“Go back to your shadows, Nerezza.” Luna dismissed her with a careless wave of her hand. “Tonight is for joy, for light, for celebrations—not your ambitions and thirsts.”
“The night is mine.” She slashed out a hand, and lightning, black as her eyes, sliced the white sand, the dark sea, and arrowed up toward the flying stars. It cut through the streams of light moments before the stars found their home in a gentle curve at the base of the moon.
For an instant the stars trembled there, and the worlds beneath them trembled.
“What have you done?” Celene whirled on her.
“Only added to your gift, sisters. They will fall one day, the stars of fire, ice, and water, tumble from the sky with all their power, their wishes, the light and the dark combined.”
Laughing now, Nerezza lifted her arms high as if to pluck the stars from the sky. “And when they fall into my hands, the moon dies for all and ever, and the dark wins.”
“They are not for you.” Arianrhod stepped forward, but Nerezza carved black lightning through the sand, left a smoldering chasm between them. Smoke streamed up from it to foul the air.
“When I have them, this world dies with the moon, as you will. And as I eat your powers, I will open others long sealed. The pale peace you worship will become all raging torment, all agony and fear and death.”
Through the smoke, she lifted her hands, glowing in her own desire. “Your own stars have sealed your fortunes, and given me mine.”
“You are banished.” Arianrhod lashed out, and hot blue lightning that cut like a whip wrapped its tongue around Nerezza’s ankle.
The scream ripped the air, shuddered into the ground. Before Arianrhod could drag the dark into the chasm of her own creation, Nerezza spread thin black wings, snapped the whip of light as she flew up. Blood from her ankle burned and smoked in the white sand.
“I make my fate,” she shouted. “I will come back, take the stars and the worlds I wish. And you will know death and pain and the end of all you love.”
The wings folded around her, and she was gone.
“She can do nothing to us or ours,” Luna insisted.
“Do not doubt her power or her thirst.” Celene stared into the dark gulf, felt a terrible sorrow. “There will be death here now, and blood, and pain and sorrow. She has left it behind her like a stain.”
“She must never have the stars. We’ll bring them back now,” Arianrhod said. “Destroy them.”
“Too much to risk while her power still stings the air,” Celene replied.
“So we only wait, and guard and risk all?” Arianrhod argued. “We allow her to twist a bright gift into something dark and deadly?”
“We cannot. We will not. They will fall?” Luna asked Celene.
“I can see they will, in a bright flash, but I cannot see when.”
“Then we will make the when, and the where. This we can do.” Luna took her sisters’ hands.
“In another place, another time, but not together.” Nodding, Arianrhod looked up at the stars, so bright and beautiful over the land she’d loved and guarded since her time began.
“If even one falls into her hands, or one like her . . .” Celene closed her eyes, opened herself. “Many will seek the stars, the power, the fortune, which is the same. And the fate. It is all one. And we, reflected light, must send of us on the quest.”
“Of us?” Luna repeated. “We do not go to retrieve them?”
“No, that is not for us. I know we must bide here and it will be done as it is done.”
“We choose the time, the place. In silence,” Arianrhod added. “Even in our minds. She is not to know when and where they will fall.”
They joined minds as well as hands, and each took her journey, followed her star where it willed as it tumbled from the sky. Each h
id her gift, each laid the power of protection over it.
And with minds joined, with no words spoken, each understood what must now rest in the hands and hearts of others.
“Now we must believe.” Luna tightened her grip on Arianrhod’s hand when her sister said nothing. “We must. If we do not, how will those who come of us?”