The Light We Lost: The Stardust Circle, #1

By Abbie Payne

"Blood, death, and gore as far as the eye could see… and a High Priestess Serena standing on top of it all."
Nadia, Jade, Spencer, and Priamos have spent the best part of their lives trying to keep a massive part of who they were a secret. They kept themselves as separated from the rest of their coven as possible, not telling anyone about who they were - not even Priamos' brother, Tempest, until he discovered he was already one of them. The number one rule for the entire group is very simple: absolutely no one can know about what sets them apart from the rest of the town. However, when the reigning High Priestess begins to lose her control over Wolf's Hollow and the Stardust Circle, they realize that there's a grave danger in Wolf's Hollow and that they might just be the only ones that can put a stop to it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Abbie M. Payne
• Release date: Oct 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393154525

Abbie Payne

Abbie Payne is an author from right outside Houston, Texas. She writes young adult and adult about found families, hardships, and the things that make us different in hopes of inspiring people and offering people that are even just a little bit like her a way to escape and a little bit of solace that they aren't alone.

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By Abbie Payne

The Stardust Circle: The Light We Lost (Vol. 1)

The following work comes from the writer’s imagination and only that. Any similar people, events, or places are solely coincidence.

Copyright © 2020 Abbie M. Payne

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No parts of this publication may be reproduced, scanned, copied, or transmitted in any format, digital or printed, without written permission from the author.

The Light We Lost

Volume 1 of The Stardust Circle series

To my history professor that once said the first three words of this book during a lecture and said that no one could ever write a book about it.

Well, I did it.

1

Tempest

J efferson still lives .

As I woke up to the sound of my alarm, rolled over, and was met by the bright sunlight gleaming through the white curtains covering my windows, I only had one thing on my mind and that was my dream from the night before.

Well, maybe it wasn’t exactly a dream, but it wasn’t exactly a nightmare either. My moms and my brother constantly warn me not to eat sugar before bed, but I was weak to my sweet tooth’s desires and so I had nightmares more than I had dreams, but the one last night wasn’t really a dream nor a nightmare.

A dream-mare?

Okay, yeah, I had to admit that was kind of dumb.

Whatever you wanted to call it, though, this dream was on my mind pretty much every time I woke up. Every night for the past three or four weeks, I’d had the same dream, but every night I got further into the dream and learned more details. But I still had no idea what was happening... maybe I needed to talk to Priamos about it.

Priamos, who I sometimes referred to as Pri, was my older brother. I worshipped the ground he walked on growing up (and I still kind of did). We were very close and always had been. Priamos was the one that I trusted the most out of anyone - even our own parents - and I had a feeling that, if anyone was to know what was going on with me, it would be him.

I jumped as the door to my room swung open and Priamos walked in, throwing my coven robe at me, Get dressed, Idiot. You’re late for the meeting and you’re making me late because I’ve been waiting for you for the past hour.

I honestly completely forgot about the coven meeting today, but then again, surprise coven meetings happened quite a lot around here.

I got to my feet and got dressed. I had one of Priamos’ shirts in my closet that I always wore to the coven meetings. I hated wearing dark colors normally (and therefore didn’t own any dark clothes), but our clothes had to blend in with our robe, so I usually just borrowed one of Priamos’ shirts for the meeting and then changed afterward.

Ah, the perks of having a brother that didn’t wear anything that wasn’t dark gray, dark blue, or black.

Once I was dressed, I headed downstairs and followed Priamos out the door, heading towards the place where our coven met. As we walked, I couldn’t help but slow down a little as I looked around. I had lived here for as long as I could remember, but I would never get used to the beauty and mystery that was Wolf’s Hollow, Virginia.

It was a small town of just over two-hundred people located just outside of Arlington, Virginia, but it was a town that possessed secrets that could only be found if you took the time to look for them - and you didn’t get killed trying.

Wolf’s Hollow wasn’t just another small town. It was home solely to immortal beings - supernaturals. To be more specific, it was home almost solely to witches. On occasion, a supernatural hybrid would come into Wolf’s Hollow, but even that was rare.

