Chapter 18
ASHES
Heat licked at Vesperin as she woke up. It was a slow waking as she got her bearings. First, she felt her body’s lack of response. Then?
Then she felt the pain.
Her brain felt like a throbbing, wet mass fit to explode in her skull.
Her mouth stretched in a silent scream as she twisted in the sheets, curling onto her side in a small ball. She wanted it to stop. The pounding in her chest, the breaking of her heart, and the wash of memories, swiftly rushing by behind her closed lids.
It was like trying to hold onto the galaxy itself, for the way the countless memories rushed past.
Flickers of voices, words, the brush of hands… It was all too much.
Vesperin’s hands tangled in her hair, and she pulled, hoping the pain would wake her up from this terrible dream.
Her father was waiting for her. Her mother would be so cross that she had missed dinner. What would it be tonight? Herb stew or her favorite braised lamb with freshly churned butter? She trembled on the bed, pressing her palms to her eyes.
"Wake up, wake up—wake up," she sobbed.
The pain in her head did not relent.
There was someone missing her. Something she was missing. She felt it as surely as she felt the heat lick against her.
What was that burning? Was there a fire? Was it one of her siblings? Had they let the hearth’s fire grow uncontrollable? Oh no.
Vesperin unfurled with a groan, sitting up. As her half-lidded, watery eyes adjusted, she saw things that were hers yet not. Things that belonged yet didn’t.
The walls were not stone. The bed she was on was not low to the floor, with her favorite hide blanket. The blanket was dirty, and the bed was high. Her head pounded as she tried to understand—where was she? How did she get here?
"Mother? Father?" Vesperin called, voice a croak.
She stood slowly, and her toes sank into a rug. She looked down and saw rusted brown stains on it.
A flash of memory.
Vesperin gave a sob. She pressed her hand to the back of her mouth to stifle it. But there was no one here to hear her. She was alone. And—
"Atlas," Vesperin wailed.
She sank to her knees on the rug, her fingers stretching through the fibers.
Old, brown blood flaked off, getting beneath her nails.
It was hers. Her blood. She remembered now.
So much, too much, more than anyone should ever be able to remember.
Lives warred in her mind. One second, she was beneath a willow, then tumbling down through the Stars, through lives, passing by men whom she grew to love, whose Souls called to hers.
Now she was here. And she was Rin, yet not.
She was Vesperin. Vesperin Vox. She always had been.
The girl called Rin felt distant now, smaller. Her life had been doomed from the start.
Some locked-away part of her trembled, like the floor beneath her knees.
Vesperin’s head hung low, her white hair falling around her shoulders.
It shouldn’t be white. The shade was distorted.
Tears fell steadily, heavily over her lash line, wetting the rug.
A cockroach skittered along the wall, burrowing beneath her dresser.
Her eyes traced it. She felt like that bug, trying to hide, to escape—to survive.
Her head hurt so bad. She moaned. Something wet trickled down her face, and she wiped it away with a shaking, trembling hand. When she pulled her fingers away, they were stained a deep scarlet. Fresh blood.
Vesperin touched the old, faded bloodstains on her carpet.
"I should have died here so long ago." Yet, she’d been saved.
Now she knew why. It was as undeniable as the Celestial chasing her.
Atlas, her Atlas, had saved her. He had saved her when she could not save herself, repaid her for awakening something in him on the first planet of Stella, in her small village, Luxuria.
In saving a fallen Star, Vesperin had gotten the attention and eternal devotion of a vengeful, protective Celestial.
But where was he now, when she needed him most?
"Atlas?" Vesperin’s voice broke. "Atlas, I need you.
Please do not leave me alone." She found her words slipping, her tone turning soft and gentle, a slow rise to the end.
Not at all like the clipped, bitter tone she knew she could have when she felt the angriest and most alone.
"I need you—please, my Shadow. Do not leave me to face this alone.
Do not force me to give up my faith in you now, of all times.
" Her eyes squeezed shut as she sobbed in the quiet. She was alone. She did not feel him.
Slowly, Vesperin pushed herself to a stand, wobbling from the multiplied pain in her mind, echoes of laughter and groans and cries, amalgamating into one endless screech. It grew to be too much. Something inside her Soul wavered, then splintered, cracking open.
