Page 183 of Fallen Stars

“And then what happened?” Elara whispered.

“She appeared. At first as a swirl of shadows, but then she formed into a woman. A beautiful woman, with skin like honey and eyes black as ink. Gem and I couldn’t believe our eyes. My sister had always had an edge to her, even as a mortal. I was the trickster, the pickpocket who would ruff a gentleman up and slip his pocket watch from him as he laughed with me. But Gem. Well, you know, Elara. Gem enjoyed pain. She would shiv a man down a back-alley to take his money, stamp on the fingers of other beggar children until they gave her their coppers. She always resorted to violence.

“So Gem went up to her, thinking she was a spirit, and threw a rock at her. It flew right through the woman. And I remember her laugh. Hundreds of years later, and I will never forget it. The sound was of something dying, something begging to be ended from between her lips. She was beautiful, but there was something terrifying in her. Something you couldn’t look at. This writhing beneath her skin.”

Eli raked a hand through his hair, desperate for the story to be finished as the group waited, enraptured.

“That night, she told us she could help us. That we only needed to give her our hearts. These heavy, cumbersome things. And that we would be so much lighter without them. That then, she would grant us insurmountable power and throw us to a world that would worship us as gods. Gem obliged instantly, let Piscea carve her chest right there as she worked her black magick. But I was smarter. I asked for a day…”

He paused.

“Then, I finally gave her what she wanted. A heart. And asked in return to be allowed to enter people’s minds. To trick and deceive. To possess knowledge that as a street urchin from the dregs of Whitechapel, I never could before. And she granted it.”

He looked furtively between Elara and Enzo, whose mouths were both agape.

“And then, from what I know now, she went to Cancia. And then Leone. Then Verra. And so on, and so forth. And each of us fell to this earth, streaks of light in the night sky, immortals, able to grow to adulthood and then stop. And we became gods.”

“And what of us?” Elara asked. “When did you become part of this cosmos?”

“You were all wary. Piscea had brought with her these mortals you adored so much and immortalised them. Given powers to the most desperate, the most depraved souls alive. Some of the Stars, you were at peace with.” He gestured to himself. “Others were always trying to escape your reign to form their own. But it would take a whole tome to describe the story of the Sun and the Moon, their friends, and the messenger between them.”

Eli smiled, more to himself than them, before it slipped.

“What I need you to know is that Piscea collected all our hearts. And with them, she kept a part of us. Imagine one being with the power and control to rule over twelve gods. This is what Piscea is. She collected the last heart—Aquaria’s—on the day that you were bound. When I discovered what she had done, what she was using hearts for, I ran to Ariete. I’d tried to find you, or the Sun, but the sky was dark, neither of you anywhere to be found. Ariete was the first Star, the oldest, the one I was close to at the time. And he looked me in the eyes and asked me to help bind Piscea to a human body. I didn’t discover until later, that he had done the very same with you and Enzo’s only hours earlier, that same night.”

Elara flinched, and Eli frowned. But he dared not reach out his charm to find out why she had; he would not breach her trust.

“It was the last time I called Ariete a friend when I found out he had betrayed you all. But the one thing I could thank him for was binding Piscea. He despised the Dark, more than anyone. Whatever she had done, whatever she had taken from him… If even the god of wrath, of hate, feared the darkness, that meant something monumental. And so, Ariete used his blood magick to bind Piscea to a mortal body, then I helped him drag her to The Graveyard.”

“And the point to this all?” Enzo asked, his voice higher with panic now.

“The point is that, Elara, long ago,you warned me. When Piscea had collected her sixth heart and was already showing signs of greater power, greater evil, you warned me that there may come a day where we would have to put her to sleep. But you told me that if she awoke, her vengeance and fury, her power with twelve Star hearts… It would be the end of the world as we know it.”

Elara’s lips parted as fear flooded her eyes. Some of the others gasped or cursed.

“It’s why we need to make sure she can never make it into this world on All Hallow’s Eve,” Eli finished. “It’s why we must go to Kaos and find the witch. It’s why we cannot fail.”

Chapter Sixty-Five

Adrian lay on the divanafter Merissa had vacated it. She’d gone to sit at the table nearby, a stack of books with her as she and Leo began to research everything they could on Piscea to help.

Elara and Enzo sat, talking quietly with Eli, likely wringing every detail out from him about Piscea, forming a plan to make their night in Kaos run without a hitch. Isra was beside Adrian, a book about the Dark and generally Mythas in her lap that she was poring over, a pen in hand as she circled words, muttering to herself as she did.

Adrian should have gone to bed, but he was no longer tired after hearing Eli’s news. How did one move on through life after learning everything he just had? He realised that he hadn’t even slept yet since he’d become a titan, lost an eye, discovered that his lover was his immortal enemy, andthat an entity greater than all of them combined might be awake and trying to find a way into their world to end it.

He needed something stronger than fucking rum.

And yet of all these issues that could stave off sleep, there was only one that crowded to the front of his mind.

Oceanne.

He looked at the pearl in his hand, the last one that she had given him before he’d discovered who she truly was. Had that all happened only a few hours ago?

He rubbed his eye, sighing as he tried to get comfortable. Isra shot him a look before continuing her reading.

And as though this all wasn’t enough, Oceanne, orCanciahe should say, didn’t even know that he knew who she really was. She’d likely leave another pearl out tomorrow, expecting them to resume their trysts as normal. He had half a mind to meet her, but he didn’t trust himself not to kill her where she stood if he did.

She pervaded his every thought, and he hated it. The goddess had betrayed him, had made him start to feel things that he had never felt in his years alive. And she had done it all for what—to try and trap Elara and Enzo? To locate their whereabouts so she could go running to her darling consort?