The town itself had existed since the early 1800s and everywhere you turned was a hodgepodge of different architecture from different eras. There were some plantation homes, some Victorian homes, some Edwardian homes, and even some modern homes were scattered throughout (those were rare, though).

Oh, and we definitely milked the witch thing everywhere we could. Since there were only privately owned businesses in town and the owners could pretty much do what they wanted with their shop’s decor, the shops (particularly on Main Street and around the town square) were well-known for their witchy themes... probably because most of them had witchcraft-related things in them, but even the best general store in town (the general store on Main Street that belonged to a middle-aged woman named Angelina Brodeur, which I’m totally qualified to say as the biggest foodie in town) had obvious witchy themes.

What’s more, Wolf’s Hollow was home to the Stardust Circle, the second-largest coven in North America and the largest coven in the world open to those of any gender (or lack thereof).

The Stardust Circle was mine and Priamos’ coven, though we didn’t exactly have a choice in the matter. When I was young (I’m not sure how young - I don’t even really know how old I am now, though I’m pretty sure I’m around nineteen or twenty... maybe), I was adopted by Maya and Serena Livingston, who had already taken in Pri many years prior.

Serena was the High Priestess and so Pri and I were almost always members of the coven- much to the dismay of everyone else - having both been initiated into the coven when we started going through puberty.

Even though men were permitted in the coven it didn’t mean that everyone liked the idea of a man being in the coven. They especially didn’t like me being there because, unlike Priamos, I wasn’t even born in Wolf’s Hollow. I wasn’t supposed to exist and if it weren’t for Maya and Serena, I wouldn’t exist. I knew that very well.

I followed Priamos into the meeting hall where we always convened before going around back into the woods to perform our rituals. Although the Stardust Circle was like a coven that the humans thought of in several ways, we still weren’t that kind of coven.

The Stardust Circle was the only coven in Wolf’s Hollow and since we were the primary species in Wolf’s Hollow, Serena was almost like the queen. She made all the rules, all the decisions. So, the coven meetings were also a way for us to get the news about Wolf’s Hollow that we wouldn’t get otherwise. Kind of like a city hall meeting for the humans, but more mandatory and with a greater chance of death if you didn’t go. Unlike with humans where there were few consequences if they weren’t involved in the government, witches couldn’t live in Wolf’s Hollow if they weren’t part of the coven in some way, shape, or form and - save a few - no witch in Wolf’s Hollow has ever been outside of Wolf’s Hollow.

Priamos and I already knew a lot of the information being said, but Maya and Serena still expected us to show up for the news portion (the boring portion) of the meetings and sometimes it was just easier to go with it rather than complain. Neither of us ever got very far with complaining anyway.

At the front of the meeting room at the podium stood Serena. She was tall and thin in stature. I’ve heard some people describe her as willowy, but I’ve never been able to wrap my head around that. Isn’t a willow a type of tree? Who would use that to describe a person?

Serena had long, black hair that hung in ringlets just below her waist, but she always kept it up in a bun when she was going out of the house. She had deep-set, dark brown (almost black) eyes, too, which added to the creepy factor for quite a few people in the town. I don’t think it helped any that Serena almost always had razor-sharp, black acrylics on her nails. I didn’t know exactly why she always had them (literally always, she’d been getting them since I was a small child), but I didn’t think I wanted to know either.

Beside Serena stood Maya, Serena’s wife. She was shorter than Serena, but she was definitely more skin-and-bones than her partner. She had pale skin that was almost translucent and hair that reached just below her jaw that she kept colored gray. Or, at least, it was gray. I’d never tried to figure out whether it was natural or not because I didn’t care that much. She had wide, hauntingly blue eyes.

I heard that a lot of people describe Maya as ghostly in appearance and, honestly, I wasn’t sure that I disagreed with that description. She was, at the very least, unnerving to see for the first few times after you met her. I’ve never tried to figure out why that is.

I stood quietly beside Priamos in the back of the room while we listened to Serena talk. She almost seemed nervous about something, though she was trying not to let the others know. That was relatively normal for her, though. I loved my mother, but she was paranoid - especially about keeping others under her control.

