by Lux Miller
It’s almost a mixture of a laugh and a yowl, and it’s not a sound that should be coming from a bird, and most certainly not from a raven. I’m very confused by the entire last twenty minutes of my life right now, but one thing is certain — no bug-eyed bird is going to laugh at me while Drake appears to be slipping into unconsciousness just feet away from me.
I take a deep breath and try to scoot around the bird again, but this time, the voice that comes out of it is sharp and commanding. “Nova, stop it. Leave him be.”
I slam both of my hands to the sand as I stare straight at the bird and argue, “But he’s dying!”
“No, actually, it’s quite the opposite. Despite what it looks like, he’s healing…”
I look up in surprise when I hear a different voice, blinking in surprise to see Kira standing there, flanked by Finn, just beyond where Drake is moaning in agony. She doesn’t seem amused, but she doesn’t seem completely horrified like me, either. Instead, she seems to be completely intrigued by everything that’s happening around us as the raven hops in front of me, lifting its face to look dead at me as it speaks to me again.
“It’s a painful process to push one’s body beyond its limits. And he will need you to recover from this, but right now, if you touch him, it will be an overload on his body that he would not be able to survive. Allow his body’s defenses to do what they can before you interfere…”
Frowning, I point my finger at Kira, a notion of fear tainting my voice, “Why’s the bird talking to me?”
Kira shrugs like it’s totally normal, replying, “Because she has something important to tell you, apparently.”
I narrow my eyes at the redheaded girl as I scrunch my nose up. I seriously must have knocked my head back there, and now I’m stuck somewhere in a hellish dreamworld that I can’t escape where the nightmares are real. Except I can’t wake up, and when I try to pinch myself to see if I can force myself awake, I yelp in pain because that shit hurts.
I look up at Kira and shake my head, “Okay, let me rephrase the question… how can I understand it?”
Kira kneels down beside me and takes one of my hands in hers, reaching her other hand up to lift the glowing necklace off my chest. “I should’ve known…”
I lean back from her, the stone slipping out of her fingers. As it falls back into place against my chest, it feels heavier than before. I can hear the snippiness in my voice, “Known what? And you still didn’t answer my question…”
Kira smiles, bowing her head to me. Now I know things have gone off the rails because I’m a nobody, and now Kira is all of a sudden acting like I matter. I scramble back from her, shaking my head wildly. “Can somebody tell me what the fuck is going on here? Have you all drank some kind of loopy juice? Everyone’s acting crazy. Drake’s passed out like he’s been on a bender, and he lit the damn world on fire. Now he’s paying for it by praying to the porcelain god… except there’s no toilet to puke in... You’re acting like I’m actually somebody because of this ding-dang stone… I’m still the nobody I’ve always been, and it’s just a stupid necklace I stole…”
Kira shakes her head with a sigh. “We’re all new to this, but I’m trusting my gut. My gut says that you did something to make this stone glow… because it wasn’t doing that earlier.”
My cheeks flush as I glance at Drake quickly, then back at her. “Uh, define something…”
The bird squawks, flapping its wings as it takes on a matter-of-fact tone, “You activated the Shard of Polaris. Which means that you connected with and entwined your spirit with that of your one true love when your two hearts beat as one. This can happen many ways, but the most common and often most effective way is during…”
I groan as Finn snickers behind Kira, bringing both of my hands up to cover my face. I nod as I try to hide my face underneath my hands. “Okay, fine… but it wasn’t anything so eloquent. Drake and I had sex. Great sex, but it was just sex between two people who couldn’t hold off on the need to get some kind of release any longer. Then the necklace went all wonky after that, glowing like it’s some kind of heavenly light.”
Kira blinks at me, glances at the bird, then looks back at me in awe. “That flash of light was you?”
I point at the necklace around my neck that still pulsing slightly with the pure white light. “All I did was get laid. That still doesn’t explain why I can understand a bird that’s talking to me… and why the hell this thing is acting like it has a mind of its own…”
The bird’s voice softens slightly as it explains, “It was not the sex that activated it, Nova. It was the moment when your heart and his beat at the same time. You just managed to accomplish that while fornicating in the woods. It was not destined to happen during sex, but that is the moment the two of you managed it. Almost poetic, but also rather primal. You can understand me because you activated the shard. It serves as a kind of translator. As long as you wear it, you will have a connection to me.”
I reach up and grab the necklace, yanking hard on it, but to my surprise, it doesn’t break. In fact, no matter what I do in the next few minutes, it won’t come off. Groaning, I cast an annoyed stare at the bird as I yank and tug on the seemingly indestructible gold chain. Frustrated, I throw it down against my chest and point at the bird accusingly, “Assuming I believe this isn’t some kind of crazy hallucination… why me?”
Kira sits down on the sand beside me and takes my hand in hers, a soft smile on her face. “You weren’t actually chosen… but if that’s how you need it explained, that’s how I’ll explain it for you. You were destined to find a shard… or rather, a shard was destined to find its way to you. It belongs to you… and always has. To be more specific, it belongs to all of us, actually. But you’ve activated this one, so it’s attached its essence to you and your bond with Drake.”
