Page 95 of Ties of Starlight

The comet's magic was filling her. Her life tied to it.

And this was the moment all her lives were so much clearer. She could see them all in the water around her, the memories that tormented her. The deaths.

She turned to her left as she kept sinking, and she saw it. What Olaug had said, the missing piece of her last death.

The illusion falling as the Moon Elf lunged for him and stabbed him in the heart as Idonea screamed her heartbreak and rage before launching herself at the enemy.

She watched her past life fight with the girl over the dagger, Idonea nearly losing her life several times before it was over and she was scrambling back to Olaug's side, crying as she tried to stop the bleeding, but it was too late. The position Bror found her in seconds later.

Then Idonea sank deeper. She reached the bottom of the pool, settling on the silt.

She looked back up at the surface so far away, the echoes of her past lives filling the space between her and her exit. Where Nyrunn was waiting. He had to have exited by then. Full-blooded elves couldn't hold their breath as long as she could. They'd both been in long enough for the ceremony to be complete.

What would she choose?

She dug her hands into the silt, magic thrumming as she thought back. Slowly, the memories of six lifetimesbegan to fade as the memories of her seventh overtook the space.

And Olaug wasn't in any of them.

Nyrunn was.

And Asa. And Frode even.

Nyrunn's attempts at flirting with her that she took as cruelty. The way he'd looked up at her as she watched from the library window a dance in the courtyard she couldn’t attend even as he was dancing with someone else. How he'd rushed up to her the morning before the ceremony where she'd been selected as part of the Cometa Couple, and he'd been so full of light, but what he'd been going to ask her had to wait as she'd been rushed away with the other girls with human blood. How he'd found her afterward and his demeanor had flipped while she'd been over the moon. Painfully obvious now that she looked back on it.

The way he'd stared at her, silent in his agony over the next year while she'd been convinced this was the life she'd have everything she ever wanted.

The night before the wedding. Him catching her. Asking if she'd be happy.

Him taking off her veil.

The asterberry cake he'd ensured she'd have even when she was marrying another man. Every time he rushed to her side after a nightmare. All the times he held her. All the times he'd held his tongue. The Heava Dance.

Riding side by side. Wandering around their campsites, laughing. Carrying her down the cliff.

Kissing her.

None of her other lives had ever had anything like this.

Olaug hadn't run off because she'd killed him in his last life. He'd run off because she was never going to be good enough for him. There was no amount of perfection she could achieve to make him choose to love her.

And...

As she looked up at the vast evidence before her of the overwhelming love she’d already received, a few more appeared.

The way she lit up when Nyrunn approached, the warmth flooding her as she picked up her pace to reach him even a moment faster. Running her fingers through his hair, no longer sick with jealousy, but soft sighs as she admired the colors. The way his soft eyes had her slowly unfurling the darkest parts of herself, letting him into her infinitely decimated mind. Teaming up to tease Frode.

The conversations she had with Asa, the girl blind to her own feelings for Nyrunn’s righthand man.

Idonea was a hypocrite.

Here it all was, staring her in the face.

She ripped the necklace off and her lungs began to burn as the metal fell and sank into the dirt as Idonea pushed up.

The gems’ glow vanished, and they would never glow again. They were going to stay there in the silt for the rest of time.

She started swimming back up to the surface, kicking her legs as fast and furiously as possible.

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