When Stars Die (The Stars Trilogy)

by Forbes, Amber Skye

  I put my hand against a cobblestone for support. A slick, warm feeling greets the underside of my palm. I look at the source and discover a splash of blood. Eyes widening, I pull my hand away and look at it: No wound. Only the lines on my palm that look like meandering rivers.

  Where did the blood come from?

  I jump to my feet and look around for a potential source. There are other splashes of blood dotting the cobblestones sporadically etched with images of witches impaled on thorny vines. I follow these to the edge of the alley and stop. They lead across the main road into another alley.

  I think to follow them but realize I need to figure out what happened before arriving here. For all I know, those blood splotches could lead me to my death.

  I was on a train to Norbury, I left the compartment to go to the observation deck, there was an interesting rectangle of light, and then I saw a shadow, then Oliver, and something strange coursed through me. The shadow…the shadow must have done this to me, must have sent me here for whatever reason. This must be some vision then, so I can safely assume following the blood won’t lead me to any harm.

  A scream pierces the night. It’s so loud it could crack the sky and bring the stars down. I assume it’s coming from across the street, where the blood spatters lead. Hitching my dress in hand, I follow the blood, and with each bloodstain I come across, the scream heightens.

  Soon a dark figure emerges from the alley with the body of a struggling woman. I stop on a blood spatter in the middle of the road.

  I stare.

  The dark figure is one of the shadows. The figure must be Sash because it is a short shadow. He looks over his shoulder, freezing me in place. The shadow is Sash. However, he isn’t looking at me. Rather, he looks through me. This makes me think I’m still on the train viewing whatever this is.

  So I just watch and see what he does.

  He studies where I stand, his bottomless eyes filled with unknown calculations. After he surveys my area for a few minutes more, he turns away.

  He drags the crying woman to the edge of the sidewalk and lays her down. She’s bleeding from a wound in her chest, right beneath the cusp of her heart. She bleeds profusely all over his white hand.

  She looks into the eyes of the shadow, and in a raspy voice asks, “W-why are you doing this?”

  He takes a dagger from his cloak, draws up a sleeve, and runs the point of the dagger down his forearm. A sickening shiver passes through me as a sliver opens up on his white skin, and black beads bubble to the surface. It looks like tar, and the sight of the tarry blood flips my stomach. Whatever kind of creature Sash is, he was certainly never human. No human being has blood that color.

  The woman screams again, twisting my heart. I want to scream for him to stop. He dips his finger in her wound, pulls it out, and draws the blood along his wound. The black and red blood bubble and form a scar.

  His voice wavers. “This is what I have to do to look like one of you.” A pained regret lingers in his eyes, as though he had no choice but to hurt this woman, as though he hates that he had to.

  He raises the dagger above his head, winces, and slams the point into the woman’s heart, quieting her screams and my ensuing ones. He lets her bleed rivers of blood that slide down the side of the sidewalk and crawl through the cracks of the cobblestones.

  He gets up, raises his head to the sky. The pain in his face is gone. Sash is all stoicism. “Come get some before her blood is no longer fresh.”

  A cluster of shadows appear from a darkened alley. Asch is among them.

  “They’ll be able to see us now,” Asch says, a small smile gracing his scarred face.

  Another replies, Gisbelle I believe, the one who asked about me when we were in the cloister. “All the better because now we’ll be able to tell for certain who is a witch and who isn’t through a mere glance. Now that we look like them, we’ll be able to sense one just by looking at it. Took Purgatory forever to come up with this.”

  The world turns to ashes around me as I register this information. All this time they’ve been looking for witches to kill, and even though I had this hunch, this confirmed thought is no less astonishing. And all this time they have been looking for me. That’s what Asch meant by there being more.

  Who are they though? What do they want with witches?

  Gisbelle continues talking. “But what you did was reckless, Sasha. Did you really have to drag her out to such an open place?”

  Sash narrows eyes with green radiating in spirals from black pupils. The green becomes his irises, and his skin begins to take on flesh tones. He scowls. “I did what Purgatory wanted me to do, Gisbelle. And I succeeded.” He looks around at the rest of the shadows. “Now cut yourselves and put her blood in you.”

