Page 127 of The Star's Sword

I was quiet. I wanted to promise him that, but I wasn’t even sure I could.

I loved him so much.

“I’m happy, Cleo,” he said. “I’m happy, regardless. Our time together has meant everything. I know that through our bond, my heart will always be connected to yours, no matter what happens.”

I just held onto him tight, letting him talk.

“But I’m also happy to know this is finally going to happen. We get Vasara and the vampires out of the way, you can finally take hold of your destiny.”

We were both watching out toward the direction of the sky realms, but the veil and the celestial realms were much too far away to see from here.

“Will it be hard?” I asked. “Getting past the security on each level?”

“No one knows,” Samael said. “I’m not sure how many have even attempted it that we don’t know about.” He sighed. “They have the cleanest air, the best elements from the earth. Animals that are extinct here. Maybe others have tried to go there, other than past Morningstars.”

“But you’ve been to the celestial realms,” I said.

“I have,” he said. “But I never had to fly up through areas that had security. People allow me to go wherever I want.”

“But you haven’t been to the ninth realm?”

He shook his head. “Why would I want to go there? Other ninth realm celestials want to kill me so I can’t kill them.”

“But wouldn’t the best stuff be there?”

He sighed. “No. Because if the best people aren’t there, it doesn’t matter how good everything else is. Just a bunch of empty voids with too much power and a sadistic love of feeding off the hurt of others. Ninth realm celestials are all the same.”

“You told me before they feed off of hurting things,” I said.

He nodded against me.

“You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

“I guess we have to. I want you to be prepared, so that if you hesitate you know what you’re up against. What you’d be enabling.”

Enabling. A horrifying word in this context, but Samael was right. If I abandoned my duty, even to save him, when I could stop atrocities, I would be enabling.

I shuddered.

“You should shudder,” he said, his arms holding me tightly, bands of velvet-covered iron. “They are hard to comprehend for beings like us, that like to see our friends smile, and our communities healthy and happy.”

“Who could want something else?”

“Beings who have fed on pain for so long that happiness tastes bitter,” Sam said. “Especially the happiness of others.” He shook his head. “Nothing signaled something horrific about to happen like someone having the audacity to laugh in the darkness.”

“Bad things happened because of laughter?”

“Bad things happened every single second of every single hour of every single day,” Samael said. “But yes, a laugh, say if a bug passed in front of your cage, could result in you being taken out for a group torture session. Like being publicly ripped apart in front of the rest of us.” Sam shuddered. “Like the punishment for any enjoyment was to make sure you could never feel enjoyment again.”

It made sense now, why Sam laughed or smiled so rarely.

“I started fighting back as young as five,” Samael said. “I got language as early as three, but I was mute, trying to protest. After my mother was killed, I shut down.”

“I’m sorry.”

“She deserved better,” Samael said. “If I could have saved her, I would have. But we weren’t closely bonded. Our captivity didn’t allow it.”

His mother had been kidnapped by his father, and Samael had literally been born into slavery. I’d known that before. But he’d never wanted to talk about her death much.

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