Page 34 of Starlight Mates

The second Rhodes has disappeared from my sight, a hand taps me on my shoulder. I turn round, and a grin spreads over my face as Harry looks down at me. “I thought it was you, but I wasn’t sure,” he says.

Laughing, I wrap my arms around his neck and hug him. He looks great in a brown shirt and jeans, but paler than he was in Spain. We both are now after months of living in Scotland. “What are you doing here, Harry?”

“It’s a party.” He rolls his eyes at me. “I was invited, and I got lucky seeing you. Gwen, I wanted to thank you, actually. I know coming here probably wasn’t what you wanted, but just watching you with your mate, you look happy. I’m happy too and found a girlfriend who I’d love for you to meet at some point. I know we were weird for a while, but you wanted your mates, and I was lonely. I think we are meant to be good friends. It all worked out in the end, didn’t it?”

“It did.” I softly smile, delighted to hear that getting captured actually made someone happy in the end. “Harry?—”

I don’t get another word out as the floor completely collapses underneath me, and an explosive bang fills my ears before it feels like the entire house itself falls straight onto my shoulders.

Chapter

Fifteen

“We should tell her the truth. It’s not fair anymore, and?—”

I wrap my arms around my legs as I sit at the top of the stairs at the hostel, listening to my parents at the vending machine below. It’s cold in France, not yet snowing but chilly enough that it might. I like it here, with the mountains, and the French language has been easier to understand. They think I’m sleeping, but I couldn’t, no matter how long I lay there. Too many nightmares tonight. My mum interrupts my dad. “The truth? It would destroy her! You’re her father, you’re meant to protect her from?—”

“I know, but this is about who she is. It’s so much bigger than our hate of the Nexus people.” I hear him step closer. “Protecting her has been my duty from the moment I knew she existed in your stomach. Sometimes I wonder if this life is no longer protecting her but destroying her. The truth is hers to know, and I think it’s cruel to hide it.”

What truth? My mum scoffs. “Fine, let’s tell her the truth and take her back to be a whore to those five mates of hers. I’msure they will accept their monster mate and happily watch her destroy the whole fucking world.”

“Elly…”

My mum softens her voice in response to my dad’s tone and nickname. “Exactly. We both know we are the only ones who will accept and protect her in this world. Telling her the truth is pointless, and it’s better she is kept in the dark. At least for now.”

My dad’s words haunt me. “I will pray to the Gods that she doesn’t hate us when she finds out.”

Screams wake me up and, for once, it’s not my Nexus who caused them. I gasp through the pain as I try to focus on anything. My hands reach out, touching a heavy piece of brick wall slammed against my hip and my upper thigh. It isn’t the only place throughout my body that hurts. My Nexus rolls about in my mind, feeling as dizzy as I am from blood loss, no doubt. The heavy smell of blood lingers in the air, along with smoke and dust. I’m trapped.

Panicking, I start wiggling around, and every movement hurts. Ash sticks to my arms and legs, to the cuts in my white shirt and bare legs. I cough on smoke as I blink and try to see where I am.Calm down. I need to calm down. My hands grab the wall lying on my hip, and I push it with everything I have until I’ve lifted it high enough to slide out from underneath it. It slams hard on the ground and smashes to pieces the second I roll away with a scream. I wince as I suck in a deep breath, feeling like my pelvis is broken, or maybe I have internal bleeding, because everything hurts around there. My Nexus is healing me the best it can, but it will take days to heal something this big naturally.

Rhodes and Alek…they were here, and Annie too. I sense my Nexus bonds, and I know they are hurt but okay. Alek is closer, though, and I might be able to get to him if I’m lucky.

It must have been a bomb or something similar to have destroyed the house that quickly. It’s the only reason I can think of for the bang and the way it felt like the house just collapsed underneath me and above. I rub my eyes, only spreading the ash and dust around as I try to see in the fading, dim light shining in from a few feet away, from a big gap. An exit maybe? I look down and see blood all over my hands as I finally focus. I feel the colour drain out of me as I realise that I’m not lying on the ground, but a person. A man. The brown shirt is familiar as I pat upwards and find his face after pushing off sheets of rock and rubbish. “Harry!”

My scream echoes as I gently lift his head onto my lap to look him over. Blood is pouring out of the side of his mouth, and he is covered in bruises and dust and too much blood. His eyes flicker open, and his chest is still moving, even if it’s haggard. “Harry. Harry, come on, talk to me. You’re okay.”

“I n-never believed you,” he groans, his voice cracking. I can’t heal him. It’s not a gift of mine. Fuck. I have to get him out.

“Don’t worry. I’m going to pull you out of that gap and find a healer. There have to be a bunch of healers running here after they heard the explosion,” I softly tell him. It’s a lie though. There are too many screams outside, and the sound of magic clashing fills the silence between the screams. There is a fight happening outside, and the Vian must be here. “Harry, I got to see you again, and I didn’t think it would be possible.”

His whispers are not much more than a broken crackle. “Tell mum and dad that I love them. This isn’t your fault, Gwen.”

“It is,” I cry, shaking my head. “And don’t you dare say end-of-life shit like that. You aren’t dying here like this. Iwon’tlet you.”

“Do you remember that night we went to watch the shooting stars, and I told you that story of the Mortal God?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me it. I want to hear it now,” he asks…and I can’t say no. I know I won’t be able to get him out of here when he is this injured without making it worse, and I don’t think he has long. I can feel death. I always have been able to, and he is dancing with it now.

My tears fall onto his face like stars dropping to earth but they can’t save him. I never give life— I only take it. “The Mortal God was the youngest of the five, and he had no power. When he was eighteen, he felt a pull to an empty field in the middle of the night, and the stars began to fall around him. One hundred stars burst into our world and crashed around him in a circle, and when it stopped, he finally had his power. They say every Nexus is made of pure starlight, and he was blessed from the stars that night because they watch us all. The Mortal God stopped wars, and he became loved by the mortals far more than any of the others. When he died, they cast his body into a pure diamond star coffin and prayed for years in his honour. Now they say, when you watch a falling star, know in your Nexus soul that the Mortal God is watching you.” I smile to myself. “You made me cry that night because you told me that my parents would be with the Gods and stars watching us, that one night, in the far future, we will dance with them in the sky.”

I look down, and Harry is smiling…but he isn’t breathing anymore. No. NO! The sickness rises in my throat. I feel I can’t breathe as I shake his shoulder. “HARRY!” I scream, shaking his shoulder harder, but his eyes are empty. He doesn’t move and I feel his soul is gone. He’s dead. Everything seems to drain away into pure anger as I stare at Harry’s dead body. It’s my fault. They came for me and killed my friend, who was nothing other than innocent.

Fuck them. I can feel Alek and Rhodes nearby. I need to know they’re okay, and I need to kill whoever did this. I can’t do anything for Harry, even if it destroys me inside to turn away. Iclose his eyes first and lay him down, kissing his forehead once. I don’t let myself stay any longer, or I won’t be able to let go.

There’s a small gap of light pouring through a few feet away, and everything shakes as I crawl towards it. The ground rumbles hard beneath me, and broken glass tears into my hands. I crawl over to the gap and don’t dare stop. Something else might collapse on me. Blood is pouring down from my shoulder, there are cuts all over my face, my body is in a state, but I’m pretty sure adrenaline is running the show right next to my anger.

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