Page 30 of A Clash of Stars

He kissed me again, and I could feel the longing in his touch. He pulled back and looked around us, noticing the castle not far in the distance. “So, what made you want to find the castle?”

I sighed and said, “I have no idea. Part of me just kept saying to come here, so I followed myinstinct.”

He grabbed my sword, holstered it on my back, and said, “Well, let’s get you that relic, shall we?”

We continued walking briskly towards the castle, quietly at first, but I was not too fond of the silence.

“So, what made you want to come and help me? Don’t you want to win the Variance?”

Madok sighed as we continued our strides towards the run-down castle. I imagined it used to be a stunning and remarkable place to visit before it was destroyed. His voice interrupted my wondering.

“I have not been there for you for three years. I abandoned you, made you think you had done something wrong.”

He stopped walking and turned to face me, and I halted my steps too.

“You must know that you have done nothing to make me stop loving you. I know you may not feel the same way about me, and that’s all right. I want to keep you safe.”

I nodded, and he embraced me in a side hug as we continued walking. Something was off, there was no way that he just woke up one day and decided he wanted to try this again, but I was foolish and helplessly still in love with him.

His powers were the reason I had so much heartbreak, and his powers were the reason he stopped talking to me. Our gifts were supposed to be just that. Gifts. Positively impacting our kingdoms in the process.

I thought about my powers. I never liked to use them, but what would it be like if I did? Everyone else used theirs, but obviously, you couldn’t truly see their powers at work. They were all invisible, apart from the markings on our skin.

Mine, on the other hand, was very much noticeable. Madok and I once were out in the field by my parent’s castle. We were running and playing like we did when we were young, and I came across a plant. This gorgeous plant had glistening white flowers blooming at the top, and it almost looked like magic.

It sparkled and gleamed and was intriguing to look at. Directly next to this plant was an unfortunate looking plant that looked like it should be the same as the gorgeous, magical plant but was dying.

I reached out to touch the plant. When I did, a light started to seep through my veins to the fingertips that touched the plant.

Immediately, the once sad and dying plant started to come to life. When I did this, the other plant that had first caught my attention started to wilt. I was confused and frustrated, and that’s when Madok startled me. He had been watching the entire encounter.

“My mother calls it the Hybrid Chrysanthemum. They grow together. When one flower starts to wither away, the flourished partner flower pushes its energy and nutrients to its companion. In return, the once flourishing flower wilts. They go back and forth like that until one day, the vibrant flower wilts away along with the other.”

My fourteen-year-old self began to cry, hearing that I couldn’t make them both live and flourish independently. I understood what he told me, but I wanted some loophole.

“Mother also said that it’s a great example of love. In a partnership, you give pieces of yourself to each other. You won’t always flourish together, but you are there as companions to lift one another when you have started to wilt away.”

Madok sat down by me and wiped the tears from my cheeks.

“I just thought my power could fix it for both the flowers. What’s the point of having powers, living a long, somewhat immortal life if I can’t make any real permanent change with the gift I’ve been given.” He reached his arm around me and pulled me to his side, kissing me on the top of my head.

“I don’t know the answer to that, Clara, but I do know that your power is stronger than all of ours. You hide it away because you are scared, and I wish you could see what I see.”

“And what do you see?” I asked him.

He smiled a toothy grin, “I see a powerful ruler full of great change, and one day, maybe you will figure out how to give enough power to fix both flowers so they flourish forever together.”

I was immediately pulled back to the present when Madok’s voice boomed through my memories.

“Wow, look at this decrepit place. It gives me the heebie-jeebies.”

He chuckled as I began to notice the enormous size of the Claiborne castle. It had to have been the largest castle out of the entire land of Carondelet.

The bright white stones were broken and crumbling into the ground with weeds growing through the sides of the building, and that’s when I noticed the door. On the right side of the frame, there was a marking that was curious looking.

I had seen the symbol before, which I saw every day. It was part of my marking, or at least similar to it. It was a circle with a star within it. I ran my finger along the engraving and thought back to the note on the roses at my door.

I removed my hand from the door and made hesitant strides into the building. Half of the walls and ceilings of stone had fallen, leaving small beams of light illuminating the passageway with tiny particles of dirt floating in front of us. I became reticent, and Madok took notice.

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