Page 18 of Where the Shadows Land (Garden of Hope #1)

ASTORIA

A storia’s throat tightened as Mairuk stomped out of sight.

She clutched the doorway with a white-knuckle grip until their thundering footsteps vanished in the distance.

She straightened her spine and squeezed her eyes closed.

Astoria couldn’t cry over this. The tears welled in her eyes all the same, one falling free and burning down her cheek.

Her stomach dropped and flipped low in her belly as heat scorched her cheeks.

She choked on the shame that twisted her tongue with venom she didn’t mean to spew.

A moment of weakness. A single moment where Astoria dared to reach for any feeling other than misery or anger led her to making the worst mistake of her life.

She wanted the monster. She begged Mairuk to put their hands on and inside of her body.

Astoria burned for them in the way a married woman should only ever desire her husband, and yet the terrible beauty of Mairuk drew her in like flies to honey.

Gods above and below, why am I like this?

Astoria had never been her own biggest supporter.

She was always too sensitive, too soft, too stupid.

Everything was a crisis. It remained that way her entire life.

After Damien died, Astoria allowed the simmering self-hate and shame to consume and devour her whole.

Astoria never hated herself more than she did at that moment.

Visceral and raw, Astoria drowned in the twisting emotions that rushed through her veins.

Damien, her beautiful, kind Damien, deserved a better wife.

A better woman. He deserved someone who would remain loyal to him until her dying breath.

One who would keep her soul pure enough to rejoin him in Her Holy Light.

Damien deserved a wife who wouldn’t dishonor his memory by throwing herself at a near-stranger to climb out of the grief.

Astoria’s grief was her love. The grief was proof that she was a good wife, loyal and true to the love of her existence.

She suffered because she missed him. Missing him meant she loved him.

He was the only one she ever truly loved, the only one who had all of her body, heart, mind, and soul.

Damien was the other half of her soul, the reason she breathed, the answer to the song in her heart.

His touch soothed her worries and fears.

His voice was safety. Damien’s embrace was her home, the only one that ever mattered to her.

She took her oaths to the man she loved and tarnished them, tarnished herself, with great sins.

Sharing her body with another, especially a monster, the enemy of mankind was an insult to their love and his memory.

Astoria deserved to suffer. She deserved the pain, the misery, and the lonely aches in her body.

That was the cost of love. She was one of the lucky ones.

She found love and happiness, something many searched their whole lives for. Astoria found it in Damien and Inara.

They both died, and so did her mortal happiness.

If she behaved, if she didn’t let the Orsea slip again, and she didn’t continue to debase herself, Astoria would enter Soleil’s Holy Light and be with her family again.

Her family would become whole as long as she made it through the rest of her mortal life on the straight and narrow.

Astoria was close to thirty. If she was lucky by anyone else’s standard, she only needed to live alone for fifty more years .

What did fifty years of solitude matter up against an eternity in the arms of her soul mate? What were fifty years if it meant she got to hold her daughter again? Would prayer be enough for Soleil to grant forgiveness, or had Astoria finally crossed a line that she couldn’t return from?

Astoria bolted inside and gathered every candle she could find.

She swept her arms across her worktable and knocked everything to the ground.

Her tools clattered against the wood floor.

She placed the candles like Blythe taught her and placed the amulet of Soleil she always kept in her pack between them.

Astoria lit the candles and spoke the Calling Prayers from memory alone.

The candles before her gleamed brightly.

Golden light brushed against her skin in a wave as gentle as the brush of a spring breeze.

The Orsea in Astoria’s blood prickled with an awareness of something Other, not of the world she lived in.

Something separate from the Spirit that fed Mieotsy and her magic.

Alien, yet familiar. Divine in the purest understanding Astoria had.

“Great Goddess, I come to your Light to take my sins from the shadows. Please forgive me. I have lost myself in the darkness and made many mistakes.” Astoria’s voice cracked with emotion.

The prayer fell from her lips and poured straight from her heart into a puddle at the feet of a Goddess.

