“I will tell them,” the Sun started carefully, pulling me from my spiraling thoughts, “that Ceris Wenden was wise beyond her years, brash, and yet oddly delightful. And that she loved her star with all she was.”
A grin parted my lips, and I blinked back a tear. “I would be happy with that.”
It is a woman’s intuition to recognize labor, even when it’s new to her body, so when the first, subtle contraction rippled across my abdomen, I stopped to listen. My tapestry was finished—I’d made quick work of it, with little else to do—and I was nearly done with an elegant border of honeysuckle wrapping around the edges when the first pain came.
The second was stronger, and the third even more so. By the fourth, I knew something was wrong. Not wrong, but not normal, for a woman’s labor should come neither so fast nor so angrily. I had seen babies born in the village, and the midwife had chatted with me as she helped me make the linen for my dress, so of this, I was sure.
I stood, the contractions sudden and quick, each like a punch to the gut. With every tightening of my stomach, I felt a heat beyond my own, like coals dancing within my belly.
My star. My star was coming.
It panicked me so greatly I did not stop to think that I stood on death’s door, or that the creature inside of me would rip me apart as its brothers and sisters had to their mothers before it. But I knew this being, this child, who had kept me company these last nine months, was ready to be known. And would, hopefully, see my face and hear my voice before my body released my spirit into paradise.
I made my way to my not-door, hunched, and opened it into the not-hallway that reached nowhere and everywhere, and cried, “The star is coming!”
Had I known those four simple words would give me such attention, I would have shouted them my first week in the palace.
Godlings descended upon me. Elta and Fosii were among them—they had been hovering for the last three weeks, knowing my time was near. Others were complete strangers. The great and bizarre palace moved and shifted around me, as though a womb in and of itself, and I found myself in a room not unlike my own. But this place felt more solid, the not-walls fully opaque, leaning in as though to better see me. And yet the space opened wide above me, no ceiling but endless stars and galaxies, colors and shapes I could not then, at that time, name. Not unlike the Sun’s room, which I had only entered once.
Above me, the night sky sparkled with life, a blanket ready and waiting to catch its child. Twinkles of light danced in anticipation of meeting their new sibling. The empty space where the last star had perished seemed to yawn with wanting. In my delirium, I imagined a dark hand reaching down from it and grabbing my stomach.
The godlings barely had time to lay me down before I screamed.
I had been given bountiful time to consider my upcoming delivery. I had seen other women give birth. I had witnessed tears and bravery, trepidation and joy. I had spoken to my attendants and the Sun Himself about what to expect. I had thought I was prepared.
But there was no preparing for the vibrant pain that ripped through me, as though blacksmith’s tongs had grabbed the skin of my toes and peeled it back to my forehead in one swift, cruel motion. As though my gut had been hollowed out for a cookfire, my entrails the meal. As though I had been piked upon the Sun Himself, my flesh forever charring.
I had thought making love to the Sun the most unbearable pain of my existence, but I was wrong.
This was far worse.
There was no question why star mothers died upon the birth bed. No mortal could survive this. Not even a godling could.
My world became utter agony, bright and unyielding, tearing me apart and remaking me only to pull me asunder once more. I was disembodied, and I was fire. I lost consciousness in the sense that thoughts ceased to process, but I never pulled away from the torture within me, blazing slowly, so slowly, toward my hips. I never broke away from the pain, not once. I screamed, unseeing, barely registering hands holding me down. If Elta and Fosii tried to comfort me, I couldn’t hear them. If the Sun came to witness my death or His child’s birth, I couldn’t sense Him. I was locked in a world all my own, the bars smoking against my skin, closing in on me from all sides so I could not pull away. Not in body. Only in spirit. And I felt that pull, that need to break free from my own skin. I welcomed death with all that I was. I begged for it.
Time warped. I burned alive for years, decades, centuries, hours, minutes, seconds. I tore apart again and again and again, until finally, blessedly, the darkness swallowed me whole.
CHAPTER 6