Page 2 of A Touch of Stars and Stones (Kirrian #1)

one

. . .

Ever

L yle never looks scared.

She keeps her feelings, thoughts, and every emotion sequestered away, at least from me.

But not tonight.

I can see that her usually calm demeanour is rattled, betrayed by her wide eyes and ashen skin, reflecting how I feel.

The rest of the room comes back into focus around her, looking over me. Her pale blonde hair framing her in light, her eyes pinned to mine, the misty blue shrouded in fear.

I’m downstairs in the front room of the house.

On the floor.

The large table, which often overflows with items to trade and sell, is crooked. Its contents littered around me like fallen leaves from a tree.

“What happened?” I croak out, fighting to fill the gaps in my memory and remember why I’m on the floor. I raise my arm towards Lyle, asking for help, but she pulls back, and I feel it like a slap across the face, jarring me from the hazy recollections.

She’s never not held my hand or hugged me before. I’ve fallen plenty of times in the past, often climbing too high in the trees to the north of our cottage.

“I’m sorry, Ever. I shouldn’t have risked it.” She turns from me as confusion mounts in my mind, and as if I can summon a physical reaction to my feelings, the floor begins to vibrate around me—shallow quakes fracturing the ground where my hand rests as if answering a call.

It stops Lyle in her retreat from me, but only for a second.

My fingers dig against the stone, grasping for any purchase to anchor me.

“What’s happening to me?” I shriek after her, fear shaking through me with every shudder of the earth beneath us.

Fear grips me, tightening around me along with my confusion.

The more I try to search for an answer, the harder the task feels.

Flashes flicker across my mind with the mental strain, like a memory, perhaps.

A dream, maybe. The images don’t make any sense.

A man and a woman I’ve never seen before, their faces obscured through some kind of mist.

And Lyle.

And me.

My room. The sea, although I have never visited any of the market towns on the coast to the south, with blues so crystal clear, so vivid, they can’t be real. Nothing makes sense, and as I focus on the image of the ocean, grappling for more, pain erupts as if in warning, splitting through my skull.

Pounding. Beating me back into submission.

This is far worse than last time.

Several months ago, my dreams started to creep into daytime hours.

I’d be dressing or cooking, and I’d be struck with visions.

Images and glimpses at first, like seeing through a window into a different place.

The pictures that flashed in front of me seemed out of a book—a fairy tale—until they merged into a nightmare.

After they faded, I’d be left bereft. Lost. As if time had skipped, and my mind had run away with itself on an adventure, leaving me where I stood.

When people visited the shop to trade, it was worse—as if their presence disrupted my thoughts, mingling with my own and giving my imagination room to play. Only, I didn’t think I consciously found these thoughts. They happened to me.

I never told Lyle about any of it, not when there were no witnesses around me to vouch for my strange visions, my episodes. But then she noticed. She witnessed me struck, rooted in place by my mind, trapped in my body, unable to move and only able to pay attention to the scenes infecting my head.

She quickly snapped me out of it, but since then, she’s kept watch. As if anticipating—no—expecting it to happen again.

And it has. Only far worse.

The only home I’ve ever known has slowly grown into a place that holds trepidation, something I never thought I’d experience within these four walls.

Lyle continues her retreat, and with her steps, the small vibrations disturbing the ground follow.

A cracked ceramic jug, sprayed with colourful flowers on the side, still rocks back and forth as it lies on the flagstone floor, an echo of the whole ordeal.

Picking myself up, I survey the damage I’ve caused to the room I’ve spent half of my life in.

It holds a collection of everyday items that we’ve gathered over the weeks, months, and years, ready to be traded or sold to passers-by.

A tapestry of simple life painted in front of my eyes—my simple life. Our simple and happy life.

Now, I feel as shattered as the jug.

The third step on the stairs creaks as I climb to my room, just like it always does. Something about that normal slither of routine settles a crack in my heart, grounding me in familiarity after the strange events from downstairs.

The tremors might have diminished, but they still shudder through my body.

As I try to piece together what happened, the event grows more nebulous in my mind, like a puff of smoke dissolving in the air as I reach my fingers out to grab it.

