CHAPTER 62

AUREN TURLEY

I hatched out of a star.

I blinked away death because he called to me. I didn't want to fall. Didn't want to drift down to that place where I would forever hover above the waters in divinity.

I wanted to go back .

So I had to burst free.

I was in the core of a burning light. Except, I was the light. Golden and shining. Pure life and warmth. I didn't need to descend, just as I didn't have to stay dark and dead, hanging forlorn in the void. This light that I burned with, it had always been in me.

The gilded light of a goddess-touched.

So I used that power and I gave up the gift of the stars.

Because some are not meant to burn in the dark.

With a push of my will, I cracked the star open. Its splintered shell fell away, and I spilled out from the light.

I knew where to go, even there, in the abyss. Because that root—the one still caught in my core, it reached . Pointing the way toward its other half. Toward my other half.

I passed by the other stars, saw the goddesses' faces, and I smiled. Then I leaped into the river's current, and I let it sweep me away toward my home.

Toward him .

And though I couldn't see, one of those stars smiled back. Then it tossed in a droplet of light to follow after me.

I went through the river and I became myself again. Healed from the cruelty of living, restored from the thievery of death.

I went through the river in the void, and I was reborn.