Page 51 of The Breaker of Stars

“What did he do when the secret came out and Ophelia and I tried to make you a prisoner?”

“He saved me,” she muttered, barely opening her lips to speak. Like if she did, she’d free fall over the edge of the cliff, the truth weighing her down and stealing every shred of control.

I drove her toward that drop.

“What did he do, Vale?”

“HE LEFT ME!” she shouted, chest heaving. “He—he left me.”

It didn’t feel good to hear. To see the acceptance shattering across her face, her body, like her bones were fracturing. It had been a different sort of cage holding her up, one she’d formed within herself around her captor’s manipulation.

It was the base of her. And now, as it rippled across her features, as her shaking hands dragged through her hair and tangled at the roots, trying to grasp onto one steady thing in reality, she free fell into the loss.

“He left me,” she repeated, voice so small. No hint of the starlight that burned through her veins or the strength I loved so fucking much. “Not one letter. I wrote to him every week, begging him to negotiate with Ophelia, to get me out of that prison.”

Ophelia. And me.

I’d been as complicit in Vale’s pain as the chancellor. The realization was sour in the back of my throat, a stampede of warrior horses pounding through my chest.

“I just wanted him to help me. I just needed help…help. I needed him to care.” Her words were rushed, eyes stuck to the floor. “I needed him to care like he told me he did. I needed him to be a mentor like he said he was.”

Her knuckles went white as she tugged on her hair, knees buckling. I raced forward, catching her around the waist. Vale’s eyes flashed up to mine, teary and wrecked. They widened, like she’d only just remembered I was there.

Then, her hands gripped my arms, and she was talking to me again.

“He swore to me when he took me from the temple that life was going to be better. And it was. It was so much better here, but it was just another chain around my neck. By covering the brand, he was only making me beholden to him.”

I nodded, swallowing past the thickness in my throat. “Not all motives are innocent. Sometimes, a gesture that seems good-natured can have expectations weighing it down.”

Her nails dug into my skin, but I let her use me to ground herself. I’d bleed out before her if it was what she needed now.

“I don’t think he ever loved me,” Vale admitted. I thought she might have been considering it for a while, maybe even knew it for sure, but hadn’t wanted to say it out loud. Today, though, after the archives and the discovery of his secret office, after the feel of this city against her skin and the memories it pushed forward, she finally did.

“You should not have to guess if someone loves you,” I said.

“The last time I knew love was when I was four. I barely remember how that felt, it’s just a haze of memories.” The tears stopped falling, her gaze turning more thoughtful and desperate as she sought mine. “I saw it when I came to Damenal, though.”

“Tolek and Ophelia?—”

“You, Cypherion.” She squeezed my arms, easing her clawing grip. An emptiness settled in me. I wanted it back. Wanted her marks on my skin to remind us both that I was here with her through whatever she might face. “The way you love your friends…it’s deep. It’s true and unquestioning. That’s the kind of love that would never die.”

The kind she wanted.

The kind I wanted to give her.

I swore to Damien I’d show it all to her.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “for the part I played in your imprisonment. For not trying to see past my own selfish pain and understand what he was doing sooner.”

“Pain isn’t selfish,” Vale corrected. She was fully supporting her own weight now, but still we stayed entwined, her body against mine, so every breath pressed her tighter. “It can turn us rotten, certainly, but to feel hurt is not a selfish act.”

“I indulged it. Used it as a guard and kept you away because it was easier than exploring the alternative.”

“I hurt you,” she tried to justify, her voice kicking up with a hint of stubborn argument.

“And I added to your pain,” I shot back. Spirits, were we really going to argue over who hurt the other more? Who deserved to feel more guilty? “The details of it don’t matter. We’re here. Together. And Titus is never going to slip that chain back around your neck.”

She stiffened at his name. I ran a hand down her spine, the other cupping her cheek.

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