Chapter 3 #4
He pulled away, glasses slipping down his nose. His dark lashes perfectly framed his green eyes. Rin wanted to count each one. Guilt unfurled inside her. She was so selfish.
"I’d never hurt you. Ever." As Lucien said it, she saw something haunted briefly flashing by his face like a shooting Star. "I’m angry you left, but I think I understand why you did it. To keep us safe. Isn’t that right?"
She nodded. His gentleness cut deeper than anger.
"Then we all can only thank you for trying to protect us. So, I’ll be the first." Lucien cupped her cheeks. "Thank you, Vesperin. But never do anything like that again, and I’ll forgive you."
The words were so intimate. She realized they weren’t alone. But sometimes it felt like she was always alone—she was getting used to sharing her space, her emotions, her life.
"You’re so good at piecing me together," Rin uttered, moving slowly away until Lucien’s hands dropped. She stared at the blanket over her lap, feeling hollowed out. She tried to smile. "So… presents?"
Cyrus jumped up, making her flinch from the suddenness of the movement.
He moved to the kitchen counter, where a tiny bag was sitting.
He hooked his fingers in the ribbon straps and walked to her, sitting as he thrust the bag into her face.
"Open mine first. I hope you like it. It’s not as pretty as your bracelet.
" He gripped her hand and lifted her wrist, turning it until the Ryuxia diamonds refracted in the lights from the small Christmas tree.
Inside was a soft, tan cashmere hat with a small puff dangling from the end, and matching fur-lined mittens.
He took the hat from her and plopped it on her head, tugging it down until she couldn’t see. She tried to reach up and fix it, but he stopped her, gently folding it up until her eyes were revealed.
Cyrus reached forward and batted the puff ball, laughing. "Something sweet for you, doll. I could just eat you up."
Rin blushed as she remembered his words to her from the night before.
Next was Auren, his back straight as he sat on the edge of the coffee table before her, blue eyes flicking about the room in that quiet, searching way of his.
Distance stretched between her and Auren. Here she was, so selfishly in the arms of a man who wasn’t hers, while her three Soulbonds watched silently. Rin reached for Auren’s hand. He smiled softly, lacing his fingers with hers.
"I don’t have much to give, Hunter. We knew each other for three lives, each cut too short.
As was the nature of our fate. I, the reaper of your Soul, and you, always out of reach.
I never got to know you—not truly." Auren’s hand flexed around hers.
"As a Soul Searcher, I value my hands. They are the tools with which I wield my scythe.
When not reaping, I grow restless." As if to speak to this restlessness, his thumb brushed softly over the back of her hand.
"It is important to keep myself occupied.
" Auren’s other hand began to fiddle with something at his side.
He lifted it up. It was small, delicate.
A Star, folded from paper, the edges precise and pointed.
"I reaped a man’s Soul once… His wife had passed long before him, and he had taken to origami to keep his mind intact as he aged.
One for every day he lived without her. I took it up too, but…
" Blonde hair fell over his forehead as he shook his head faintly.
"There were too many days I lived without you, too many Stars to fold. "
He said it all without looking at her.
A tear slipped down Rin’s cheek.
His eyes finally rose, drawn to her like a moth to flame. "Do not cry. It hides the Stars in your eyes." He released her hand, only to press the delicate paper Star into her palm.
Her fingers curled lightly around it, wanting to protect it. "Thank you doesn’t seem like enough."
"It is more than enough, Hunter," murmured Auren.
She knew, in her Soul, that this distance would be a short-lived thing. They had to get used to each other; already, she felt herself thawing toward his ethereality.
Rhyden’s rough voice cut through. "Catch."
Something streaked toward her. Rin didn’t have time to linger on Auren’s aching words. Her hands reflexively caught it. Dark rope, knotted into a ball.
"What’s that?" Cyrus tried to peek, but she didn’t let him, covering it with her hands.
Rhyden ran his tongue over the tip of a fang, briefly staring at Cyrus before meeting Rin’s eyes. "A promise."
Rin tried to hold his stare, but the heat in his red eyes left her dizzy.
It wasn’t a promise—it was a threat. And she feared the day she grew strong enough for him to take his revenge.
She’d known when she took the Argent and seduced him into drinking her blood, that she’d been playing with fire. Now the flames were catching.
The others were gone, leaving only Rin and Lucien. They’d slipped out without a word, as if the moment had been arranged.
