by J. A. Comley
Larkel froze, Markis' words opening old wounds, then he slumped, his body having no more energy to fight.
Eben let go, and Markis stepped warily to the side, both watching Larkel as he staggered against the wall. Eben clenched his fists, noting how his friend looked broken, eyes fixed on Starla, blood dripping from his chin.
Slowly, the blue tone of Starla's skin faded, brightening with life, and she took on the appearance of being sound asleep as her body stopped writhing.
Shuffling forward with the aid of Eben's steady hand, the High Lord laid a hand to her heart and felt an overwhelming relief as it beat steadily beneath his palm. Lifting his staff, he repeated his earlier spell, searching for any signs of poison. It was gone. Gently, he Healed the remaining damage the poison had caused, even as his own body protested, needing the magic for itself.
Opening his eyes, he felt tears leak out.
“She's Healed,” he said. His voice was hoarse, and his body trembled from fatigue.
“She needs to rest. And so do you. How much of your energy did you give her?” Eben asked, seeing the dark circles that had suddenly appeared below his friend's eyes.
Behind him, Shaneulia threw her husband a pointed look, and Markis sighed.
Reluctantly, Larkel rose, knowing he would collapse soon anyway, and let Shaneulia keep watch as Eben lead him away, supporting much of his weight.
“I know I would never convince you to go home, so stay here. You can have the room next to mine,” Eben said, opening a door two doors down from the room Starla occupied.
As Larkel lay down waiting for the exhaustion to claim him, he remembered his sheer panic at the thought of losing her. Markis was right, he had to tell her, but then he might lose her, anyway.
***
“Easy, slowly now. You will still be very weak,” Eltara’s gentle voice came through the fog in Starla's mind.
“What happened?” she asked, her words a little slurred.
“You were poisoned,” Eltara said after Starla's eyes had become focused. “Here, drink this. You have been unconscious for two days. Your body needs food.”
Starla drank the thick broth slowly. Ignoring the bitter aftertaste, she looked to Eltara, waiting for answers.
“The shift you went to sleep in on your birthday was laced in magic-bound poison. I found you unconscious in the morning, and we sent for Larkel.”
Starla found herself looking around the room, half expecting to find him there, sleeping in a chair.
“He's downstairs. He needed his own recuperation time. He gave you a lot of his energy when he Healed you,” she added, a strange, almost pained look on her face.
Starla felt her heart tense.
Eltara took in the look and sighed. “He is fine.”
“Thank you. All of you,” Starla smiled weakly. “May I get up?”
“Yes, of course. There is some warm water there, and mother brought one of your tunics in here. Larkel has checked all your things for poison. It is safe.” She gestured to the folded foam green cloth on a nearby stool. “I'll go and prepare something to eat.”
Starla washed and changed slowly, stretching as the stiffness left her muscles. She had only just managed to quell the panic that hit when she had realised the Star wasn't around her neck. The memory had returned quickly and she breathed a sigh, knowing it was unlikely to have been spotted by Larkel, having been sewn into the purple dress he had bought her in preparation for a day that had now passed.
His face filled her mind, and she walked as quickly as her wobbly legs would carry her, needing to see him and confirm with her own eyes that he was safe. As she neared the end of the stairs, Starla spotted Larkel and felt her heart soar.
Eben noticed her first. Beaming at her, he poked his friend in the ribs.
Larkel's indigo eyes widened as he rushed to her.
“How are you feeling?” he asked urgently, holding her tightly with one hand at her waist, his other hand gently stroking her hair back from her face. “That woman, Lanteg, poisoned your shift. I had her arrested and questioned. She's awaiting trial next week. She got the poison from a grobbler.”
“I'm fine, really, thanks to all of you.” Starla smiled, looking to Markis with a nod of thanks. “Did … has the Baron been arrested too?” she asked, suddenly hopeful.
Larkel growled. “No. She acted on her own initiative.”
She placed a hand on his arm. “Thank you. For helping me, for saving me.”
The High Lord helped her to a sofa as Eben, after shooting Larkel a rather pointed look, went to help his father outside. Larkel sat beside her, fingers combing gently through her golden hair. She lent her head against him, releasing a long sigh, never wanting to be away from him.
“Starla, I—”
“How do they build these houses?” Starla asked, the random question taking Larkel by surprise. “I mean, the glass looks like it should be transparent, but it isn't.”
“That's a well-guarded secret,” Larkel said, reluctantly removing his hand from her hair as she shifted back so she could look at him. “The Glasioders make them using a special mixture that is then moulded into the desired shape by Makhi. The moulding process is easy enough to learn, but no one else knows what is in the mixture.” He laughed softly. “Markis has been trying to figure it out for years. All he's managed to discover is that part of the mixture is made up of glass shards from the Eastern Shore, Silver Seas Metal, and the sap of a lightning fern.”
He watched her as she closed her eyes, breathing gently. She was clearly still very weak from her ordeal. Swallowing his initial sentence, he began to stroke her hair once more.
***
Starla stretched out in the bed in the cottage. The previous two days had been spent mostly eating and sleeping, recuperating. Still, it had been pleasant, with good company, Eben having no shortage of jokes. Even Eltara had joined them, though most of her questions seemed to be hiding some double meaning, asking after Starla’s likes and dislikes.
