Page 23 of The Breaker of Stars

“We lost Malakai once, and it nearly pried Ophelia from us. We only held on to her because the rest of us gave into the denial and accepted his death.” I shook my head. “It gave us a false foundation. We tried to carry on, but that damaged all of us in one way or another. None of us are the same people we were when he left. But what happens when another piece of a still-healing foundation is permanently ripped away?”

My voice cracked on that last word.

“We won’t survive it, and I fucking need them, Vale. I need them,” I admitted, turning to her. “Help me, please.”

Vale rose, standing toe to toe with me, over a foot shorter but her stare searing down to my soul. And it was a sad fucking stare.

“I don’t know what I can do.”

“Please. Try. See if there’s a way out of this.” Every word I spoke was painfully vulnerable. Some instinct in my head told me not to say anymore. Not to further confess how desperate and lost I was.

Vale’s eyes flicked to mine, a war being fought in her gaze. Then, she assessed her table of various reading supplies that I was only beginning to understand the uses of. Her shoulders sank, but she turned back to me.

“I’ll do whatever I can.”

She led me to a chair, and I sat on nervous pins as she silently attempted readings. For hours we remained in that smoke, and each time she was unable to pull an answer from the Fates.

We spent the entire night together. First with her readings, then in her bed. I worshipped her body, showing her exactly how grateful I was for her help, and when she fell asleep and promised she’d keep trying, there was a bit of a regretful limp to her words.

I hadn’t understood then that it was guilt.

And in the morning, when she told me that she’d be returning to Valyn after Daminius as per the agreement between Ophelia and the chancellors—when I thought my chest would cave in because I was losing someone else now, too—I left without a word.

I’ll do whatever I can, she had said. Five words that haunted me months later. Made it impossible to let her in again.

Vale hadn’t truly tried. She’d sabotaged those readings—ruined any chance of glimpsing that the Engrossians were about to sack the city, too—and given me hope rather than tell me an ugly truth.

And then, she was just going to leave.

It had been the fist through whatever story the damn stars were writing for us at the time. One I hadn’t been able to let go of, months later.

I believed now that she didn’t mean to harm the Mystiques with her secrets. I understood it was Titus’s manipulation holding her hostage. But when we were done with this mission, Vale was going to leave again, and who would she take out in her wake next time?

I stared at the moon, begging its luminescence to burn the image of her bare beneath me on that night from my mind. Erase every memory of what she’d said, too.

All of that…and she’d been hiding things.

She hadn’t had a choice.

And why shouldn’t she lie to me? It was easy to be angry with her about it when we were in the mountains or traversing the continent. Seeing her here was different. This territory tore her up, and she wiped scars away every time, like stray tears.

I sighed, tipping my head back against the wall.

Immediately after the Battle of Damenal, I hadn’t necessarily believed she had no hand in lying. I thought when we returned here, that secret would be exposed, too. She’d be back to life as it had been, but after tonight, I couldn’t keep trying to believe that lie.

Not only was her power turning on her, but the land itself was jumbling her thoughts. Perhaps Vale was as confused as I was.

Weren’t we all just a bit lost? Comprised of pieces of broken dreams lodged inside of us like shattered stars careening through the heavens.

“May I join you?” I hadn’t even heard her wake up, but just as she had been that night, Vale was there. And I didn’t know how to decipher the defensive hunger in my bones at seeing her now.

Chapter Eleven

Cypherion

Vale’s voice was a bell through the night as she poked her head out the window. It called to something in my chest as it always had.

“Of course,” I said, scrambling to rise and give her my hand as she sat on the ledge and swung her legs over, bare from toe to thigh despite the chill. She’d changed out of her sweat-stained outfit from the rings, wearing a similar blue chiffon one now.

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