Page 3 of The Breaker of Stars
I’d thought the Spirits were cruel to me before?
Vale stepped into the room and froze, wearing nothing more than a slip of silk for a nightgown, her hair dripping across her shoulders and pinning the fabric to her body. Her eyes landed on me, widening at the realization that I was half naked, and a flush crept across her skin, a comb tumbling from her hand.
The Spirits were fucking dead to me.
She bent to pick up her comb, flashing more of those lithe legs. One strap dipped down, and her silver tattoo glinted on her shoulder.
Angels, what poor fucker had I been in another life to deserve this? She was torture, every inch of her a punishment designed specifically for me—a torture my entire body was too aware of.
“I have to go and”—I shot up from the ground and reached for the tunic I’d just removed—“check on the food.”
Her bottom lip caught between her teeth, and dammit, this was an act I could write by now. The sequence of reactions she had when I shoved her away. Eyes wide, lip caught, gaze searching through the hurt, wondering if she should say something and ultimately deciding not to. Then, the slightest drop of her shoulders and lift of her chin, and she’d say?—
“As you must.”
Those three words—her response nearly every time I’d avoided her. I couldn’t figure out why she always chose the exact same sentence, the replicated tone.
As I pulled my tunic back over my head and stuffed my feet into my boots, grabbing parchment and Mystique ink from my bag, I told myself to stop fucking picking her words apart. To stop caring.
It only led to more pain.
Chapter Two
Vale
I kept my chin high until the door closed behind him.
Until the creaking of the staircase was no longer audible through the thin walls.
Until I could breathe around the heavy weight on my chest and the stinging in the back of my eyes.
But his bergamot and sage scent crowded the air, and the avoidance ripped at my heart.
It hurt, the way he looked at me now. Or the way he didn’t, I should say. Like the wishes on stars and secrets exchanged in the quiet mountain nights meant nothing. Like each kiss had been me digging out the earth for his own grave. That’s what he believed. But every word I’d said to him, every confession and comfort, had been true.
Just because I’d been lying for Titus did not mean I let those things bleed into whatever had dawned between us.
I had to lie. I had no choice. Titus was my…well, I didn’t know what he actually was. I wasn’t sure I ever had known.
As Starsearchers, we did not just read fate. We were tied to the Fates—a distinct difference most other clans did not understand. There’d once been twelve Fates, but one had died a brutal, betrayed death when only the gods spun tales in the skies.
As children, we learned of the eleven remaining, but it wasn’t until we grew in our searching practice that we were drawn to one over the others. Sometimes, rarely, more than one. And Titus had me swear I would never reveal my truth about the Fates.
No matter how badly I wanted to.
No matter how much that hurting pair of blue eyes pierced my soul each time I caught them looking to me for an explanation. For some way to make my secrets make sense.
Alone in the room, I rubbed a hand against my sternum. My entire chest was tight. Not just from Cypherion’s avoidance, but from the pressure of my magic begging to be released. I’d never stifled it.
I hated stifling it.
Incense snuck beneath the crack in the door. Not enough to consume me, but enough that, maybe, I could try to read something. Tentatively, I closed my eyes and grasped for the readings sitting beneath the surface of my skin.
Reaching into my magic was like dipping a toe in a pool of starlight. But instead of the ripples cascading outward, they shot into me. The voices of the Fates crowded my mind, blurred so I couldn’t read a word they said.
Flashes of white fire, like the tails of falling stars, burned behind my eyelids, and in them, I could barely make out muddled fortunes. They should have been painted there, clear as the dawn. The voices shouldn’t have been layered but guiding.
My limbs shook, darkness consuming the edges of my session. It was heavy, like the darkness I’d once seen surrounding Ophelia. Opening its maw, it tried to swallow me down.