Chapter Twenty-Nine

The stars will shine eternal.

They burn because that is all they know to do.

Suspended in space, I stare at the glistening backdrop of the heavens, watching my sisters glimmering, their colors bursting in vibrant hues of red, yellow, blue, and green. And it is more beautiful than anything I have ever seen.

The crone stares at me, approval written all over her face. “You survived, Starkeeper,”

she says. “You have become Setareh Framātāram—the master of the star.”

“I mastered nothing,”

I say. “I died.”

“In sacrifice lies true mastery of your gifts.”

I laugh. “You talk in riddles a lot, Vena, you know that?”

“You offered your magic to save another,”

she says, and I feel something like sorrow settle upon me. “You sacrificed your life for someone you felt was more deserving.”

“It didn’t work.”

“Of course it did.”

My heart hitches. “Roshan is alive?”

Vena tilts her head to one side, studying me. “You care for him.”

It’s not a question, but I still nod, and after a while she continues. “He sleeps. His future rests in the hands of the fates.”

I narrow my eyes at her. “Then why am I here?”

This time she is the one who laughs. “And by here, do you mean in your dreams?”

She has a point—it’s not like our many conversations have been real. Then again, I can’t feel my body, so I must be dead, or doing whatever it is departed stars do. We float side by side in companionable silence, watching the constellations orbit overhead.

“What’s going to happen now, Vena?”

She shrugs. “There will always be those who covet power—those who pursue the lie to disable and disrupt. You will forever remain one of the champions of light and a beacon to those who are lost, those wandering few who seek the truth. But as far as you, Suraya Saab, daughter of Nasrin Saab, are concerned, you have a choice. You may stay here as one of us, guarding those who walk below.”

“Stay here as a Royal Star.”

“Of sorts,”

she says. “You are part of us, after all.”

“Or?”

“Or you can return to the world from whence you came and live out your remaining years as a mortal woman and return to us when your time comes.”

I ignore the startled leap of joy in my heart. “And my gifts?”

“They are a part of you, Starkeeper, and you have proven that you are fit to wield their power even in the face of great fear. The fates will slumber sound, waiting until they are called. Until they are needed.”

She turns to face me, starbursts erupting in the apples of her cheeks, her eyes glistening like meteors. She takes my hands in between her own, tracing the five-pointed stars upon them. With a dawning smile, her fingers trail the path of the M shape on my palms along the heart, head, life, and fate lines, lingering on the last. Her thumb grazes over the narrow side of my palm beneath my little finger, and a small gasp leaves her lips.

“Soul-fated,”

she whispers so softly that I barely hear her.

“Me?”

I ask in shock. “What do you see?”

Vena smiles. “I see two incomplete souls finding their missing halves. I see a magical fated soul bond blessed by the gods.”

Mine. The gravelly whisper comes from everywhere inside of me. A possessive throb fires deep in my chest, making me gasp, but I can’t make head or tail of it.

“But the bonds of akasha are ever fluid,”

Vena muses softly. “Perhaps . . .”

There she goes again with her cryptic statements. “Perhaps what?”

“Never mind, child,”

she says with a sigh, patting my hand. “The future is yet to be written. Perhaps your destiny will be the one you choose, not what has been written.”

I frown, definitely lost now. “Which destiny? Do you mean Roshan?”

Inscrutable starlit eyes meet mine as her hands fall away. “Forgive me. I am rambling.”

She smiles, but her gaze slides past me as though there’s something she doesn’t want me to see.

“Will the prince awaken?”

I ask after a beat of silence.

“That depends on you.”

“On me? But you said it depended on the fates.”

Vena shakes her head with an exasperated laugh. “You are the Starkeeper. The fates bow to your wishes.”

“Oh.”

I reach over in a spontaneous motion and pull her into my arms, squeezing hard. “Thanks for never giving up on me.”

“Nasrin was right about you,”

Vena says after a while. “She said you had more strength than even she knew.”

“Mama chose to become a guardian?”

I ask, eyes going wide.

Vena shakes her head. “Your mother died to safeguard you. The parts that you chose to see were your own memories—the pieces of her that were in you. You saw her because she is important to you. She is a large part of that strength you carry.”

“So, she’s not really here?”

“Not in the form you expect,”

Vena says. “She is akasha, in the moon and the stars, in the ever-changing fabric of the sidereal universe. She is your hopes and your dreams, your past and your future. She is you, and me, and the air we breathe. She is life as you know it. She is part of your everlasting truth.”

And we’re back to soothsayer-speak. I roll my eyes with a fond grin. “I will miss our little chats, Vena. So how do I get back to Oryndhr?”

