The Other Side of the Sky - Amie Kaufman Page 0,138

me now—a new goddess had come.”

“I blamed you for abandoning our people, for turning against destiny for your own heart,” I whisper. “But I have done the very same thing.”

Jezara’s eyes widen. “The cloudlander,” she murmurs. “I saw the way he … Did you—”

“I let him go,” I whisper. “He is the Last Star, and I need him to fulfill the prophecy. But when he found a way home, I … I could have made him stay. I had that power. But I let him go.”

Jezara’s gaze is troubled. “You wanted him to be safe. You care for him, that much is obvious.”

“But he’s not safe!” I retort, my voice coming out a bit more intently than I wanted. “Inshara has him.”

Too late I remember who Inshara is to Jezara, and I regret the bitter hatred in my voice.

Seeing my face, Jezara gives a tiny shake of her head. “It’s all right. I know what she’s becoming. I’ve always known—I just didn’t want to see.”

“You were too busy believing she was the Lightbringer.”

Her expression freezes, and for a moment I regret my words—until I see that her eyes are dark with … guilt?

“Forgive me,” she murmurs, gaze falling from mine as she passes a hand over her eyes. “I was so angry—I wanted you to feel what I’d felt, to be as lost as I was.”

My stomach twists, a sickness rising up in my gut. “What are you saying?”

Jezara’s lips press together. “She is not the Lightbringer. I told you the story she believes. I don’t know what voice she hears, but it certainly isn’t a god speaking to her. You must understand, she was so lonely, so unhappy as a child—we lived among such hatred. Everyone we met punished her for my misdeeds. When she was a child, she found that scroll, the one with the lost stanza.”

“Why would she think it had anything to do with her?” I demand. “That any of it was about you?”

“Parts of it seemed true,” Jezara murmurs. “The empty one. A journey. And I had my own Star… . I gave up my divinity for him.”

“Your own—but you did not actually see a star fall from …” My words stop as my throat squeezes.

“Your North was so surprised that I knew where he was from,” Jezara murmurs. “He reminded me so much of him, with that skeptical mind and strange newness to the world. When I first saw you together in the mist-ruined village, I thought I was seeing him.”

“Your lover … was a cloudlander,” I breathe, the anger knocked out of me by shock.

“He fell, and I healed him, and eventually, he gave me Insha.”

“So she saw herself in the scroll, as I did.” I stare at her, mind spinning. “And you did not correct her.”

“It was a bedtime story!” Jezara blurts, voice begging me to understand. “I told her she was special—I told her she was chosen. That all this pain and loneliness … was because she was destined for something bigger than us, bigger than those who’d cast us out.”

I feel as though I could collapse there in the mud. “You made me think I was delusional.”

Jezara’s eyes are wet. “I’m sorry, Nimhara. You must understand, I lost my faith the moment the only family I had threw me out into the world, pregnant and alone. I believed in nothing—what harm in giving my daughter something to believe?”

My hands curl into fists. “Why are you here, then? Why follow me?”

“Because …” The former goddess sighs and gets slowly to her feet, grimacing as she rubs a hand against her bad leg to work out the stiffness. “Because I know where you must go, what you must do. I understand now what Insha has become. She is my daughter, my responsibility.”

“I know she’s your daughter, but—”

“Listen to me.” Jezara’s face is calm and grave once more—but this time it doesn’t have the look of armor. “They put me in my prison, those priests—I let them make me ashamed of myself, of my own daughter. I cowered there in that box of shame and guilt and regret for so many years, and I believed that they had poisoned my daughter the way they poisoned me. But I am the one who raised her. I poisoned her.”

I stare up at her, robbed of breath.

“I’m done hiding.” Jezara looks down at me, eyes troubled but resolved. “And she’s my responsibility.”

“She must be stopped,” I manage, getting to my feet and finding them wobbly beneath