Page 45 of Edge of Stars

No, damn it. That’s not it either. It’s one of my notorious favorites, meaning I don’t toss it around lightly, but this time it’s not enough.

I dig deeper, though all that comes to me are echoes of smug chortles. Po and Proteus laughing at me from across the miles.

And there goes my imagination, chugging through the exhaustion to get to the melodrama. The stuff that has to be pretend. If those two are actually taking time away from Hecate’s situation right now, simply to check in on Kara, me, and the sex party playpen…

Thoughts I stow for later. Thankfully, gloriously, they don’t really matter right now.

In this exact moment, I have all the only components that really matter to my existence. What I readily wrap in my arms, following Kara’s lead in not even bothering to strip fully. After I shed my shirt, I’m a goner. Falling to the heavenly mattress next to her and focusing fully on everything I could possibly want or need.

My wife, my child, a pillow that smells like ocean mist, and a dream that beckons better than the lagoon’s hypnotizing waves.

In my dream, there’s an ocean. I can see again, this time across miles of the vast waters, topped by foam that might even be softer than the orgy-ready castle bed. I ride the rollers without effort, skimming right then left like a boardless surfer, and conclude that subconsciousness actually is my friend from time to time.

The sky gets lighter, a peachy dawn blending into a sun-drenched day, before dark corners appear again at the corners of my vision. But the foam takes me farther, carrying me into a lavender and gray twilight, until I’m drifting next to dolphins and whales that sing to the stars for me.

Until their songs become screams.

And they’re breaching high, whirling through panicked breaches, leaving me alone with the quivering stars—

And I realize it’s not their terror at all.

Though the cries are far away, they’re familiar now. Too damn familiar.

The stars shake once more. Then tremble on their invisible axes, before their gasses churn, their filaments flare, and their glow is worse than the first goop that threatened my vision. I throw both arms across my face, fighting their painful pulses, until realizing that those thrums are an attempt at communication. At words.

It’s not Morse. But not basic English either.

Xypnísei.

I hold out a hand, silencing the lapping water around me. But not the distant shrieks. The screams I have to find now…

Xypnísei.

At last, my mangled mind connects the translation—from its original Greek.

Xypnísei, Maximus.

Wake. Up.

In the same moment, I know why the shrieks are resonating so deep. And now, shattering every inch of my heart.

I can’t jolt into consciousness fast enough.

Before I’m fully there, I’m already back at her side. Folding myself around her. I don’t care about the beading that scratches the inside of my arms. Part of me is stunned that so much of Madame Voracity’s handiwork has hung on this far. But most of me is grateful for the realization of how lucky I am to be doing this. If fate, or its master, hadn’t interfered on our behalf in Palos Verdes, my wife wouldn’t be here.

As for where she might be…

I stab my mind into compliance before it can spin off into that horror.

“Kara.” More constructive tasks demand my attention anyway, like the fervent croon I issue into her ear. “Kara. It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s me. It’s only me.”

Still, she flails. And whimpers. And sobs. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry! Didn’t…have…a choice…”

“A choice? About what?” I’m as gentle as possible about it, hoping to ease her out of the dark dream that’s got her. My poor girl. No soft seafoam rides with the whales for her.

“No choice,” she repeats, then again. “I had to go. I had to…understand…please?”

“Of course,” I soothe. “They understand, okay? Kara?”