirms my worst fears.

  No. It’s impossible—I’d fallen asleep last night seeing the rhythmic rise and fall of her chest. She had been murmuring something I couldn’t understand. Beads of sweat dotted her brow, and her skin was hot to the touch. This is not real. I shake her again, my hands clutching her shoulders hard. “Violetta!” I shout. This time, the others all startle awake and the sentries look over at me, but I don’t care. I keep shaking her until I feel someone’s hands on me, forcing me to stop. It’s Raffaele. He kneels at my side, his eyes on Violetta’s still form. The sadness on his face shatters my heart all over again.

  “Can you revive her?” I ask him.

  “I will try,” Raffaele murmurs, but the way he says it tells me what I desperately don’t want to hear.

  Everything will be all right. I will wake from this, as many times as I have to, until I return to reality. The illusion will disappear, as it always does, and I will spend another morning with Violetta.

  Now Maeve rises too, as well as Lucent and Magiano, and heads over to me. “Your Majesty,” I say to her. It is the first time I’ve addressed her properly. “You align with Moritas. You can call her back, if needed.” I look at Raffaele. “Wake her,” I say angrily, my voice a command now.

  “Adelina,” Magiano whispers.

  Raffaele’s hand tightens on Violetta’s cold shoulder. He reaches up and cups her cheek in his palm. I wonder if he is working his magic on her, the gentle tug of his energy on her heartstrings, perhaps stirring her with his calming touch. I crouch as he hovers there, my stare fixed on Violetta’s face, waiting for her gray eyes to flutter open.

  “Adelina,” Magiano says again. His hand touches mine, and he squeezes it tightly.

  Maeve shakes her head. “She’s gone,” she says quietly, bowing her head.

  “Then bring her back,” I snap. The darkness in me rises up from the depths of my chest. “I have seen you do it.”

  Maeve looks at me with cold eyes. “I cannot.”

  “Lies,” I hiss. “We need her. We cannot enter the Dark of Night without her. I—”

  I glance to my side, where Teren still has his face pointed up to the heavens. He is the only one of us all who has not gathered here in a circle. The whispers, already a chaotic din, now explode into a whirlwind around me. Him, they say, their voices merging with my own voice. Teren killed her. He is the only explanation—you knew he could not be trusted.

  “You,” I say, the word trembling out of me with all the rage and blackness in my heart. Teren lowers his head and turns to meet my gaze. “This is your doing.” In this moment, I do not see a former prisoner of mine. I do not see the man who saved me from drowning in the rough seas. All I see is the Lead Inquisitor who had once laughed at me with his poisonous white eyes, who had stolen Violetta from me and used her against me. The whispers repeat Teren’s old threats, words he once spat at me with a blade pressed to my throat. You have three days. His taunting voice echoes across time. If you go back on your word, I will shoot an arrow through your sister’s neck and out the back of her skull.

  He killed her when we were all asleep. Raffaele had warned that we might behave differently here, that our powers might be unstable. Teren has always wanted Violetta dead so that he can hurt me. The entire world around me now turns scarlet with my fury. It was him.

  Teren looks at me, his expression blank.

  “Adelina.” Magiano’s voice rings out again, but he sounds far away.

  The dark energy in me bursts free.

  I fling an illusion of pain at Teren. Your skin ripped away, your heart pulled from your chest, your eyes bleeding from their sockets. I will destroy you. The others seem to vanish from my sight—all I can see before me is Teren crumpling to his knees from my onslaught. I rush toward him. The mountain path we are on turns black and crimson; demonic silhouettes rise from the snow, their fangs bared. I tighten the illusion around Teren in fury and pull a dagger from my belt. Then I lunge at him.

  Teren bares his teeth—his sword is in his hands before I can blink. He swings it at me in a shining arc. I whirl to one side and tighten my fist at him. He lets out a shriek of pain as my illusion covers him in a net. I strike at him with my dagger, but his hand shoots up to grab my wrist. His strength, even in agony, nearly breaks my bones. I wince and thrash out of his grasp—my dagger clatters to the ground. I can hardly see straight through my illusions anymore. I am surrounded by silhouettes and night, white cloaks and fire.

  Then a boy with golden eyes and dark braids stands before me. Between us. His pupils are narrowed into black slits, and his jaw is clenched with resolve. He walks toward me without fear.

  “Adelina, stop!” he says.

  “Get—out—of my way.” I lash out at him with my illusions—but he narrows his eyes, raises his arm, and flings my illusions out of his way. They dissipate in a cloud of smoke around him. He continues toward me.