“Forgive me. Forgive me for forgetting my vows. Forgive me for not being as pious as I should. Forgive me for not being good enough. I swear to you, Goddess, I have tried. I keep reaching for your light, but I can’t find it. ”

The candles flickered to the left, right, then stilled, as if waiting for her to continue.

“I’m lost in the dark, lost in grief. I know I’m lucky to have loved so much.

It’s a blessing that I conceived Inara at all, and I know it was a gift to carry a soul so pure all she needed was a body to visit until she passed into Your Eternal Light.

I know all of this, but it hurts, Goddess.

My heart aches and I’m starting to believe it won’t ever stop. ”

The tears fell freely from Astoria’s eyes. Her voice was full of the ache she swallowed each morning and suffocated on each night. She prayed for light before, but it never felt like this. Here, far away from the temples and laws of kings, she poured her soul on the table and sobbed her truth.

“Please, please, please, grant me Your Light. Please. I’m so tired of feeling like this.

My life has been nothing but pain for two years and I’m so sorry I reached for someone I should not have, that I broke my vows.

I’m sorry I used my magic when I know it is a sin in the eyes of all Four Gods.

Lady Light, I am not strong enough to keep living like this.

I am so scared of failing you. I beg you with everything that I have in me to please heal my soul in Your Light.

Please help me bind this wicked magic. I promise I can be good.

I promise I will be your most devoted worshiper. Please. Please help me!”

The candles whooshed out all at once, and the sunny winter day outside turned overcast. Thick, dense clouds blocked out the sun, and with it, the Goddess’ sight.

Chills pricked against her skin and the tethers holding her heart together snapped.

The gentlest touch of a warm breeze over her shoulder ruffled Astoria’s hair.

“You are not mine, and I am not yours.”

Astoria did not hear the words with her ears, but deep within her soul.

The cutting of a string, the release of a long held breath.

The sense of falling came over her followed by the sharp, icy sting of abandonment and the endless gray of loss.

She clutched the amulet in her shaking hands.

“Please. Please. Please don’t go. Please. Please help me.”

The amulet turned cold in her grip. The temperature dropped lower and lower until ice bit at her skin.

Astoria dropped the pendant and stared at it.

Her eyes caught on the burnt out candles and the gray overcast through the windows.

Alone. Astoria begged the Goddess for forgiveness, and the Goddess rejected her.

Any hope of returning to the Eternal Light vanished like smoke.

She would never find peace in the After, her soul too blighted by her use of the Orsea.

Astoria committed too many sins for the Goddess to forgive her, and now she would never see her family again.

Her soul was no longer bound to Damien’s, and he was lost forever.

She would never hold Inara in her arms again. Not even in death.

Astoria screamed. Feral, broken, and furious. She screamed so loud it shook her body and burned her throat. She screamed so loud it hurt her ears. The wailing didn’t stop as her magic rushed out of the confines she kept it chained up in and her form shifted from woman to vixen. Astoria ran.

“Sister?” Bastian barked the question as she bolted past him, standing over a fresh kill. The blood appealed to her in this form, the smell of it so strong she salivated.

No matter how appetizing his meal smelled or the wave of concern rushing through their bond, Astoria didn’t stop.

She screamed. She ran. She cried. She shattered.

Nothing mattered. Not anymore. Her soul was damned, her family was gone for good.

If the gods rejected her, she might as well face the eternal punishment as a ghost. At least then her heart wouldn’t hurt so much.

“Stop!” Bastian barked, and he skidded to a stop in front of her. “Your pact, you must stop!”

The wave of emotion rolling in her left all her fur on edge. She snapped her teeth and snarled. “Gods damn the pact! Gods damn everything! Run with me or get the hells out of my way!”

Bastian cowered and whined. “You will die.”

“What am I living for, Bastian? Am I meant to live alone with a monster for the rest of my days? Am I meant to keep seeing their kindness, curiosity, and gentleness yet somehow resist the sick pull I have to them? Am I living only to ache?”

“Sister…”

“Mairuk is far gone. We are fast. They won’t care to chase us far and when the blood oath takes me, at least I will die in a place of my choosing. I love you, but I can’t do this anymore. I can’t. ”

Bastian rubbed up against her side. “I go where you go.”