Chapter 9

Memories of the time before the first city they'd ever built on Maricol were like fragmented pieces of clarion crystal—shattered moments that never quite fit after all these many years.

The sound of Aaralyn's footsteps echoed against the walls of the catacombs beneath Amari as the North Star walked the length of a tunnel. She trailed her fingers across the cold metal walls that had survived the Ages on this planet and the one that came before, between the stars. Starfire dripped from the Wolf constellation tattoo wrapped around her right arm, providing never-dying illumination there in the dark.

She wandered below, aware of the weight of prayers above in Ashion's capital city from all the people hoping to escape the noose of Daijal's rule and those who didn't mind it. The catacombs were quiet, though, the prayers once whispered within those expansive walls long since lost to history. But Aaralyn knew what they had prayed for, once, when desperate people had dug into the poisoned earth to survive.

Much of the catacombs had fallen into disrepair, hallways and rooms blocked off by past efforts, the full map of the underground city lost to those above, even the ones who purported to know it. They didn't, not truly, not how Aaralyn once had.

This had been home, their beginning before the aether ate through their veins.

Before they were changed.

What the Duchess Auclair and those in the Clockwork Brigade didn't know was how deep the catacombs truly went. The underground tunnels they walked merely scratched the surface of places hidden away in the dark for Ages. But the barricaded entrances, hidden behind packed earth and other efforts, weren't a problem for a star god. Aaralyn passed through them all like a ghost, breathing in cold air and dust that reminded her, there beneath the ground, of the coldness found in a sleep with no memories that lasted years and years as they streaked through an impossible darkness like a comet.

Some vast, distant part of Aaralyn remembered the relief she felt when the stars fell on Maricol so long ago, like finally reaching the shore after so long at sea. She remembered, too, the husband she'd first breathed the fresh air with, before they knew about the spores and the poison and the revenants and the aether that would not let them go.

Down, down, she walked between cold metal walls, through closed doors and barriers of earth, the dark easy enough to see through when lit by starfire. Aaralyn made her way with unerring steps to a room where the metal walls were painted black, with flecks of gold that would have gleamed in the light of starfire if not for the thick layer of dust blanketing everything.

They'd called it a reflecting room, a place to pray and remember the dead burned above. The stars they would become were painted across the walls and ceilings, so different from the ones they'd left behind in some other life, some other Age, some other world.

But they could not leave each other, and Aaralyn would not break the vows she'd sworn at the start of their journey. Innes looked the same now as he did then, ever her husband, ever her regret in moments like this.

"Husband," Aaralyn said into the deep, deep quiet there below the living, her voice echoing in a room that hadn't heard sound in Ages.

Innes smiled at her in the glow of starfire that dripped off his shoulders like a cape, bleeding aether from his Viper constellation tattoo. "Wife."

She looked away from him, looked up at a ceiling that could have doubled as the night sky behind the dust and dirt and grime of their past. "This world isn't meant to be owned how you wish."

"You would deny our children progress."

"I would deny them nothing, but your dream will be their nightmare." Aaralyn met his gaze once more, the love in his eyes as steadfast as his hate. "Our hope of leaving has long been dead. Do not try to resurrect it like a revenant. That way only lies madness."

Innes stepped forward, hands reaching for hers, and she let him take them. His grip was firm and familiar, as was the tired smile on his face. When he pressed his forehead to hers, she couldn't help but close her eyes.

"We are the stars that guide, and you guided us here, forever the captain of my heart, but this world was never meant to be our home."

His power tugged at hers, drawing her upward through the long-ago safety of that underground home and back to the surface of dangers that would never die. The cold changed, that ancient quiet replaced by the sound of the wind and a city waking up. A burning heat to her left that chased away the chill of below had Aaralyn opening her eyes and pulling back.

The starfire throne burned at the center of the park that had grown up around it in the last two decades. The new palace was close by and walled off for privacy, but the old broken throne room remained accessible as a reminder of what a country had lost and could regain.

The throne that every king and queen of the Rourke bloodline had sat on burned with starfire that never went out. The glass cupola above it was supported by iron pillars, the space between them open so people could see the remnants of all that was left of the old palace. The old marble floor was streaked with ashes from the people who still sought to claim the power of rulership denied to them by her decree.

"Maricol was our lighthouse in a storm," Aaralyn said, letting her husband go. She took a step back, looking away from the starfire throne to meet Innes' gaze once more beneath the dawn's encroaching light. "Our miracle."

Innes skimmed the knuckles of one hand down her cheek. "Our grave."

He wasn't wrong, but they'd long since accepted their roads. "And for your anguish, you would damn the world."

"My only goal is to rebuild it through our children, to give them a chance to see the stars one day, to know what we once knew."

She gave him a pitying look, and that deep well of love in his eyes faded into something bitter and angry and mournful. Aaralyn caught his wrist in her hand, pulling his away from her face. "Husband, don't you remember? We ran from that future once before and promised each other never to strive for it again."

"You cannot kill progress."

"Progress has many roads, and I will not let our children walk yours."

Innes wrenched his hand free, walking away from her as was his habit these last few centuries. Ever since Daijal had cleaved itself of Ashion, he had cleaved himself from her. She missed him—she always would—but she would not give up Maricol without a fight.

It was, after all, the only home they had left.