Piercing light filled the room, chasing away the shadows.
It was coming from her.
She looked down, finding her pale legs shining. She lifted her arm, staring at the veins racing over her skin. They were blue, brilliant. Her Stella. It had finally awoken inside her. Now, she feared it was too late.
The scent of smoke yanked her from her daze. She once thought it had been a fire in a hearth, left unattended by one of her siblings—from her life on Stella. Now she knew it was not. It made something inside her thrum in warning. Danger. The air was thick with it.
She braced herself with a hand on the wall, trailing past as she walked to the shattered window. The curtains fluttered wildly from a hot breeze. Her palms pressed against the windowsill. Old, jagged glass cut into her fingertips. She did not care. Outside, the world was on fire.
The sky was red and golden. Shooting Stars streaked past, their fiery tails cutting through the sky.
Smoke rose in the far distance.
She was in her neighborhood. Nova Zone 173. She hadn’t returned in five years, too afraid. It had been sealed off like all the other Nova Zones. Now, she was inside its near-impenetrable walls.
Her home had been in a quaint little neighborhood. Now the concrete was cracked, and bones littered the driveway. Everything was colored red from the sky’s ominous glow. The blue that swept out from her flesh chased away the frightening aura.
The cries of Rogues split the night air, and Vesperin flinched back, hands dropping from the windowsill. Her red blood flecked the carpet as she pulled away. There were small, stinging cuts on the delicate pads of her fingers.
The walls of her home shook around her.
She had to get out before she was buried beneath the weight of her childhood.
Vesperin stumbled out of her room, down the hallway, tripping over broken glass and overturned furniture.
It felt like hers, yet, at the same time, it did not.
Because this home was only one of many. She would have another one day, she knew, and it too would be just as fleeting.
Nothing was ever hers, except perhaps the Celestial—who had now abandoned her.
"No," Vesperin gasped, the vow breaking from her lips as she stumbled out of the doorless frame of her house, onto the porch, then down the sidewalk, until her bare toes scrunched in brittle, dead grass.
The air was thick with smoke and fog. She coughed, and her stomach tugged, then she remembered more.
The space between her thighs was sore still, thoroughly used.
"I have faith. Atlas, you are here. You have to be.
" She tipped her head back, staring at the red sky.
"If you are not, then it was all for naught. You saved me. Do not leave me here."
Through the heavy fog around her, shapes took form.
One, before the dark blot split into four.
She squinted.
"Atlas?" Her voice was soft, echoed by howling Rogues.
Then she saw their faces.
Her legs trembled. She forced strength into them so she wouldn’t collapse.
"My Soulbonds, you’ve found me," Vesperin said, as Lucien, Rhyden, Auren, and Cyrus came into view.
The crimson fog parted around them, as if swept away by a ghostly hand—or a Celestial who watched over her.
Her head fell back, eyes cast upward, as tears tracked through the ash on her cheeks.
"Thank you," she whispered, hoping Atlas was listening.
When she dropped her gaze once more, she saw they were right before her. She was no longer alone. "You’re here."
Lucien reached her first. She blinked and swore his hair grew right before her eyes. Turning long, tied back at the base of his neck, flowing over imagined robes. Her eyes pricked with tears. Would they turn to diamonds?
His hands settled on her shoulders, shaking her slightly. "Vesperin, my V girl? God, what happened to you? What have they done to you?"
She felt her abdomen tug as he gathered her close to his chest, crushing her there. Her skin still held traces of oil and metal from Kit, and faint, purpling bruises from everything that had been done to her.
Lucien’s chin dug into the top of her head as he gave a low, grief-stricken sob. He mumbled faint praises—and prayers, too.
Her cheek rested on his chest, and she breathed him in. Lucien had given everything to save her, yet he still thought himself to be a monster. Her lids cracked open. Nestled in his arms, her eyes slid past him. She found the others waiting.
Cyrus Soltren… Her chin wobbled. Her Prince, oh, how she’d missed him.
Though he wasn’t a prince any longer. For her, he had given it up.
She licked her lips, tasting sugar rock tea, sea salt, and berries from his kiss.
She couldn’t quite look away from him. Whatever Cyrus saw on her face made his purple eyes gleam with unshed tears. "Ves…?"