The Chaos of Stars

“Stop it!” I gasp.

“What?”

“That thing you’re doing! With your eyes!”

“Um, opening them? Or blinking? Should I not blink?”

“Just—make them less blue or something.”

He laughs, oblivious to my drowning desert. “It’s pitch-black out here. You can’t see what color they are.”

“But I still know, and they know I know. So just—point them somewhere else.”

He blinks, slowly, the line of dark lashes standing out against his skin in a semicircle smile, mocking me before he opens them again. “But it’s okay to look at friends, remember?”

“Shut up.” I smack my hand against his chest and then it stays there and I need to pull it back I can’t leave it there why isn’t my arm pulling it back and

oh idiot gods I can feel his heart beating and nothing has ever felt so simple and pure and honest and right in my entire life.

GET OUT OF HERE, my brain screams. Move your hand, Isadora. Move it. Move it. But that line, that traitorous anchor that misaligned, that picked the wrong Orion, it’s singing out to stay.

Ry reaches up, ever so slowly, and puts his hand over mine and now his heartbeat is underneath it and his skin is on top of it and I can’t breathe, I’m holding my breath because if I let it go I have to make a choice to drown or to flee, and I cannot make this choice

I like the person I am with him

and no one’s skin has ever felt this way before

and every part of me—every part—is in those few square inches of palm and finger connected to him

and I am going under

and I don’t care

“Isadora?”

My name in his voice sends a jolt through me, creates me in the way he sees me and feels about me and the way I would be with my name in his mouth forever. Finally I understand the power in names, the power that we give people when we tell them our names.

“Orion,” I whisper, and he is. Orion. Forever now, he has replaced my Orion stars in name.

He lifts his free hand toward my face, turning on his side to close the distance between us and—

I panic. I have never been so terrified in my entire life. This is a beginning and that means there will be an end and I can’t, I can’t have something that feels this way end.

“I can’t.” I sit up, pulling my hand from his. It’s cold, so cold, colder than the rest of me and I want to hold it myself to try and get back that sensation but I cross my arms over my chest instead, cut off the errant line connecting me to him. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to do this. I can’t. Please take me back now.”

He looks like he has something to say, but I stand up and jump over the side of the truck bed, then sit in the passenger seat. After too long Orion—Ry—gets in and starts the truck.

I will not drown tonight.

I will not drown ever.

I am the desert. I am the desert. I am stone.

Chapter 12

Set and Horus continued to challenge each other in the courts of the gods. They fought in ludicrous displays of strength and cunning—including a spectacular event that involved seeing who could stay underwater as a hippo longest. That one resulted in my mother’s decapitation.

It didn’t stick, obviously. Gods are awfully hard to kill.