When Stars Die (The Stars Trilogy)

by Forbes, Amber Skye

  I look at her face, finding comfort in her warm smile. “I’m sorry, Colette. I’m just…scared.”

  “So am I, Amelia. So am I.”

  Later, on our way back to our cells, I discover Sash standing next to our room. I gloss over him and look at my door, Colette behind me. He tries to reach out to touch me, but I have hurried into my room before he even gets the chance. A sickening feeling blooms within me. He will not stop following me until he finds out whether or not I truly can see him. Not only do I have to worry about making the Professed Order, but now I have to worry about living to the day of my eventual profession. He might try to get me when I least expect it, like in my sleep. Well, I’m used to little sleep.

  I have to be professed. I have to live to be professed. For Nathaniel.

  Chapter Three

  I jam a piece of wood in the lock with the hope this will keep Sash or Asch or any of the shadows from coming in. This could get me in trouble with Theosodore when he comes to fetch Colette and I for the next trial, but I can lie and say the lock is stuck. In any case, I doubt I’ll be getting much sleep tonight, what with the intense cold searing through the wounds on my back, the stress of vying for a position in the Professed Order, and the gnawing thoughts of those shadows and what they want.

  As I turn around to lie down on my bed, a searing pain icicles through my welts, pushing my knees to the floor. They were treated, but that treatment did not relieve the pain--only prevented the possibility of infection.

  Colette runs over and bends down in front of me. “Are you all right? Do you want my shawl?”

  I shake my head, gritting my teeth against the pain. “How are you tolerating this?” I ask.

  Her eyes widen. “Oh, Amelia, you’re bleeding.” She helps me to my feet and draws me over to her bed, removing my shawl in the process. She unbuttons the back of my gray dress and peels away the fabric. Raw cold assaults the welts, drawing a hiss from me. “Mine aren’t reacting this poorly. I frankly thought the nurses did a fine job.”

  My heart falls in the burgeoning darkness inside of me. “Marvelous. I know what’s going to remove me from the initiation and that’s a severe infection that will hospitalize me. I might even die from it, or need my back amputated. Can backs even be amputated?”

  Colette presses against my wounds with her shawl. “Don’t talk such nonsense, Amelia. You’ll be fine. They just need to air out and scab over.”

  I make a face as thoughts of hideous scabs cross my mind. At the same time, the wounds remind me being a nun isn’t about beauty. When I’m professed, I’ll have my head shaved to blend in with the rest of the Professed Order. Serving Deus has never been about individuality or frivolity. Serving Deus has always been about humility. I can only hope this whole process will humble and not break me, because there is a darkness so thick in me that if I make some severe mistake in the next trial, I’m afraid I’ll never be able to rise from my failure.

  Colette buttons my dress, wraps my shawl back around me, and sits down, putting a hand on my shoulder. “I can see it in your face, Amelia. Don’t let what happened to you today depress you.”

  Her attempt at comfort draws tears to my eyes. My shoulders shake as I try to suppress them, but they come anyway. I end up sobbing and speaking at the same time. “I just--that shouldn’t--why did it have to be me? Why did I have to faint?” I bury my face in my hands, the warmth of my tears melting the chill on my skin. “Mother Aurelia isn’t going to want somebody who faints over a silly leech!”

  Colette squeezes my shoulders. “Ssh.” She draws my head to her lap and I bury my face there. The warmth of her lap melts the cold. Even after being whipped to the bone, Colette’s clover scent lingers as a therapeutic catalyst for my nerve-stricken body. “There’s still more to come, Amelia. There’s still so much time for you to prove yourself, for us all to prove ourselves.”

  My shoulders hitch up to my ears and freeze there. I raise my face to Colette’s, tears dried on to my cheeks. “Why do these trials have to be so ridiculous, so cruel, so--” I fall back to her lap and sob.

  Colette’s voice comes out somber. “The life of a nun is no vacation. Deus demands a lot, so of course Mother Aurelia is going to demand a lot. If we can get through this, then we can be nuns.”

