Page 61 of Shattered Stars

“Huh?” I say. I don’t think he has a temperature, but now that I think about it, he ate his breakfast with a lot less enthusiasm this morning.

“He’s lovesick, Rhi. He’s pining for Cliff.”

Pip’s head pops up at the mention of that name and he grunts again.

“Who’s Cliff?”

“Nonny’s pup.”

I stare at my oldest friend. “Seriously?” Pip sighs again and his body droops. “Jeez,” I mutter.

“Ah ha!” Winnie calls out. “She found it!”

“Found what?”

“The old book of fairytales.” She holds the book up to show me the cover – leather and battered with a faded gilded title. “This historian, Grace Emilie, collected them all together in the last century. They say she traveled up and down the country listening to the stories mothers told their daughters, fathers their sons, grandparents their grandchildren, and wrote them all down in this book.” Winnie glides her hand across the cover. “This copy’s been in our family for years. Nonny says, when her own mom was a child, her mom used to read it to her.”

She flicks through the pages and colorful illustrations streak before my eyes.

“Why did she send it to you?” I ask, coming to lean against Winnie’s desk so I can get a better look.

“Because I asked her to. There’s this story in here …” She continues to flick through the pages. “I couldn’t quite remember what it was called … Ahh, here!” The book falls open in her lap and she runs her fingers over the swirly calligraphy of the title. “Queen Æðelflæd and her five knights.”

“Right,” I say, my eyes trailing over the rest of the page. “And why–”

“When you were asking me the other day, remember, about fated mates, you asked me if there were ever cases of magicals with more than one fated mate and this is one. Queen Æðelflæd had five fated mates.”

“I don’t know the story.”

“You don’t?” Winnie says with a grin. She points to my desk chair and I wheel it over and sit beside her. She flicks over the page to a double-spread illustration. “This was one of my favorite pictures in the book when I was little. I used to stare at it for hours.” Winnie points to the elegant-looking woman in the center of the page. “This is Queen Æðelflæd. See how she’s dressed in armor and not some fancy ball gown. That’s because she was a warrior queen. With the help of her five knights, she banished all the monsters from the land, and saved the people from the darkness.”

I stare at the face of the woman. The artist had given her a beautiful face, her features soft and delicate, but there’s a steely look in her golden eyes, and she grips a sword in both her hands.

“Who were her mates?” I ask, examining the faces of five men circling the figure of the woman.

“Now, let me see,” Winnie says, tapping her finger on the page. “There was the prince – see this one?” She points to a young-looking man, his hair as golden as the crown he wears on his head. “The Scholar.” She points to a man with a book inhis hands. “He was my favorite. Then … the huntsman and the shifter.”

“The shifter? Well, there you go. It is all make-believe. There are no such things as shifters.”

“There are werebeasts though, aren’t there?” Winnie says, not looking up from the page.

I gaze back at the illustration. “And who is he? The last one.” He’s dressed in a dark brown robe, a hood pulled over his head.

“The monk. He’s the one who saved Æðelflæd.”

“Saved her?”

“The story goes that magicals were few and far between back then and when the village discovered that Æðelflæd had unusual powers and abilities, they called her a witch and sentenced her to burn on the stake.” I gasp, my eyes returning to the woman. “It was the monk who rescued her and took her away.”

“You said she was a queen.”

“She rose to be one.”

I stare at the woman and the five men, the blood in my ears ringing. “A wheel,” I say. “She’s their core. That’s how Stone and Azlan explained it?”

Winnie tsks. “This is why boys need to read fairytales too, Rhi. It’s not a wheel. It’s a star. See?” She hovers her finger above the illustration, drawing colorful lines in the air, connecting the queen to her five knights and they to each of them. “A star.”

I gaze down at the shape until the lines fade away.