House of Eclipses by Casey L. Bond

20

“Lumos,” I said quietly, looking at the god of night. “Sol sent me to steal this from my father. I understand that only you can reveal the ink with which she penned it. I beg of you to show me what she wrote on the pages.”

Swallowing thickly, I peeled the leather binding back and waited as Lumos shone down on the first piece of parchment. In the dusk lands, the pages looked blank, but under Lumos’s light, portions of pale blue words shone. They ebbed and flowed until the swoops and whorls connected.

Tears pricked at my eyes as I realized this was not penned by my father.

I gripped the leather tighter, my heart racing. Burning. “My mother wrote this?” I gasped.

Did she come to Lumina to write it, or would Sol’s light also expose the ink?

I took a deep breath and began to read.

When the Sculptor chiseled Sol from the creation rock, he took one look at her heart and saw it was one of fire and flame, warmth and wrath. He set her ablaze and hung her in the great darkness. Her purpose was to shine light on the dark world he had envisioned but hadn’t yet carved.

Her purpose was to burn.

He chiseled her equal and opposite, Lumos, whose heart was cold and calm, frost and frigidness, to rule the night. Lumos did not burn. The Sculptor placed in his heart a serene light, bright enough to temper the darkness. Lumos was peaceful, dependable, and sure.

His purpose was to soothe.

Lastly, from the creation rock, the Sculptor finally chiseled the dark world that haunted his thoughts. He set Sol into motion, spinning around this world, and her purpose was revised. She was still meant to burn, but for those to whom the Sculptor would gift the dark world. She was to burn for them, and to guard, guide, and love them.

Lumos was then set into motion. He orbited the dark world opposite Sol. As she was to burn for them, his revised purpose was to soothe these beings. To encourage rest and peace as he guarded, guided, and loved them.

The Sculptor breathed onto the dark world and from the fog of his breath, spirits poured onto the sand. From it, humans rose. Half, the Sculptor gave to Lumos to reign over. Half was given to Sol.

Lumos loved his people. He shone so they could enjoy rest and quiet.

Sol loved her people. She shone so they could thrive and mingle.

For millennia, there was peace. A pleasant monotony. Until one day, Lumos grew bored and sped his trek across the sky. The god of night caught sight of Sol, goddess of day, and immediately fell deeply in love with her. He chased her in earnest, then.

The moment Sol caught sight of Lumos’s pale face, she was enamored with his temperance, his dogged determination, and his cool beauty, so different from her fire. But the two were not made for one another. Their purpose was to serve their people, the sculpted spirits cloaked in sand and flesh below them.

The Sculptor noticed an imbalance in the two great lights he’d set into motion around the dark world to chase the darkness away. He rebuked the two gods and punished them by cleaving Sol from Lumos. In the Great Division, the earth, the gods, and their people were also divided. Lumos was set in a new orbit. He spun around the southern half of the dark world, where his people were taken and established again.

Sol was set in motion around the northern hemisphere, where her people bathed in her light and feared the darkness when they could not see her face and Lumos was nowhere to calm them.

Sol ached for Lumos, too, but knew he was safe. The Sculptor could have crushed them both for avoiding their purposes. As it was, Lumos lived.

She could feel his pull, and she was certain he could feel hers.

But the knowledge of his presence wasn’t enough to remove the pain lancing her heart, or take away the longing she felt for him every moment of every day.

She mourned his absence in her life, however fleeting it had been.

For generations, she lamented, her heart burning for Lumos.

She needed companionship. She was lonely. So, she chose from among her people a special person set aside from the others; someone with whom she would speak and who would reveal her will for the spirits cloaked in flesh. Her people.

My eyes widened at what was being revealed. Lumin did the same. Had the Sculptor somehow influenced each of them to choose among the people to distract them from their pain?

She chose Aten after Aten, six in succession, all descendants of the first she deemed worthy. Then came her seventh, who was stronger than the others. Smarter. And like her, something in him burned. Perhaps that was what intrigued her.

But beyond the flame kindled in his chest, something in his heart lay empty and unfulfilled. Her chosen was dissatisfied, restless. Sol thought he needed a companion as well. So, she sent a wife to fill the void.

Her Aten loved his wife. He was true and faithful. And it didn’t take long before his beloved carried his child. But her body was weak, and her lifeblood drained away as his daughter was born.