  I wouldn’t be feeling this way if the trial we went through was the final trial, but this was just the first. If I feel this way now, like I’m about to break, then I can only imagine how the future trials will make me feel. I stop sobbing and sit up, wiping my face free of tears. Staring out the window at the darkened sky and waxy moon, I say, “I don’t think I’ll be able to make it. Look at what an emotional wreck I am…and this was only the first day.”

  “I don’t know what Mother Aurelia expects out of us, but I’m certain these trials were designed to play with our fears in some way, to see how long we’re willing to hold out and put up with what she does to us. You can’t let these scare you, intimidate you, or make you feel like a failure. There is no denying that you made it through today, and you don’t feel like quitting, now do you?”

  I shake my head. “But--”

  She silences me with a wave of her hand. “If you don’t feel like quitting, then you haven’t failed. We will get through this, and we will be the best professed nuns the convent has ever seen.”

  Her words imbue me with some optimism. She’s right. I don’t feel like quitting at all, in spite of feeling like I failed myself today--and my brother. I will be able to get through this, and I have to. I survived today, and I will continue surviving. Yet, it’s moments like these that make me wish Nathaniel were here with me, to curl up in my lap, to tell me stories about his day. His presence would dispel all doubts. It’s also moments like these that make me miss the grotto we used to play in before I uprooted our lives and brought us to Cathedral Reims. Part of me wants to sneak off to see him, while another part of me realizes the danger in being alone with these shadows about.

  I smile at Colette. “Thank you for that.”

  She smiles and embraces me. I return the embrace, breathing in the scent of her clover. I still don’t know how she manages to smell fresh through the blood and sweat dried on her skin. I don’t even want to think what I smell like.

  “We will get through this,” she says again.

  A knock on the door freezes me in her embrace. Two things run through my mind: it’s either Theosodore or the shadows. I’m reluctant to say anything for fear of it being the latter. Yet, I want neither. I’m not ready for another trial.

  “Amelia?”

  I relax in Colette’s embrace, then pull away from her. “Oliver?” I walk over to the door, remove the piece of wood, and push the door aside, elated to see Oliver’s gray eyes, shock of black hair that droops over his eyes, and his thin-lipped smile and skin as pale as mine. But he shouldn’t be here. Having contact with a male during initiation, even one who is in the priesthood, is far worse than escaping our rooms, since the Order can draw a lot of assumptions over a visiting male. We’re supposed to be chaste, and any question of our chastity can result in a tribunal and eventual expulsion from Cathedral Reims.

  “You shouldn’t be here. You’re going to get both of us in an enormous amount of trouble.”

  He smiles, cocking his head so that his hair falls over his eyebrow. “Believe it or not, I’m on night patrol.”

  “What about Theosodore? He’s been patrolling our corridor since we were locked in here!”

  “Methinks he had a bit too much wine for dinner after your trial.”

  My eyes widen. “Oliver…you didn’t do anything to his wine, did you?”

  He rocks back and forth on his heels. “Maybe I did, and maybe I didn’t. I heard you had a bad day and figured you desperately needed to get out of this stuffy room. I’ve always thought the trials were ridiculous. I don’t believe in torturing myself to prove I’m fit to serve Deus.”

  Colette’s voice rises behind me. “That’s because you priests don’t have to
do what nuns do.”

  Then why do we have to suffer at all? Is it because we’re women, prone to hysterics, and so this must be beaten out of us? I assume so. There is a strange standard with chastity. It is assumed males are more lustful, but we women must be in charge of controlling that lust.

  “We’re all part of the Professed Order, regardless,” Oliver says, looking at her with a smile. “A priest, a nun, we all serve Deus.” He proffers his arm to me. “In any case, would you like to take a walk of Cathedral Reims? I just want to make sure you haven’t forgotten what our dear cathedral looks like.”

