Page 22 of Stars Above the Never Sea (The Last Faeyte #1)

Chapter fifteen

Callan

L eo tugs on Merrick’s hand. “ Please .”

Amused, Merrick waves him off. “All right, all right. Give an old man a moment, Leo. I just finished eating. Clear the deck for me and we’ll see.”

Letting out a small whoop of excitement, Leo darts around, picking up everyone’s bowls. He hesitates in front of Selene, but she only picks up her empty bowl and holds it out to him. “Thank you, Leo.”

The blush is still in his cheeks when he reaches me. Ducking when I ruffle his hair, he staggers off with his arms full of dishes

My eyes drift. The flames of the hearth still flicker, lower than they were an hour ago and casting dancing shadows over the faces of everyone around me.

Esme sits in the space between Rio’s knees, her head against his chest as his back rests against a wooden stool.

She rolls her eyes when she sees me watching. “Stop fussing. You’re as bad as he is.”

My lips twitch before I move on. Sol looks more relaxed than he did an hour ago, lounging on his stool and rocking it back with his feet. He catches my eye. “You good?”

Nodding, I shift. The boar stew Merrick made for dinner to use up the fresh meat hasn’t dampened the metallic taste in my mouth, but I’m used to it. Moving on, I settle on her.

She runs her fingers over the leather, not paying attention to us at all. Her knees are pulled up against her chest where she sits on the floor, the boots that fit her perfectly coming over them to just below her thighs.

I wonder what she’s thinking. Selene’s face gives nothing away, her eyes too foreign to be easily readable. But she traces the pads of her fingers over those leather trousers, again and again.

“I’m back!” Leo’s shout startles her enough that she jumps, her fingers closing into a fist as she looks to him. He almost dances around the hearth toward Merrick. “Now? Please?”

Merrick’s weathered face creases indulgently. “Fine. Which one?”

Leo purses his lips, his face scrunched up in concentration. “Endymion. Or… no . The origin? Can you do that one? And then Endymion.”

My eyes slip to Selene again, almost without thought. Rio interjects before I can address the question on her parted lips. “Merrick is an excellent storyteller.”

“Was,” Merrick corrects him. But he hesitates. “I was a Traveler in my youth.”

Selene straightens, attention sharpening as she focuses on him. “You spoke at the hearth of Asteria?”

“Several times.” We lose him for a moment, his eyes shifting somewhere else.

“It was a great privilege. I spent many months there, learning from Erena. She was kind enough to teach me some of the old stories. And there were others. Friends. I did not wish to leave, when it was time to move on. But all things must come to an end.”

There is no hiding the emotion that crosses her face in that moment. The yearning. Painful enough that I drop my eyes. “Erena was my tutor.”

Merrick almost smiles, but it slips away. “She was relatively new to her Calling when I arrived in Asteria. It was many, many years ago. None taught me better, before or since.”

He takes in her face. Turning back to Leo, he holds up his hands. “The origin it is, then.”

Salt-cracked wood groans softly under my feet, Volatus creaking beneath the weight she carries. As Merrick prepares himself, I look up to the sky, taking it in. The tapestry of stars above our heads glimmer against the mirrored water below, endless and jeweled within the vast pitch-black night.

None of us speak. None would dare to interrupt.

Each of us settles back, and my eyes lower to Merrick as he straightens.

Raising his hands, he stares into the flames until his eyes begin to glow a soft red, shades of amber and yellow warring for space.

Glowing embers on a cold night. Leo backs up into me, and I pull him down until he leans against my side, eyes agog.

And in front of us, the flames begin to sputter and grow. Sparks travel up, dancing and twisting into the darkness of the Ellas sky as Merrick begins to speak, the hushed words traveling to each of us as if his words are for our ears alone.

“Once, there was only endless darkness. An eternity we know as Ellas .”

He swipes his hand. The flames drop instantly, leaving glowing embers behind.

“The sky god, Caelum, had spent an eternity in that darkness. He travelled alone, always alone, and over his eternity of isolation, he had grown so very lonely.”

A flame flickers and jumps, weaving into a single silhouette that splits into two figures.

“The sky god took a thread of his own power, and he molded and twisted it until he created a silhouette different to his own. He gave her breath from his own lungs, eyes from the deepest depths of the night, and hair of the softest, ethereal light. Caelum created seven moons in order for him to see his goddess, and as a gift, he gave her dominion over those moons. And finally, he gave to her the craving he felt so deeply—to be loved , and adored, so she might feel as he did and never leave him alone in the darkness again.”

My gaze travels, almost despite myself. It lands on eyes that reflect the sky above us. Eyes of light, the stars within them shifting as Selene watches Merrick, leaning forward to listen. She pays me no attention, as deeply entranced by the low cadence of his words as I have always been.

And yet I find myself watching her instead.

“He named his goddess Hala. And at first, he knew only happiness, where for so long there had been only inertia. Hala brought Caelum light, filling his dark sky with stars that scattered across the endless void. And so Caelum followed his goddess wherever she chose to go, enthralled with this creation he had built to love him.”

The figures entwine, wrapping around each other before splitting apart, circling the other.