Plus, Priamos once told me about this curse in the Livingston bloodline that causes those in the bloodline to eventually lose their magic. Although that wasn’t something Pri and I had to worry about since we weren’t blood-related to the Livingstons, my mother did. She wasn’t the greatest at conserving her magic either.

Maybe that curse was what she was worried about.

Eventually, the end of the meeting came and Serena closed it with a single statement: Absolutely no one is allowed in the barrier or outside of it. I don’t care if they’re a witch or not. Outsiders are dangerous. Outsiders are deadly. Outsiders will not be tolerated in Wolf’s Hollow.

The barrier. We just had to talk about the barrier again. For the past fifteen years, Wolf’s Hollow’s had a barrier around it and we were still having to talk about how no one was ever allowed in or out of the barrier. Honestly, I don’t even know what Serena does when she catches someone - if she does anything at all. She likes to have control, but she can also be kind of wishy-washy when it comes to the barrier. After all, she let Maya bring me in through the barrier and they still kept me after that.

Those last three sentences weren’t a surprise either. They had begun drilling those last three sentences into the heads of every Stardust Circle witch from the moment that they could understand the words. For Stardust Circle witches, we memorized that easier than we did nursery rhymes. In some twisted way, it was a nursery rhyme.

I looked up as Priamos nudged me in the ribs with his elbow.

Let’s go, he told me as the other coven members filed out of the room and through the back door that led to the woods behind the building.

We followed and joined into the ritual with the other witches.

Priamos and I were both relatively powerful - especially for a couple of dudes - but we were really only that way because we’ve both practiced magic our entire lives. Priamos has practiced for years and then when I came along, he taught me everything he knew. Then, we began to regularly practice together.

That being said, we were not the most powerful witches in the coven. No witch was more powerful than the High Priestess and no biologically male witch was more powerful than a biologically female witch. At least, that was how we were always led to believe those things worked.

During the ritual, I kept thinking back to the dream I had the night before. There was just something about it that wasn’t settling right with me, something about it that made me question things (and I hate questioning things because then I spiral). In the dream, I was witnessing things that I knew I’d never witnessed. The signing of the Declaration of Independence, George Washington’s inauguration, the death of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

Jefferson still lives.

But what did it mean?

Like I said before, I didn’t know my real age... was it possible that I did live through those events? No, that was impossible. Regardless of my real age, Pri was definitely older than me and his biological age was sixty-five (witches were immortal, but we had a biological and apparent age, so Priamos appeared to only be in his mid-twenties or so), so there was no way. Right? But then... How did I have such distinct memories of these things?

As the ritual went on, I could feel myself slipping into my own thoughts over and over again. It was like I was being pulled underwater even though I kept trying to resurface. Slowly, I slipped into some kind of hallucination that closely resembled my dreams.

☆☆☆

John Hancock, the man signed on the piece of paper before him. This piece of paper wasn’t just any old piece of paper. This piece of paper held the key to a new nation -a new nation full of promises and risks that were all for the colonists’ taking. This was the birth of a whole new flavor of freedom.

☆☆☆

April 30, 1789.

Another pinnacle point in United States history.

A man stood on a balcony, repeating words said to him by another. Before him, hundreds of townspeople stood, hanging on every word he said like he was some sort of god As he finished giving his oath, he kissed the Bible held before him as the chancellor that was holding it called out to the crowd:

Long live George Washington, president of the United States.

☆☆☆

The next thing I knew, I was standing in another room. It was dark other than the light a few candles that were placed around the room. In the bed lay an older man, graying and fading quickly. Other people were surrounding him. Soon, everyone in that room would witness the end of an era.

As the old man lay there, being called back to the home of his original creator, he uttered just three last words.

Jefferson still lives.

But he was wrong. For just a few hours prior, Thomas Jefferson had also been called back to the kingdom of his creator. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson: two great minds, two once bitter rivals turned friends in their old age, both lost on the same day: July 4, 1826.

☆☆☆

I snapped out of... whatever that was and jumped as I felt a hand on my arm. I turned around and met Priamos’ gaze. I could tell he was concerned, but it took me a minute to figure out why.

The ritual was over... the meeting was over. It was now just me and Priamos standing in the place that the ritual had