Page 81 of Heavenly Bodies

‘Lara, come on!’ Sofia’s plea was muffled beneath the water. Elara reached out blindly, unable to speak, to breathe.

A hand plunged into the water, gripping Elara by the hair and dragging her above the surface.

Elara spluttered and coughed up water as, to her horror, Ariete hauled her back to the bank. She saw Gem pounce upon Sofia, holding a blade made of starlight to her neck.

Ariete finally let go, and Elara collapsed on to the grass, sodden. He slowly crouched before her as she gulped in lungfuls of air between coughs. ‘I do love these cat-and-mouse games,’ he crooned. ‘And you’ve been a bad little mouse, haven’t you, Elara?’

Her throat burned, poison and water crawling up it as she tried to scream, to plead. She looked behind to where Sofia was struggling against the goddess. ‘Get the fuck off me,’ her friend screamed. ‘Lara! Lara! Leave her alone. I swear to the skies I’ll kill you all. Leave her al—’

‘Take her away,’ Ariete said.

‘So-Sofia,’ Elara rasped. She tried to crawl, but starlight was already lighting around Gem and Sofia as they began to disappear. She swayed on her knees.

‘It’s all right.’ Ariete gently gathered her in his arms. She didn’t have an ounce of strength left in her to fight him as he lifted her. ‘You’re starting to understand that there is no hope. You will never escape me,’ he murmured into her hair. ‘Wherever you run, I will find you.’

When the darkness came, for the first time in Elara’s life, she tried to fight it.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Elara looked at her reflection in her ornate mirror. Her gaze flicked from her sallow skin, to the shadows under her eyes, faint red with Ariete’s venom. Then to the crimson eyes that watched her from behind.

Days had passed. Unending torment as Ariete’s venom had ruined her, the Star drip-feeding her his blood—enough so she could talk, but not enough to use her magick.

She took in her dress, heavily embroidered with rubies and garnets, as a glamourer silently worked on her hair. She thought of Merissa. Then she felt like crying, and tried to focus again on her own reflection.

‘You’ll be the belle of the ballet,’ Ariete said, strolling around the room, dressed in a suit that matched her gown.

‘Why are we going?’ she asked dully.

‘Because I have a surprise for you.’

She tried to feel panic, but her box of emotions was firmly locked.

‘Where’s Sofia?’

Ariete, like every other time she had previously asked, didn’t answer.

She watched as her hair was transformed by glamour into midnight ringlets, then placed carefully off her face with jewelled ruby pins that studded the curls like droplets of blood.

Makeup was smeared upon her face, hiding the dark rings. When the glamourer reached the bite marks upon Elara’s neck, Ariete tutted. ‘Leave them,’ he said. ‘The world should see that she’s mine.’

‘I will never belong to you.’

‘Your heart, no. I’ll make sure of that,’ Ariete said. ‘But your soul, your existence. They are mine.’

‘And won’tGembe a little bothered by that? The two of you seem awfully close.’

He made an amused sound. ‘Oh, she sates my appetite now and then. But not the way a mortal can.’ He drew his thumb down the wound on Elara’s neck. ‘You sicken me, and yet I crave you. You know, I’m the closest to you humans. The god of war, of blood. I understand your fleeting lives, your desperation to make them count. And so, you fuck and kill and love and bleed. And it tastes so delicious to me, all of it.’ He wet his lips, and she watched, unable to look away, as he pulled a knife from thin air, the weapon appearing in a flash of red.

‘Look at how I bleed,’ he said, cutting open the skin on his palm. Sparkling glitter welled up from the wound, a liquid stardust. ‘Insubstantial.’ A snarl curled his features. ‘But a human’s…’ He beckoned the glamourer to him, who laid down the last pin she was about to secure in Elara’s hair. The woman swayed to Ariete, moaning as he embraced her. She whispered fervent prayers as he chuckled. ‘A human’s blood is warm and red and so very alive,’ he murmured as he plunged his teeth into her neck.

Elara flinched, looking away as the woman moaned anew.He smeared her blood on his lips, his eyes gleaming as he pushed her off him.

‘Yes, mortal blood tastes so muchmore.’

The glamourer slumped on to Elara’s parents’ bed, as utter fury writhed beneath Elara’s skin.

‘Are we really that expendable to you?’