When Stars Die (The Stars Trilogy) (23 page)

I cross over and press myself against the barn, listening for any unusual sounds. All I hear are soft knickers, restless walking, and the lapping of water with thick horse tongues.

I put my hand against the wooden bolt that keeps the barn closed. Pushing it to the side, I open the door just a crack. Shadows pour through, replacing the pale moonlight that paints the ground in a soft gray. I hold my breath, listening for further sounds. Just knickers and restless pacing. I slip through and close the door.

Now I grope for a lantern to throw some light on the spot where Colette may be. She didn’t say how she wanted to be found, but I assume she knows I’ll figure it out if only to make certain it’s me who finds her and no one else. I feel around, keeping my hands against the door of the barn and sliding them down the wooden wall for safe support. My shin bangs into a crate, nearly eliciting a string of inappropriate words from me. But something that sounds metallic falls off it and lands on the concrete flooring.

I reach down, scoop up the object, and realize it’s a lantern. I feel on the crate and find a book of matches. I strike one of the red-tipped beasts and light the lantern.

The lantern throws an orang
e glow on my surroundings, revealing horses with perked ears, curious eyes, and muzzles poking through stall slats. The light also reveals dust and cobwebs and spilled grain. An enormous spider makes its home on one of the crossbeams far above my head. I walk down the center aisle of the barn and say, “Colette? Are you there? It’s me, Amelia.”

A creaking sound echoes at the end of the barn. I hold my breath.

“Amelia?”

At the end, I make out the outline of Colette. I release my breath. “Oh, good.” I make my way toward her. She is standing by the open door of an unused stall. “I’m sorry I’m late. Olly and I got in a bit of spat, and well…”

Colette gestures me inside, bolting the stall door when I enter. She also closes the top half, leaving only a slit that doesn’t show much but darkness. I set my lantern down on a flimsy crate.

Colette sits down on a bale of hay. “You saw Oliver tonight, didn’t you?”

I nod, almost tempted to tell her about the moment I had with him. In fact, there is so much I want to tell her, so many burdens I feel like I need to release from my heart. Not only this, but I want to talk with Colette as my best friend and not as a Shadowman. Peering into her face, however, tells she is all business and isn’t here to rekindle a friendship that began dying the day the Shadowmen took her life. This thought strangles my heart in a noose. Things between her and I may never be the same again. I don’t know if I can, or if I will ever be able to accept this.

“Amelia,” Colette says, rousing me from my thoughts, “I told you to be careful around him. Being alone with him is not wise.”

Then she would shun me if she knew I made love to him.

I sit down on a pile of hay, moving the lantern so that its light shows Colette’s Shadowman face. “I don’t want much to do with him. I know you want me here to talk about more things, but I first want you to teach me how to properly use my fire.” This is the only way to calm me down, because if she teaches me, I can throw this in Oliver’s face and make him feel guilty for not teaching me. “And I’ll keep pressing you until you do so. Olly refused to teach me, so you have to. I’m not going to be made a victim.”

Colette moves her head a little, obscuring her face in the shadows. I pick up pieces of hay, stripping a single straw, piece-by-piece, as she seems to mull over my request. She moves her head, bringing her face back into the light. “All right, but you have to get Oliver--”

“I will, Colette! All right? But can we please not bring him up for one night?”

Colette reaches into the hay and grabs a fistful of straw she sets on a small patch of concrete. She sweeps excess straw aside, likely to ensure that when I am able to manage fire that the fire doesn’t spread anywhere else. Cathedral Reims doesn’t tidy the barns too often, so there is plenty of flammable material for fire to feast on. Once she finishes sweeping the area of excess debris, she locks serious black eyes on mine. They match the shadows from the lantern, sending a slight chill through me.

“This isn’t going to be easy, Amelia. I’m not even sure if you’ll be able to grasp it in one night. Deus didn’t curse witches with this power so that they’d be able to naturally control it, but it is doable.

“You have to clear your mind of everything, every bad feeling, every good feeling, every doubt. If your mind finds itself straying for even a split second, the fire will not work. Or worse--it will work, but will not do what you want it to do, and this is about controlling that which Deus cursed us with. Are you absolutely certain you want to go through with this?”