The weight of my body grows too heavy, and I give up trying to hold myself up, collapsing on the bed tucked into the corner of the room.

My eyes look over the underside of the thatch above me before finding their way to the small window ledge where I’ve placed the only real possessions I have—a group of individual items that all add up to me—Ever Hart.

They are my comfort, and that is needed more than ever tonight, the sting from Lyle’s dismissal still raw. As my eyes land on each item, I wonder why I haven’t collected more things, considering that trading is what we do.

But these items are special, like a part of me. Adding to them would taint the balance of what they represent to me.

My finger brushes the small gold ring I’m too scared to wear in case I lose it, etched with the crescent moon cradling a disk with an almost black stone in the centre.

Sometimes it winks green at me, and sometimes it shows me blue or purple.

All the time, it lives safely on the ledge as my most precious possession in this world.

Lyle’s never told me where it came from, just that it’s mine and that I should look after it.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always assumed she doesn’t want me to make a big deal about an expensive gift. That’s Lyle’s way. Soft and quiet, but sure.

Another treasure is the small piece of pale milky pink quartz I’d plucked from the edge of the river, the one and only time I ventured too far from home.

Lyle was so cross that I’d gone exploring without her, but the pink stone was worth her wrath, and the reminder of the ferocity that Lyle kept in check until pushed. A rare sight after that.

A teacup, the most beautiful shade of blue.

Dark and rich and speckled with feathered lines that spread over the cup and mar the surface.

No one would want to buy a single cup, but I loved the colour, so Lyle let me keep it.

I was too afraid that putting anything hot inside it would crack the fissures, and I’d lose it forever.

So, I fashioned it into a small vase for dried flowers that I’d pick in the glade down the path from the house.

The final item was a small leaf-shaped metal brooch.

Only I never wore it as one. It was a deep green with red and gold undertones.

Pretty but unusual. A stranger had come into the shop when I was small, talked with Lyle and traded a few things, but left this on the table.

He gave me the oddest look before leaving, and my little fingers couldn’t resist grabbing for the item he discarded as if he meant it for me.

The man still visits maybe once or twice a year, and I now know him as Kalan, a friend of Lyle’s.

He’s never asked for the brooch back, and Lyle, in turn, hasn’t asked about it either, even though she sees it whenever she comes to wake me.

After my appraisal, I listen to the house, but it’s silent in response, no telltale signs or sounds from Lyle, and I watch the darkness grow, encompassing my room, only the pale light of the moon creeping through the window, telling me how late it is.

Lyle hasn’t come to check on me. Despite my being an adult, she still always says goodnight.

Always.

I’m too tired to ask the questions I want to, and confusion and hurt weigh me down, so I let sleep wash over me, staring at the items that I kept for myself, wondering if there’s an answer to what’s happening to me.

“Ever! Please, wake up. Come on.”

Somewhere at the back of my mind, I can hear someone calling my name, but I am somewhere dark. Somewhere deep, and it’s too much of a struggle to move.

A gentle rock, back and forth, and then suddenly, there is blinding light and flashes of so many pictures I can’t follow them, searing into my mind. Burning.

“Ever!”

I open my eyes, and it all drops away, replaced with the familiar outline of my room. Lyle stands in the corner. Her arms crossed over her chest as if she were fighting to keep them there. “We have to go. Now.”

She turns and heads down the stairs, the creak on the step telling me where she is in the house.

“Wait!” I scamper after her, my limbs heavy and uncoordinated as I try to rush. “Lyle, please. It’s not even dawn. Where are we going?” I force my mind to string the question together.

“I thought you’d be safe. You’re nearly twenty, and there have been no other signs.”

“What? Signs of what?” Was she talking about yesterday?

“Come on. We have to leave. If we’re lucky, there’ll be time.

” She busies herself, grabbing items off the shelf of the small kitchen and then heading back into the main room where we keep the goods for sale and trade, the mess still evident.

She assesses the room in the gloom, a solitary candle the only light, and puts a few things into a satchel before going back to the kitchen again.

“Where are we going?” I ask, my voice quivering.

“The Court. It’s the only place,” she mutters while her attention stays on her tasks.