“You are already there, Setareh Framātāram.”

* * *

My room in Coban is the same as I left it—a mess. Then again, it’s not surprising considering half the inn has been burned down, thanks to Javed. If he weren’t already dead, I’d incinerate him for the senseless, selfish devastation he’d left in his wake. But as my father had said, Cobanites didn’t learn to thrive in the desert for nothing. Thankfully, many of them had escaped into the sands and survived the attack. Undaunted by the challenge, the villagers of Coban are already rebuilding.

Though covered in a thick layer of soot, my room had been on the side of the inn that had escaped being torched. I stare at the grime covering every available surface and grimace, picking through my belongings and trying to decide what to take and what to leave behind. It seems like eons ago that Laleh and I had packed my trunk to go to Kaldari for the engagement celebration.

Laleh.

I pull a vivid emerald scarf from beneath my bed and press it to my nose. Underneath the smoke, it smells faintly like her—like ripe grapes and sunshine. I’d visited her parents, and we’d cried together, mourning the brightest light that the world had lost. My eyes sting from the prick of tears. I’d finally let myself grieve, but the pain remains too fresh and too sharp. I suspect it will be a while before I can think of her without sobbing.

Laleh’s spirit was like a burst of flame that brightened everything it touched, and even though it might have lasted for only a short time, I’ll always remember the warmth and the brilliance of it. She had lived life with so much joy, relishing each moment. She was unapologetically herself, and she’d treasured each day as if it’d been a precious gift.

Don’t worry about me, I imagine her saying now. Life is for the living, and you, my friend, need to live. Just please use some lip stain and maybe a dash of kohl. And for the love of all things holy, try to do something with that hair.

I smile through my tears and wrap her scarf around my ponytail in a sequence of stylish knots. I like to think that souls who leave the mortal plane end up among the stars, watching their loved ones. I hope that wherever she is, Laleh is happy.

Fastening the two bags with my most treasured possessions—mostly my books and some forging tools—I open the window and breathe in the fresh air. The desert ripples like molten gold beneath the rays of the midday sun. A sketch of the Kaldarian palace like the one in my workshop lies smashed at my feet. It must have tumbled off the wall from one of the explosions.

I touch the shattered glass with a wistful smile, envisioning my mother’s painting in my head. I remember thinking that it hadn’t done the palace justice, and that is still true. The palace is still magnificent—and hopefully when Roshan wakes to take the mantle and be coronated as its new king, it will be beautiful on the inside, too.

My memories are scattered after what happened in the temple, but Aran had written to my father that Roshan is alive, though still unresponsive. For the health of the kingdom, his condition is being kept quiet.

I still can’t imagine Roshan becoming the king of Oryndhr, but I have no doubt he will be a better ruler than his rotten brother. All four houses and the houseless have widely accepted him as their new leader. It didn’t matter that he was born on the wrong side of the blanket, not when his mother had been the queen’s sister. He’s a blood descendant of the Imperial House. As far as the Dahaka, I can’t think about them without feeling conflicted and hurt. Will Hamid take over in truth now that Roshan will be king?

Are they even going to be needed?

If Roshan is king, no doubt he’ll make sure all those people in Nyriell are safe and get to live the lives they deserve. That’s what the Dahaka had been fighting for—the simple right to choose how they want to live.

The House of Fomalhaut denied having any hand in the existence of death magi or knowledge of any Elonian prophecy involving Morvarid’s rituals. The rest of the magi have gone to ground, but as Vena said, the fates will slumber until they’re summoned . . . if Fero tries to rise again.

In the end, the newspapers proclaimed that King Javed and the queen mother had been killed during a Scav attack, and the Dahaka had been the ones to save the day—along with the life of the future king. I feel sad that the Scavs had been blamed, when they were only doing Javed’s bidding, but then I remember that Vogon had tried to kill me. That had been his choice, no one else’s, and he’d paid the price for it.

The Dahaka were hailed as the heroes of Oryndhr. Little did the houses know that their precious successor had been the leader of the Dahaka all along. But that’s Roshan’s secret to tell.

“Suraya?”

I turn to see my father standing in the doorway, his face covered in soot and grime. He has spent the better part of the week cleaning out the rubble and putting up scaffolding to rebuild the tavern walls. “Papa,”

I say, rushing into his arms, uncaring of his dusty clothes. “Where’s Amma?”

He laughs his deep belly laugh. It’s been so long since I’ve heard it that it makes me laugh, too. “Where do you think she is? In the kitchen.”

“Good, because I’m starving.”

Hugging him tightly, I snuggle into his comforting warmth and sigh. Sometimes all you need is a hug from someone older and wiser than you. After a long while, I release him and search his face. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course.”

