Page 27 of The Breaker of Stars

She continued, “I thought about defying him sometimes, but every time I was about to, I heard his voice reminding me how dangerous my secret was.”

Brushing across the tattooed brand, I wound a strand of her hair around my finger. Spun it and let go, continuing my journey down her arm until I found her hand. Then, I interlocked our fingers.

“Why are you telling me now?” I asked.

“Because tonight I realized that maybe Titus isn’t the one with my best intentions at heart.” She blinked back tears, her grip curling around mine. “Titus hasn’t written to me since Daminius, Cypherion. The letters have all been from someone else. I don’t recognize the handwriting, but it isn’t his.”

There was such a vulnerable abandonment in her voice—it was the most she’d ever let her walls down.

Fury burned through me. “He deserted you?”

After using her, he left her to our discretion—a clan she had deceived. That fucking protector left her.

“I don’t know.” Admitting that seemed to weigh her down, so I bit back every accusation I wanted to let soar and instead tilted her chin up to look at me.

“We’re going to figure it out, Vale,” I promised. “What it means, why your sessions are hurting you, and how it ties back to Ophelia. I swear, we’re going to get the answers you deserve. You’ve lived far too long without them.”

Warning flared in the back of my mind at the sincerity in my words, the brightening of her eyes, and the way I liked seeing her happy. But for the moment, I told it to shut up. Now that Vale and I had been forced to talk about parts of this mess, it was harder to hate her. Harder to pretend I didn’t care.

With the way her confession about Titus’s abandonment ignited fury within me, I knew that was a losing battle.

The fucking chancellor…

He’d been manipulating her all these years.

“I’m sorry I never told you,” Vale said, and I froze.

“What?” I asked.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated. She seemed to deflate at saying those words. “About the Fates and my past and Titus’s rules. I wanted to, but I thought Titus would somehow know. Being back here, though…I’ve realized that I’m so small. And my movements don’t upset the balance as I thought they did. And if I’d realized that sooner, I would have told you everything.”

“Some of that is right,” I said. “You’re not some small thing in the universe, though. You should be free to make decisions without being beholden to him, but you have a connection to nine Fates when most Starsearchers only have one. That’s not small, Vale. You aren’t unimportant to the universe.”

She was reinstating herself as the center of mine, and that was a problem for another night, when we weren’t both bloodied and broken. Tonight, I wanted to set down the armor. I wanted to rest knowing she was safe and admit to myself that fact mattered.

“I’m still sorry…”

“That’s the first time you’ve said that,” I said.

She blinked those wide olive eyes. “What?”

“In all of these months since the Battle of Damenal, you haven’t once told me you were sorry.”

“Did you think I wasn’t?”

“Yes,” I admitted. “For a while, I thought you’d only ever meant to use me and leave. That you didn’t care what your lies risked. And until now, I didn’t know what to think. Because you never said a word.”

“I mean it,” she said, and she shifted closer to me, our chests brushing together. Her hands came around the back of my neck. “I am sorry, and I’m sorry I didn’t say it sooner. I’m sorry for both of us that I didn’t start asking questions sooner. And I’m sorry for my role in allowing Damenal to be sacked. For not trying to see it ahead of time and fortifying the borders as we could have. I’m sorry for putting the people you love at risk, because I know how much your life is wound to theirs, and I’m sorry for getting us here.”

Her lips were only a breath from mine. She was so close that I couldn’t pick apart every apology she’d just made. I was certain there were some in there that I needed to comment on, but Spirits, it was hard to think with her against me. I could see the individual streaks of color in her eyes. Could smell nothing but starlight.

Was it possible for someone to smell like starlight? That’s what I always thought of when Vale was close to me. Like a clear midnight sky, free and promising, and that scent consumed me now. It was all over her, I remembered. Couldn’t forget. She even tasted like it.

That wasn’t something I should be thinking about now. Not as she was leaning closer and our lips would brush if I tilted my head at just the right angle.

Instead, I stood, locking her legs around my hips. “Let’s go to bed. It’s been a long night.”

I carried her through the window because I didn’t believe she wasn’t still exhausted. Not because I wanted to hold her longer. Definitely not.

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