  He leaves the woman’s body, keeping bright green eyes on Gisbelle.

  Gisbelle shakes her head. “When will you get over her, Sasha? Claire was useless to Purgatory. She had no place with us.”

  Without warning, Sash tosses his dagger at Gisbelle, who catches it by the blade. He spits. “Don’t bring her up again.”

  These shadows have feelings. This Claire must have meant something to Sash, just as Oliver means something to me. I can almost feel his pain.

  Gisbelle brandishes the dagger. “You can’t keep up this bitterness, Sasha. Sooner or later, it will interfere with your standing in this alliance, and then you’ll be in the exact same place as Claire: nothingness.”

  A sharp chill eats at my spine as the word ‘nothingness’ echoes in my mind. What does she mean by Claire being nothingness? That she died, or was killed, and that is all? There is nothing after for her?

  Sash widens his eyes, and lunges at her. Asch grabs the back of his cloak, stopping his progress. Sash beats his fists in the air. “You bitch!”

  “Stop this, Sash,” Asch says. “Gisbelle, don’t speak of Claire again. Once we’ve all taken the blood, we’ll swarm Malva in search of more witches. With Purgatory’s permission, I’ll ask about expanding our reach across Warbele.”

  “Maybe even the world,” Gisbelle says.

  “That’s a bit of a stretch,” Asch says. “We’ll keep our minds set on Warbele for now.”

  Once the shadows have drained the woman of blood, they step back into the alleys, disappearing from view. All I can do is stand on the sidewalk and let the scene sink into my mind like a bullet to the heart. Legs going numb, I start stumbling on the ice-slicked cobblestones. I try gathering my footing, but give up and let my head slam on a stone, drawing blackness to my eyes that flickers once, then stays.

  #

  “Amelia!”

  “Sister!”

  “For Deus’s sake, Natty, give me that rag. She’s a bit flushed.”

  My eyes flutter open. A wet coolness spreads across my forehead and cheeks. Two blurred faces greet me, then come into focus. I’m sprawled out on the plush carpet, so I sit up, blinking several times. Nathaniel and Oliver are on their knees, looking at me as if I’m some species yet to be identified. Once I’ve sat up all the way, Nathaniel smiles and throws himself at me in an embrace. Oliver pulls him off.

  “Don’t think she’s quite ready for that yet, Natty. She’s barely got her bearings,” Oliver says, sitting Nathaniel back down beside him.

  Once the fog clears from my mind, I snap my eyes on Oliver. He was in the car with me when I saw the shadow. “Olly, tell me something.”

  Oliver flicks invisible dust off his cuffs and motions toward our window. “I will speak with you later, Amelia. We’re in Norbury now, and we’ll be off the train in five minutes, most likely. Not enough time to talk.”

  Nathaniel looks between the two of us. “What happened to you?”

  I keep my eyes on Oliver. “Nothing for you to worry about. I’m fine.” The train whistles, a hiss of steam flying by our window. “We might not even have time to talk.”

  Oliver crosses his arms. “I think I feel the train stopping. We better gather our things.”

  Chapter
Twelve

  The courtyard of our mansion looks exactly the same as when Nathaniel and I left three years ago: statues covered in ivy, a snow-drenched lawn, and plots of winter-chilled flowers. We live in the middle of an enormous forest that hides our mansion from view. One would only be able to view our house from the air. The one part of the mansion anyone might see from ground view are the turrets and spires, for our house looks like some mad castle, couched in ivy, stucco, and trimmed in black, with an arched entrance held together by our haphazard family seal the size of a lion’s head.

  The forest seems to extend forever. Truthfully, I have missed nature. Malva tries to keep nature tamed, and we are taught the same at Cathedral Reims. When Colette and I were helping Sister Sylvia tend to the plants in the greenhouse, I would always try to keep them in order while Colette would insist on letting the plants grow as they pleased. Colette was always wild. She would love this forest.

