"Here's your room," Brand says to me as he reaches a single door, painted white, a little further down the hallway where the room of Jock Steele was once filled. "Niro's room is right next door, so you can get him if you need anything. Plus, you can ask him about the things he's been holding back from you. I know you're at least a little angry with him." Brand smiles, but it doesn't quite touch his eyes.

"Sure," I say quietly. I don't want to say anything much, not after what he's shown me. I can only marvel at the courage it must have taken to tell me about his deceased son.

Brand pushes the door open, gives me a small smile, and turns to walk away. Before he does, my mind makes a split second decision, and I reach out to grab his wrist. He swings around and looks at me with his hazel eyes. A lump forms in my throat.

"Thank you," I whisper softly.

He smiles back.

"Anytime, Lenore Kelandi," he says. "I know that Jock would have liked you."

And then he's walking away.

Slowly, I make my way into the small room. I close the door behind me and glance around. A lamp with a lavender shade. A chair with a small desk pushed into the corner of the room. A wardrobe, a window, a bed with a flowery spread. When I sit down on it, it feels medium soft. Much better than my dingy cell back in Solum.

Niro was right. This seems so much more like home than that prison.

Niro! Brand told me to go ask him about the things he's been holding back from me. A relentless hunger gnaws at my stomach, and I march directly out of the room without inspecting it further.

Brand has already vanished down the hall. I turn to my right, towards an almost identical white door next to mine. This has to be Niro's. I hesitate, wondering whether or not to knock, and decide that I probably don't owe him the courtesy anyway.

I push the door open without knocking.

"Yeah, sure, come in," Niro says in a dry voice.

The room is almost identical to mine. The only difference is a blue lampshade instead of lavender, a plain white bedspread, and a bookcase in the corner. The curtains have been swept aside to let in the light of the setting sun, illuminating a cushioned window seat where Niro is sitting, cross-legged, the golden light bringing out the lilac tones in his violet eyes.

He pats at a spot next to him. "Come sit."

I walk across the room, my feet against the bare wooden floor. It's only then that I realise that I haven't taken off my boots.

"Leave them," says Niro. "It doesn't matter."

So I sit down beside him, feeling the warmth of the fading sunlight caress my cheeks, setting my skin aflame. The golden tone looks good on Niro's darker skin.

"I know you have a lot to ask," he says quietly. "I'm going to answer them - but not all of them."

I glare at him, and he smirks. "Screw you," I mutter.

He ignores me. "You remember the dreams you've had in Solum," he says. "Do you remember the poem?"

"Edgar Allan Poe, yes."

He gets up and moves over to the bookcase. Reaching up, he picks up a small volume and flips through it before handing it to me. "Read that."

Scowling, I lean over the pages, yellowed with age.

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil! - prophet still, if bird or devil!

By that Heaven that bends above us - by that God we both adore -

Tel this soul with sorrow laden if, within the distant Aidenn,

It shall clasp a sainted maiden whom the angels name Lenore -

Clasp a rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore."

Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

Ice rushes through my bloodstream. My fingers are stiff.

The book falls from my cold hands, landing before my feet.

Niro bends and picks it up. Sitting down on the bed, he leans forward and takes my hands in his. "That," he says slowly, "was taken from Edgar Allan Poe's Lenore."

No. No, it can't be true. Although it's just a random poem, maybe with no connection to me at all, a sense of foreboding crashes down on me like a raging wave of the sea.

"Nora, calm down. Please."

I look into Niro's eyes, begging for comfort.

He sighs. "Look," he says, "the name Lenore is an ancient, old-fashioned notion. It doesn't necessarily relate to you."

"It doesn't?" I whisper.

"In Greek, Lenore means light." Niro flips through the book again, then snaps it shut. "It doesn't necessarily have to mean you."

"Necessarily?"

Niro glances down. "Has Phillip ever told you what Kelandi means?"

I strain my memory, thinking back to the fateful night when I wandered down to the Red Room from my own tiny cell of a bedroom, when I saw Phillip in the armchair and that painting on the wall. The painting of Clarity and Jeremy Questorm.