  I look behind me at Colette who has a wary look in her eyes. Although Oliver is on night patrol, that doesn’t mean someone in the Order won’t happen to cross his path, so I shouldn’t go with him. On the other hand, Oliver is also a dear friend of mine whose presence I’ve desperately craved almost as much as my little brother’s. Colette is my dearest friend, yet sometimes I need a bit of the masculine in my life, a bit of that strength men have that women need to survive in this world. I accept his arm, heat blossoming in my cheeks as I look at Colette with shame burning my eyes.

  “I’m sorry, Colette, but I need this.”

  She darts her eyes to Oliver, a frown marring her delicate face. “Make sure she doesn’t get caught, Oliver.”

  I smile. “Thank you, Colette.”

  She looks away from me. “This doesn’t mean I approve, Amelia, and this doesn’t mean I’m simply going to accept your choice.”

  “You know you can’t talk me out of it though.”

  She sighs and says nothing else. Oliver leads me into the corridor lit by glowing moonlight that flies in pale streaks through the stained-glass windows. They are covered in depictions of suffering witches. There are thousands of these windows all over Cathedral Reims, reminding us in a thousand different ways how we should hate witches.

  This is the thing about witches. They are never spoken of. People don’t want to acknowledge they exist because we’ve been conditioned from birth to accept they are terrible beings through our religious text, The Vulgate. I have heard stories of witches being caught and disappearing, never to be heard from again, but rumors circulate these stories. The only reminders we have to hate witches are propaganda all over Malva, ranging from posters, to statues, to engravings, to paintings, and any way Malva can get its message across without having to speak of them.

  Oliver leads me out into the nave, and I gasp. I forgot how enormous the nave can be. The nave soars over a hundred feet above our heads, ending at a vaulted roof. Hundreds of jamb statues of fearsome witches line the niches on the uppermost parts of the ceiling, sometimes giving me the feeling that this is an executioner’s chamber and not a cathedral. Their mouths have been carved into screams, their arms and legs twisted around stakes and trees.

  We walk over to the crossing, which is the center floor of the entire cathedral. It’s an enormous circular area we call Deus’s Eye because just above it is a large stained-glass dome in the roof positioned where light shines through. We then sit, facing the west transept, the entrance, with its set of thick, heavy doors the height of eight grown men. The stone flooring is cool beneath me, reminding me I should be chilled to the bone. I find whenever I’m around Oliver, however, I can ignore any discomfort.

  Oliver reaches out and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. To an outsider, this would seem like an affectionate gesture between two lovers. Of course, Oliver has been my friend about the same length as Colette has. We just don’t get to see each other as often. I will admit I’ve always felt something for this boy, but I have always kept my feelings at that: a little something. Relationships are impossible for those in the Order. He’s also the first boy I’ve interacted with who is my age, so that ‘little something’ could be a false feeling.

  “So tell me what happened today,” he says, his voice a whisper to keep sound from echoing in the spacious nave. “Don’t keep all of this to yourself. You know I’m here for you just as much as Colette is…whenever I can be, and I do try, so don’t think I’m not.”

  I can’t help but to let out a small laugh over Oliver’s obvious feeling of guilt for not being able to be there for me as much as he wants to be, though this is by no means his fault. The Professed Order just demands different things of the two sexes, things that often keep us separate. “I fainted when Mother Aurelia brought out the leeches.” I show him the puckered wounds on my flesh. That same sickness I had before I fainted creeps up again, so I look away while Oliver inspects the lesions.

  He sighs, rubbing a pale finger around each sore. His skin is cool, though his touch sends electric swirls through me I cast out by pressing a welt on my back. “This is nonsense, what they do to you ladies.”

  “Those aren’t even the worst. You should see the welts on my back.”

  “I don’t want to. If you ask me, I find all of this undeniably cruel. I don’t understand why you ladies let yourselves put up with Theosodore and Mother Aurelia. There is more to life than being trapped here.” A bitterness edges his tone. “There is so much more you could be doing.”

  I pull my arm away and bury both of my arms in my skirts. “There isn’t, Olly. You know why I’m here.”

