Total pages in book: 64
Estimated words: 62637 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 313(@200wpm)___ 251(@250wpm)___ 209(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 62637 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 313(@200wpm)___ 251(@250wpm)___ 209(@300wpm)
She shakes her head and looks down at her worn-out high tops. “Why would you do that? A god?”
“Why not?” I answer simply. “Is my job not to be benevolent and love? Are my job and my promise not worth anything? I said I would help you. Save you. Come back. And you said you’d save yourself. So maybe this gives us all a clue in how you, a small Kitsune, does exactly that.”
“Or I die.”
“Yeah, or you die.”
“You’re supposed to be encouraging.”
I smile for real this time. “It’s been a short time here on earth; I’m confused easily.”
She rolls her eyes, showing a bit of plucky personality. “I’m done in five and Tarek can wait. Can we maybe have a drink before we go to dinner?”
“Yeah,” I murmur as a wave of longing—something that unsettles me—washes over me. “Just a drink.”
And a sad dinner after, my last.
A twinkle sparks in her eyes. “Did you want more?”
“Always.” I decide to answer honestly.
She laughs, perhaps a little sadly, or perhaps that’s my imagination. “You barely know me.”
I don’t return her laughter; just simply lift her chin with my thumb. “You have no idea… how long I have known you.”
“So…” I break the silence as we drive toward Ethan’s for dinner in one of Tarek’s many SUVs. “First time eating with a vampire?”
Kit glares over at me. “That’s not funny. I’m petrified, but thank you for that; super helpful.”
We ended up taking too long with our last drink making it, so I had to drive Kit while Tarek went ahead. It’s killing me, being this close to her, smelling her, already missing something I don’t know, but knowing if I fully had the ability to see her past, present, and future, it would probably destroy me.
“He doesn’t bite…” I clear my throat. Though he did bite her, but only to try to find out more about her. Moving on. “I mean not a lot, from what I’ve seen. Then again, I’m new in this timeline, so—”
“Maybe stop talking now.”
“Yup.” I drum my fingers against the steering wheel of the Jeep until we finally pull into Ethan’s compound, well technically, the Immortal Council’s compound. Werewolves are guarding the gates, the doors, basically everything around us just in case, and I can feel the stars staring down intensely, almost like gravity is pushed harder here as we get out of the car and walk across the pavement. Any human walking onto this property would feel a giant sense of foreboding, like an invisible sign that says turn back.
I look up and smile. They’re out in full force tonight.
The stars, they shine through you, pushing you into the ground, making it hard to walk, to breathe, especially when they watch and know that destinies are about to be changed, decisions made. They press down, they search, and they wait.
“Normal,” I whisper to her and grab her hand. “The stars can’t help but keep us grounded because our souls want to ascend, we want to go up, we want to join with creation, but it’s not our time.”
She grips my hand. “How do you know when it is?”
I hesitate, drawing in a deep breath. As a god, I know these things, but I’ve never spoken them out loud, the secrets of heaven. I stop walking and pull her into my arms. “Imagine this.”
She relaxes against me. “Okay.”
“Look up.”
“I’m looking.” Her head rests back against my chest. Is this perfection? I don’t know; all I know is it feels right. Can I be selfish then? And steal more seconds and minutes, more moments from her so that if the worst happens, I can look back on this time, this sky, and say it was good enough? That I used those few seconds thoroughly.
I point up at the sky. “All of them, they sing, they sing day in and day out, they sing during the night. They tell stories of creation over and over again, and each time they sing over creation, they bring about destiny, but they can’t interfere. Their job is to watch, to shine, to speak things into existence. That’s why it’s so important for humans to be careful what they say to the stars, for what they say… they believe.”
She doesn’t tense against me, but she does twist her head to gaze up at me. “So if I say I’m a star, I’m a star.”
I laugh. “No, but if you say, I’m sad, I’m depressed, I’m a failure, if you say things like that, then yes, your mind will follow. Then your star will diminish, and when a star diminishes, it gets pulled toward the earth until it crashes against it. That’s what we call a fallen star, one who has so much hope in its human that it is willing to sacrifice its life for that human. And if the human fails, the star does as well. That’s why they watch. They each pick one—one human, one life, one source to breathe into. It’s where dreams come from. Not the Creator, not your psyche. No, your dreams, they come from the stars, and your nightmares come from the death of your star as it crashes down to earth.”