Starborn Legacy (A Starborn Series prequel)

Chapter thirteen

Phoebe laid in bed, listening to the rain as it splattered against her window. In the wake of the Starborn elder's death, the mood around Ardent had turned dark and gloomy, so much so that even the weather seemed to be in mourning. As she watched the rain fall from the swollen grey sky, Phoebe thought about Rue and wondered what she was doing at the moment, and how she was holding up after the loss of her grandfather. The last time they'd seen each other was two days ago, when Phoebe raced back to Connor's cottage and burst through the door to deliver the terrible news. She had interrupted the couple mid-make out, tangled up in one another on Connor's tiny bed. They gasped, then glared daggers until they saw the panicked look on Phoebe's face.

"Pheebes, what's wrong?" Connor had asked, his face draining of color as he no doubt considered the many awful possible answers to his question.

"It's the elder," Phoebe said, breathless. Rue didn't need to hear another word. She scrambled out from under her lover and off the bed.

"I'm sorry," she said after pressing one last desperate kiss to Connor's mouth. "I'll come back to you as soon as I can." She paused at the door for only a fraction of a second, just long enough to lay her hand gratefully against Phoebe's cheek, before dashing down the path and disappearing into the trees.

It took a moment for Phoebe to realize that Connor had joined her at the door. When she did, she turned to him, wide-eyed and stunned. "Connor, the elder is dead. What does that mean?"

Her cousin shrugged helplessly, staring down the path as if he could somehow will Rue to return to him if he just believed hard enough. "I have no idea."

Phoebe had left him that day with a promise to return with news as soon as she could. But when she returned to the druids' camp, she was met by her father, who took her by the shoulders and steered her back toward home.

"Give them space, Phoebe," he said to her. "They are grieving a terrible loss."

The rain came that evening, rolling in on waves of thunder that shook the walls of Phoebe's house.

"He was so frail," Phoebe's mother said over their dinner of parsnip and rabbit stew. She and Phoebe's father had been talking about the elder while Phoebe stirred her spoon around her bowl, lost in her own thoughts. "At least he was able to pass in the comfort of his bed instead of on the back of a horse, I suppose."

Phoebe's father nodded as he wiped his mouth with a napkin. "As soon as the storm passes, we'll offer to help build the pyre."

"Do you think they'll accept?" asked his wife, sounding both curious and hopeful at the same time.

"It's hard to say," he answered. "I realize they may want to perform the ascension in private, but surely they would understand that we want to pay our respects as well."

While her mother said something about what an incredible honor it would be to participate in the funeral of a Starborn elder, Phoebe's mind wandered back to the pyre. She hadn't experienced a lot of death in her sixteen years. The only person to die in her family so far was her paternal grandfather, and he had passed before she was born. In fact, it had been nearly five years since Ardent last lost one of its own. Though the commune was small, Phoebe hadn't known the man all that well. Still, the memory of his ascension was seared into her mind. If she closed her eyes, she could almost feel the heat of his funeral pyre warming her cheeks as it burned. She and their community had stood vigil, watching as the flames ate away at the man's corpse, turning his flesh and bones to ash and smoke that drifted upward into the night sky, bringing him as close to the Stars in death as he'd hoped to be — as they all hoped to be — in life. Phoebe knew it was supposed to be beautiful, but the thought of being burned, even as a corpse, made her feel queasy.