"No," I say.

Niro sighs again. He leans forward, avoiding my eyes; without noticing it, I lean forward as well. Our hands clasp each other's tightly.

"Kelandi, in the ancient tongue," Niro says, "means Star-Shadow. It translates directly to Starshade."

I hesitate, gripping his hands so tightly his skin and my knuckles turn white.

"Cecily Ethi first made a prophecy several years ago, and she delivered it to us in the words of Edgar Allan Poe. We had no idea what she meant, of course, until now. She meant you. What you would call yourself, in an act of rebellion."

"Rebellion?" I don't understand.

"Against Solum. Against me calling you Lenora. You're changing, Nora. You're different, and even I can't keep you the way I want to."

"Good," I say, my voice weak. "I'm not yours anymore."

We both fall silent for a while, staring out the window, watching the sun dip below the forest line.

"What do I have to do with the prophecy my mother made?" I ask softly. "What exactly happened that made me so important?"

"We have to go back in time," Niro whispers. "Back to the time when... when all this first began."

~

"Time is a fickle thing," Niro says. "It's relative to our thoughts and emotions; it is different for all of us. For some, it is brief, because their lives are but a flicker in the long darkness of history. For others, it is long and unmoving, because they wish for only death. And there are also some for whom time passes both swiftly and yet tarries, swiftly because they change not, and slow for they do not have to count the running of years, for they are the ones who are immortal."

My ears perk up. Immortality and mortality. What it means to be human. Before I turn to stardust.

That's what Jock Steele said.

"In the beginning," Niro says in a hushed voice, "there were two tribes. One of them were called the Eyras, and the other the Geydrim. They were on rather hostile terms; the Geydrim had been there for a long time, and they deemed themselves worthier than the Eyras. Their home was in the watery depths of the Mediterranean Sea. The Eyras were a warlike people, and they prided themselves on their strength in both war and trading."

"Phillip told me about them," I whisper.

"I don't doubt it," Niro answers. "Among the Geydrim there was a young princess, the most beloved of her people, born of Oren and Ellenas, and her name was Reyniri, that is Foam-Lily in their tongue. She was the fairest in her land - with raven hair like shadow following her, and her golden eyes like the glow of the setting sun, and the light of the stars and moon were in them. She loved to sing - and dance. Many said that her voice was sweetest in the world, sweeter than the nightingale as it sang upon nightfall, with the loveliness of the shining stars and the power of the raging summer storm, mysterious as the mists curling around the uncovered lands in the Far North. All creatures fell under the enchantment of her song, the glory and beauty of it, as if she were a fairy-maiden come to reality.

"When Reyniri was older, she shied away from her home and her family, growing ever nearer to land. Often she would come to the cool clear rivers of shore, and there beside the voices of the running water she would dance upon the fading grass, and turn her face to the light of the stars and darkening skies above her, as the sun dipped below the horizon and the moon rose in the sky as rounded dew dipped in starlight. There she would break into heart-piercing song, and the bubbling rivers were her pipe, and her voice was that of the lark upon the gates of spring. Lilies were in her hair even as her name told, and her mantle was blue and gold, her raiment woven of the ocean waters the setting sun gazes upon.

"Then came upon her one evening, even as she danced and sang under the dawning stars, Tinlent Eyra son of Tumbar and Nithlent, prince of the Eyran kingdom. He was weary and worn with toil, but when he heard that song of pure loveliness and blinding glory his feet felt light, and his heart flew on wings of fire and storm, and he fell under her enchantment. Fleet-footed he came to her, and seeing this fairy-maiden upon the hills of Arindille he fell in love with her, and called to her, calling her Kelandi, that is Starshade."

A shiver runs down my spine.

"Reyniri halted in wonder in her dance, and she glanced upon him, this mortal man worn with woe and toil. And doom fell upon the maiden of the Geydrim, for she loved him, and being free she received the chain of mortality, for the grief and anguish of her descendants shall be greater than the world has ever known.

