Page 98 of As Many Souls as Stars
I’m here.
When Miriam tried to see her, there was nothing. She focused more, tried to find the light of her soul. Still, there was only darkness.
Miriam spun in the water.Where are you?
What’s the difference between love and hatred?Rosamund asked, her voice echoing, everywhere and nowhere.
There isn’t one.
They can coexist, yes, Rosamund said.I know that without doubt. But there’s a difference.
And what is that?
There were hands on hers then, a mouth against her neck.Love takes. It makes youwant, makes youneed, empties you out until there is nothing left but the love itself.
And hatred?
Hatred is a gift, Miriam. It gives you the strength you need to survive.
Then Rosamund was pulling her up, up out of the water, up toward the sky. And they were birds again, flying without aim or reason, spinning in a dance around the ship as it continued to cleave the waves. There was ice in the air, frozen salt tossed up from the sea: never before had Miriam flown for so long, so fast, nor had she needed to expend so much power just to stay aloft. The shadows were reluctant, drawn to Rosamund’s light even as they answered Miriam’s orders. And it was only as Rosamund started flying higher again, preparing for another fall, that Miriam finally realised what was happening. Rosamund was trying to tire her out.
Miriamwastired, now she thought of it. She could feel the strain of commanding the shadows in her limbs, her hollow chest. She had consumed several souls before coming onto the ship, but that had been days ago, of course, and now she had expended so much magic in the chase—her reserves had their limits. She and Rosamund were competing: to see which of them could keepthemselves flying for the longest, immaterial for the longest, before they ran out of power to feed the darkness. Once, Miriam would’ve been confident in her victory. But Rosamund had three souls within her, three souls greater even when separated than any others Miriam had ever seen. Despite the price Rosamund had already paid, she still burnt so fiercely that Miriam wondered if this was a fight she would lose.
But she couldn’t bring herself to end the chase, not when there was something so brutally joyous about it, the wind and the water and Rosamund flying before her. She thought of the girl in the forest with mud on her face, and wondered what she would say to see her ascension. Miriam hoped that Harding understood just how far she’d come. She hoped that she was proud.
So, Miriam flew until she felt the shadows start to give way. She flew until she was entirely material again, until she fell to the deck of the ship on her knees, vision swimming. Rosamund alighted beside her, a woman now as much as Miriam was; Miriam craned her head to look up at her.
‘You win,’ Miriam said. ‘Much joy should it give you. The pact is still nearly complete.’
Rosamund smiled tightly. ‘Yes, it is,’ she replied. She offered Miriam a hand, helping her stand.
‘You fly well,’ Miriam told her, vision swimming.
‘As do you.’ Rosamund stepped closer, cupped her cheek with her palm. ‘Will you miss me, once I’m gone?’
‘Of course. I’ve told you I will.’
‘But you won’t spare me.’
‘I can’t,’ Miriam said. There was a gnawing inside her belly: the pact begging its due. She was hungry. She had waited centuries for this.
Rosamund’s palm slid downward, towards Miriam’s chest. She rested her fingers in the hollow of her throat, pressing the heel of her hand into her sternum. ‘Whoever made you, they made you empty. That’s why you aren’t human; why you’re a shadow.’
‘Yes.’
‘But youdohave a soul, Miriam,’ Rosamund said, with the gentle tone of someone instructing a child. ‘Everyone does. You wouldn’t love me if you didn’t. You wouldn’t feel anything at all.’
‘No,’ Miriam said, automatically. She had made her assumptions, when she was born, and to reconsider themnowseemed ludicrous. What need did she have of something so human? ‘I am a shadow, I am soulless; that is how my creators made me.’
Rosamund shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. I think you have a soul made of darkness, instead of light. That’s why you are so hungry for light in the first place: you need it to cast the shadow your soul is made of.’
Souls were a weakness, the distinction between prey and predator—something to be reaped, to be consumed. There was something revolting, something unnatural, about the idea that she could have one of her own. ‘No,’ she said again, even as the idea took root, insidious and somehowfeasible, despite it all. ‘No, it can’t be. It—it can’t.’
‘Just because you believe you’re a monster doesn’t make you one.’
‘Why does it matter?’
‘It matters,’ Rosamund said, ‘because it’s what will save me.’
