Page 32 of Stars Above the Never Sea (The Last Faeyte #1)

“You were so fast .” Callan shakes his head. His golden throat flexes. “You truly flew that day, Selene. You might not have been able to use your wings, but you flew faster than anyone who tried to catch you. I ran as fast as I could, but I still couldn’t keep up with you.”

Run , my sisters had said. Do not stop.

And I had not stopped.

“There was a situation,” Callan says quietly. “I stopped to help, just for a few moments. But they cost me. I got there just as you fell.”

His hands spread, almost helpless. “It means nothing, I know. It doesn’t matter. It didn’t change a single damned thing about what happened to you. I’m not trying to claim otherwise. It’s just…”

Once again, I can’t breathe. But it is not mud cutting off my air. “Just what?”

Callan meets my eyes. “You said you were alone. While you were sleeping, just now. You said it a few times. And I just wanted you to know that you were not alone. Not for that.”

He steps back. One hand reaches, rubbing at the back of his neck. “I hope the bath helps.”

But my mind is caught by his words.

Not alone.

I had felt so, so alone in those last moments on the dock, with them all there. Laughing, and reaching for me with metal hands. Alone in my fear and my rage, as I had screamed out at them in wordless anguish.

But I wasn’t alone. Callan was there. Even if I didn’t know it, he was there .

He had tried.

My feet cross the room before I can think, and I wrap my fingers around his arm as he turns away. The warm muscle flexes as he stops, his hand on the door and his head lowered.

“You were wrong.” I search his face. “It matters. To me, it matters.”

“I’m glad,” he says hoarsely. “I should get back up there. Check in on everything.”

“Of course.” Long seconds pass before I pull my fingers away from his skin.

And I sense the warmth of him even after he’s gone. As the door swings open, Esme jumps back, clutching the items in her hands to her chest. “Gods, you scared me. Why were you standing there? Are you alright?”

I rub my fingers together. My stomach flutters. “I don’t know.”

***

Esme rests her head back on the edge of the barrel, her arms wrapped around her knees. “Gods, this is bliss. I thought I’d be more filth than anything else until we reached Asteria.”

I push through the last button on another of Callan’s shirts. I had opened the chest at the end of his bed to find a small stack, neatly folded with slices already made down the back, and a note in scrawling calligraphy. Use these.

My cheeks still feel the warmth from earlier as I turn to her, tugging my damp hair out of the shirt’s collar.

My eyes snag on the soap I brought with me.

It sits on the bedside table—still unused, I realize.

That faint, spiced scent coming from Callan’s shirt lingers on my own skin now. “Would you like me to rinse your hair?”

She groans. “Yes. Please. If you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind.” I use the crate to kneel, and she hands me the flagon.

Esme sighs as I tilt her head back, then dip the flagon into the water and pour it over her hair before carefully sliding my finger into the wet curls to massage her scalp. “You’re good at this. There’s wild hazel oil on the bed that I use.”

My lips tilt up. Collecting the oil, I follow her murmured instructions and pour a small pool into my hands, massaging them together before running my fingers through her curls, teasing them into individual springs. “My sisters used to do this for me. They taught me to do the same.”

Nyx in particular had a penchant for having her hair washed, until she had grown impatient with the tangled strands and cut it off in one impulsive sweep using Deva’s shears.

Esme’s eyes crack open. “I lost my sister on the day of the Shift. Myra. She was in one of the ships that didn’t make it to the dock.

My parents too. Everyone, really. Of all of us, none of our families made it through.

Rio had a cousin on the dock, but he threw himself in to try to save some of the fallen. ”

I pause. “I’m sorry.”

She sighs. “You don’t have to say that, but I appreciate it. Not after what the Caelumnai did to you.”

I consider it. “I can still have empathy for your loss, while grieving my own. Grief touches us all, one way or another. It would be foolish to believe that mine somehow means more than yours, no matter how it occurred.”

I am not such a fool as to think that every man, woman and child from Boreas was responsible for the loss of my sisters.

Perhaps I might have thought that, once.

For a long time, I had pictured the Caelumnai as a seething, moving mass that swallowed us up so easily.

I had pictured us as lights, winking out one by one.

That’s how they appeared in my nightmares. As a dark, unending force, creeping over Asteria, smothering us until I woke up screaming and fighting to free myself from tangled, sweat-soaked sheets.