Starla and Larkel had spent hours just chatting about books and friends, exchanging memories. He had promised to take her to see the Registries in the Royal Library as soon as possible, though for some reason, that promise had been accompanied by Eltara's face.
Getting up, she reached for the purple dress. Larkel had said that he had postponed his plans, but that today would be just as perfect for it.
Curiosity rising again, Starla dressed and managed to do her hair in the half-up, half-down style that the women here used, her birthday clip holding it all in place. Standing before the mirror in the morning sunlight, Starla admired the tunic again. It all felt so normal, now. She didn't think she would ever be comfortable in the cumbersome dresses of Earth again.
The strapless dress wouldn’t hide the Star if she wore it, but she had already managed to stitch it into the hem again, where it would be hidden well enough for the day. It had been almost a compulsion to go and collect it as soon as she’d been able without drawing suspicion.
If it really is mine, and I am Soreiaphin, then it is part of me.
She shifted her eyes back to the mirror and clipped on her silver belt, a small smile tilting her lips at the physical sign of unity between her and Larkel, the clip's jewels sparkling in the light, and she wondered if Father Joe would have liked the powerful Makhi.
Quickly, she made breakfast for herself, turning her thoughts back to the present. Larkel had said he would be here around nine and that she should eat first. The nervous fluttering in her tummy made her give up after eating a small bowl of porridge. She had decided that today would be the day she asked about their future. If there were a way for them to stay together, whether by her magic or the elixir Eben and his family drank, then she didn’t want to stave off the fire in her blood any longer.
“You look amazing,” Larkel said, giving a slight bow when she opened the door to his knock a few minutes later. His eyes swept over her. “Ready, my lady?”
Again, Raoul popped instantly into
her head, but this time no guilt followed behind. That life was over, with only a small desire to go back to give them all a proper farewell so that they wouldn’t spend the rest of their lives worrying. She knew where her heart was, where she wanted her home to be.
Larkel noted the delay and frowned. “That happens a lot,” he said. They began to walk.
Starla glanced up at him and offered her hand, waiting for him to open the bond so that he see and feel what she meant.
“The man you saw in my memories, Raoul? He and I used to greet each other with mock formalities all the time. I guess it just reminds me of him. He had offered to help me find my birth parents, and I had promised not to leave without him. Then … then I wound up here.”
The High Lord looked away, his brow furrowed. “Who is he to you?” he said, looking back, eyes intense and anxious, his direct question layered with meaning. Through the bond, she could feel that he did not want to make her uncomfortable but needed to know if there was any part of her, no matter how small, that wanted that life instead.
“He's like a big brother,” Starla shrugged, “Here, I’ll show you.”
She took him right back to the start of her childhood in Arreau, focusing more on the emotional connections in the memories than actually playing each one out.
She watched his presence, the magic required to bring up the right memories coming naturally to her after weeks of daily mental connection. It lightened a bit as he saw her growing despair as her friend’s feelings had changed towards her, how she’d felt trapped, knowing that if he chose to pursue that course, she had no reason that would sway the people of her world.
“Would you ever want to return?” Larkel asked, his eyes focusing on her again as the memory stream ended with Elise telling her that Raoul had asked for her hand in marriage the day of her wedding. “The night that I saw in the dungeons, he kissed you, but you didn’t pull away or tell him to stop.”
Starla let go of his hand, not wanting him to share the deep pain in the memories that were coming, but he took it back, holding it tight. Starla gave him a small smile, the memories flashing by as she spoke too fast to see anything, but the feelings of loss and betrayal were still there. “That night, my whole world changed. He asked to marry me, and I discovered that the man who had raised me had lied to me for seventeen years. I said I couldn't, tried to explain, but he wouldn't accept my explanation.” She paused, catching and playing that snippet of the memory, where Raoul cornered her against the kitchen counter, refusing to back down from his course. “Back there, on Earth, he is who I would have married, out of duty and respect for him. That kiss, I let it happen because I was broken and lost. Because he was the only one who'd never lied to me, who was willing to help me search just because he knew it mattered to me. I do love him, but not in the way he wants. He just couldn't accept that. Neither could anyone else. What I wanted didn’t matter.”
Larkel breathed out a deep breath, and Starla almost laughed at the weight that left his mind. She placed a hand against his chest and trailed her other hand up his arm, resting it against his scarred cheek.
“How could you really think that there was any part of me at all that didn’t want to be only here?”
His eyes watched the twin flowers bloom in her cheeks, his mind feeling the heat that burned in her blood.
“Because the thought of losing you terrifies me.”
Before she could let the words sink in or capture the tangle of dark emotions that hounded his words, he had wrapped his strong arms around her and pulled her against him, his lips closing over hers. The fire in her mind seemed to explode, obliterating everything else in an electric glow that seemed destined to incinerate them both. Beneath the hand on his chest, she felt his heart break into a sprint, a galloping beat to match her own.
As they pulled apart, Starla tried to even out her breathing, her emerald eyes never leaving his indigo ones, both pairs sparkling with the fire Starla felt still coursing through her veins.
