Cursed with immortality, Mars goes on a journey with his lifelong more-than-friends partner Astral, a painfully average future-seeing mage, to find the root of magic, in an effort to ease the side effects of Astral's visions - and to finish their th...
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"I have decided to help," Venus said and traded a glance with Astral before looking back at me. "I think I can help Astral with the side-effects of The Sight."
"Have you done it before?" I asked and arched a brow at her.
"I have helped many different mages, yes. I've always had a special power. I fix things."
"It's not like Astral needs to be fixed. He needs help."
She smiled a kind of dead smile. "Yes. And I can help him." She leaned back in her chair and brought her teacup with her, placing it on her thigh, one leg crossed over the other.
"Good. When will you start? How long will it take?"
She took an obnoxiously long sip of her tea before replying. "It won't take long. And I can do it tonight. It's supposed to be clear tonight, don't you think? Then you can see all the stars as if someone had dropped paint on the sky." She looked out the window and sighed a bit.
Everything about her demeanour seemed fake. As if she was pretending to be oh so dramatic and quite frankly it made me wanna vomit on her dumb high-waisted trousers that would've looked better on me.
"What do the stars have to do with anything?"
"They power us. All of us. Mages and humans alike. You too, Mars, though you don't fall on either side of human nor mage."
"Not this again," I muttered under my breath, earning a kick from Astral under the table.
"What is Mars?" Astral asked, taking my hand in his.
"The clerics at the temple would call you a star-child. It's almost correct, but you're not a child of a star. You are a star."
"Right," I muttered.
"What do you mean?" Astral asked.
"It means Mars is a star personified. As I've told you before, Astral, I get the stars to come down from the sky, and I urge them to transform. One of those transformed into Mars." She smiled again and I felt my skin crawl.
"I had parents. A family."
"Yes, the temples have always been very helpful in placing you children with good families. I was saddened to hear what happened to yours. They're all very devoted to the temple and would've told you everything when you were older. I don't know why the college would've taken you instead of the temple."
I opened my mouth but closed it again. It didn't sound real, but... Maybe this was the actual truth. Why would she lie? She didn't know me, and I hadn't exactly been that friendly or nice to her, so her motivation couldn't just be out of the goodness of her heart. Or because she liked me. But then again, because I hadn't exactly been her best friend, she could be lying. To spite me. To mess with my head.
I was wrapping my mind in knots trying to figure out her ulterior motive and it was giving me a headache.
"Maybe it was fate. To bring you and Astral together." She smiled again and it was so creepy.