“Amma told me that when you and Mama left Kaldari, you ran because of Morvarid and what she wanted to do with me.”

He nods sadly, propping his shoulder against the doorjamb but still cuddling me to him. “We had our suspicions about her devotion to the death god.”

He brushes a strand of pale hair from my cheek with a sad look and then lightly touches the now barely visible runes on my forearms. “We thought these could protect you, keep you from her.”

“These runes are Mama’s?”

“Yes, and yours.”

“Then why did you let me go to Kaldari when the invitation came?”

He sighs. “Poor judgment. I kick myself every day for it. But I foolishly assumed that the runes would work and that Morvarid had no reason to know who you were. Why would she? We were so well hidden for years. For all she knew, we died in the desert. You’d never displayed any signs of the gifts Nasrin had, and you seemed so happy for the chance to visit the palace. I hoped you would be safe for a few days.”

Frowning, he pauses, taking my hands in his and thumbing the stars on my palms. “Like I said, I was foolish, and I have regretted it every day since. I should have foreseen that these would make an appearance.”

“How could you? They only did—”

I break off, my mind racing as I consider exactly when my power had materialized and when I’d seen the first vision of the crone . . . the very day the summons had come. Papa’s brow tightens at my expression as he waits for me to continue. “It was when I received the invitation.”

“Morvarid’s work.”

He grinds his teeth in frustration. “I thought we had erased any record of your birth chart, but clearly that wasn’t the case. More death magic at work, if she could dig up buried information from long-gone record keepers and forge an identifying spell.”

It makes sense. The queen must have used hidden runes on each invitation to make my magic awaken. She had plotted this ever since my parents had fled her reach. She had waited nearly a quarter of a century for me to come to her.

No wonder she’d been so pissed off in the temple.

“I should have put my foot down and insisted you marry Cyrill,”

Papa says jokingly.

“Not a chance!”

I snort, shaking my head. “It’s not like you had much of a choice. You are not to blame, Papa.”

“I could have gone with you.”

“And done what?”

I ask gently. “You might have been hurt in the Dahaka attack on the palace.”

“I would have kept you safe.”

“You’ve always done that,”

I say, swallowing past the lump in my throat. “Mama said that I was strong, but I don’t get that strength only from her; I get it from you, too. Thank you for taking care of me for all this time. I don’t know that I would have survived otherwise.”

“That’s my job,”

he mumbles, sounding strangely choked.

I grin at him. “Your job should be to take care of Amma now.”

His brows draw together and he opens his mouth, no doubt to argue. I cut him off before he can say anything stupid. “You love her, and she loves you. I think it’s time to make it official. And with me gone, you’re going to need each other.”

Disappointment clouds his face. “So you’re leaving then?”

“For now,”

I say softly. “I need to be in Kaldari.”

“The prince hasn’t woken yet.”

“He will.”

I exhale slowly. “And I want to be there when he does. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I have to see it through.”

“You love him, then?”

With a heavy sigh, I rest my head on my father’s chest. “I do. Or I thought I did. I’ve never felt anything . . . like this.”

A mortifying sob breaks free from me as the words rush out. “But in Kaldari he lied to me about who he was. He did it to protect me. He regretted it and said he was sorry, and I forgave him. But I’m scared my heart won’t let me forget or that I can’t trust him.”

I hiccup. “Or that he’ll do it again.”

My father strokes my hair. “Everyone makes mistakes, love. The point is how you fix them.”

“But if there’s no trust, where does that leave us?”

“Then you rebuild that trust brick by brick. Nobody ever said love was easy.”

He tips my chin up. “You are the only one who can know if he’s worthy of a second chance.”

I think long and hard about that. “He might be.”

His eyes filling, my father pulls me close and kisses the top of my head. “No one, not even a king, will ever be deserving of you, my Suraya. But if he is the one you have chosen, then you have my blessing.”

“Papa?”

My tears—bittersweet ones—dampen his shirtfront as I squeeze his strong shoulders tightly. Vena’s cryptic words and Morvarid’s comments in the tower about the late king and Nihira echo in my head. “Were you and Mama soul-fated?”

“No,”

he says, his voice tight. “We were not, but I loved her with every ounce of my undeserving soul.”

I tuck my cheek into his chest. “Then how did you know it wasn’t a fated love?”

“She once described a soul-fated claim as a transcendent bond that snaps into place to provide a magical anchor. An ability to share power, to become one.”

He stares down at me. “I don’t have magic.”

Air leaves me in a rush. If what my father says is true, Roshan can’t be my soul-fated. Because he doesn’t have magic either.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t make the choice to love him like my father did with my mother.