My eyes widened. Zarina.

Sol’s seventh Aten was distraught, and the corner of his heart that had been empty and then filled with happiness for a time, emptied once more.

She sent another wife for him, one whose spirit was stronger than the last. He fell in love with her slowly, fearfully. But soon, the void filled once more and his wife became pregnant with his second daughter. But though the woman’s spirit was stronger than the last, her flesh was weak. She succumbed to death only weeks after her daughter was born.

Citali.

At her death, Sol’s seventh Aten came undone. He begged her for death, for anything but the pain from which he could not escape. Sol searched for another wife, someone strong in spirit. She found plenty who would have sufficed in that respect, but none whose bodies would not eventually relent to cold death.

Something in her shifted as she heard his lamentations, as she counted his tears and heard his dreadful thoughts. It was as if his heart was a mirror of her own, a distant echo. The pain she felt, he felt, too. The loneliness pouring through him rushed through her as well. The empty sadness, the ache that would not go away… also lived in her Aten’s heart.

She fixed herself in the sky, determined to become what he needed for a time and to take from him what she desperately craved and missed from Lumos, and to see if anyone else could fill the void Lumos’s absence left in her.

Her spirit descended into the sand and she called on it to clothe her. The grains formed her flesh and she walked from the dunes and found him in the House of the Sun. Her House.

My heart pounded. This must be a made-up story… but my heart… I clutched my chest. My heart demanded more.

He knew who she was the moment his eyes met hers. He fell to his knees, but she bade him stand. He loved her instantly, and she loved him.

The flesh she wore distracted her from the ache in her heart.

Months passed. Then years.

She did not miss her home in the sky at all as her daughter was born. Her body did not falter, for she strengthened it as she strengthened her babe. She loved the child so much. Much more, she realized, than she did him.

Sol spent much time with her babe, forgetting her seventh Aten’s heart, his pain. Her Aten grew jealous of the child.

An anxious feeling filled the goddess, a feeling of constant prickling. She knew it was the Sculptor because she’d prickled once before, right before he divided her from Lumos. He’d allowed her to follow her heart for a time, but she knew that she must leave the human life she’d constructed, along with her daughter, behind.

She tried to convince the Sculptor to release her from her purpose. To fill the great sun with a goddess far stronger than she. But he refused. He had made her specifically to burn… for this purpose and none other.

She took her daughter to the sands and explained to the girl that she had to leave. She let her fingers rake through the grains, bringing up sun diamonds and nuggets of gold, then pressed them in her palm and opened it back up. A gift for her daughter lay on her skin. She wanted her to have a piece of her on earth, even if she was in the sky.

Sol told the Aten that the Sculptor demanded she return to the skies to fulfill her duty to her people, to burn, but he did not understand. The darkness she once saw in the empty place inside him, spread and consumed him. He grew frantic. His worry turned to fear, his fear sparked anger, and his anger turned to an inferno of rage.

For days, he begged her to stay. He did not understand that the decision was not hers to make. For days, he sought a way to bind her to the earth. He found no acceptable solution.

In the end, rage consumed him.

He took out his overwhelming anger on her fleshly body, wrapping his hands around her throat and squeezing. She let him.

Because she had to shed her mortal coil one way or another. She had to go back so she could burn for her daughter. Because that was her purpose now. The Sculptor could drag her back to the sky, but he could not erase the babe from her heart.

As her flesh suffocated, she thought only of her daughter. Of her soft, dark hair. Of her baby scent. Of her first steps, first words, the day she first called her mother. Her love for the sun and her laughter. The way her face changed and thinned as she grew older. Seven years. She’d had seven years with the daughter she bore with her seventh Aten.

And before her spirit returned to the sky, as he killed her fleshly body, he uttered words of pure evil. “If you leave the sky over Helios, I will kill her. I will kill our daughter, and you will watch.”

Insanity had claimed him. She fought him then, but it was too late. The flesh she wore perished and her spirit was cast back into the sky.

The Sculptor wishes for her to move, but he doesn’t insist. He heard the threat. He knows Sol’s heart and that it belongs to her daughter. He knows for whom she truly burns.

So, she waits over Helios.

She will wait… until the girl is of age.

Until she can bear her great and terrible inheritance.

She will wait. And burn.

For her.

