Page 182 of Fallen Stars
Elara leaned forward. “Go on.”
“The Dark, or Piscea, took the nomer of Star so she could come to this plane, to be amongst us. But she was always separate. To us Stars, to you titans.”
Eli took another long drag of his cigarette before he spoke again. “If Elara was the Moon, then Piscea was the darkness that surrounded her. If Elara was the light in the dark, then Piscea was the night itself, the dark side to El’s coin.”
Elara gulped. “And we knew each other.”
Eli nodded. “Well, as I told you in the story during our game of Bard, you were her only friend. Until the Sun arrived.”
Enzo tensed beside Elara.
“To me, Piscea was someone that came to me when I was desperate. Came to Gem and I.”
His fingers shook a little as he pulled his cigarette from his lips.
“You and Piscea, friends before one star ever twinkled in the sky, fell out. You chose the Sun over the Night—this part of the story I’ve already told you, sweet Moon. The Dark retreated. Became a monster, the one that lurks under your bed, the shadow in the doorway. Where you represented the beauty and peace of the night, Piscea represented the terrors.”
He exhaled audibly.
“And so, she began to collect hearts.”
Adrian leaned forward. “I’m sorry. You gave your hearts toPiscea?”
Eli spared a glance to Elara who was nodding. She already knew his story.
“It started with Ariete,” Eli said quietly. “He was the first. I don’t know his story. He won’t ever utter a word of the life he led before he became a Star.”
Elara’s jaw clenched.
“He was the first,” Eli repeated. “The first to give his heart to Piscea.”
“Romantically?” Leo asked.
“No, Leo. Literally. That was Piscea’s business, you see. If you sold your soul to her, your heart, she granted immortality. Powers beyond imagination. A world to rule. And so that’s the bargain each of us made.”
Merissa had paled; Isra’s brow furrowed.
“Gem and I…” He shook his head. This was the part he couldn’t bear to tell. The part that made him feel sick to live over. “We aren’t from this world. None of us Stars are.”
Elara again didn’t look shocked. He knew she knew this part. But the others didn’t.
“In the same way that the witch isn’t?” Leo asked.
Adrian was still shaking his head in disbelief. “This can’t be true. Otherworlds? What do you mean that other worlds exist?”
Eli glanced to Enzo, who was staring at him. Eli remembered that one of Enzo’s gifts was that he could see the truth in something. Eli knew it wouldn’t work on him —he was a Star —and yet the way the Lion was looking at him was as though he knew.
“The stars you see in the sky, the ones that don’t represent Ariete or me or any of the other stars…” he sighed, “they are the other worlds. So far away they just look like a speck of light. But on them live different people, different races, whole different worlds. The cosmos. That is what lies above us. What Elara and Enzo are king and queen of.”
“Other people? Like us?” Leo pressed.
Eli pinched the bridge of his nose. “It was both a blessing and a curse for Piscea to grant me the power of knowledge. There is much I wish I did not know. But yes. Other worlds, other people. In the world I’m from, we had no magick.”
“A land with no magick?” Elara breathed.
“Yes. There are worlds out there that possess none. And Gem and I… We were street urchins. For lack of a better term. Parentless, homeless. One night, as we shared a threadbare blanket against the bite of a London winter, I could feel my pulse slowing, and I knew, as anyone knows when Death is near, that at ten years of age, I was going to die. I looked up to the skies, certain my next breath would be my last, and saw no moon. Funny, how even in our godsless world, we were told superstitions, how bad fortune always followed on a night where the Moon didn’t grace the sky with her presence.
“And so, I begged the Dark. It was all that was left in that sky—this darkness. This reliable, always around me, darkness. Piscea listened. Piscea answered.”