.
✧Pyrrhus✧
My hands are empty when I wake, so I resolve to live up to my name. Unable to shake loose a star, I become one, blazing through the midnight sky, scorching my path home.
Kyadel can't reach me now.
I face it as I plummet, slicing through the clouds, toward the home I was unduly ripped from years ago. Lapis-tinted windows flash with gold, and I laugh at the thought of Servile watching me now from his tinkling webs, watching me leave him: happy and whole.
Melt my crown. I'll fashion myself one of starlight.
The Shining One has no idea what it is to glow.
I am a firebird. My arms are wings, my fingers: feathers. Flapping, I wave goodbye to Servile, to Kyadel with its gleaming spires. Goodbye to my siblings who never were.
Goodbye, Izem. Goodbye, Yol. Goodbye, Sabriya, Taylan, Avė, Vere, Helio, Ilyas, Ankit, Jessamine-
"Pyrrhus."
Lene.
Flaxen hair waves like a flag, and not one of Pyrrhi. She doesn't sleep in her veil.
"Pyrrhus," she repeats, craning to reach me. To reach what's mine.
White rocks and wildflowers, green leaves and the red pulp of gutted fruits. A faceless girl steals my crown-
I snatch my hand away.
And fall.
✧
The noose wraps around my ankle, not my neck. For a moment, I dangle amidst a sea of silks, suspended by a string of false stars, watching my siblings upside down as they're lowered gently to the floor.
"My apologies, Pyrrhus. My one leg must be coming loose."
Eight legs. Twelve children. And I just happen to hitch a solitary ride on the unstable one.
"And my body will come loose from my leg if you do not release me."
"That may be a poor choice of words," tuts Servile, dropping the line so I fall until he catches me -at the last possible moment- and deposits me within the ranks of my siblings.
Across the swell, Lene catches my eye.
"Regardless, I am sorry for the abrupt, early waking."
'Pyrrhus', she mouths, and I nod, ready for the latest intelligence. 'Twenty-five fifty-four is-'
Out of reach.
Out of sight, blocked from view by the reflective brass of Servile's belly. He is more than master of Kyadel. Servile is warden of hopes and dreams.
The weaver twirls to face us, suspended by a single web. "Given a choice, I would have left you all to your slumber a little longer."
Turn.
Lene continues, 'Unlit-'
Turn. My own reflection in Servile's belly. My own expression, wiped clean. Butterflies fill my stomach, but I remain still. I remain sane.
'Valid because-'
"But the Shining One-"
'Oh, wuh,' Lene exclaims.
What? I reply with a frown to match my intended tone, but it reaches only Servile, who expects nothing less.
"But if I had allowed you a little more sleep, I would have lost the opportunity to say goodbye to you."
Goodbye?
My private thought is echoed aloud by Taylan, Ilyas, and Yol. When they say it, it's a protest. A cry of alarm.
When I breathe it, it's a wish. "Goodbye?"
"The Shining One cares not for goodbyes."
Heartbeats in my chest, my throat, my head. Lene's lips become increasingly illegible, but it matters not. Servile's saying goodbye.
"Eleven of you, I will see again." Izem, Sabriya, Ankit, Avė, Vere, Taylan, Ilyas, Jessamine, Helio, Yol. "But one of you... One of you will be lost to me."
Knees threaten to give way.
"For the Stelithera begins this morn."
"The Star Harvest," breathes Ilyas, but Jessamine elbows him.
"The Starvest," she corrects.
"I'm starving," I gasp.
"Well, then you shouldn't have skipped nectar, Pyrrhus."
Ankit laughs a beat too late to be helpful. We return to the warden.
"I have woken you with only two degrees to spare. Dress yourselves. Gather your things. Gather your thoughts. Take one last stroll around, then meet me in the front demesne."
I have but one thought to collect, one possession to gather. I snatch my ruined crown from the remnants of my hammock. Pyrrhic gold calls me home. My days of looking up are over. The time has come to look in all directions, to search the earth that bore me far and wide. I'm starving.
Twenty-five fifty-four. Twenty-five fifty-four is-
I crave my home.
