Page 159 of Starside

Poison.

I try to deny it, but the cold slowly sliding through my veins becomes too noticeable to ignore. This was left out of the book, but I can feel its effects.

Raker must feel it too. Their skin touched his when he defeated the horde.

Our steps slow. We don’t speak. My eyes open, then close, and I have to catch myself from falling multiple times.

There’s nothing to do but keep walking, hoping somehow our starved bodies are able to fight this.

Sun rains down through the sparse trees, but I barely feel its warmth. My body has gone numb and cold.

The gray is ending, I think. Just a little longer. I grip that hope and will it to keep me moving, knowing that all bad places end, but—if there is a good place after the bad, I don’t think I’m strong enough to reach it.

“Raker,” I say, the word just a whisper.

I’m fading, it says. I can’t keep going.

“Aris,” he says, and it’s ridiculous that my body still has the energy to form a chill. The word is quiet but filled with a strength I don’t currently possess. Filled with keep going. Filled with don’t fucking quit now.

I stumble on a vine, and a hand reaches out to steady me. His fingers wrap around my arm, keeping me upright. His hand doesn’t drop, as if he knows that if he lets go then I’ll go down.

My legs are boneless. My thoughts become muddled. My feet drag against the increasingly fertile ground, pulling me forward.

Just a little longer—

No matter how badly I want to keep going, to swallow down the pain and just keep moving, I can’t.

Flashes of green and brown and fading sunlight blur together until I hit the ground. It’s cool and soft beneath my cheek. There’s no movement. No one next to me. It’s only then that I realize Raker must have already fallen. Or he left me.

If I close my eyes now, they’ll never open again. I know that. Body quivering with the effort, I turn onto my back so that I can see the sky.

One last try.

With a final scrap of energy, my fingers crawl into my pocket. There, I grab something I stole from the bottom of the bog. An emerald, large as my palm.

I hold it up to the sky, arm shaking. “Eat,” I say, the word a croak. “Come to me. Come to eat. Please.”

I repeat the words until they are just rasps.

Then my arm drops. My eyes close.

The moment they do, something gleams above me, so bright I can see it through my eyelids. It’s getting closer and closer, like a falling star.

It feels like the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but I force my eyes open, just to see it, just to know what’s so bright that I can see it with my eyes closed.

My dragon?

No. A woman with a crown of stars, in a silver dress, the fabric glowing, liquid, curling behind her. A woman with golden hair floating right above me like a cloud.

She looks like an illusion, but no. There’s a force around her, an energy. My sword hums against my spine.

I blink away the darkness as she turns her head, studying me so carefully, it’s like she sees through me. She frowns.

Then she reaches a gleaming finger toward me. I use every last piece of myself to reach back. Between our hands, something like a star forms, blinding me.

When I can see again, she’s gone. My hand drops against the dirt, spent, and from the finger she touched, silver roots spiral across the ground, through the forest.

Somehow, I know it’s a road. I know it’s a gift from this mysterious woman. She won’t save me … but she’ll show me the way.