The Sun and the Starmaker

In the remote village of Reverie, nestled among peaks so high that the Sun cannot rise above them, survival depends on the Starmaker, an immortal guardian who pulls the Sun's light over the peaks each morning using a golden lamppost on the glacier. Centuries ago, a great earthquake raised the mountains, plunging the village into darkness and giving rise to the Frost, a deadly force that feeds on living things deprived of sunlight. The Sun made herself human, fell in love with a man on the mountain, and poured her magic into his blood before returning to the sky, granting him a vastly extended lifespan. When a Starmaker dies, his body is buried in the mountain to sustain its magic, and the Sun chooses a new successor. Eight-year-old Aurora Finch grows up hearing this story as a bedtime tale, captivated by its romance and tragedy.

Ten years later, Aurora is preparing to marry Farren Glenn, whose family owns Reverie's only newspaper, Eternal Reverie. The union will produce a glare line, a magical connection between families' homes that strengthens defenses against the Frost. Aurora's family needs this protection: Their cottage sits entirely beyond the reach of sunlight, and her younger sister, Elsie, was recently touched by the Frost, her skin cracked and white and not healing. Aurora visits the first Starmaker's grave to pray, whispering, "I'll give anything" (14).

On her wedding day, Aurora encounters the fourth Starmaker in the woods. When she grabs his wrist, the veins in her hand glow gold. He tells her sunlight runs in her blood and she is the next Starmaker, the Starmaker Rising. If she does not learn to use her magic, it will kill her. Aurora strikes a bargain: She will move to the castle and train if the Starmaker heals Elsie and marries Aurora to produce a replacement glare line. He reluctantly agrees.

Aurora breaks off her engagement, mourning the safe life she had planned. She recognizes that what she felt for Farren was a love chosen to avoid the devastating grief she watched consume her mother after her father's death. The Starmaker heals Elsie, and Aurora departs for the castle.

The castle brims with magic: fires that never die, a ceiling of clear ice revealing the stars, and a foyer dominated by a weeping statue of the Sun and the first Starmaker. The Starmaker himself is cold and brusque. When Aurora asks about her future, he tells her she will stop aging, outlive everyone she loves, and even in death her body will serve the mountain.

Each morning, Aurora joins the Starmaker on the glacier to pull the sunlight, a process so painful she collapses the first time. She patrols the woods using candy stripe phlox, flowers that turn gray when the Frost advances, as a warning system. Despite constant clashes, Aurora glimpses another side of the Starmaker: He tends a greenhouse of roses and cares gently for Tilly, a living snow angel who has spent centuries searching for her lost human identity.

The Starmaker insists on a grand public wedding to explain Aurora's presence at the castle. Standing at the altar, Aurora panics, realizing the ceremony is a performance rather than a truth, and runs. The Starmaker is forced to reveal publicly that she is the Starmaker Rising. That night, Farren arrives at the castle, certain Aurora ran for him, but she tells him firmly she did not. Later, Aurora and the Starmaker share a candid conversation. He confesses he once ended his own engagement because he could not bear to watch someone he loved age, and admits that if he were not the Starmaker, he would have liked to wholly belong to another.

Their bond grows. The Starmaker reveals that as his magic transfers, he can feel Aurora's emotions. When she has a panic attack about outliving everyone, he places her hand over his heart and breathes with her until she calms. After a dangerous surge of magic on the glacier leaves Aurora weakened, Farren abducts her to an ice cave, hoping to pressure her into creating a glare line for his struggling family. The Starmaker tracks her with white wolves and brings her home. Aurora's mother visits and offers the counsel Aurora needs most: Loving her husband was worth every moment of grief, and the pain reflects the depth of their love rather than erasing it.

The Starmaker installs mirrors on a castle balcony angled to reflect sunlight to Aurora's family cottage. Aurora whispers, "I might love you" (278). He appears not to hear, but privately he does, thinking, "I might ruin you" (279). One night, Aurora kisses him in his greenhouse. He kisses her back before pulling away, calling it "a moment of weakness" (289). Until now, Aurora has believed the Starmaker will simply become mortal once her magic is complete, aging naturally over time. But the village bookshop owner shares an old saying suggesting the Starmaker will die the very day her magic is fulfilled. The Starmaker confirms it. Aurora is devastated, declaring she will let the mountain crumble before she loses him.

Aurora plans one perfect day: She pulls the light alone so the Starmaker can sleep in for the first time in centuries, plants a rare rose with him, and fills the day with simple joy. At the end, she proposes, and he says yes without hesitation. They marry that night in the moonlit garden with only a priest as witness, exchanging sapphire rings and traditional vows. Afterward, he tells her his name: Caspian.

The Frost advances. During a patrol, Aurora's blood falls on gray phlox from a cut, and the flower turns vibrant pink, though she is too disoriented to grasp the significance. On the glacier, Caspian calls to the Sun a final time. Aurora pulls the light alone as the last of his magic floods into her. Caspian dies in her arms.

Aurora spirals, neglecting the sunlight for over a fortnight and plunging Reverie into darkness while she searches the library for a way to bring Caspian back. Elsie arrives and pulls her out, reminding Aurora their family's home will be the first the Frost reaches. Aurora remembers the phlox, tests her theory, and confirms her blood can restore gray flowers to full color, proving it can sustain the mountain in place of a buried body. She finds a journal entry Caspian wrote before his death, calling their love story his favorite and asking her to write it down. She recommits to her duties.

On her first morning back at the glacier, Aurora speaks with the Sun and realizes the Sun's words carry no feeling of love. She concludes the Sun has forgotten her own love story. Aurora arranges mirrors to project the weeping statue's image past the peaks into the heavens, then climbs to Reverie's highest summit to tell the Sun the story of how she once fell in love with a human. Northern lights appear, confirming the Sun remembers.

On the morning of Caspian's planned burial, the Sun offers to split Aurora's immortality with Caspian, shortening Aurora's life but restoring his, if Aurora gives her blood to the mountain regularly. Aurora agrees, drags Caspian into the sunlight, and endures agonizing waves as years are torn from her. A falling star lands on his chest. Caspian gasps, opens his eyes, and whispers, "My god, you're a stubborn thing" (409).

In the epilogue, a father tells his daughter the story of the Double Star: the fourth and fifth Starmakers who fell so deeply in love that the Sun changed the rules of the mountain so that one's beginning was not the other's end. For the girl listening, it is not an end but a beginning.