“Stelle sapium,” she muttered, returning to the mirror. It was an old Aphrodean saying, one she kept with her at all times. “Only the Stars know,” it roughly translated to. Aphrodeans said it to one another when they were losing faith or had no way to see how things could possibly get better. For Merissa, it had kept her company on the nights she sobbed on the floor from heartbreak or felt another part of her heart freezing over. It had been a comfort, a hope that there was something greater out there that had a plan, even when she could not see it.
