Chapter 18 #2
Rhyden’s white hair blew back in the hot, red wind.
It was shorter still than she recalled. He was harder everywhere.
Harsh and jagged. It was all her fault. Her father’s fault.
If only she had been stronger, if they had been able to flee from Sangreal.
Her neck felt light without the weight of diamonds draped there—or without a collar locked around it. She was too bare.
Rhyden’s fingers tightened around the grip of a gun, the barrel laced with glowing, pulsing liquid, as a Rogue trilled. Something pounded closer.
It was Auren who knew she was different, even before she spoke. It was her Soul Searcher, who had chased her across lifetimes, who understood she was no longer the Rin they knew.
Ash drifted on the shoulders of his white cloak, like grey, muddled snowflakes, as he stepped nearer. The end of his scythe dragged over the ground. "Vesperin, you know now, don’t you?"
Lucien’s arms tightened around her, then she pulled away, and they dropped. She stepped out of his hold, her white hair violently whipping around her in the fierce winds.
"Yes," she said quietly. "I remember everything." It was as though her eyes could not focus clearly on them. She looked at them and did not see them. She saw echoes of who they had once been. Haunting her.
They had been the darkness in the corners of her room, making her toss and turn in her childhood bed as she’d wished to be held. Memory was a monster, and it had tracked her down to the here and now. She could not run any further. It was finished.
Her brain swelled, temples throbbing, and her nose tingled, a hot wet rush of blood slipping from her nostrils and collecting above the bow of her lip.
When her lips parted, she tasted iron. "I saw Kit when they took me.
" She didn’t call him Kiton, because he would always be her Kit.
What she called him in gasped whispers, her lips pressed to his flushed chest as he took her.
Or in the sweet moments, when she would look up and find him already looking at her.
"He can be saved." She smiled. Though faint, it was there.
Her palm pressed to her sore stomach. She was no longer sad. She had already lost a child once. She did not feel as though that was something planned for her. At least… not this life.
Death stood mere inches from her. She felt its cold touch, whispery fingertips brushing against her arms as she wavered.
"I think—my head, it hurts," Vesperin whispered faintly.
Auren surged forward and caught her before she fell. His scythe dropped to the brittle grass with a low clang.
His arm banded behind her back. His blue eyes gleamed like pools of moonlight.
"Your scythe," she breathed, staring up at him.
Auren shook his head. "I was wrong, Vesperin. My allegiance is not to the Celestials or Stars. It is to you." His lips parted, but words died on his tongue—just as before.
Cyrus’s fingers shook as he touched her arm. "Hey, doll, you’re okay. God—" His voice broke.
Auren helped her straighten, and she leaned her weight on his chest.
She hadn’t realized the glow of the Aether in her veins had dulled, but now, with them all around her—or perhaps because she merely thought of it, and it answered to some unseen call in her Soul—it surged anew.
Awe filled Cyrus’s purple eyes. "You’re glowing, Ves." His hand left her as he traced over the air before her, a faint blue from the power that raced in her veins.
"Stella," Lucien breathed. "Your Stella…"
Vesperin raised her hand, staring at it. She tried to see what they did, but couldn’t. She only saw herself.
The ground trembled, and Auren’s arm snapped up, wrapping around her protectively.
Rhyden, who had been quiet, raised his gun. "Rogues. We’re in a fucking Nova Zone. How did you get here, wife?" The word was soft as his red eyes moved over her.
"I have always been here in some way," she responded, with effort. She wanted to ask how they’d known she was here, but some things could not be explained with mere words.
Her head was a constant throb now, rebelling from the contents it held.
The wind grew fiercer, and it brought such sweltering heat she coughed. Auren’s gloveless hand pressed against her jaw, forcing her face into his chest. Her eyes burned as she squinted into the red fog. It was like fire.
The sky was on fire, with streaking Stars.
They all stared up, helpless but to look.
"Will we be okay?" Vesperin asked, and for a second, she felt like her again. Rin.
Lucien ripped his glasses off, wiping the lenses on his dirtied shirt. His lips moved, but she didn’t hear what he was saying.
Rhyden was the one to assure her. "We’ll keep you safe." He cocked his gun and turned out to the foggy streets of her neighborhood. The ground thundered. "They’re coming." He looked at her from the corner of his eye. "They sense your Stella. Either do something about it or go hide."