"And as she gazed upon Tinlent, he saw in her golden eyes a shadow pass over, the shadow of mortality even as the evening comes to dawn upon morning, and her eyes became grey as the Twilight, but in her eyes there was also the light of the stars. For Reyniri Geydri became mortal indeed, and there in the hidden glade of Arindille she placed her hand in that of Tinlent Eyra, and thus the race of Starshade was born."

"Stop," I whimper softly. "Stop."

Niro's violet eyes do not soften. "I cannot stop. It is already done. Even I cannot change the past, Nora."

I crumple forward, scratching at my eyes and ears, but Niro seizes my hands. I sink into his arms, sobbing silently, wishing I had had the foresight to never ask for the truth. The truth was what I wanted, but now I prefer to live in ignorance.

Because Reyniri Starshade should never, ever have died. She should have lived forever. She should still be alive and with her kin deep down in the watery depths. She should have lived.

She should not have fallen in love.

I should not exist because of it.

"I am a mistake," I say, muffled, into Niro's shoulder. "I should never have been born. I should not exist."

"Nora."

"Don't tell me it's not true, Niro," I push away from him and wipe my eyes. "Isn't that what happened with Phillip Questorm? I should never have fallen in love with him. Maybe I don't love him. Maybe I do. But what if I did love him? He might still be here. Not in danger. Not in the Raven's grasp."

"Nora, look..."

"What, Niro?" I pull away from him, new tears forming in my eyes. "Tell me what. Because I don't understand what happens to me now. I was never meant to exist - I shouldn't exist. Neither should the Raven. The world is better off without both of us."

I reach back, digging my fingers into my hair, clutching at my raven locks. Only then do I think with revulsion - hair just like Reyniri's by Niro's description. She was a coward, culled by love, blinded by it. She never should have done it.

"Lenora, Nora, listen to me. Look at me."

I shake my head, unable to speak.

"Nora!"

In all the years we've worked together, I have never heard Niro raise his voice. Ever.

I look at him.

His violet eyes are firm, though I see with astonishment that they themselves are welling up with tears. "Years ago, I had a sister," he whispers. "I loved her more than anything. And I lost her because of my own selfishness. Because I wronged her."

I listen intently, unable to prevent the words from falling into my ears and my mind. I have never heard about Niro's past before. And I can't help but hear about it all now.

"There aren't many things that I believe in," Niro says. "But one thing that I do believe in is compassion. I lost my sister because of a lack of compassion. I lost so much because I couldn't be compassionate. And I believe..." He hesitates. "I believe that Phillip Questorm loved Ashleigh Miller."

He knows.

"And I believe that there's a reason for our existence," Niro says. "Yours, Phillip's, Jeremy's. There is a reason we all exist. And that's because we love. Because we're capable of loving and being loved back. And it's a gift, Lenora - it's a gift to be able to love."

A tear slides down his cheek.

"And that's why you exist, Lenora Starshade," he whispers, "because you need to be loved. And you will be loved. Phillip recognised that, and he knew that only one person can love you truly, as you are, because each person is destined to find the other part of their soul. You haven't found that love yet. You have to exist."

My hands are trembling.

"Do you hear me, Nora?" Niro leans in closer, his hand cupping my face. "You need to be loved."

I raise my eyes.

"Plato once said," Niro says, "that men and women were once one. They were so powerful, because of their power to be together, to love each other, to have their souls intwined, that even the gods feared them. For the gods were immortal, and those who are immortal cannot love. But those who are human, those who live with a brief flicker of brightest flame in the dark - those are the ones that can love."

He's quoting Jock Steele.

"And you?" I say. "Haven't you ever had a love?"

"My only love has been my sister," he says. "Even after she is gone. I don't think I'll ever find peace after her death.And Nora," he says, with a soft chuckle, "you don't know me. You don't know about the thousands of years that I've lived. There is no hope left for me, but there is for you."

A shudder runs down my spine.

"What was her name?" I ask softly.

Niro looks at me, his wet eyes flickering with flame.

"Nora," he says.

~

And the Raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting

On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door;

And his eyes all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming,

And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor;

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor

Shall be lifted - nevermore!