For Noor.

Tears spilling down my cheeks, I flipped page after page, waiting to see if she’d penned anything else. “How did you write this?” I asked out loud, desperate. It was obviously penned after her death. “Did you know the ending before he killed you? Did you leave this for me?” I cried.

The rest of the book was empty.

Lumos watched as I crumbled. The girl who thought she was stone broke into nothing but sand. Weak and weathered. My eyes caught on my bracelet and my hand found the matching anklet. I alone could wear them because I was hers. The fire in the stones burned through me, too, because it was her fire.

I still couldn’t wrap my mind around it.

I was Sol’s daughter?

I raged and stared forlornly at the placid face of Lumos. Now I realized my father was holding my mother hostage.

What would happen when I came of age? My seventeenth birthday was fast approaching; a handful of days remained before I would find out. If Sol moved, if she left Helios to come for me, what would happen to Vada and Lumos’s priests?

I needed her to stay.

I slid the book into my pocket, then stood and walked to the balcony’s edge. In the distance was sand, and the thunderous roar of the ocean filled my ears. Lumos’s light glistened off every facet of the rolling sea and each uncurling wave beckoned me.

Come.

Turning to heed that call, I started off the balcony and came face to face with my sister.

My ribs tightened protectively, and my phoenix shrieked. How long had she been lurking in the shadows of my room?

“I just spoke to Caelum,” she said calmly, too calmly, leaning against a column.

“About what?”

“The two of you. He has feelings for you, you know. Did you know this very room is an indication to everyone in this kingdom that he intends to marry you? We’ve skipped the hand-feeding and gone straight to nuptials, apparently.”

I stared at her.

“He wanted to tell me before I figured it out. At least he was considerate enough to spare me the humiliation,” she spat. “Then I ran into Beron, who admitted to the little game he was playing with both of us,” she gritted. “I could’ve been the perfect embodiment of a Luminan queen, and he would have looked over me because you were there.”

“You knew he could only choose one of us, and it isn’t entirely up to him. Lumos will have the final say if we go forward.”

“If we go forward?” she reared back. “Of course you will. I know what it is you truly seek. Stealing Caelum’s crown and kingdom is the only way you will ever garner an ounce of Father’s approval!”

I shook my head at the foolishness of my sister. “I don’t want his approval, Citali, and you and I both know that even if I tossed the crown at his feet, he would still hate me.”

The dark fire in her eyes blazed as she smiled. “So, you seek it for yourself, then?”

“No,” I told her. “I don’t.”

I didn’t need it. If Sol was my mother and I’d inherited her fire, I knew who she would choose as her Aten. As soon as I came of age, I would ascend. Mother would be free, and Father would be nothing. I only had to wait until that day, and then make my way back home to claim my rightful place in Helios. But I would never tell Citali such a thing.

Citali’s eyes glittered. “I must have that crown. I will find it, Noor. I will find it and I will no longer be threatened,” she vowed.

My brows kissed. “Threatened? By whom, Father?”

Instead of answering my question, she asked one of her own. “Why did you bring Kevi and her dancing girls to Lumina?” she asked, her eyes sharpening.

“I’m surprised you noticed,” I snapped.

“They’ve claimed the attention of half the Luminan guard.” Oh, what a tragedy. She pushed off the column and walked toward me. “I want to know why your eyes glow.”

I rolled them. “This again? I don’t know, Citali. I don’t make them glow, if that’s what you’re wondering. They simply do.”

Her eyes caught on my cheeks, then searched my face. Lumos’s light was brighter than I had hoped, and at the same time wasn’t warm enough to comfort me. “You’ve been crying.”

“That should make you happy.”

“It won’t if you don’t tell me why.”

I refused to answer. She wasn’t entitled to my tears or what caused them.

Another step forward, then tears sprang into her eyes and her upper lip trembled. “You take everything from me.”

“I’ve taken nothing.”

But she wasn’t listening. “I cannot lose this time… I can’t… I hope you can understand.”

She suddenly lunged forward with a screech.

I caught her, but she clawed at me, thrashing and punching and flailing as she backed me toward the balustrades that ringed the balcony. My lower back hit the rail and I bent over its edge. I grabbed hold of her hair, wrapping it around my fist. “You’re going to kill us both! If you push me over, I’m dragging you with me!” I screamed.