  “Adelina, stop.”

  It is Magiano. Magiano. Stop. The name is a small light, but it is there, and I cling to it in the maelstrom around me. I falter as he reaches me and pulls me into a rough embrace.

  “He didn’t kill her,” Magiano is whispering. “Stop. Stop.” His hand cradles the back of my head.

  My strength leaves me in a rush. The world around us lightens, the silhouettes of demons vanish. Teren crouches before me on one knee, leaning heavily against his sword, breathing hard. His pale eyes are fixed on mine. I look away from him and concentrate on Magiano’s arms holding me tight. Teren didn’t kill her.

  But she is gone. It is too late.

  I start to cry. My tears freeze on my face. In my exhaustion, I step away from Magiano and stagger back to where Violetta’s body lies on the cold ground. The others watch in silence as I fall to my knees. I gather my sister into my arms, brushing her stiff hair from her face, repeating her name over and over until it becomes a constant loop in my mind. A note of anguish escapes me in between sobs. I see a vision of the night I’d first run away from our home, when we touched our foreheads together. I do this now, resting my forehead on hers, and I rock her back and forth, begging her once again, in vain, not to leave me.

  It is the holiest of places, where the stars shine against rock and the twilight never ends. Be wary, for pilgrims may be so drawn to its power that they may lose themselves entirely.

  —Charted Paths of the Karra Mountains, various authors

  Adelina Amouteru

  Had Violetta died in Kenettra, we would have buried her ashes in the maze of catacombs extending underneath the city. But out here, on the cold paths of the Karra Mountains, without enough wood to create a funeral pyre and the ground too frozen to dig, we can only cover her beneath a mound of stones, turned in the direction of our homeland. Before we do so, I lay her cloak over her body and bend to touch her hair—how luscious and dark her locks once were, how much I’d envied them when we were young—now it looks faded, as if its light had gone from this world along with my sister.

  We should have moved faster. I should have argued less with Raffaele when negotiating in Tamoura. I should have been kinder. The whispers haunt me with these words, and this time, I don’t stop them.

  The others stand beside me, hands folded into sleeves. Even Teren stands here, his face vacant. No doubt he does not grieve my sister, but to my surprise, he does not say it aloud. He seems lost in his own world, making silent prayers to the gods. Raffaele’s head is bowed in grief, and his eyes are moist with tears.

  “What do we do now, Messenger?” Maeve murmurs, her hand resting on the hilt o
f her sword. It is the question on all of our minds. “We’ve lost her. Is all this futile?”

  Raffaele doesn’t answer right away. Perhaps, for once, he doesn’t know the answer. Instead, he just continues to stare at the mound of stones, wisps of his hair blowing across his face. The question is numb in my own mind. I let the whispers swirl in circles around me, their presence so familiar now.

  It is your fault. It is always your fault.

  “We continue on,” Raffaele finally replies. And none of us says anything different. It is simply too late to turn back now, even if it may not even be possible to step inside our destination, when we have come so far.

  I should have listened to Violetta, all those months ago. When she had tried to take away my powers, I should have let her. Perhaps she would still be alive, if I’d done so. Perhaps we could have acted sooner, somehow. Perhaps we would have had more time together. The guilt sits like a weight in my chest.

  I should have listened, but it doesn’t matter anymore. None of this seems to matter anymore.

  As the soldiers begin to pile more stones at her feet, I take out a knife sheathed at my belt, reach out, and cut a length of Violetta’s locks. The warmth of my hand melts the ice on the strands. I entwine it with a length of my own silver hair, taking in for a moment the contrast, thinking back on the lazy afternoons when she used to weave my braids. I love you, Adelina, she used to tell me. The dried tears on my face crack when I move.

  We stay for as long as we can, until finally Maeve commands us forward. I look back and try to hold Violetta’s grave marker in my sights, until she disappears around a bend.

  One morning blurs into another. The twilight becomes darker each day, and the snow turns steady. No one crosses our path. It is as if we were traveling at the edge of the world. Our travel settles into long silences, where none of us feel in the mood to speak. Even Magiano rides quietly by my side, his expression dark. The energy of this terrain pulls us forward, calling to us. I see illusions at night and during the twilight days, see them chased away only by the light of our fires. Sometimes, the ghost of Violetta walks alongside my horse. Her dark hair doesn’t move in the wind, and her boots leave no prints in the snow. She never looks my way. Our path turns narrow, branching a dozen different ways every few hours, each leading deep into yet another set of mountains. Without Raffaele’s guidance, I have no doubt that we would lose ourselves out here in the cold.