Cyrus had helped her back into bed after a while. Sitting up on the couch had been too much for her.
She was exhausted, but there was one person left who hadn’t given her a gift.
Lucien sat by her side on the bed, one leg stretched out, while the other was on the floor—half in, half out, like he was unsure whether he deserved to be by her side.
"Vesperin, what I have to tell you is the last of my own secrets I ever want to keep from you. I can only hope that after I tell you, you find it in your heart to forgive me. I don’t ask for your understanding—I barely understand myself most days. I only hope you don’t hate me for this."
Rin’s eyes went wide. Slowly, she reached up and removed her hat, feeling her hair stick up on end from the static. She didn’t bother smoothing it down.
"You’re scaring me, Lucien. What else could you be keeping from me?" Rin wanted to know—yet she never wanted to know.
"Just let me talk first. Please. This is all I’ll ask of you."
He took a steadying breath, then met her eyes unflinchingly.
"We’re Soulbonds. I’ve known since we were younger.
" Lucien reached up to touch his glasses, hand falling back to his lap, fingers twisting. Yet his voice was so calm. "Every time I speak to you, it’s knowing I’m lying to you—actively.
I’m choosing to keep something vital from you.
You should hate me. I hate myself for it, and yet, every time I go over it in my head, try to figure out another way it all could’ve been different, there’s nothing. I would do it all over again."
Rin could only stare.
She took a deep, sharp breath. It felt like glass cracking in her lungs, slipping down her throat.
She was shattering.
And Rin—
Cried.
Lucien told his V girl everything—down to the day it happened, when she came over one Christmas with fresh-baked cookies.
"I think my hand brushed yours. My thumb, maybe.
" Lucien flexed his hand, staring at it. "It took everything in me not to fall on the ground, right there on the doorstep. I waited for you to… to look at me like you knew me, but you didn’t. Once the shock wore off, I was almost relieved. I was twenty-three, you were fifteen at the time—far too young for me. I’ve never been confounded before, but that day, I was deeply… confused," he settled on.
"I had just been awarded as one of the youngest doctors in Solar City. That caught Blackfall Industries’ attention, but my attention had already been caught by them.
I was trapped between what they wanted me to do and my beginning understanding of what they had done to you.
Sabine and Talor," Lucien said their names with viciousness.
"He knew? Kit knew the whole time what you were to me?" Rin sobbed. "And he never said anything?"
"I begged him not to."
Just as Kiton had begged Lucien not to tell Vesperin they were Soulbonds, too. It would only hurt her. They all had roles to play.
Sabine and Talor thought they’d wiped Kiton’s memories. It had to stay that way. But now, it didn’t matter.
Did anything?
Lucien held Vesperin as she cried. When his story ended, he braced himself for her to yell or shove him away, like she wanted him to do to her.
As her sobs dwindled, she lifted her face to him, and he realized what emotion shone there, as bright as dawn sunlight:
Happiness.
"You’re mine," Vesperin whispered, reaching up to touch his jaw, "and I’m yours."
"You’re not angry with me?" His words were a strange decalcomania of what she’d asked him when she first awoke.
"Maybe I should be, but right now, all I feel is relief.
" She looked down, lashes casting shadows on her wet cheeks. "I felt guilty for so long for wanting you. Now I don’t have to feel like that anymore. I could’ve had you this whole time, without hating myself for it.
That day, before I left for Sibeth and I came to see you"—a flush bloomed on her once-pale cheeks—"I wanted you so badly.
After, I wanted to change it—my weakness.
Cyrus said I smelled like you. And I felt so guilty.
" She roughly scrubbed beneath her eyes, as if her tears were a betrayal.
Lucien caught her wrist. "I’m to share you," he said quietly. "I belong solely to you, but you’re not solely mine." The admission twisted something deep within him.
"I’m sorry. I wish I knew what to say, but…" Vesperin shook her head. "We can’t change it—and honestly? If I could… I’m not sure I would want to."
"You don’t need to be ashamed of that. What you feel for them is natural. They’re yours." He clenched his jaw. "Even Valkar."
She stilled, voice soft and strange. "Even him."
Her eyes grew distant as he watched her process everything he’d told her.
Lucien knew her so well, thumb against her pulse point, he could tell the precise moment she began to spiral.
He leaned down, lips hovering inches from hers. "Will you let me kiss you?"