  He is the only one who knows my brother is a witch, but only because his younger sister Ella is one. He told me he joined the priesthood in the Professed Order for her, for the exact same reason I did. I suppose all of us with witches in the family desire Deus’s forgiveness in some form, and serving Him seems to be the highest form of asking for it. The only difference between Oliver and I is that he left his sister behind while I had to bring my brother with me. Whatever sins my parents committed to birth him, I didn’t want those sins to eventually come out and punish my brother. There is no happy ending for a family with a witch in it. The Seven Deadly Sins break families apart sooner or later.

  “There is no turning back for me. We haven’t spoken with our parents in three years. Who knows if they’re even looking for us?”

  Oliver takes my chilled hand in his icy one. Even on warm days he’s cold, due to a blood problem he was born with. “Some days I think that you and I and your little brother should run away from all of this. Then other days I see the determination in your eyes and have to remind myself this is something you want. But mostly, I just wish there were something else out there for us.”

  The thought of running away with him makes my cheeks bloom with heat. Again, I stamp this out by pressing one of my welts. His words bring bitter tears to my eyes that I manage to hold back.

  “There isn’t, and there never will be. Face it, Olly. This is the way the world is and always will be. People like Ella and Nathaniel, they’ve always been hated, always been a blight upon this world, and we don’t even understand why.” My voice rises with fervor. “Day in and day out, it’s drilled into our heads that Deus works in mysterious ways. We’re not supposed to question what he does for us, only that what he does is for the best in the end. But you can’t say that when you’re suffering until the end of your life.”

  My own cynicism makes me want to cry over the unfairness of what I’ve just said. This would be different if humanity were doing this to us, but it’s Deus, a being we can’t see, a being we only believe in through faith. How can one change something whose image is impossible to picture?

  Oliver squeezes my hand, trying to infuse me with warmth I doubt will ever be there for me again. “We’ll change the world, Amelia. We’ll rise so high in the ranks of the Professed Order that every word we speak will not be questioned, even when we tell people to start accepting witches as human beings. We’ll just have to push through this, and everything will work out in the end. It has to.”

  I almost want to laugh over the enormous amount of hope he has for our futures. But as I look into his gray eyes, I realize he is serious, and a small part of me wants to share in this dream--no, needs to share in this dream. I need a new dream, one that is beyond being professed. Even if this dream isn
’t tangible, I need some sort of hope to cling on to, something that will push me to keep going despite insurmountable odds.

  I turn to him, moving in close so that there is only an inch between our faces. “Let’s make a promise then. Let’s promise that no matter what, we will encourage each other to keep going, to keep rising, right until the very end. Even if I’m dying, I want you to keep pushing me, and I’ll keep pushing you.”

  Oliver smiles, his eyes brightening. “How will we seal this promise?”

  I kiss him on the cheek, his scent of winter and ice catching the edge of my nostrils. Like Colette’s clover scent, his wintry scent is not unwanted. “Like that.” He kisses me on the cheek too, and our promise is sealed. On occasion, we will risk daring affections with one another, but nothing ever beyond a light kiss on the cheek. I yearn for more though. “There is no going back. If you break this promise, you’re telling me you no longer wish to continue our friendship, and it is the same if I break the promise as well.”

  Oliver nods, a smile planted firmly on his face. “I like this nightly jaunt. We should have this every night.”

  “And increase our chances of finding trouble? Then we’ll have an excuse to break the promise because expulsion can’t be helped by that point.”

  Oliver holds up his hands. “All right then. Every once in a while. How does that sound? I hate thinking of you locked in that room for most of the day. I know how close you are to Colette, but it sometimes helps to speak to someone outside of all this, doesn’t it?”

  “It does. But only once in a while. I hesitate to say once a week.”

  “Then whenever I know it’s safe.”

  Oliver takes me back to my cell. When we come upon it, Sash is leaving with a smile. He doesn’t make eye contact with me, yet that smile indicates Sash discovered something. I don’t want to know what it is, so when Oliver hugs me goodnight, I throw the door closed and jam the piece of wood back into the lock. I try to hold on to the warmth of the promise I made with Oliver, but thinking about these shadows elicits a vicious chill.