“But Hala grew tired,” Merrick murmurs. “She had only Caelum for company, and she desired more. Always, more. She grew listless, and bored, and begged him for companionship. And when he refused, for he needed nothing more than her, her light began to fade, until it threatened to go out. Leaving him in darkness once more.”

Across the flames, Selene’s eyes glimmer. Merrick tilts his head. “Desperate to bring Hala back to his side, Caelum took more of his power, pulling at those threads, and created something new.”

A small ball of flames forms in the center of the hearth. It flips, twists, growing in size and raising up. Merrick lifts his hands, and the ball raises above our heads, spinning on a single axis and illuminating our faces.

“He created a world.” Merrick’s voice deepens. “A world for Hala to watch over from the safety of Ellas. She was pleased with this gift, and in his hubris, he wished for more of her gratitude.”

Flames spit. One, and then more. Many. “And so, he created the Caelumnai. He molded them, gave them life, and set them down upon the world, all for the pleasure of his goddess. They worshipped him, and in return, he rewarded those he favored with gifts of maegis.”

The dozens of flames lift, rising up as if they would engulf us. “Those without Caelum’s favor, untouched by the maegis, became known as inritus. They left the Caelumnai behind, finding new land and building the territories we know as Terrosa. And so, the world grew. And Hala and Caelum watched.”

“Hala was enthralled with our world.” Merrick grows louder.

His hand sweeps, and more flames join those above us.

“But she envied Caelum the worship he received from his Caelumnai, and wished for her own acolytes.

So she took a piece of her own power, of the power Caelum had given her, and she created her own priestesses.

She built the faeytes in her own image, shaped them with the light of the stars and the shimmer of the final moon, and she set them down on a small island of moonlight and mist that they named Asteria.

“She blessed her faeytes with gifts of their own. She blessed them with souls that craved the light , just as their goddess did. They loved, and they laughed, and they felt more deeply than anything that world had seen before. To hold the love of a faeyte became a thing of legend, and as word spread, many traveled to Asteria in an attempt to be chosen as their mate.”

“That’s you .” Leo’s excited hiss has me glancing down. He points at Selene theatrically.

She raises her eyebrows. “So I see.”

I hide my smile in my hand as Merrick’s arms lower. The flames die down to leave burning embers once again. And his words grow heavier.

“Many years passed. Many lives, born and lived and ended. Hala grieved for each and every loss, calling their spirits home to Ellas. The sky grew bright with a million stars. A million souls. And as that time passed, she became more and more obsessed with the world Caelum had built for her. He tried to draw her face to his, to win back the love he could feel fading, but she would not look away. And when the time came, it was almost inevitable.”

Another figure rises from the embers. “Hala fell in love with one of Caelum’s creations.

She saw the inritus male, Endymion, and could not look away.

She saw the way he searched the sky each night, his yearning for something more calling to her own, and she took human form and went to him despite Caelum’s pleas to stay.

He begged her on his knees not to leave him alone once more, but she could see nothing but the love she held in her heart for Endymion. ”

Heat threatens to singe my cheeks as a wall of fire leaps up, devouring the figures. Leo’s quiet gasp is the only sound aside from Merrick’s rising timbre.

“And from the Ellas sky, Caelum raged . He raged, and he vowed retribution on this worthless male who had dared to steal the love of his goddess. He hunted Endymion down, and he killed him with a bolt of lightning before taking Hala back to Ellas.”

The third flame sputters, and extinguishes.

“Caelum refused Endymion entrance to Ellas and created a barrier in the sky so that Hala could never leave him again. He vowed the two would be forever parted. Caelum believed that Hala would forget Endymion in time, that she would remember his love for her and return to his arms.”

Darkness. Only a single flame remains. It falls in a graceful curve to curl itself against the bed of ash.

“Hala’s grief was endless,” Merrick says, his voice nearly imperceptible.

All of us lean forward to hear. “She begged Caelum to relent, to allow Endymion to take his place amongst the stars. When he refused, she grew cold, and distant. The love in her heart turned to anger, as it so often does. Hala vowed that Caelum would never know her love again, and to spare her faeytes the agony she felt from a broken heart, she reached down into the world.”

A hundred small flickers around the folded figure. Merrick’s fingers dance between the flames, twisting. “And she stripped the love from their hearts. Between one heartbeat and the next, the Faeytes ceased to love .”

A crack in his voice. “And the world was darker for the loss of those bright hearts.”

Merrick snaps his fingers. In a moment, we’re plunged into darkness.

“The faeytes withdrew,” Merrick’s quiet words fill my ears as if he’s standing at my shoulder.

“They hid behind the walls of Asteria, grieving a loss they could no longer recognize. They turned away from those who had loved them, unable to bear the weight of expectation that they could no longer meet. And as a hundred years passed, they turned their attention to learning. To healing. To the Callings gifted by their goddess, clinging to them in a world that had turned so cold, so suddenly. And it was almost inevitable that they too would grow colder.”

A hundred years.

“What then?” Leo is leaning forward, straining to see. “What happened then?”

But it’s not Merrick who answers.