Page 52 of The Song of Sunrise (The Prentice Teller #1)

“What do you mean your eyes glowed? Without a channeling ring on?” Her round green eyes crinkle with concern.

“Yes,” I start, then decide right then that I’m going to share with her the whole truth. “I’m a Starwatcher.”

Ramona gasps, and one of the daggers she was flipping in her hand drops to the ground. She never drops her daggers. “Holy fuck! What? There hasn’t been a Starwatcher in—”

“—fifty years.”

“That’s amazing and also terrifying.” Ramona’s large eyes somehow become more round. “My dad has told me about Starwatchers. They are usually gobbled up at first chance by the Elders to run missions, uncover secrets, all sorts of sketchy shit that usually ends up with them injured or dead.”

“That’s reassuring,” I say flatly.

Ramona stops herself before sharing more. “I mean, I just… I’m glad you told me, but Akemi, you’ll want to be really careful about this.”

“That’s what Atlys said too. He doesn’t think I should tell anyone.”

Ramona huffs out a laugh. “I might have to agree with the giant Underling Lord on this one.”

I slump forward, resting my elbows on my knees, suddenly feeling so tired from the ride back to the Watch. “Do you think I should tell Leaf or Castor?”

“Honestly, I’m not sure. Leaf is such a gossip, and Castor’s father is, well… you know.”

My gut coils with the fact of holding more secrets from my friends, but if it keeps them safe, I’ll do it. “Let’s keep this between us for now. Atlys is going to try his best to teach me how to connect to the source intrinsically.”

As if he was listening in for his master’s name, Nightmare bounds through the wall. Ramona shrieks and unsheaths two daggers from who knows where.

Nightmare ignores Ramona and nudges his nose on my hand.

I offer my palm tentatively. An icy zipping sensation resonates from his nose as he touches my palm.

An image of the starry sky, forest, and two large rocks atop a hill appears.

I know this place; it’s near the eastern side of the Watch a short distance away.

In the image, the moon was full and bright, raised high in the sky.

I don’t need a note to understand the message and who it was from. Meet me here tonight.

“Thank you, Nightmare.” I scratch him under the chin, and a delightful chirping sound escapes before he bounds off into the wall.

“I don’t know how you’ve gotten used to that.” Ramona shivers and flicks her daggers back into their mysterious sheaths. She smirks at my look of confusion.

“What? A girl can never have enough daggers.” She twists her wide mouth into a saccharine smile.

I pull my cloak tighter, fighting the wind as I make my way toward the meeting spot. The clouds pull together above, leaving only small patches of the starry blackness beyond. My boots slip softly into the snow. This area of trails is not often used, unlike the western paths leading to Olwythion.

As I crest the top of the trail through the woods, I feel a sense of recognition from Nightmare’s message.

Surrounded by trees towering over a hundred feet tall is a small clearing.

A dark pile of blankets and furs sits in the middle.

Even in the darkness, his shape is unmistakable.

Atlys lies with his head propped under his arms. His eyes are closed and his chin is slightly raised upward as if he is basking in the sun, but instead.

the moonlight gently outlines his profile like dew.

The rhythm in my chest quickens despite the respite from my earlier climb up the trail.

His beauty is unmistakable. Even relaxed and unguarded, there is a powerful and distinctly un-human aura about him.

I take a step closer, and his head turns toward me like a flower bending toward the sun.

His eyes snap open and his silver irises lock on mine.

“There you are,” he says so low I swear I feel the slightest trembling of the ground.

“Atlys,” I whisper back. Though my thoughts are normally spiraling, all I can muster in the utter silence of my mind is his name. It’s as if the quiet winter night stole all sounds from around us, even my own thoughts.

“Please, join me.” He unfolds the corner of the furs. “I wouldn’t want my champion to get a cold.”

I clear my throat. Champion. Right. I force my feet to take me forward until I’m pulling myself under the blankets.

This close, I can feel the heat radiating off him.

I start leaning back, readying myself to look up at the sky as we did last time, but before my head can hit the furs, Atlys reaches his arm out as a pillow.

That is, if you can count resting on an extremely large, firm bicep as a pillow.

I try to mask my face to indifference, but my racing pulse gives me away.

“Let’s start where we left off last time,” Atlys says, a hint of a smile in his tone. “Extend your presence upward to the stars. Start by just feeling them.”

A cluster of stars twinkle through one of the open patches of clouds.

Even now, with only a few stars visible, I feel so small.

So… insignificant. Not in a demeaning way, but in more of an acceptance.

That I’m here in this place and time, and yet, these ancient lights so distant above are also here and now.

All of my memories, my life, miniscule compared to the history those glimmering lights have witnessed.