A bone-chilling howl filled the air from somewhere on the ground. She paused her assault but quickly resumed, even more determined. She tried to wrench her hair out of my grasp. I let my knees buckle to keep her from pushing me off the railing, and she tackled me to the stones and straddled my hips. I held her hair tight. I couldn’t buck her off, though she was much smaller than me.

That dark fire blazed in her eyes. “Why you? What is different about you? What makes you so special? I cannot let you best me.”

I bucked, finally knocking her off balance. She fell onto her hip and I released her hair. Standing up, I put distance between us, this time backing toward my room.

A wicked gleam entered her eyes before a tear slid down her cheek. “I should’ve done it. I should’ve pushed you into the river.”

She started toward me again and that angry fire tore from my chest, filling my hands. “Citali, this is your last warning.”

“Or what?” she laughed. Then, she lunged.

A low growl stilled her hands before she could reach me. I’d planted my feet, ready to take the hit, but also ready to scorch her the moment her skin met mine. We both watched in astonishment as an enormous black wolf crept onto the balcony from between the fluttering, pale curtains, snarling and snapping at Citali. Her frightened eyes jerked to mine. She backed away from me and the beast as it moved to stand between us, posturing protectively in front of me.

The wolf howled again so loudly my ear drum vibrated. I clapped my hands over my ears. So did Citali.

“Noor!” Caelum cried from inside my rooms. He rushed to the balcony, taking in the beast that had planted himself in front of me. He relaxed and loosed a pent-up breath.

“What is happening?” I shrilled while trying not to startle the wolf. As fantastical as it was, I knew this creature. I remembered him from when I was lost in the woods.

But what became more apparent, and somehow equally as disturbing, was that Caelum knew him, too.

“Thank you. It’s okay now,” he said to it.

The wolf shook its fur, looked at me, and… before I could begin to comprehend what I’d seen, turned into Caelum’s brother. Beron, naked as the day he was born and seemingly proud of his bare body, stood in the beast’s place.

My mouth hung open. Citali’s did, too. “What just happened?” she breathed, panicked.

He shot her a toothy grin, making the dimple in his cheek deepen, and winked at her.

If her teeth weren’t sharper than his, I’d say they might make a good match.

I clamped my lips closed. Breathed in, out. Caelum stepped inside the doorway and jerked down one of my curtains and flung it at Beron, who only laughed and quickly tied it around his waist. Not that the pale gauze hid much.

I was just glad I had the backside view of him.

I finally found my voice. “It was you in the woods! You found me.”

A look passed between him and Caelum, a permission granted. Beron nodded. “It was me.”

I hadn’t needed him to find me. I had the bracelet, the light, and my mother. But he didn’t know it. He came to help me.

“How?” I squeaked.

“I’m the Wolven. I changed the instant Lumos chose Caelum. I am his protector.”

I braced a hand on my stomach. It made so much sense…

“This doesn’t mean I forgive you,” I told him.

He shot a pouty look over his shoulder, looking at least a tiny bit humbler now.

“Forgive you for what?” Caelum said slowly, carefully.

I swallowed thickly, mentally chastising myself for blurting before thinking. Again.

I was about to deftly change the subject in favor of throwing shade upon my treacherous, murderous sister once again, but Beron winced and admitted, “Noor and I kissed.”

It rushed out of him like he’d been itching to tell his older brother but hadn’t had the guts to. But still, he got the details of that encounter a bit confused. He and I did not kiss. He kissed me.

Citali maliciously stared me down, the dark fire she held within building back into an inferno. It was one thing for me to take Caelum’s attention away, but quite another to kiss Beron. She liked him, whether she would admit it to herself or anyone else.

I suspected it before, but now… Now, I knew. If Beron hadn’t turned into a wolf to keep us from killing one another, she would have pounced again.

“He kissed me; not the other way around. I didn’t want to kiss him,” I said for her benefit. My reframing did nothing to assuage Caelum, who stood there fuming. I winced as Caelum stalked to Beron and grabbed him by the scruff of hair on his neck. Then the Lumin turned and shouted at my sister, pointing toward the door that led to my rooms. “Citali. Out.”

Shocked that he’d raised his voice and likely still terrified from Beron’s revelation, she didn’t talk or look back, but scurried behind the brothers obediently. I walked after her, watching Caelum drag his younger brother through my room.

