When Stars Die (The Stars Trilogy)

A review by Sorin Suciu, the talented author behind the brilliant contemporary fantasy
The Scriptlings
:

“Amber’s writing is dark, marked by suffering and a deep understanding of what makes us tick, not to mention tock. Her devastating first-person narrative and present tense combo makes it hard not to be drawn into the story.

While
When Stars Die
is categorized under Romance, there is so much more to it than that. Indeed, I would argue that romance is not even the main dish, but rather the subtle spice that takes the whole plate up a notch.

The story is set in the late 19th century Europe, somewhere close to Denmark but not anywhere you would find on a real map. Without giving away too many spoilers, I would like to concentrate on Deus, the sadistic god and true villain in this universe. He keeps the society in an eternal check, giving them very few reasons to love him. It should come as no surprise then to the amateur theologian, that the more he hurts them, the more people love him. Amelia, the main character, and one of Deus’ unfortunate victims, is the best example of this masochistic devotion taken to the extreme.

In tackling sensitive topics such as religion, abuse, rape and the inquisition, Amber dances on hot coals to a dangerous tune; but she does it with incredible style and pinpoint precision.”

WHEN STARS DIE

Book 1 of

The Stars Trilogy

AMBER SKYE FORBES

This is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2013 Amber Skye Forbes

Published by AEC Stellar Publishing, Inc.

All rights reserved.

ISBN:
194082009X

ISBN-13:
978-1-940820-09-5

DEDICATION

To the stars above,

For they make life possible,

And, therefore, this book.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

While I often toiled away at
When Stars Die
in silence, there are a myriad of people that I am indebted to for its creation. It is an enormous privilege to just be able to write an entire book for the purpose of being read by many.

I want to first thank my biggest fan, Mariah Wilson, for being the first reader of
When Stars Die
, and encouraging me to seek publication for it.

Georgia McBride, for editing the sequel to
When Stars Die
in exchange for helping out with YALITCHAT, which gave me the knowledge and skills possible to create
When Stars Die
.

Nazarea Andrews, for helping me with the winning blurb that made it possible for
When Stars Die
to be accepted by AEC Stellar Publishing.

My mom and dad, Lance and Sandy Forbes, and my fiancé, Jeff Ferreira, for always encouraging my writing endeavors and being my biggest supporters all these years, especially when it seemed that I’d never reach publication.

My AEC Stellar Publishing, Inc. support team, particularly Raymond Vogel and Christine Heisler.

Viola Estrella, who created a gorgeous cover that I would never have imagined.

Sarah Long, for helping to whip
When Stars Die
into shape and cleaning up extraneous grammar beasties that sometimes hide within the pages and make themselves impossible to find.

Stars, who are my fans and have kept up my excitement for the book by simply being excited for the book’s release.

Daphne Maysonet, Becca Wilson, and Christopher Selmek, the original Corner Club, for supporting me as a writer and never giving up on our friendship, in spite of how busy we may be.

All of my English teachers ever, for always being interested in me as both a writer and student, and always, always, always, supporting me and my writing.

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.

I turn back toward the door and curl my fingers against it, tapping my nails on the wood. I will not argue with Colette. Even trying to convince myself they are not real is like trying to convince one of our priests to remain celibate.

“Don’t bother with me, Colette. I’ll be--” Wailing erupts far down the corridor. The sound is loud enough to break the icicles clinging to our window. I’d join, but I already ache from stress. That crying has been intermittent since we were shoved and locked in these rooms. The trials are that dreadful, though we have no idea what they consist of. The screams of those being tested assure us they are far from pleasant. I look at Colette and gesture in the direction of the crying. “At least I’m not at that point.”

She sighs again. “All right, then. Once this is all over, I’m certain you’ll stop seeing things.”

I hear the skirts of her gray dress rustle across the floor and the creaking of the mattress as she settles back on it.

I first saw the shadows on the roof of the south transept while Colette and I were in the orchard, picking plums for jam. My little brother Nathaniel was with us, but he was too busy climbing trees to take notice of anything. There were five of them, I remember. I turned away from them and whispered to Colette, “Do you see those things on the roof?”

“What things?”

“There are five of them, all in black cloaks.”

She dragged me deeper into the orchard so that foliage and plums obscured my view. “You’re starting to lose your mind, just like Sister Marie did. Remember what happened to her? She was so stressed about the trials last year she slit her wrists, miraculously survived, but had to be put in an asylum. Don’t end up like her! Don’t bring them up again. Ever. If you do see them again, just keep telling yourself they’re not real.”

