Page 78 of Broken Star

The words feel foreign in my mouth, but they come anyway, spilling into the empty air. Because I have to say it. If I don’t, then I have to accept that I’m staring at a future I’ve always feared.

“I don’t want the throne,” I continue. “I never have.”

“I know,” Sapphire says, and for once, she’s not arguing with me. She’s not throwing my own words back at me, sharp and cutting, because that’s all she’s been capable of doing since Eros’s lead arrow turned her love into hatred.

It was my fault.

I’m the reason she’s been suffering. The reason she’s looked at me with nothing but disgust, the reason she’s recoiled at my touch, the reason she lost herself in the excruciating pain of undying hatred.

But now, for the first time in days, she’s standing beside me again. TherealSapphire. Not the one I’ve been drowning in guilt and grief over since that arrow pierced her heart.

And I don’t know how to breathe. I don’t know what todo.

But the vision before us doesn’t care. The older version of me simply sits unmoving on the throne, a ghost of a man, a king with nothing left.

He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t react.

He justexists.

And I feel it—the cold creeping up my spine, the weight of something inevitable pressing against my ribs. And I don’t know why, but seeing this image of the life I’ve always feared changeseverything.

“Where is everyone?” Sapphire’s voice cuts through the silence, filled with something scared and vulnerable. As if like me, she’s wracking her mind for answers. For clarity. For something that isn’t as hopeless as what we’re seeing in this vision.

“I don’t know.”

The words barely escape my lips before older me stands, his movements slow and deliberate, like evenexistingis too much effort. Like he already knows there’s no point. Like he’s already accepted his fate.

The temperature drops as he walks to the window, his steps slow and methodical.

Snow falls outside, covering the Winter Court in endless, suffocating white. It’s the kind of storm that eraseseverything.The kind Sapphire and I escaped when we took shelter in that cave in the Wandering Wilds.

But I can’t think about the cave. Because every time I’ve tried to these past few days, there’s a hollowness. A missing piece. A darkness that stretches too far and deep, like something was torn out of me that I’ll never get back.

So, I focus on older me as he presses his palm against the glass, frost blooming under it and spreading outward, thin and delicate.

And then, the images form. The same spiraling patterns I’ve carved into frost since I was a child. The ones that flow through me when emotions threaten to break the walls I’ve spent decades building—the walls my father has forced upon me.

Me and Ghost, the first time we met, when I let myself believe I wouldn’t have to be alone. That I could have something good in my life. Something beyond duty, logic, and expectation.

Me and Sapphire, back in the Summer Court, hands clasped, speaking vows that meant nothing to her.

A hardened version of me, his sword buried deep in the chest of a male night fae, the look on his face one of cold, brutal necessity.

The air freezes, and in the next breath, older me speaks words that cut through my soul.

“I failed them all.”

I hear the sorrow in his voice and feel the weight of it in my bones. There’s no anger. No shame. Just a quiet acceptance that he lost everything. That he doesn’t expect anything more from life, because he’s already given it all up.

His forehead presses against the glass, and for a second, I swear he’s crying. But it’s not tears. It’s just condensation fogging up the window, like the life inside him has melted away, leaving nothing in its wake.

My hands shake, and I call on my magic, releasing tendrils of frost from my fingers to my wrists, as it can freeze the emotions that are threatening to break every part of me.

“No.” My voice comes out hoarse and broken, barely more than a breath. “This can’t be my future. My father will recover. He’ll rule again. I’ll make sure of it. And I won’t be alone. Not when I have?—”

I stop, the words dying in my throat. Because if this is real—if this is the truth waiting for me—then it means Sapphire left me. That I have nothing but a kingdom of ice and a fate I can’t escape.

I won’t survive that.

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