Auren’s hand tightened around her. "I will protect her."
Cyrus’s eyes grew half-lidded. She couldn’t see the red glimmers of his power because of the fog, but his skin swelled with proof of it. "We cut them all down, and we get out of here. The city is being evacuated because of the earthquakes. The Academy is gone. We can go somewhere else."
"To my cottage." Auren’s chest rumbled beneath her. "We will be safe there. Once we leave this Nova Zone, I can try to portal again."
But wait… She stared at his scythe, discarded on the ground. It did not glow. "You cannot use it, Auren?"
He blew out a sharp breath, staring at the dull scythe with angered eyes.
"No. I suspect it is the Nova in the area. Though I’ve never had such an issue before," he gritted out.
"The Celestials are scheming against us.
" The words were low and bitter. She sensed there was more he wished to say—again.
"They always scheme," Vesperin murmured, feeling the Rogues’ footfalls pound in her heart, in her head. "There is a reason." There had to be.
She saw dark, hulking shapes through the fog. The ground trembled constantly now.
That was the thing about mortality. It made you believe you were impervious, until you were faced with death, and even then, you pretended it was not staring you in the eye, hands locked around your throat.
That was what they all did. They pretended.
That the sky was not falling. That the ground would sustain even against the worst of the shaking. That the end was not here.
Lucien was shaking his head. "It doesn’t matter. Oh god, it doesn’t—"
Rhyden clapped him on the shoulder. "Snap the fuck out of it. If you can’t protect her, then go. Do something with that Stella of yours. I know you’re not entirely useless."
As the Rogues jumped out of the fog with fearsome roars, Rhyden, Cyrus, and Auren jolted into action.
It was seamless, the way they knew what to do.
Even Lucien, who had been scared, whose eyes were still wild, reached for Vesperin. Auren passed her off, his bare fingers skimming over her cheek, before he used his immortal, Celestial-given speed to swoop down and collect his scythe. It did not glow, but the blade was still sharp.
Rhyden’s arms were straight, aim true, as he fired shot after shot. The magazine dropped from the gun, and he reloaded so swiftly she could have blinked and missed it. She did nearly miss it, as Lucien’s arms wrapped around her and he tugged her back into her house.
She looked behind her, watching Cyrus hold out his hands, a wicked grin on his lips, as he twisted his fingers up, curling toward his palm, and a Rogue dropped dead at his feet. Blood oozed from the black, Soulless pits of its eyes.
As Lucien tugged her through the jagged frame of the door, she saw countless Rogues. Too many for them.
Her knees trembled.
And the glow beneath her skin burned brighter.
Inside her house, the halls seemed tighter than they had before. Or maybe the Stella in her veins and memories in her mind had grown too big in too short a time, making her seem larger.
Lucien forced her down on the dusty couch.
There were old stains on it. He stood, pacing, and roughly put his glasses back on, staring down at her.
Whatever he saw on her face, the listlessness, the pain, made his lips thin.
He crouched before her, placing his large, comforting palms on her bare knees.
The short hem of her cotton gown was stained and torn.
"Whatever happens, my V girl, know that I will always love you, and I am always, always going to do whatever it takes to protect you.
" He reached for her, his hand cupping the back of her head as he forced her eyes to his.
Their noses brushed as he leaned closer toward her.
"Whatever it takes, Vesperin. I want you to promise me something. "
Her lips trembled. "What?" She felt herself slip into a different persona. One that cried tears of diamonds and spoke a different language. She felt the hard floor of a cage bite into her kneecaps, the fear of not knowing what awaited her.
Lucien’s forehead pressed against hers. "You will stay here, and you will not leave, no matter what," Lucien said. She started to shake her head, but couldn’t because of how his hand gripped her so tightly.
"Promise me, Vesperin." His lips brushed hers.
She felt something touch her ankles. "I do not wish to do this, but for you—if it means keeping you from the future that has haunted me—I will be the villain. "
Something coiled around her ankles, then surged up her calves, twining around her waist. She was pinned to the couch, unable to move as vines kept her tied. They tightened around her belly, making her wheeze from the pain inside her—from what had been taken from her.
Her eyes were wide as she stared at him. "Lucien? Wait—no."