“So, two soul-fated might never meet?” I ask.

He exhales and strokes a hand over my hair. “Destiny doesn’t always get it right, my girl. A vertex might appear in someone’s birth chart, but never be actualized. We can decide our own paths. The gods and the fates might have their own plans and their own prophecies, but sometimes love is a choice you make, and one you keep making every day.”

“Speaking of love finding a way, Mama would be happy for you and Amma, you know. She’s up there, watching us, and that’s all she wants—our happiness. She told me so. She told me to find my truth, and I think it’s time you found yours, too.”

“How did my little pea pod get so wise?”

I thread my fingers into his beard like I used to do when I was a little girl. “I have great teachers.”

We make our way downstairs, navigating the crumbling stone steps. Much of the foundation of the tavern is still intact, which means that rebuilding won’t be as difficult as I first imagined. There’s still a lot of work to be done, but my father seems to have a lot of help. There are at least a dozen people milling about. I even spy my old nemesis, Simin, sweeping the floor alongside her mother. She darts a few curious looks at me but makes no move to come over. Surprising myself, I smile at her and wave, and she hesitates before waving back. After dealing with Helena—or worse, Morvarid—Simin is a delight in comparison.

I shouldn’t be surprised to see so many familiar faces. After all, the Saab Inn is home to many in Coban. I wave at some of the regulars clearing rubble and cleaning instead of downing ale as they would have been if the tavern had been standing. There’s no shortage of food, thanks to Amma, and I suspect that’s why half of them are here with a sudden interest in volunteering. I grin. Nothing like her cooking in all of Coban.

“Cyrill,”

I call out to the man dangling precariously from the nearby scaffolding, “thank you for everything.”

“You are welcome.”

He swings down and approaches me, eyeing the bags at my side. “Leaving us?”

“Yes.”

He purses his lips. “Thought you might finally want to settle down and accept my marriage proposal.”

I can tell by the tone of his voice that he’s joking, but I’m at a loss for words. He’d been one of the few who had known the truth, and he’d been trying to protect me—even with his unsolicited and fervent propositions.

“Her heart is elsewhere, Cyrill,”

my father interjects, clapping him on the back.

“You’re going to make some woman very happy,”

I tell him, and then as my gaze slips to the dark-haired woman working beside her mother, I have an epiphany. Maybe not everyone is here for the food. Come to think of it, Simin had always acted her worst toward me whenever Cyrill had been in the tavern. How had I not noticed before? I elbow Cyrill. “I’ve seen the way Simin looks at you.”

“She does?”

he says with a surreptitious glance over his shoulder.

I nod firmly. “You should definitely look into that.”

“I might have to,”

Cyrill says with a grin. “Be safe, Suraya.”

“You, too, Cyrill,” I murmur.

The deferential expression on his face makes me blush. But he is one of the few who knows who I truly am and what I’ve done. Despite the events of the last few weeks, things have already settled back into some form of normalcy. And I feel ordinary, as if everything has been part of some surreal fever dream.

“Where’s Amma?”

I say, peeking around the makeshift kitchen that has been set up within the bones of the old. My aunt is nowhere in sight.

“You know how she gets,”

Papa says, coming up next to me.

I swallow—she’s never been a fan of goodbyes. “Tell her I love her.”

One of the kitchen girls rushes up with a large basket, shoving it into my arms. “Food for your journey. Your aunt wanted you to have it.”

I blink, staring at the hamper. It’s large enough to feed a small army. And even though my journey is a short step through a portal, I never say no to her food.

My father laughs at my blissful expression. “Better than Jade?”

“Don’t even joke about that,”

I say, my lips curling. “This is way more precious than any shitty Jade.”

We have to stop to greet more people on our way to the square, but we eventually arrive at the middle of town. To my surprise, the waiting runecaster is the same one who transported me to the palace the first time, what feels like forever ago. I let out a huff of laughter at having come full circle and peer upward with an eye roll.

The fates—and Vena—have a unique sense of humor.

“Be safe, daughter,”

my father says, and kisses the top of my head. “And don’t be a stranger.”

“I won’t.”

As the portal shimmers into existence, I fight back a wave of sadness. Coban has been my home for so long that it’s hard to think that I’m voluntarily leaving it behind. But life is too short not to take chances and embrace change. Kaldari may be vast and fast-paced, but the one I need to be with is there. I close my eyes and take a moment to appreciate the beauty of the stars in my mind’s eye.

I imagine that one of them is Laleh, urging me on. Another is my mother, pride and love glittering in her eyes. My gaze flicks to the brightest Royal Star resting in the north, and I incline my head.

Vena is watching. She always will be.

I take the step through.