Page 49 of The Breaker of Stars

Father. Captor.

Savior. Ruler.

Liar—

No.

Heat flared through my shoulder.

Titus was good. He was. He had to be. Titus had saved me sixteen years ago, and if he had not written to me since Daminius, there was a reason. A valid explanation, I was certain.

That mantra played on a hypnotic loop through my mind as magic continued to pound beneath my skin. As that tangle of wild stars begged to be released.

Flashes of light and wings and falling constellations. Images of legends and gods and locked cages.

Footsteps echoed down the nearest aisle, coming toward us.

“Come on, Vale,” Cypherion said, his hand squeezing mine.

But my feet remained rooted to the tile. “Titus…”

He was the one I was supposed to be working for. He was the one who had rescued me from that temple as a child, who had seen promise in me that no one else had.

They all wanted to use my magic, but Titus nurtured it. Power danced within my veins at the reminder.

That burning was back along my shoulder and nine midnights eddied through my mind. The footsteps were getting closer, laughter with them now.

“Vale, we have to go.”

“No…Titus…”

“Enough of him, dammit.”

The swirling pressure crescendoed in my mind, stars popping along my vision. My shoulder flared, and strong arms hoisted me from the ground, fleeing the temple.

Chapter Twenty

Cypherion

Vale didn’t speak the entire walk back to the candle shop.

She kept her head down and hood up as we climbed the stairs to our room and quietly slipped off our weapons and cloaks. It wasn’t a tense silence, but it was the kind that bristled against my skin nonetheless. The kind that seemed to heighten every other sound besides the ones you needed to hear most.

I waited as Vale slipped into a nightgown and dumped her clothing on the floor rather than folding it as she usually would. She drifted to the lone window in the room and looked out over the city. I remained beside the mantle, one hand on the wood, fingers drumming in a slow measure to try to steady myself.

When I couldn’t take the stillness anymore, I picked up her clothes and folded them, then started arranging each of our weapons, polishing those that had gotten scuffed after days of travel.

But still, a beast roared within my chest. It lifted its head and breathed hot fire at the way the chancellor’s name on the door had frozen Vale in the archives.

As I carefully laid her triple blades on the shelf, I remembered how her fingers had reached for the wood. How her voice had been so shocked and betrayed.

I…didn’t know…

It was only an office, but to her it was an entire world shattering. Every star in the sky breaking.

It was another abandonment, twisting a blade that was plunged between her ribs months ago.

She wanted in. She wanted to patch that wound and cleanse the knife herself.

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