She never really knew how it happened - trying to remember the exact way was like trying to recall the day you met your childhood best friend. Looking back, you realize that their coming wasn't ushered in with a thunderclap and a round of applause. Instead, they infiltrated your life slowly until one day, years down the road, you wonder how they ever became so important to you.
As she lay in bed, staring through her skylight at the stars above her, she recalled the events of that long-ago day in her mind…
"Don't get lost," Caprise told her, leaning on her husband's arm. "Those Exillium people are dangerous."
Marella would've rolled her eyes with anyone else, but this was her mother. Her poor, damaged mother.
"I'll be careful, Mom," she reassured her before turning and disappearing into the thick of the crowd. She stopped running when she was a safe distance away from her mother, rubbing her hands over her face and drawing in a deep breath. That morning had been indescribably horrible. Her mother had screamed at her for leaving the back door unlocked the previous night, terrified that the Neverseen would come into their home. Marella had searched the entire house three times over for Caprise's medicine, but when she finally found the bottle underneath her mother's bed, it was empty. Apparently her mother had emptied the liquid contents into the courtyard directly outside her window. In the end, Marella's father had held her, both restraining and comforting her as she screamed, sobbed, and finally went limp with exhaustion in his arms.
As her mother collapsed, Marella had caught the look of grave sadness and something that looked like reproach as her father looked at her. She'd held herself together only until she could escape to her room; then she'd buried her face in her pillow and sobbed for her mother, her family, and, most of all, herself.
Marella shook herself away from the pain-filled memory of the morning and dove headfirst into the crowd, ready to lose herself in the chaos of her surroundings. Anything to dull the stabs of pain ravaging her heart.
A familiar voice caught her attention and she looked around, confused. Wasn't Sophie banished?
She made her way toward the noise. A way to her right, the crowd had emptied a small bubble of space around the former Exillium attendees - Keefe, Sophie, Fitz, Biana, Dex, and… two more she didn't recognize. Who were they? She craned her neck to see, and at that exact moment one of them turned their head her way.
She was left staring into the mesmerizing silvery-blue eyes of a boy she had never seen before. Helpless. She was helpless. His gaze locked with hers was the most exhilarating thing she had ever felt. His eyes burned through her mind and her heart, lighting her on fire from the inside. She was a living flame, and she would never be the same.
Now, with the timeless stars burning on above her, she felt that familiar fire in her again- more real to her even than the flames stored in her hands and her DNA. For three years, the flame had burned on, faltering and flaring up as all flames do, but lasting. This was not some petty candle; she was a living bonfire, burning her love to eternity. Marking her place in the stars. Setting her seal in the sun. She was eternal, and she was on fire.