When Stars Die

Chapter One

The sound is a dagger scraping crosshatches on a frosted windowpane, its echoes loud in this insensible room I've been locked in for the past few days. I want to remedy my fears over the sound, but I'm more terrified of the impending trials that will determine my readiness to be professed in the Order of Cathedral Reims. The trials are the reason I have been locked in here.

Colette sits beside me, lost in knitting a scarf she has been working on for a week—the amount of time we've been trapped in here with minimal food, water, and sanity. Her ability to shut out the world with a click of the needles is something I have always envied. For her, the world is nonexistent.

But not for me.

The sound strips my nerves raw, so I tighten my shawl and rise from the creaking mattress. My boot-clad feet meet the floor, and in spite of my stockings, cold still shoots through the soles, hibernating in my bones. Pulling in a deep breath of biting air, I tiptoe over to the door and press my eye to the keyhole that overlooks a bright hallway. The air freezes in my chest. I knew I heard those blasted shadows, the eerie, almost impossible sounds they make whenever their black cloaks trail along the cobbled floors of Cathedral Reims. Sometimes I wonder if they're witches, people born of the Seven Deadly Sins and considered worse than murderers in the eyes of the law. Then I remember my little brother is nothing like them. They are mere shadows. Mere shadows.

Two of them stand outside the room. I recognize them. The tall one is Asch, and the little one is Sash. I don't know where I heard their names. Here, in my dreams, in nightmares, or somewhere else.

I wish they would go away. I wish, I wish, I wish. I close my eyes. Open them. They are still there. Why must they be here? Theosodore, our Mother Superior's lackey, could gather us any moment for the first trial, a trial that will test everything we are made of, and here are Asch and Sash teasing my nerves with their cold, white fingers. But I don't know what it is about them. They haven't done anything in the two months since I've started seeing them, but their presence makes sharp fear burrow into my muscles and knot them. I believe I'm the only one who can see them. This frightens me. Perhaps waiting for these trials has made me mad.

Colette's voice rises behind me, a quiet thing in the tremors of my mind. "Are you searching for those shadows again?"

I look over my shoulder and into eyes that reflect a blue sky. I have no reason to tell her that I am. She puts down her knitting and tightens the standard gray shawl given to all girls being tested for the Professed Order. Winters are bitter in the city of Malva, especially in this winter of 1880, though the unpleasant chill is a mere prologue to the upcoming trials.

"Amelia, it's stress. We've all been stressed about these trials." She shows me her bloodied fingers. "See? I've bitten them to the nub! Now why don't you come over and let me braid your hair?"

I shake my head. I will admit nothing. And yet, I don't know why I can see them and Colette can't, or why they're even here. I keep opening my eyes and closing them, hoping they will disappear. But they don't. For whatever cryptic reasons they have, they are here and have been watching us all for the past two months.

Colette puts a hand on my shoulder that I shrug off. "Stop this nonsense, Amelia. You know how fretful you make me when you act like this. It's stress. I promise you. Just stress."

Stress. Yes, just stress. But does stress truly conjure shadows of the darkest thoughts in one's mind? I thought of tearing my hair out in clumps to reduce the stress of these trials. While I have awaited this period in my time as a sister, knowing that my performance hinges on whether or not I stay and continue on as a nun is trying. I don't want to go home. I can't go home. Home is where I'd spend days in my room, sometimes comforted by prolonged sleep, other times tortured by an unquiet mind. Cathedral Reims was the only thing able to give me some purpose, and here I am, and here is where I need to stay.