I attempt to push my consciousness upward, imagining a hand reaching straight from my chest into the air above me, stretching and stretching, but I’m grasping at air. I let out a huff of breath, and my tether to the stars snaps like a broken lute string.

“You can do this,” Atlys says. “You are a Starwatcher, Akemi. Your abilities are untested, untrained, and likely more vast than we can imagine. This is just the first step. Give yourself ten seconds. If you cannot ground yourself, touch here.” He brushes a finger along the inside of my wrist. An iridescent tattoo appears in its wake, as if an invisible painter brushed the geometric pattern onto my body.

“What is this?” I say, watching as the tattoo fades and disappears into the pale skin of my wrist.

“It is a piece of my magic. Coming from one of the deepest layers of this world, it should ground you.”

“Thank you” doesn’t feel sufficient enough, but I say it anyway. “This is too much… thank you.”

His chest reverberates with a low grumble, almost like purring. “I should have done it sooner, but now that you have a piece of the Core, you will hopefully find your way back here if you get lost in the stars.”

Back here to him . Even without the anchor in my wrist, I would feel a tug to him.

My eyebrows pull together and I try again, this time working faster to reach beyond the place my cord snapped previously.

I feel the string pull upward, so distant and so delicate.

Carefully, I ascend. My eyelids open wider, and I know for certain that they must be glowing gold like the other night.

And then, I feel them.

All at once like curious eyes blinking in the distance, all turned toward me. It’s not a single string, but a web! Sensing the presence of the star closest to me, I tug myself closer to it. Just as the corners of my vision begin to fill with an image, I’m falling.

I gasp and sit up. Tears stream from my face, and my whole body is trembling.

“I am here. You are safe.” Atlys pulls me onto his lap.

“How long was I out for?”

“Only a couple of moments.” His thumb absentmindedly circles my wrist.

“I think that was the furthest I’ve gotten with my control,” I watch as his thumb circles once more. “It is… hard to describe what I saw up there. Each star is linked to another, like a web.”

“Are we not all linked in some way?”

“I suppose we are. Each memory is a result of an action, each choice with its own set of reactions, linked to one another with no beginning or end.”

“A circle,” he purrs, then lifts my wrist to his mouth, planting a soft kiss in the spot where his thumb was previously.

My whole body clenches at his touch. His lips sear into the memory of my skin. Once my trembles subside, I adjust so we are next to one another once more.

“I want to try one more time.”

“I’ll be right here.”

There is comfort in knowing Atlys is next to me, like an anchor to a wayward ship. I drift up again, this time getting to the web much quicker. Around me, the stars pulse with ancient power, magnificent and all seeing.

There. The same star blinks at me, its presence the same one I tried to connect with earlier.

I don’t know how I know, but I do. There is a sort of familiarity with it.

I glide down the string closer to the star, slower this time as I approach.

My vision flashes suddenly with a scene of an oak tree.

Two people are pressed against one another at the base, kissing feverishly.

The man begins sucking on the woman’s neck, and she moans, tipping her head up in ecstasy.

I step away, trying to give them privacy, only to fall backward, down and down and down.

“I saw something!” I gasp. My body is trembling like before, but I know what to expect this time. “A beautiful tree, with turning leaves. Two people were underneath the canopy kiss—” I stop myself and blush.

Atlys turns on his side to study me, strands of his white hair falling forward to shade his eyes. “See something you like?”

I just admire him for a moment, the sharp angles of his nose and chin and his full lips tilting up on one side. “Yes.” I do see something I like. A bold strike of courage fuels my next words before I think too much. “Can we stay here for a while longer?”

We lie on the pile of furs for a while, gazing at one another, measuring the passage of time by the lazy hoots of an owl in the distance or the dainty flakes of snow now falling around us.

Does he see me as differently as I do him?

So otherworldly and opposite of what I should be attracted to, and yet it is his face I think of at night.

After a while, I adjust to my other side, facing away from him.

Atlys drapes a heavy arm around my waist and pulls me closer instinctually, but then freezes, likely realizing his movements.

The space between us charges with energy, an unanswered question in the air.

I move closer until we are flush, feeling the firm muscles of his chest and abs as well as another, very large , firm area pressing into my ass.

Despite his clear interest in me, Atlys doesn’t make any advances, only holding me until I feel myself begin to rest. And, inexplicably, I feel safe.

I almost laugh at the thought. The most dangerous Underworld Lord makes me feel safe, like the warm kiss of the sunrays after a long winter’s night.

Something his people haven’t been allowed to see for the past one hundred years because of old biases and treaties.

“Do you miss the sunlight?” I ask.

“Not anymore.”

“Why?”

Atlys pushes the hair away from my neck with his chin, the short stubble from his jaw scratching against my skin, and my toes curl. His lips brush against my earlobe as he whispers, “Because I have you, my Sunrise.”