Page 27 of Edge of Stars

But what other alternative is there?

There’s new warmth pressing around me, and I look up far enough to recognize the refuge of my husband’s embrace. But not the comfort. I feel him fighting for some to give, but the mighty thunderclap over our heads is proof of his fruitless search.

He’s floundering as much as me. As clueless about an answer that’ll save our wedding day from being the darkest one of our lives. But as rain starts to slash at the chapel’s windows, glistening like liquid knives in the light of constant lightning blasts, we grip each other in the certainty of that impossibility. Holding tighter and tighter, as if this is our last embrace of all time.

Because it might very well be.

CHAPTER EIGHT

MAXIMUS

“Fuck.”

Normally, I’d write off the word on Z’s lips as an egotistical ancillary to watching the room spin out of his control. But I wish his bruised pride was the only problem to worry about here.

That part is on me.

I’m the sudden storm guy. It’s a solid fact these days, ever since I came to full terms with my true heritage. The squall I’ve summoned has actually been a strange comfort, expressing the deeper feelings that I can’t put into words right now.

But there’s a difference between a freak downpour and a full-on typhoon.

A tempest that’s now brought the sunset’s high tide right up to the edge of the church.

There’s no mistaking what I turn and see. The ocean, which was separated from us an hour ago by a high hill, a four-lane boulevard, and a sizable nature reserve, now splashes against the floor-to-ceiling window just beyond the front altar. Though the onflow succeeds in shorting out the sanctuary’s electric lights, I have no trouble obtaining a visual on everything thanks to the lightning flashes that persist across the whitecaps.

The scene is apocalyptic.

I haven’t even caused a typhoon. This is a tsunami—upon which the church seems ready to set sail any moment.

“Shit,” I mutter.

“Fuck,” Z repeats.

We’re both muted by Hecate’s stabbing shriek.

“No.”

She spins around, a dervish now dragging the soaked hem of her finery through the inch of water flowing across the sanctuary’s floor. If this were any other time and place, I’d be gripping Kara’s hand with an air of knowing humor, acknowledging how similar it looks to the wedding scene from her favorite rom-com film. But nothing about this is comedic. I hold my wife tighter, yearning that it doesn’t swing completely the other way. Tragedies belong on muse masks and emo rock album covers, not in the aisle of our wedding chapel.

Not even in light of the terrible expression across the magic goddess’s face.

“No!” She seethes it harder than before, her locked teeth showing like barbed wire past security fence tarps. “Turn it off,” she drills at me. “All of it. Right now. Or your wife and child are mystical putty in my hands!”

“Stellae dicure aliud!”

I’m not wheeling a wide stare at my wife because I didn’t expect her protest. It’s because the last form I expected it to take was her rough snarl, as if she hauled the steel spikes straight from Hecate’s mouth—

And wound them around Latin?

Oh, fuck yes. It is Latin, and it’s never fit a moment of my life so succinctly. Beyond perfectly.

Stellae dicure aliud.

“The stars have something else to say.”

She translates before I can, and I’m beyond giddy about it. On her lips, both versions are pure magic—perhaps literally. Either that, or it’s an insane coincidence that as soon as Kara issues the challenge, she marks it with upflung arms and sparkling fingertips. At the same time, a new crackle of lightning stretches up and across the whole hill we’re on. Its brilliance flares through the sanctuary windows, illuminating my woman like a silver supernova—with one blinding distinction.

She’s far from nuclear-force death.