She let out a quick laugh. “Yeah. Bloody inconvenient. They’ll come here, the other three. I know that now. Or maybe they’re already here. But they’ll find us, or we’ll find them. Once that happens, I don’t know if there’s any going back.”
“To what?” Bran wondered.
“To our lives, to the way they were before.”
“If that’s what’s put the worry in your eyes, it’s always better going forward than back.”
She said nothing while the waiter served the starters. “You both want to find these stars, and your reasons probably matter, but all I know is something wants us to find them or we wouldn’t be here. But something else doesn’t want us to have them. That something is dark and dangerous and powerful. It may not be a matter of going forward or back, but of not existing at all.”
“Nobody lives forever.” So saying, Riley dug into her eggplant starter.
Bran brushed a hand over Sasha’s, lightly. “No one can make you do what you don’t want to do. It’s your choice, fáidh, to go forward or back.”
“What does that mean—what you called me?”
“What you are. Vision-seer, prophet.”
“Seems to me a prophet should see things more clearly.”
“I’ll wager others with your gift have thought the same.”
“If I go back, I don’t think I’ll ever find peace again.” While that was true enough, she knew a deeper truth. She couldn’t walk away from him. “So it looks like forward. I’ve never had dinner with two people who just accept what I am. It’s good.”
She sampled the dish Riley had called tzatziki, found the smooth yogurt, the bite of garlic, the cool tang of cucumber went down easily after all.
“And so’s this.”
The food settled her. Maybe it was the wine, or the fragrant night, or the fact that she’d finally fully accepted her decision, but the raw edges of her nerves quieted.
When Bran cut some of the meat, put it on her plate, she stared at it.
“You should try it,” he told her.
To be polite, she told herself, she did—but the act felt ridiculously intimate. To distract herself from the heat that had nothing to do with a bite of grilled lamb, she picked up her wine.
“How do you know about the three stars?” she asked Bran. “They’re why you’re here. Why we’re all here. How do you know about them? What do you know?”
“I’ll tell you a legend I’ve heard of three stars created by three gods—moon goddesses, they were. Or are, depending on where you’re standing. They made these stars as gifts for a new queen. Just a baby, say some legends, while others . . .” He glanced at Riley.
“Others say young girl. Kind of an Arthurian riff—a true queen chosen at the end of another’s reign through a test of sorts.”
“There you have it. These sister goddesses wanted a unique and lasting gift for the queen they knew would rule for the good, who would hold peace softly in her hand as she did. So each made a star, one of fire, one of ice, one of water, all brilliant and filled with strength and magic and hope, which can be the same.”
“On a beach—white sand,” Sasha added.
He continued to eat, but watched her carefully. “Some say.”
“There’s a palace, silver and shining, on a high hill, and the moon’s white and full, beaming over the water.”
“You’ve seen this?”
“I dreamed it.”
“Which can be the same,” Bran repeated.
“They weren’t alone on the beach.”
“They weren’t, no, not alone. Another like them, but as unlike as white to black, wanted what they’d made, and what the queen had, which was power over worlds. The three knew her for what she was, knew as they tossed the stars toward the moon, and the other struck out at them with her dark, they would need to protect what they’d created, and all that lived.
“The stars would fall,” he continued, “the other had seen to that, and she could wait. So the three used what they had to see that when the stars fell, they would fall away from one another, as their full power is only reached when together. They would fall in secret places, hidden and safe until the time came for them to be lifted out, brought together, and taken to the next new queen.”
“It’s a pretty story, but—”
“Not all of it,” Riley interrupted. “Give her the other side.”
“If the other takes possession of the stars, all the doors on all the worlds will unlock. The dark, the damned, the destructive will spring free and devour all they can. Human worlds, and others as vulnerable, would not survive it.”