Page 92 of Above
I hadn’t been afforded a spare moment to send a letter home or shadow walk there, but invitations were sent out this morning, and I imagined they’d reluctantly included my family seeing as I was quickly becoming the most important asset the shaytan had. What irony.
Grabbing my cloak, I fastened it around my neck, peering at myself in the tall mirror in our bathroom. Talon’s words during his and Altair’s fight echoed in tune with the stars’ whispers, my worth once more measured by everyone but myself.
My eyes were red from the tears I had shed in the night, my bottom lip nearly the same size as my upper one after I chewed and picked at it until it was swollen and bruised. My hair had gotten even more out of control, my nightmares making me thrash in my rare moments of sleep last night. I was a mess.Exactly what they all thought in their heads but now wouldn’t say aloud.
Dipping my head, I began the slow work of wetting my hair and brushing through it with my comb, then I worked to separate the sections and define the curls by coiling them around my finger. After, with my arms and hands prickling from being without blood flow for so long, I worked on spreading a salve across my lips. Knocks came from the other side of the bathroom door just as I finished, the sound making my never-ending headache worse. “Come in.”
Talon’s head slipped through the door, his timid smile making me furious for some reason.
It wasn’t like I hadn’t known who he was. He had always defended every aspect of the core family values he had been raised on, though he never stated he believed in the idea of mistakes among shaytan and purity determining worth. Still, I knew in my heart what he likely believed, but having it confirmed by him in such a blatant and public way had sent me into a spiral of sorts.
Talon wasn’t the type to stand up for everyone. He rarely stood up for me. But I guessed I thought his choice to publicly claim me was his own way of asserting his beliefs.
“Hey, Supernova. Ready for today?” he asked, moving fully into the bathroom. I sighed, wishing I could be anywhere else.
“Yes,” I mumbled, straightening my black leathers and arranging my hair. In my periphery, Talon watched, the sound of his tapping foot and loud sighs making my teeth grind. “How about you?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be. Just glad this is over.” Not seeing any reason to respond, I grabbed my miswak and my powdered eucalyptus from their spot on the small shelf, getting to work brushing my teeth so that I didn’t have to speak. “While we’re here, I thought I’d give you this.”
My head turned of its own accord, eyes catching on the pendant in his palm. Fingers stilling, I analyzed the item. A bear’s head, roaring up at an eight-pointed star. Its eyes were rubies, the fur black and the stars silver. Surely expensive. Not that coin mattered to the cores. But this was something more. His family’s sigil. A mark that deemed me a Zade, in a way—like I was being claimed.
I hated it.
Growing more furious by the second, I leaned over the basin, spitting with far too much aggression. Talon seemed to notice, because he let out a strained cough, his hand pulling away from me. Good.
“Sorry, I thought it would be a nice gesture to give you something to decorate your uniform with. I didn’t mean to misunderstand.”
“You never do.” I hadn’t meant it to come out so harsh. I knew he was trying to be kind in the only way he knew how. Still, I hated it. The meaning. The gesture.
A part of me hated him as well, though I had no right to. Which only made me loathe myself. I was tired of trying to be more than I could be. I was terrified. I was angry. More than that, I was falling apart at the seams.
“Is this about what I said to Az? Because if it is, I want you to know that I only said those things because he was picking and prodding. He knew exactly which buttons to push to get me to say something stupid. None of it was true, I was just angry, Nova.”
“You know, when I’m angry, I don’t usually condemn an entire group of people simply for existing.” Quickly, I put the miswak back in my mouth, scrubbing at my teeth so hard I worried I’d break one. But it wasn’t my teeth that cracked. It was Talon.
His hand reached forward, ripping the miswak out of my mouth and throwing it to the ground. I jumped reflexively as he pushed his way between the basin and I, using his chest to force me backward, my back hitting the pale wall with an audible thud. Talon leaned forward, flattening his palms on the wall at either side of my head.
“You know, I’m getting a bit exhausted by these games, Nova. You’ve given yourself to me time and time again, knowing good and well who I was. You have let me love you with very little in return. Daily, I protect and care for you. What do you do for me?”
“Look at you, proving me right. I always said no one gave without expecting to gain.”
“That’s not what this is and you know it!” he shouted, his face deepening as blood rushed upward. While I knew I shouldn’t have, I cowered slightly in the presence of his fury. I saw it so rarely. “You and I have decided that we are going to be together. You told me you loved me. We’ve committed to this. To us. Yes, I said something uncalled for, and I’m very sorry for that. But you don’t give up on someone you love just because they believe in something bigger than us. The stars deem these things true.”
What did he know of love? His mother was fucking his ex bestfriend and his father regularly brought other women into his home. From my knowledge, Talon had only fucked for pleasure, and while I saw that his sister cared for him, she didn’t love him enough to try to mend things and accept me. None of it was enough to teach him about love. He only understood ownership and desire. He, like Altair, was a spoiled child who couldn’t comprehend the word no.
“I’m sick of trying to be like you all, Talon. I don’t belong in this place. I am of eadi. I always will be. Nova Tershetta is the daughter of eadi, and the stars don’t mind. So whatever disgusting beliefs you have, they do not come from the stars. Iam not an exception to a rule your kind concocted! I am worthy, just as all of eadi are, and I don’t need to be here, surrounded by idiotic purists who refuse to see that!” My hands flew up, trying to somehow release the energy within me that built in my chest. Talon used that opportunity to snatch my wrists, pinning them above my head.
“I have loved you when no one else has! I’ve supported and believed in you when even you didn’t! You will not make me out to be some villain because I said something you didn’t like!”
A gasp slipped between my teeth, sounding almost like a startled hiss. That’s what I was to so many of them, a feral beast, and every day I wondered when Talon would see me as the same. Because it was so clear that was how he viewed all other of eadi.
“Now we’re going to go out there,together, and show them just how special you are. Because whether or not you like it, the stars have decided that you are one of us. They’ve deemed you, personally, just as worthy as any other core family member. This is your future, Nova. I am your future. That might be hard to understand or accept. It may feel confusing or even overwhelming. I get that, but you will not push me away, because I won’t let you. It’s you and me, just as it has been for the last two and a half months. There is no other reality—no other future—that I will accept.”
Talon kissed me then, his lips fierce, demanding, and angry. I understood why. He wasn’t wrong. I had promised him so many things knowing it wasn’t right to do, and I still did it anyways. While it was fair that he was angry, I was angry too, and so I pulled away, looking down to the side so he couldn’t try and kiss me again. He let out a guttural growl, and I knew that if I was a beast, so were they.
“Fine, be that way.” He released me, but his hand automatically found mine, tugging me out of the bathroom and into our room, where he swiped both of our masks up—notbothering to let me grab my own—and then he pulled us through the door.
And who was there but none other than fucking Altair.