Clumsy fingers, soft and stupid, having held neither sword nor spear, fumble with Servile's band. It falls once, twice from my brow, then again when I fish out my bangs.
"You do like it, then?" says a voice like running silver. A voice that petrifies me, freezes me despite Kyadel's perfect air. "I'm flattered that you plan to bring it along."
"Only so that my family can see the humiliation I've been forced to endure at your claws."
"Oh, I don't believe there is truth to that."
"And pincers," I amend, and Servile crawls close to my neck. Tarsi brush my nape. "I will see to my hair on Earth, Servile-"
"I know that," he chides, deftly taking possession of the circlet- sweatband, whatever it is. "I'm helping with this."
I don't fight him. In half a degree, I won't be dealing with the spider anymore. My foe will be an infestation of flies.
They have more to gather than I, trinkets and baubles which they fasten to their vestments or weave into their hair. Servile is a doting father to those who have forgotten their own.
Twenty-five fifty-four. Twenty-five fifty-four.
Against my better judgment, my chin lifts to admit Lene's hammock into my view. I frown when I find it empty. Strange, how she can make her info seem so pressing, and then-
Tarsi cease their clicking. The coarse, blue band sits too tightly upon my brow. "Lene can be found in the library, I expect."
My hammock sinks from the tension in the air.
Mandibles warble in some soulless imitation of a laugh. "You wonder at her going there without you? Oh, my child, you'll find bonds such as these often break down during Stelithera."
"Whatever happened to 'friends in fetters, brothers in bonds?'"
"No," hums Servile. "That isn't what I mean. I'm referring to power as an erosional force. You won't be able to bully your siblings anymore once their fetters revive."
"I don't-"
"You do." He skitters free, climbing my hammock to reenter his web. "Gather strength, Pyrrhus. You will need it."
And then I'm alone.
Alone at the end of my world.
✧
Pyrrhonian fortune tellers read the clouds, but I find no messages in the dawn-lit sky. No fiery omen awaits me below. I half-wonder if someone watches us now from its surface. Do the clouds part to reveal twelve children, midriffs marked with portents of their own? They have more reason to fear our wrists.
My fetters itch as Servile says his passing words, then shatters the sky with a barrage of pale, golden webbing. Down, down, down it goes, fissures reaching like hands toward earth and the prize upon it.
"Like so," he says, demonstrating it for us by catching hold of one strand and spiraling through the cloud cover.
For once, my siblings don't follow him blindly into the unknown. They hang back: Ilyas in the grove, Vere on the piazza, Jessamine beneath the yawning mouth of the building that calls itself home, but isn't, just as a mother's friend who calls herself 'aunt' will never be blood kin.
Izem studies the spires, the golden scrollwork cresting the dome. Lene turns her gaze on the swaying webs. Calculating. Assessing.
Still, she has not sought me out.
Twenty-five fifty-four. Twenty-five fifty-four is-
Her secret.
And mine.
I've been accused of many things: tyrannicide, manipulation- stagnation is the most benign of them. But like the others, it's a lie.
I am not stagnant.
I am not content.
I am not willing to stay put, to give up my youth, my hope, my home. I refuse to spend another day here.
I'm not the little boy who was dropped here by wasps ten years ago, nor am I the man I was yesterday, unable to let himself look down.
Twenty-five fifty-four. Twenty-five fifty-four is-
Ahead.
Beneath.
Beyond.
The wind claims my paludamentum, the one-shouldered cape speckled with stars and constellations that Servile fashioned for the anniversary of my Ascension years ago. Gusts bear it away, and it returns to Kyadel when I will not.
My hand drifts to the semi-opaque panel above my abdomen. Organza covers my Sting, but not enough. Vial upon vial of black ink can't hide the mangled flesh: the memory of the last time I ventured so close to the ledge, bleeding. Grieving. Weak.
I'm not anymore.
I turn around, not to farewell my gleaming prison, but to look each of my siblings in the eye as I balance on the edge of our world.
"May I?" I ask with a cock of a brow.
Most stare. Some avert their gaze.
"Do a flip!" calls Yol.
But I'm already gone, blazing through the dawn-lit sky, scorching my path home.
✧✺✧