But it’s hard to believe they’re not real when I see them every day, amassed in different numbers, engaged in indiscernible chatter. If they were just illusions, wouldn’t I have gone truly mad by now? Wouldn’t I have started seeing other things too? Wouldn’t I--wouldn’t I have ended up like Marie by now? Because I haven’t frightens me even more, for what could this mean? Marie’s sanity fell apart in just a month, and even then we sisters could see it unwinding when she started hallucinating. She saw things, like the suffering witches on the stained-glass windows, or the statues of witches nailed to stakes talking to her. We have such harrowing propaganda around Cathedral Reims.

Colette’s knitting needles start clicking away. I press my eye back to the keyhole. Asch and
Sash now speak in hushed tones.

Asch balls his white fists. These shadows have skin the color of clear-day clouds and eyes an endless black. The eyes alone tell me they are far from human. I hold my breath in anticipation of what he’ll say. Sash, however, throws a hand over Asch’s bluish, scarred lips. Thick, disfiguring scars cover Asch's entire face as though someone took a serrated knife to him. Sash narrows his eyes and opens his mouth. What comes out is loud enough for me to hear.

“You do realize there might be some people here who can see us?”

A painful cramp overtakes my stomach. He has a boyish voice. A boyish voice. He is a child. They cannot be real. They are illogical. They are demons spawned from a stressed mind whose darkest thoughts contemplate all the ways I can hurt myself to feel something other than this impending feeling that I may be inadequate for the Professed Order. But there they are, those shadows, acting, living, breathing, speaking, doing human things.

Asch grips Sash’s thin wrist. Sash is such a tiny thing. He has the face of a fourteen-year-old—soft, sloped jaw, a cocky smile that emphasizes the deep cut on his upper lip. Asch brings himself down to Sash’s stature, mocking the boy for what he lacks.

“You keep your tone down then. I have no doubt there are ones here who can hear and see us, but they’re a minority. No one would believe them, even if they ran all over the cathedral heralding our presence.”

Sash raises himself to Asch’s chin. “Then you--” He looks in my direction and narrows his eyes.

I pull away from the door, realizing I’ve started tapping my nails against the wood again. I dig them into the grain to stop them, then pin myself against the doorframe while straining my hearing. Curse my nervous habits!

Sash speaks up. “I think someone is watching us.”

I pull away from the door, final in my decision to cut them from my mind so I can cling on to the last strands of my sanity. I will need to cling to those bits if I am to survive these trials. The swishing of their cloaks meets my ears as I stride over to Colette, keeping my face passive so she suspects nothing is amiss. My sanity cannot spiral in the direction dearly departed Sister Marie’s did. I sit down and start braiding Colette’s tangled, blonde locks. My fingers fumble as they try to remember how to braid.

“Are your imaginary friends gone?” Colette asks, needles clicking away.

I ignore her, sweat beading down my temple. The swishing of their cloaks grows louder. They are not real. Nothing will come in here. The sound will disappear, and I can safely blame stress for their existence. I open my mouth to speak. My voice comes out dry. “I’m just--”

The door creaks open. Colette snaps her head in the direction of the door, while I keep my eyes on the frayed braid in my hand. She pulls away from me like someone screamed her name and sweeps over to the door. Out of my peripheral, the shadows casually glide into our room. They look around like they don’t see us.

She reaches for the knob. “T-there must be some awful draft or something blowing down the hall to push open a locked door.”

This is too much of a coincidence that their presence would push the door open and leave poor Colette believing it to be a draft. There is nothing illusory about their presence.

Colette pulls her shawl around her. “I-it’s quite chilly.” I don’t feel a draft at all, but I’m not willowy like her. She puts her hand on the knob, then stops. “That’s peculiar. The lock has come undone. Faulty lock, I suppose. Well, we’re good little sisters. We won’t go running from our trials.” She slides the bolt back in place.

I’m antsy for the feel of her braid in my hands so the shadows don’t know I can see them. She sits back down. I grab the undone braid, forcing my eyes to be lost in the tangled hair as my fingers get snarled in the straw texture. The shadows walk around our room. Their eyes burn holes in our backs.

“I know one of them can see us,” Sash says, stopping in front of us. “One of them knows something. Isn't that right? One of you can see us.”

My breath hitches. Now I can’t be insane. The faulty lock, the blown open door--I can’t continue believing they’re not real, especially when Sash implied not everyone can see them. Do illusions often justify their existences to the mentally insane? I wouldn’t think so.

Just don’t look up, don’t look up, don’t look up.

Conversation. That’s what I need, a conversation with Colette. Swallowing the lump in my throat and wetting my lips with my tongue, I say, “What do you think the first trial will be?” The ease with which the question tumbles off my tongue surprises me. My calm tone does not match the way my nerves feel, like they’re being drawn taut through a loom.