  Nathaniel lets go of my hand and runs up to an enormous statue of a lion with wings. Its mighty maw is open in a majestic roar, one paw curved against its breast while the other stands firm on the flagstone. Its tail stands upright behind massive wings splayed to beat back the world.

  I’ve never liked living at this house. It has always been too large for a family of four, and the statues make this courtyard seem like a graveyard rather than a nice lawn a family could play croquet on.

  Nathaniel crawls on top of the statue’s back and supports himself with one of the wings. “Look! I’m flying!” He giggles and makes a whooshing sound.

  On any other occasion I’d indulge Nathaniel’s fantasies, but not today. I go up to the statue and wrap my hand around Nathaniel’s ankle. “We don’t have any time for this, Nat. We’re--we’re home.”

  He frowns, but relents and lets me take him down. We meet Oliver at the front door. His scarf wraps loosely around his neck, showing the snowy whiteness of his throat. He looks at us in a way that suggests I shouldn’t be nervous because he is bearing all my nerves for me--though I think my nerves pulsate enough to carry all of Malva’s stress for the next year. I should be freezing since Norbury is far colder than Malva, and yet my palms are slick with sweat beneath my gloves, and my overcoat feels like a furnace. Nathaniel clings to me, his tiny body radiating with shivers that course through me, making me feel like I’m enduring an earthquake. I remove my overcoat, wrapping its warmth around my little brother. Even left in just a wool dress, stockings, and fur-lined boots, I’m still too warm.

  “Are you ready?” Oliver asks, lifting his hand to grab the knocker the size of a baby’s head. “I can give you a few more minutes to gather yourselves.”

  I snap my eyes on Oliver. “Could you and I have a few minutes?”

  Oliver turns away and raps the knocker against the metal plate three times. I don’t know why he has been so cold to me since I woke up. He said he would talk to me about what happened on the train; however, he’s doing everything he can to avoid this conversation. It’s not like I can’t handle whatever it is he wants to say to me. I’ve been through far worse than fainting on a train and seeing uncanny things in that vision or whatever it was. Perhaps he is ashamed to be friends with someone like me, just as Cathedral Reims is ashamed to harbor Colette, an invalid.

  Thinking about Colette brings hot tears to the backs of my eyes. I scrape snow off the stucco and dab my eyes with the coldness, pressing the tears back into me. I’ll cry them another day.

  The sound of the knob creaking on the other side of the door sends daggers spearing through me. I didn’t realize I’d be this anxious about being home. I wrap an arm around Nathaniel and pull him so close to me that I fear I will suffocate him. He seems to welcome this suffocating hold though, and doesn’t hesitate to wrap his arms around my waist. The door groans as it opens into our foyer lit by only a few tapers. I see my parents have still refused electricity, when Malva updated five years ago.

  Father’s voice speaks softly from the dimness, and an eye the color of mine peeks out from the other side of the door. “Amelia? Nathaniel?” His voice is feeble.

  Nathaniel unwraps his arms from around me and is about to run up to Father, until Oliver stops his progress with a hand. “Mr. Gareth, a word? Do you perchance have a phone I may use, or rather a phone you could use? Mother Aurelia wants you to call her back. It’s urgent.”

  Father nods. “Why, yes, yes, of course, Mr.--”

  “You may call me Oliver.”

  Father opens the door, gesturing all three of us inside. “Of course, of course. Amelia, Nathaniel, you know where to put your coats and things. Dust the snow on the rug, please. Warm yourselves by the fire in the parlor. I’ll be there in a moment.”

  At first I am too speechless to move. Father talks as though we haven’t been gone for three years, but only three days. Not the kind of ‘welcome back’ I expected, but then what should I expect from parents whose Seven Deadly Sins gave birth to two witches? Parents like that never truly miss their children. Most of the time, children are just a convenience, whether for money, status, or something else, and Nathaniel and I are no different. We were tutored to be trained for a higher calling in life--Nathaniel for university, and I for marriage with an affluent husband. Another reason I ran away with Nathaniel, I suppose.