Groaning, I let my shoulders droop slightly. “So, you’re telling me that because of some mystical stone that’s set in an unbreakable necklace and glows like it’s a freaking star… that I’m now somehow mystically connected to a guy because I had sex with him? Like… don’t I get a choice in the matter?”
Kira takes a deep, unsteady breath and looks at me, nodding slightly. “In a crude nutshell, that’s one way of putting it. It’s not quite that simple, but it’s not something I can really explain to you in a way you’d understand. Whether you realize it or not, you made your choice long before you made that choice. The sex was just a physical embodiment of a spark that was already burning between you. You’ll find with time that you share more than just a healthy sexual appetite. You wouldn’t have been drawn together otherwise. I can’t say that you’ll find happily ever after with him, but you will find happiness. Polaris may be fractured, but it’s wise.
“But there will be plenty of time for discussion once we’re out of harm’s way. We need to get inside the walls of Atlantis. Whatever you were running from won’t follow us there. Drake needs to rest. There’s still Navian poison in his system, and likely yours, as well. There’s a long road ahead of us… and we’re flying blind without even a map to guide us on the raven’s quest to find the rest of the pieces of the crystal that the piece around your neck came from...”
I can tell from the earnestness on her face and the depth in her eyes that she’s telling me what she believes to be the gods’ honest truth. I lift the crystal up so that I can get a good look at it, closing my eyes as an uncomfortable warmth washes over me. Swallowing hard, I pop my eyes open. “I’ve seen a crystal like this before… and I always felt drawn to it for some reason, but I could never understand why until now. Why do we need to find these crystals?”
Kira smiles as she rests a hand on mine, “Because my mother told me to find them… our mother told me to find them…”
I don’t know why and I don’t know how, but the answers to my questions flicker in my mind seconds before they tumble out of my lips like word vomit, “Wait, what? Are you saying we’re… sisters? How is that even possible? I’m an orphan! I grew
up under the care of the Nomads... and you’re a dome dweller… how could we be sisters? Who’d give birth to children just to abandon them to the different tribes of the world?”
Kira’s eyes widen as she winces slightly. If we’re sisters like she claims, something we both inherited is the lack of a filter because the words that fly out of her mouth seem to shock her as much as they do me. My blood runs cold as she blurts them out. “Freya… our mother is Freya…”
I feel the nervous laughter bubble up from my throat before I can stop it, “You mean the goddess? That’s been dead for a thousand years? Why on Earth do you think we’re daughters of a long-forgotten deity that our ancestors buried… if she ever existed to begin with?”
Kira motions behind me, a serious expression on her face. I whip myself around, but all I see is the raven sitting perched on a fallen tree limb, its head cocked to the side. Kira scoots up beside me and sits down in the sand beside me, whispering as she motions to the bird, “Why don’t you ask her yourself?”
I scoff as the bird bows its little head at me. The same voice that I’ve been attributing to it scolds me, “You would believe that a bird could talk to you, but not that a bird could be anything but a bird? My daughter, you have much to learn.”
Scrubbing my hands over my eyes several times, I stare in awe at the raven as it straightens and flaps its wings. “I cannot take my natural form until Polaris is restored. The glowing stone you wear around your neck is but a piece of it. There are many pieces scattered throughout the lands, and they will call to you, just as the one around your neck has done, and as the one that Kira possesses has done. These stones have reunited you with each other and will lead to your sisters, but you must activate them on your own.
“Each daughter’s shard will pulse with their heartbeat, but only once their heart beats as one with their soulmate’s. Be careful who you trust with your heart. I have given you free will to consummate your choice from those men who are worthy of Valhalla, but no man is perfect. Just as you do, every man will have his flaws, and once you have activated your shard, you will be bound to your soulmate for eternity. This cannot be undone, so choose wisely.”
It...she?...looks at me pointedly as the stone pulses around my neck, and my eyes widen as I glance over at Drake, still lying motionless and face down on the beach. When I turn to look back at her, she flaps her wings knowingly. “He is a good man, Nova, but he is stubborn. Loving him will not be easy. He is destined for greatness, but he will need you to guide him there. He cannot see the sun for the shadows. Be the light through his darkness, and you will find that even the stars will not outshine the way he will look at you.”
I crawl over to him, and the raven caws at me, bobbing its head up and down as I lean down over him. A sense of calm washes over me as I realize what I have to do. I know it’s just a formality, because the deed’s already been done. The glowing light that’s radiating from my chest is confirmation that nothing I say or do at this point matters. The choice has already been made, but for the sake of my sanity, I have to do this. I press my lips gently against the leather that’s stretched over the Berserker tattoo that’s inked over one shoulder blade and then over the still-healing wound on the other, murmuring, “I choose you, Drake… I choose you…”
Thank you for reading Equinox, part one of the two-part Nova duet within the Celestial Awakenings series. If you found errors or inconsistencies in this book, please email [email protected] and let me know about them! Thanks for reading and if you enjoyed this book, please consider leaving a review!
COMING SOON: Part Two of the Nova duet - Solstice
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