I look into the flickering flame of the lantern. It casts an eerie glow in the stall and tosses shadows in odd places, shadows in the shapes of strange creatures that look like they could haunt one’s nightmares. They dance along the wall, mingling with the light of the glow and the shadows the lantern does not create. But it isn’t these dancing shadows that hold my full attention. No. It is the dancing flame in the lantern. The way it dances on the wick captivates me, and I need to make fire. Real, raw, hot, scalding fire. The fire witches are forced to endure when they’re strapped to stakes and burned alive. The fire witches can’t fight against. The fire Pope Gilford finds so appealing to use on innocent souls.

If I can conjure fire, I can make those Shadowmen suffer for what they’ve done--rather, what they want done to witches, all in a foolish attempt to start an uprising against their oppressors.

“I have to, Colette,” I say at last.

“Put your hand over the straw pile then, and close your eyes.”

I close my eyes and put my hand above the pile. “What is your role in this?”

“To guide you, Amelia, to keep your thinking on track. Now think about fire.”

“All right.”

Fire. Fire. Think fire. With my mind focused on nothing but a single dancing flame, all else is nonexistent. Only I and the pile of hay exist in some dark space conjured from my mind.

“Don’t forget to breathe,” I hear Colette say in the background of my mind.

I heed her words, breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth, in through my nose and out through my mouth. The single flame from the lantern dances in my mind’s eye, and within the center of that flame--is Oliver? No, no, no. I can’t think about him. This won’t work if I do, so I imagine an inky blackness blotting out his face, my thoughts still centered on the flickering flame. Then I imagine reaching out to the fire, my hand teasing the flame as it goes close but doesn’t touch. Instead I move my hand in languorous motions that tempt the fire to follow the movements. Wherever my hand moves, bits of flames follow the path. I will have to tempt the entire blaze to follow me if I am to make this work.

While I move my hand in the dark space, a soft voice invades my concentration.

Amelia, I wish I could tell you why I can’t teach you, but you’d hate me.

Oliver? Why is his voice in my mind? Nothing of him belongs in my mind, not even his voice, so I wrest for control of the fire again and draw out more flames to follow the path of my hand. They send flaming sparks coursing through my veins, capturing my heart in a fiery inferno that threatens to burst through my being and set this entire barn on fire.

I should never have allowed myself to get so close to you, Ameila, but I suppose this was inevitable. I can’t say I wish it were another girl; I’d still feel the same way. No matter what, I am trapped in this cycle, and you’re the only one who can get me out.

Another girl. Trapped in this cycle. I’m the only one who can get him out. Free him from what? No. I cannot continue to allow this distraction to slow my progress. Fire! Fire! Beautiful fire!

Amelia, if I had a choice, I would have chosen to never come into existence. Or I would have chosen parents not steeped in the Seven Deadly Sins, so that way you and I could love without this obstacle between us. But would we have still met if I were not what I am?

I think. Fire. Fire. Beautiful. Fire.

Amelia, I love you. Do you feel the same? And would you still love me, even after what I must do?

I snap my eyes open, snuffing out both flame and Oliver. “Colette, what on Deus’s great green earth are you doing? I know it’s you doing that! I know you’re invading Oliver’s thoughts, trying to show me something. Why?”

“Because you won’t listen to me otherwise, Amelia,” she says, her face downcast.

I grip a fistful of hay and start tearing the pieces apart. “But why now? You said you’d let me do this with the implication that I could perform this in peace until I got it, and then we could talk afterwards.”

“Amelia…” She sighs, going silent. She plays with the straw pile, picking up a few pieces, letting them flutter from her fingers, and then propping herself against the slats of the stall. “Even if you could manage to control your fire, you wouldn’t stand a chance against the Shadowmen.”

“Not you too.” I breathe in, suppressing a sharp sigh. “Oliver said he was gathering forces to help. Even if I don’t stand a chance, at least I will be able to make a contribution, however small.”

Colette narrows her eyes. “You don’t understand, do you, Amelia? Oliver isn’t gathering any forces. Oliver isn’t going to stop this. Oliver wants this to happen, Amelia, don’t you understand that?”

