Page 36 of The Breaker of Stars

I perched on a rock, leaning against the wall as the water lapped at my tired muscles.

“You’ve been here before,” Cypherion said, and the husky sound of his voice shot straight to my core. He may have backed away, but he was not unaffected. He stayed halfway across the pool, though, nearly six feet separating us.

“A few times,” I answered, my fingers skimming the water. “I was…busy when I lived in Valyn. Had to be available in case my mentor needed me. Apprenticing was demanding. My readings were imperative, and I was required to be behind those bars at all times.”

The thought had my spine straightening. I wasn’t sure when I’d started to think of the chancellor’s home as a cage. When I’d lived there, it had seemed beautiful and safe.

Safe was not living, though. Safe was not free.

At some point since I traveled with Titus to Damenal, I’d started to see the bars surrounding me and search for the views beyond them. And I thought maybe the man across the pool had something to do with it.

I was still picking apart what was unnatural about my relationship with Titus. My treatment at the Lumin Temple had been wrong. Even as a child, I recognized the uncomfortable feeling it caused in my gut, but until I met someone who made me want to defy my new mentor, I hadn’t seen him as a captor at all. I’d thought him a savior.

A subtle ache went through my shoulder, breaking my thought. I rolled it to dispel the pain, likely another stiff joint from travel.

I cleared my throat. “I used to conduct sessions here.” Tilting my head back, I searched the view, counting the constellations of each Angel. They were brighter here than in the mountains, in different positions in the sky.

“Did you bring other people here?” Cypherion asked.

I dropped my chin to meet his gaze.

Searing. That’s how he looked at me, despite the tendrils of steam softening his features.

“Never.”

The jungle’s silence pressed down around us, punctured only by the soft roar of the falls and the buzz of insects, secluding us like we were the only two people on Ambrisk.

“Why do you prefer reading here?” A gentleness I’d missed filled the hollows between his words. Saying all the things he didn’t.

“Readings always sit beneath my skin,” I explained, holding his stare. “My magic bristles until I tap into it, sometimes painfully so. But out here, it’s so quiet. It opens up room to truly listen.” I pressed a hand to my chest. “The pressure sits right here, and the whispers crowd my mind, but when I dig into them it’s…the purest form of ecstasy.”

Cypherion’s eyes darkened at that. Was there a challenge in his stare? “Is that because of your Fate ties?”

“Yes.” I nodded. “Or at least I assume so. I’ve never been able to talk to others about how many Fates I’m aligned with.” His brows drew together. “But no one has ever explained readings to me in the way I feel them.”

“That must be…lonely.”

I shrugged. “I didn’t realize that for a while.”

“What do you mean?” There was an edge to his voice now.

“I was used to feeling secluded. Used to my cages and chains, one might say. I did not see them as a problem or recognize the unnatural oppression of my desire to be close to others.”

“Spirits, Vale…” Cypherion shook his head.

“I spoke to Barrett about it, actually.” Pry apart the wounds. Let him see the person I was trying to become, and maybe he would understand. “The prince has been in chains in a way. He always accepted them because he wanted to uphold his responsibility to his people, but unlike me, Barrett saw his captors for what they were.

“He came to visit me when I was imprisoned in Damenal,” I said, and Cypherion’s jaw ticked. “He said some things that made me think.”

“What were they?”

Had he moved closer? Surely, he was drifting around the circumference of the pool.

“Barrett told me of when he met Dax. Of how he found a light in the darkness that made him want to heal the lonely pieces and fight, to stop being complacent in his own life.”

He’d said much more than that. Called me out on my lies and helped me see the pieces I’d shattered. You can make a mosaic with broken glass, he’d said. All you need is determination and a new vision.

“Is that what you’ve been doing? Trying to repair things? To fight?” He was only an arm’s length away now, sitting on a ledge of rock with his elbows on his knees, the water to his ribs.

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