"If we do, it’ll be different. It won’t be like before, because now I know the truth, and I’m never going to let you go," she whispered.
Lucien stared at the way his thumb smoothed over her cheek. This sort of possession was new to him. "I don’t want you to."
He kissed her sweetly, imbuing every bit of his want, filled with every unspoken wish to rewind time and fix the years they’d lost.
Her fingers curled in his shirt as she tried to deepen it, but he broke away, resting his forehead on hers. They breathed in tandem.
"Vesperin, I love you. Know this, if you ever know anything, it’s that everything I did was out of love."
"I love you, too, Lucien. I always have."
"I think a part of you knew we were destined for each other. All those years, and you were in the house right beside mine the entire time."
He kissed her again, tenderly as if they had all the time in the world.
The Christmas tree lights glistened over her face, making her tears sparkle like diamonds.
Together, they fell asleep in each other’s arms.
I’m to share you.
The words haunted his dreams—until they turned to nightmares.
Atlas stepped out of the shadows, knowing the others would not return for some time. They’d conspired with the doctor, giving him a moment alone with Vesperin.
The Celestial cocked his head, watching her chest rise and fall with steady breaths.
Her head rested on Lucien Quenlan’s chest, his arm wrapped around her shoulders, holding her close.
Envy flickered through Atlas—quickly followed by regret.
He should have been above such triviality, and yet, here he was…
Watching her.
He had done terrible things, both passively and deliberately. He had let Vesperin be tortured by one of her Soulbonds, knowing the shocks would awaken her latent memories.
He would do worse still.
Pure white light warmed his palm, and he pressed his thumb between Lucien’s brows and whispered, "Lucien Quenlan, I grant you the gift of knowledge. The future."
Then, he withdrew, eyes lingering on Vesperin.
"Oh, Star of mine, if only you knew. I made our home. I cannot wait for you to see it. There’s a flower field that reminds me of where we met."
He reached out, brushing her temples, sweeping aside strands of her white hair. The shade was strange, an extension of the Nova inside her. How could he resent such a change if it kept her alive?
After she died in her first life on Stella, in the small village of Luxuria, he’d been damned for his love, unable to find her in the threads of fate, hidden from him as punishment. Still, he searched. Life after life, he found her only when it was too late.
He had returned to the Celestials, to the Stars, earning back his place. They’d been waiting for him. He had been dutiful, unmeddling in the affairs of humans, all to earn the unfettered access to fate that he now had. And he used it for her.
To find her.
Five years ago, he had, and he refused to lose her again. So, he did what no Celestial had ever dared: he gave a human a piece of his Nova.
It changed her—dampening her Stella, making her heart’s rhythm discordant, each strained beat reaching for the rest of the Nova in him. Its cadence calmed when he was near.
They were not Soulbonds, but Atlas liked to think that this was far better, for she held a piece of his essence within her. The Nova would let her remember their time in Luxuria together, when she had found him, granted him a name.
This life would only be the turning point for the next.
Atlas placed the forget-me-nots taken from her dorm gently on her chest, then kissed her brow. She smelled so sweet. Her skin was so soft. Atlas sighed against her and let his body melt back into the shadows, but not before he said, "Merry Christmas."
Lucien woke up with a gasp, clutching his chest. Sweat slicked his brow, his head pounding. His glasses were askew, and he reached up with a trembling hand to rip them off and scrub his eyes. In the darkness, he saw only death.
Destruction.
He coughed, feeling like dust was still in his throat, choking him.
His leg throbbed with a phantom ache, and he kicked the sheets away, finding no blood, no bone.
Vesperin slept soundly at his side, hair falling across her cheek.
Lucien pressed his palms to his temples as if to beat back the remnants of his nightmare.
He had never had such a vivid, gruesome dream before. The feeling of crushing grief clung to him.
"It was just a dream," he whispered, turning to Vesperin to anchor himself, to remind him she was alive, and not crushed beneath—
Delicate blue flower petals, enchanted with Earth Stella to never wilt, rested on her chest. Her hand curled around one bloom as she slept. Each soft breath made the petals flutter.
How were they here? The last he’d seen, the flowers were on her dresser in her dorm. His mind clung to that detail so as not to return to the horrors of his dream.
Sweat cooled on his skin.
"Only a dream," he said again, but the stench of death pervaded his senses as he wrapped himself around Vesperin, eyes wide and sleepless.