Upon the Stars (Love Lines, # 5)

Prologue + Chapter 1

Prologue

"The weather's changing," said a dark-haired boy to his mother, standing next to him. The clouds over their heads thickened, blurring out the stars and the moonlight. The surroundings started to drown in the inky darkness, lulling the wildness of the wind. Then the lightning flashed in the sky, touching the surface of the lake they were standing by with its soft, deceptively calming light. The wind rushed the water, forming it into waves, one by one crashing into the rocks on the shore. The old trees bowed their tops as if unable to confront the powers of nature. A few drops of rain fell from the sky and landed right on the boy's small palm.

"They are close..." The woman whispered, looking down at the water of the dark lake splashing over her bare feet. "We need to hide." The lake had never lied to her. She could read every small changing in its waters.

A new blast of the wind slammed more raindrops into their faces. There was no mercy in that wind, no grace in the waves... Only terrifying power that could not be stopped and suppressed.

"Who are they?" The boy asked. "And why do we need to hide from them?" His mother's troubled expression bothered him. He had never seen her so dreadfully frightened. Her poor attempts to look calm wouldn't fool him.

"Because they are the evil, Son," the woman said, raising her child from the ground.

"Are they different from us?" The little one asked. He was only five, but he already knew so much more than his parents would ever want him to know. Being born a wizard, he possessed the powers that no one and nothing could ever take away from him.

"They are, my boy," his mother replied.

Pure curiosity filled the boy's eyes. "How different are they?"

The woman looked at the lake again, and took a few steps away from the water. The wind played with her long, bronze hair and her timeworn, gray dress. "We need to go," she said, ignoring her son's question.

Just when she turned around to leave the shore, the boy screamed, "Look! Something's moving in the water!"

The woman's heart missed a beat. Carefully, she turned around, her bright-blue eyes full of terror, and swallowed hard, watching a huge, crystal globe rising from under the water's surface, and making the waves around it grow higher and higher.

"What is that, Mom?" The boy asked in a barely audible voice, wrapping his arms around his mother's neck.

"It's Dever..." The woman replied. She gave the shining globe one last look and rushed into the depth of the forest, holding her only child tight and close to her heart, hoping she would be able to protect him from whatever the magical globe had brought to their land with its sudden appearance.

Chapter 1

Eileen

There was something heavy in the air that wouldn't let me take a breath. I felt like I was suffocating. I shut my eyes tight, trying to calm the burning fear rising within; my heart raced in my chest. Something terrible was about to happen. I could feel it with every fiber of my body and mind, and no matter how hard I tried to persuade myself that it was just another trick of my wild imagination, I knew another war of good and evil was coming...

I inhaled deeply, looking up into the night sky. It was full of small, shining stars together with the moonlight reflecting all over the surface of Lake Tahoe as if in a huge mirror.

"Eileen, why don't you go and get some sleep?" My father asked, coming up to me.

I smirked, humorless. "Sleep and I are no longer friends."