20: Vivid Imagination

Over breakfast, Aurora avoids the Starmaker, rattled by a tabloid headline and by the worry that he can sense her longing and fear. She stays silent, angry at herself for occasionally finding him pleasant. Even Constance’s watchfulness unsettles her as she struggles to contain secrets she cannot voice.

In the sleigh, the Starmaker asks if Aurora is angry. Unable to confess that her progress stalls because she fears his eventual mortality, she frames it as striving to do better. She admits that loving her sister taught her to live in terror of loss. He bluntly calls her stubborn—and therefore strong enough to survive grief—offering cold comfort that still lands.

Awkward banter sparks unwelcome desire in Aurora, and a single ambiguous remark ignites vivid, intimate imaginings she fights to suppress. He clarifies he meant a release from fear so she can live in the present and presses the need for progress, reminding her of the stakes.

At the glacier, after a brief plan to give Tilly her gift that night, they begin training. As the Sun crests, Aurora senses something wrong. The light passes through the Starmaker and slams into her, compounded by too much of his magic, hurling her back and burning through her body.

Both are injured: the Starmaker reels from the Sun’s force while drained by what he has already given Aurora. He staggers toward her and collapses, and Aurora blacks out, realizing in horror that unless she can hold more light soon, his magic will fail before she is ready to protect Reverie.