Asch’s voice comes out in a lilt. “You’re imagining things, Sash. I don’t think we’re any closer to finding one than we were two months ago.”

They are looking for people like me then, ones who can see them.

Colette looks over her shoulder, forcing me to adjust my arms so I can keep braiding her hair. “I’ve tried not to think about the trials. I can’t even speculate. I had nightmares when I first heard the screams from the last group Mother Aurelia put through. I dreamt these trials manifested our greatest fears,” she says.

I have to tense my hands to keep them from shaking. Fear cannot be present on my face, not with these shadows around. “What is your greatest fear?”

I look up briefly to find Asch nudging Sash closer to us. “Just touch one of them, Sash, if you’re so certain one of these girls is what we’re looking for. After all, we can touch them. We just can’t touch those who can’t see us.”

Colette lets out a small laugh, drawing my eyes to the blueness of her eyes as she turns around and looks at me, her braid falling softly against her back. “If I talk about my greatest fear, I think I might go insane. Let’s try not to think about the present. Let’s think about the future, about what great nuns we’ll make.”

Sash reaches out a pale hand. Part of me wants to run, scream, cry, while another part of me desperately prays Sash changes his mind and realizes he isn’t looking for me. I know nothing of what these shadows intend to do with the people they’re looking for, but instinct says what they want to do can’t be good. I have to bite my tongue to keep my voice from wavering. “I suppose you’re right. Talking about fears won’t do us any good. Let’s just remind ourselves why we’re here in the first place.”

Colette nods, breaking into a smile. “I’m here because the physical world isn’t enough for me.”

I grab for Colette’s braid as Sash draws near. “I’m here because--” I can’t say why I’m really here. I promised Nathaniel I’d tell no one. He would never forgive me if I did. “I’m here because I was dissatisfied with my home life and I wanted something more.”

Sash’s fingers are a centimeter from my cheek. He’s going to--

They whip their heads away from us.

“Shit,” Sash says. “He’s coming. I can hear him. We have to leave, Asch. He can’t catch us in here. He can’t catch us at all.”

Asch bolts for the door. “We’ll keep a closer eye on these girls, if that’ll satiate your curiosity.”

They throw open the door and vanish into the brightness of the hallway. Whoever this ‘he’ is has frightened them away. At the same time, I do not want to meet this ‘he,’ not in the least. This person might be more frightening than the shadows.

Colette approaches the open door. For a brief moment I swear I see panic in her eyes. Shivering overtakes that panic, however. Her voice wavers as she says, “B-blasted lock. It’s cold, so cold. I feel like the temperature has dropped tenfold.” An undertone of fear edges her voice--or that could be from the cold. “Let’s be good sisters and let Mother Aurelia know our lock is broken, all right, Amelia?”

I nod, sighing as my nerves release my muscles. I thank our god, Deus. Thank Deus they’re gone. Thank Deus they are gone.

Colette lets out a gasp.

Theosodore, the Mother Superior’s assistant, has a firm grasp of Colette’s wrist. Her wrist looks like a willow branch in his meaty hand the size of my skull. He looks at her with his infamous jagged smile and strokes the thorny whiskers jutting from his chin. “Are we trying to escape, Sister Colette?”

Did the shadows run from this man, this man who must stand seven feet tall, who looks imposing in stark gray robes lined with black threads? He could kill us in silence, and no one would ever know. This is the man who beats us when we step out of line, though he has neither touched Colette nor I. He must be the one the shadows ran from, but why?

Theosodore’s smile turns vicious, shoving all thoughts of the shadows from my mind. His presence means the first trial is here. His presence means our fate has begun. His presence means our futures will be determined over the next month, if we can survive.

Colette looks Theosodore full in the face, fear nonexistent in her eyes. “I wasn’t trying to escape. The lock is broken. The door has been blowing open all day.”

Theosodore narrows his dark brown eyes, forming menacing creases on his forehead. He grabs Colette’s other wrist and pins her against the doorframe, drawing his face to hers so that there is barely a space between them. I’ll bet he smells like wine that has fermented for only a week. “Don’t lie to me. You’re not the first to attempt escape.”

She draws her eyebrows together. “Call me a liar if you please, but you will have to let Mother Aurelia judge that.”

Theosodore lets go of Colette’s wrists. He keeps his face close to hers. “I’m not here to start a fight or punish you. I’m here to gather you girls for the first trial. That will take care of whatever misgivings you may harbor about being professed.” His jagged smile returns wider than before. “That will be a punishment in itself.”