My hand flies for the lantern with the desire to set this barn aflame and pretend Colette didn’t say what she just spoke. “Why would Oliver want this to happen, Colette? Is that what you wanted to tell me, that Oliver approves of the Shadowmen Alliance killing those who aren’t witches? That’s nonsense. You don’t know him at all.” I cross my arms and look away from her.

“Amelia, do you truly find it so hard to believe that Oliver would want this? If I died the way most of the Shadowmen died, I’d probably share the same goal, but I died by their hands, so I can’t.”

My grip tightens on the lantern, my face still turned away from her. “O-Olly’s not like that.” My voice sounds pathetic, my words even more so. “He’s not petty. He understands the way this world works. It’s not the fault of people. The Vulgate dictates our lives, Colette. People are afraid that if they don’t follow it, they won’t die into Paradise, and following it includes hating witches. They understand that much.”

“But they don’t, Amelia, and that’s what I’m trying to tell you. That’s why you have to do everything in your power to talk Oliver out of his choice. He may want what the Shadowmen Alliance wants, but I can sense part of him may relent to you.” Her voice softens. “I can feel his feelings for you, Amelia. He genuinely loves you. It’s this love that will allow you to change his mind and gather the forces we need to stop the Shadowmen Alliance. There are Shadowmen out there like me, Shadowmen who do not feel the same way. Those will be the ones eager to help our cause.”

Oliver does love me. I know he does. But there is something small and dark in me that says that if Oliver doesn’t help our cause, then he doesn’t love me. “Colette--” My breath catches in my chest. She sounded so certain Oliver would help if I were to beg him.

“No, Amelia. You have to listen to me. Even once you get Oliver’s help, he won’t be able to fight what is in his nature. It’s called an Exaltation, and we Shadowmen must Exalt ourselves to Deus if we want to find ourselves in Paradise when Deus decides to end all this Seven Deadly Sin nonsense.” She stops and pulls in a few shaky breaths. “You are Oliver’s Exaltation. He has to kill a person he genuinely loves that is not in his immediate family. That is the task Deus has set out for him, and he won’t be able to stop himself now that he has fallen in love with you. It’s in any intelligent creature’s nature to want to free itself from suffering--from its Malady. I’m telling you this so that way you will be more careful around him.”

My hand starts to shake on the lantern, my grip tightening even more, the metal handle piercing my flesh. Angry tears thump against the backs of my eyes, and my breath comes out short and ragged. “N-n-no. That’s a lie. A-a lie.” The lantern trembles as the quivering in my body deepens. “You’ve changed, Colette. You never would have said that stuff before. Is that your Exaltation? To lie to me?”

“Amelia, calm down. Just think for a moment.”

I pick up the lantern. “I don’t want to think!” I throw it against the wall adjacent to Colette, the fire immediately catching on the dry wood.

Before I let my emotions go any more awry than they already have, I burst out of the stall in a fit of livid tears, my breath so trapped in my lungs I feel like I will collapse upon leaving the barn. But I don’t, so I run, and I run hard.

I’ll run forever if it means escaping this pain.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Morning light crawls up dawn’s pallor, coaxing me to my feet. I stumble out of an abandoned shack in the poverty-laden backstreets of Malva, and make my way toward Comely’s Inn. My head pounds, my eyes are full of night’s sand, and my mouth tastes like whiskey and vomit. Now I understand my mother’s opium addiction. If opium is anything like whiskey, I’m certain it was a barrier against the painful beating of this world’s terrible heart.

A belch escapes me as I drag myself through the backstreets. The belch makes its way up my nose, and I lean against a shack to wretch out the contents of my stomach, which are nothing more than the whiskey some beggar left to rot. I’m trying to remember what happened, but last night is clouded in whiskey’s haze, at least for now. Each step is agonizing though. Every time I turn my head, a wave of nausea washes over me. Instead of dragging myself through the back streets, I’m now stumbling. Oh, Deus, just strike me now for allowing the divine taint of whiskey to infect my mind’s unwanted memories. They’ll soon come back in waves; although I can’t recall them at this moment, they’ll make me bitterer than absinthe.