“Caelum, stop. You don’t understand what happened,” I tried to soothe.

He shot me a scathing look that promised we certainly would talk, as soon as he took care of the immediate problem.

As he struggled to keep Caelum’s hurried pace bent over as he was, Beron pled for him to listen to reason. “I did it to protect her! I can explain everything,” he assured his Lumin.

For his sake, I was glad the Lumin’s touch did not burn.

Then a strangled scream slash howl tore from Beron’s throat and I wasn’t so sure he didn’t have fire. Caelum released his brother’s hair and a layer of shimmering coldness coated Beron’s skin and hair where the Lumin had touched him.

“Ouch!” Beron yelled. “You know I hate that.”

Caelum shoved Beron out, waited for Citali to follow him, then locked the door behind them. Then he fumed and paced my room silently for several long minutes. I’d never seen him so upset.

I folded my hands regally in front of me. “Was that snow?” I asked, trying to diffuse the situation.

His feet stopped and I regretted speaking and drawing his attention to me as he stalked over. I stood tall, just as I did when Father’s temper flared. “If you’re going to strike me, don’t think I’ll shrink away. But know that if you touch me,” my fire flared and I knew it was reflected in my eyes, “I’ll burn your hand off. Your snow isn’t powerful enough to quench my flame.”

I had power now… A defense against such abuse.

His face and anger relaxed, replaced with the steadfast, faithfully strong face he made when he promised something. “Noor, I would never raise my hand to you.”

I relaxed fractionally but kept my fire close. Not so that it skated my surface, but lay beneath it, easy to draw from if I needed it.

He closed his eyes. “I just… I keep picturing him kissing you. His lips on yours.”

“Then you know how I felt after seeing Citali kissing you in the garden.”

“It’s not the same!” he growled.

“It absolutely is,” I insisted hotly. “You begged me to listen to you then. You said she kissed you and I misunderstood what I saw. I’m telling you the same thing happened with Beron and me. The question is whether you’ll trust my word the way I trusted yours.”

“Will you tell me what happened?” The gravel in his voice resonated through my bones, lighting a different kind of fire in me.

I took hold of his hand. “Let me show you.”

Tugging him to the wall behind us, I put my back against it. “After Kevi and her girls served Father the sleeping draught, two of his guards helped him to his rooms. Kevi followed. Beron and I waited a moment, then made our way there. We had almost reached his door when the guards came out.”

Caelum braced his hands against the wall, caging me in, then bent low and let his lips hover over mine.

“So, he kissed me so they wouldn’t ask why we were there. I panicked and did nothing. If Beron hadn’t thought so fast, I might not have been able to steal the book. He truly was protecting me, and more importantly, our plan. And to be honest, if I hadn’t panicked, I might have had the same idea.” A rumble resonated from his chest. “It meant nothing. I promise.”

He kissed me then, my lips dragging my head from where it lay against the wall, following him even after he’d pulled away.

He licked his bottom lip. “Is that the only thing Beron has to apologize for?”

I froze.

“Noor…” he warned.

“I don’t want to tell you. I’d rather kiss you instead.”

“This conversation isn’t over,” he said sternly.

Is that so? I smiled, then threaded my hands around his neck and smothered his serious face, kissing him long enough to erase all thoughts of Beron from his mind.

“Wicked flame,” he called me. His lips found the corner of my jaw and neck before returning to my mouth. His hands drifted down, hooked onto the backs of my thighs, and lifted me up. He pinned me to the wall and kissed me like it was the only thing he wanted, the only thing he needed.

My ankles locked around his waist. As we kissed, his hands roamed the moon diamond dress, ignoring the tiny, dazzling stones to memorize the feel of the curves beneath. Mine roved over every muscular plane of his chest, shoulders, and back. They sought out his soft, midnight hair.

He groaned and tore away from me.

I slid to the floor with a pounding heart and swollen lips.

He smoothed my hair. “Did that properly erase my brother’s pathetic kiss from your memory?

“Whose?” I teased, my blood boiling.

Caelum finally laughed, but the sound and moment were fleeting. Somberness fell over us once more.

“Did you get a chance to look at it?” he asked, gesturing to my pocket.

“I did, and I’ll tell you what I learned, but first, I need to see Saric.”