The reality, I am learning, is not so simple.

“Such a waste,” Esme says quietly. “All of it. For what, in the end?”

I study her damp curls, plastered against her head, before rinsing them again and repeating the oil. “Will you tell me more about Asteria? What to expect?”

Her eyes glance up at me. Bright, vivid violet. Although there’s no shifting of her iris, no sign of the maegis that sits dormant. “Of course. How much has Callan told you?”

“Not much.”

She clicks her tongue, and the water sloshes slightly as she fidgets.

“The old King died that day too. And the Queen. Petyr was crowned the following day, once the Never had settled and we knew that none could have survived. He set up a military camp close to the forests, and the remains of the court in the…”

Her voice trails off. I fill in the gap. “In the temple.”

“Yes. There’s a new wall which separates the camp and the temple. Petyr calls it the castle, though.” She twists again, turning to face me and making water slosh everywhere. “I’m sorry, Selene. It’s strange, telling you this.”

Explaining my home to me as if I am a stranger.

My breathing, somehow, remains steady. “What of the town?”

Esme runs wet hands over her face. “I need to be dressed for this conversation. Pass me the sheet.”

She climbs out, grabbing for her clothes and dragging them on over wet skin. I stay where I am, kneeling on the crate. Her hand touches my shoulder. “Sit down. Please.”

Numbly, I follow her to the bed.

She curls her legs underneath her, slim fingers picking at a loose thread.

“The village remains as it was. We had to build some additional homes to fit those who remained, at least at first, until Petyr gave new orders for the military. Materials became scarce quickly, but we’ve done what we could. ”

“Because of the Never,” I say softly. Esme nods.

“There is no access, in or out. Callan is the only one who can get through, and with the strain it puts on him, every time is a risk.”

My brows draw together. “Could he not have evacuated everyone in stages? Taken a handful with every trip?”

“It was a possibility, at least at first.” Esme sighs.

“But he could never have taken us all, and it caused a lot of problems. Fighting, power struggles, bribery, over who would be the first. Eventually Petyr stepped in, and said either all would leave, or none, and it was too much of a risk in any case. Our priority had to be bringing goods in to protect who was left and finding a way to fix the Never. It’s been that way for years. ”

“Is there no other gerent? Nobody else who can cast like Callan?”

Her lips part. “They died , Selene. All of them.”

Gods. So much loss. “In the Shift.”

But she shakes her head. “Not then, but after. We built as many ships as we could, some barely more than boats, trying to replace what had been lost with what we had to hand. Gerent were the rarest class even then, but we had thirty-seven wielders left. The test fleet barely made it a hundred feet before the first fell either to the pretium, or to their own maegis limitations. And then more. It turned to pandemonium as we watched from the shore. Some turned around there and then, trying to make it back and falling feet from the dock. Others went for Terrosa, trying to get to freedom before the pretium hit them.”

She swallows. “It was chaos. Of those thirty-eight, only a handful even made it to Terrosa. Some of them died there, leaving four to attempt the journey back. Three of them died on the dock from the pretium. The only one who has ever been able to manage that journey, and the cost, is Callan. But the weight grows heavier each time. We hoped we might come across more gerent in Terrosa over the years, but we never have.”

I sit back, shoulders slumping, trying to digest her words. “It seems too high a risk to me, unless for an emergency. Why take the risk at all?”

Asteria is more than self-sufficient to manage food production. In our years there, we had never relied on imports or trade. Everything we needed, our goddess had gifted us. “The land is generous. Is there a lack of skill to farm it?”

Esme’s mouth opens. She shakes her head. “Gods. You really… of course, you wouldn’t know.”

“I think we’ve established that I know nothing. Better to work on that assumption.” I run my fingers through my still mostly wet hair, suddenly annoyed by the tangles.

“Selene.” She almost whispers it. “I’m so sorry. But Asteria is dying.”

My lips part, but nothing comes out.

“What do you mean?” I manage eventually. The words sound strangled, forcing their way through the growing lump in my throat.

Esme reaches for the silken strips she brought with her, wrapping them around her hair to gently squeeze out the water. “You know why we left Boreas?”

Because their land was dying. “I heard the Caelumnai had used too much maegis. That it started to pull from the land.”