Keeping hold of one of her hands, Larkel turned to face the direction they were going. “Come on, we have somewhere to be,” Larkel said cheerfully.
“Where are we going?”
“I thought I'd give you a tour of the aviary.”
Starla's mind filled with the huge dome-shaped building nestled among the trees of the Park District, and she smiled, having felt in his memories how important the place was to him.
“Those are heartwings,” Larkel whispered as Starla pointed excitedly at three black birds perched high up on a tree. “They get their colour from their favourite food, agleys, but they are born with soft, pink plumage.”
He watched her move ahead without him. The sunlight glinted off her hair to make it look like spun gold. Smiling, he remembered how her eyes had lit up when he had said they were going on a private tour of the aviary. But even as he tried to watch the birds, his body seemed charged with electricity every time she touched his arm to ask about another bird or stepped closer to him to look at one he had spotted. Once again, he hadn't been able to resist her despite knowing he should have. It was unfair of him. Now, it would cause her pain, too, if she chose to leave him. Eltara's warning, her suspicions, sounded in his head, and he took a steeling breath. She had no proof to her claims, but even he couldn't deny that he had seen the similarities too. If they were true, then he could never be her match. The law forbade it.
Starla stopped and looked back at the High Lord. He was watching her, and he seemed troubled. She felt her chest fill with ice. She hoped nothing bad had happened or that it had something to do with his comment before he had kissed her. She knew he had a secret, and she had glimpsed enough to know it was a dark one, but all she had seen of him these past weeks had made her sure of the goodness in his heart. Whatever darkness tormented him, she would deal with it, stand with him against it.
“There's a fountain just through those bushes,” he said, noticing her scrutiny and coming forward to join her. “It is the heart of the sanctuary.”
He moved through the bushes and sat down on the gossamer bench, tapping the spot beside him. “If we are quiet, we may see a very special and very shy bird,” he whispered conspiratorially as she joined him.
“That,” he said, pointing at a large, lightly-feathered reptile as it soared away from them, “is a retari. All the ones in this aviary are descendants of those my mother had. She lived on Aurelia for a while, where the animals are from.”
Starla heard the tense note in his voice. His mother, Makhi Calirra, was now trapped on Aurelia, Kyron's lockdown barring her from returning home. She had also learned another state secret, which was that Larkel had managed to find a way to communicate with those on Aurelia using Fey’s Sacred Stone. He had shared the memory to alleviate her worry over Aimee as the weeks passed and the little sparrowhawk wasn’t seen. Aimee had gone with the Guardians when they left Galatia. While she missed her pet dearly, she was satisfied that the little bird was safe and in good company.
“Be as quiet and still as possible.”
Starla nodded and, as they waited, she tried and failed to ignore the electric sensation between them as they sat so close. Flashes of their emotions crossed the gap even though she knew the bond wasn’t open. She raised an eyebrow, and Larkel gave an almost imperceptible shrug.
The bond seemed to be building, gaining power the longer they spent together, linking them without conscious effort. But even the worries linked to why that might be were not enough to supersede the fire, or the certainty, burning her.
She was about to give in to it and kiss him when an eagle-sized bird swooped down to the fountain. Its blueish-purple feathers reflected the sunlight as it drank. She stifled a gasp as the golden star on the bird's chest caught the light.
The High Lord stood up as the bird took flight once more. “My father used to bring me here all the time when I was a child. He'd tell me about all the birds and then we'd wait right here, on this bench, for the elusive starla to appear. I think he would
have appreciated the irony.”
Starla chuckled at the flash of humour that tinged the memory, how he had wandered and waited alone and she had turned up, breaking all the rules of what was possible.
She smiled as he moved away, letting her eyes wander over his strong frame as he fussed over a red blossom. As she admired the way the sunlight made his eyes glitter like jewels, she let the memory of his arms pulling her close, of the softness of his lips, overcome her. She turned away, blushing, as she realised he was watching her, too, a strange expression on his face.
He held the blossom out to her with a playful smile on his lips. “Are you ready to leave for lunch?”
Starla's heart beat harder as she closed the gap to take the flower. “Lunch sounds good.” She reached out to touch a petal.
Suddenly, the blossom became a bird. It flew up to a nearby branch with an indignant tweet.
Larkel laughed softly at Starla's startled gasp.
“Here,” he said, putting a few blue seeds in her hand. “Now, hold your hand open.”
The little bird flew back down and landed in Starla's hand, eyeing her curiously with its four black eyes.
“They are called red blossoms, because of their camouflage ability,” he explained as the bird quickly ate the seeds. “They are the crest of Queen Astria’s royal house.”
Slowly sliding his hand under hers, he lifted both their hands skyward.
The little bird took flight, circled, then landed on a nearby bush, instantly becoming a red flower once more.
Starla smiled up at Larkel as he turned his hand around hers so that they were now palm to palm.
“I have something special planned for lunch,” he said, smiling and interlinking his fingers with hers, leading the way back through the plants.
“Where are we going?” she asked as they left the bird sanctuary. “Back to Eben's or—?”