Read Online The Shadow Behind the Stars by Rebecca Hahn - Free Book Online

out at my sister. “I do want to send her back.” Shewas overlooking the obvious. They both were, but I’d have expected Xinot to catch on more quickly than this.
    She saw the certain knowledge on my face, and the eye whirled and deepened. She drew back.
    When she spoke, it was cold. “The father wasn’t a villager, Serena. He was a raider.”
    A sharp tongue of lightning licked our walls, and then I heard my kindest sister sitting abruptly in her chair. The grasses went one over the other over the other. Xinot poked at the fire with her stick; my hair shone orange at the edges, and the end of my nose began to warm.
    They didn’t ask me how I knew. They didn’t question the statement’s truth. We know truth; we know its shape and texture, and they could not help but believe me.
    The splattering turned to a steady, hard rhythm and then merged into one heavy sound. The water was starting to come in through our door, but none of us moved to shut it. After a minute, Aglaia came rushing in, her pockets full of stones, soaked through. She shut the door and greeted us as she always did, bright, vague. She didn’t seem to notice when none of us replied.
    â€œWe’ll keep it, then,” said Serena, as Aglaia went over to her blankets to deposit her loot and then took up her position on my stool, wringing her hair. The storm had arrived in truth now: The lightning flickered across our faces, turning them eerie as a mortal’s dream. We spoke between cracks of thunder.
    â€œWe can’t,” I said, through clenched teeth.
    I heard Serena drawing in a breath, low, harsh. She spoke in the same tone: “You saw her when she arrived, Chloe. You know what pain the girl was in. We can’t give her back to that.”
    Yes, I had seen her. Yes, I knew Aglaia’s pain, and I knew the fire in her eyes as she begged me for help.
    Snap. The grass I had been weaving was broken to bits in my hand. I said, irritated, tossing the basket from my lap, “We cannot raise a child, Serena!”
    Aglaia looked over at me. The basket had tumbled into the fire, and the glow from its sudden flame caught in her hair, swept along her cheeks. “A child?” she said. “Is someone going to have a baby?” Her voice was as light as ever, but I saw the hand that drifted to her stomach; I saw how it hovered there, protecting.
    This time, my sisters saw it too.
    â€œShe knows,” Xinot muttered.
    â€œOnly deep inside of her,” I said, frozen, watching the girl. “Not on the surface.”
    Xinot’s mouth narrowed. “Not yet.”
    Serena was watching Aglaia with some strange question, as though she’d never seen this girl before, as though she was noticing the color of her eyes for the first time, the shape of her arms, the curve of her neck. “Aglaia,” she said, soft as a bird’s belly, “do you like children?”
    Aglaia’s face brightened, as a small girl’s does on hearing some happy news. “I love children,” she said. She leaned over toward my sister, her hand still placed on her dress, gentle. “Do you have children?” She looked about at us all. “I think that youdo, or you will. I think there are going to be children.”
    Xinot stood abruptly, and Aglaia startled, staring up at her. “Serena,” my sister said, “you cannot protect her from this.”
    Serena’s face gleamed; she rubbed a hand across it and stood as well, turning from Aglaia. “No,” she said. “I’ll have to bring her back.”
    They looked down at me, still crouched across the fire from the girl. The way she had her face turned up toward my sisters, the trust that shone through her—she wouldn’t look at us like this again.
    But of course we had to do it. I wanted to do it. We would finally be getting rid of her. I pushed myself up from the floor and shook my tunic out so it fell full about my