  With a gentle push from Nathaniel I glide into the foyer and make an abrupt right turn into the parlor, where a roaring fire burns my eyes and makes my skin feel like it will melt off my bones. Even the parlor looks the same. Mother still has that hideous pink-and-white striped settee on the far wall Father has wanted her to get rid of for years. The lion statue that Nathaniel broke the paw off when he was little sits in the corner with dull eyes. Father’s couch, my high-backed chair, Nathaniel’s cushions, the scuffed glass table in the center, the peeling pink wallpaper, it’s all the same.

  While it’s arranged the same, the parlor seems somehow stuffier, unkempt. When I sit down on my chair, a layer of dust rises, assaults my nostrils, and I sneeze. Nathaniel throws himself on his cushions, a layer of dust rising from them too.

  “Everything’s so dirty,” Nathaniel says, rubbing a finger on the ceramic tiles by the fireplace, exposing a line of pristine white. “Isn’t Lily supposed to keep the parlor clean?”

  Now that I think about it, Lily wasn’t there to greet us at the door, to take our coats, our boots, our hats and gloves. She isn’t shuffling in here to offer us a cup of tea, some water, or a hot bowl of soup. She was like an older sister to Nathaniel and I, whenever she could be. Where is she? Not having any sign of her presence here is disconcerting.

  “Oh well,” Nathaniel says, stretching on his cushions. “I’m so happy to be home. I wonder what Mother and Father are going to do? I want to go back to our tutor, Mr. Lordes. He’s so much nicer than the nuns. And then, when it gets warm, I want to go to our grotto.”

  Nathaniel starts prattling off a list of things he wants to do now that we’re home, but I can’t be excited for any of it. This is not the life I wanted to come back to, not the life I wanted to keep. I still crave a life at Cathedral Reims with strict rules, decorum, pain, and something to look forward to every day. Here, I never had anything to look forward to, other than a life belonging to someone else. I’ve always wished I could be born a boy because at least boys could do something beyond themselves, something beyond staying home and raising children.

  I grab the knitted blanket off the back of the chair, just as Father comes into the parlor, and wrap myself in its dusty warmth. This is one item in the entire mansion I never wanted anyone but me to touch, not even Lily, who insisted on cleaning it every opportunity she could. I knitted this entire thing myself, and it is one part of my life from here I wish I could have taken to Cathedral Reims with me. The blanket is like a cocoon for me, wrapping all my nerves in a tight ball to keep my rumbling heart from bursting.

  Father sits down on that garish settee, looking directly at me. The mansion hasn’t changed in three years, but Father has. When I left, he ha
d an entire head of brown hair. Now it’s all gone, only a few wisps of gray in place. Lines mar his face, his eyes are dull, and instead of the laugh lines I used to see on him every day, there are frown lines so deep a tiny pang of guilt jumps through me over realizing I may be the cause of those lines.

  I swallow deep. “F-Father, you look so tired. Why don’t I ring for Lily to fetch you a cup of hot tea?” It’s the nicest thing I can think of in a moment where not even a tiny bit of guilt makes me want to have a full conversation with Father.

  Father sniffs. “I let Lily go.”

  Nathaniel sits up on his cushions. “Where’s Mother?”

  Father closes his eyes, bringing out deep crevices in the corners. He looks so much older than a man in his forties should.

  I grab the edges of my blanket. “What do you mean you let Lily go? And where is Mother?” Mother and Father have always been inseparable. I’ve never seen one without the other, even when they were angry with each other. “Is she sick? And what of Lily? Please, tell me.”

  Father keeps his eyes closed. His hands curl on his lap. I look at his fingers. The skin is so papery. They look like gnarled claws that remind me of Mother Aurelia’s hands. That woman is in her seventies. Father should not be having the hands of a seventy year old. “Your mother died.”

  That tiny pang of guilt grows, and the buried tears involuntarily leak out of my eyes in tiny trickles. Nathaniel looks at me, his small jaw dropped. He then looks at Father like he wants to crawl in his lap and rest his head there as he did when he was five. He stays at the cushions.

  “W-what do you mean Mother died?” I ask, feeling the chill of outside creep through my blanket.