Chapter 78: The Promise in the Stars
In a sun-drenched room of marble and gold, a child sat cross-legged with the gravity of a scholar, pencil smudges on her fingers and galaxies blooming across pages. She wasn't drawing castles or ponies—she was designing a world: a ring where sun and moon nearly touch, a necklace cradling a secret sunrise, earrings of asymmetrical love, a bracelet stitched from stars. Each piece shimmered with quiet longing, stitched in peridot and pink diamond, etched in the shape of devotion.
She didn't design for herself. Every line, every twist of gold, every ancient stone was for someone else—someone whose name she whispered more like a vow than a word. Not just a gift, but a promise: You are the only one. You are my sun. You are my moon. You are the gravity that made me.
By her side, a woman with laughing eyes and hidden awe listened as the child explained each detail, not with the flurry of youth, but the clarity of someone who had chosen. A master jeweler would later say, "These were not made by a child." But they were. And they were not for sale.
Later, when the final set arrived, velvet boxes cradled the stars she'd woven. She slipped her poem inside—an oath in ancient script—and asked, voice barely more than breath, "Do you think she'll like them?"
Someone once cried quietly in a garden, trying not to be seen. Someone else saw. And vowed, even then: I'll fill your silences with stardust. You will never be alone again.
That vow now gleamed in gold and fire.
Not romantic, she insisted.
Just us.
Just everything.