Chapter Four
Nova
“Today, I begged the stars to heal Dad. I don’t think they heard me.”
Azazel fucking Altair was making pancakes.
Pancakes.
How did he even know how to cook? And what the fuck was I doing in his…house? Cottage? Whatever it was, it didn’t fit the Altair I knew. The one who looked at my home in disgust. Who grew up in a castle, for stars sake.
He had insisted on bathing before we spoke. Then, after prancing out in a deep grey sweater and a pair of oddly well-fitting black trousers, he said he couldn’t possibly think on an empty stomach.
I hadn’t moved from his bed, though I had sat up.
I’d never admit it to him, but I truly thought he was going to force himself on me.
I didn’t know why that was what immediately came to my mind.
It had sat there, festering as he stared down at me.
Alongside that was the image of Talon’s face as he begged me not to leave him.
Core families doing what they did best: ensuring everyone but them was the loser—the underdog—the slave—the victim. I had grown angry once more as he dawdled around his home, my confusion paving the way for annoyance.
“Do you want two or three?” Altair asked, not bothering to turn around. He wasn’t even scared of me.
“Let me guess, not enough poison for one pancake to kill me?”
“Pretty sure I could kill you without the strain of cooking.”
Stars, he was right. He could kill me. I’d probably even let him. Hadn’t that been what I was ready to do before?
“How long was I out?” If he noticed how I purposefully changed the subject, he didn’t say, instead choosing to follow my lead.
“Just a day.”
“And who cleaned me?”
“I did.”
The thought of him picking wood out of my hair and wiping blood from my skin had my empty stomach rolling.
“And who healed me?”
“This is going to sound surprising seeing as I have so much company here today, but also me.”
His sarcasm had my fists clenching, my entire body aching from the blows Talon had landed. “Why?”
“You sure do ask a lot of questions.”
“You evade even more.” I watched as he reached down and offered Death a piece of the pancake he had just flipped, the sound of the pan sizzling on the blacktop loud in my ears. Why was he feeding my cat? “That’s it.”
I pushed up to stand, finding more energy than I had thought existed within me. Stomping to my pack, which had clearly been rifled through based on the slightly open zipper and the tousled contents, I grabbed one of the straps and swung it onto my shoulder.
“Death, come on. We need to go.”
“Where, exactly, do you plan to go?” At that, I stilled, my eyes squinting as my gaze flashed his way.
He was facing me now, his head tilted to the side and his stare half-lidded.
But his clenched jaw and fists gave away the tension he seemingly wished I wouldn’t see.
“Clearly someone is after you. And, seeing as you’re here, I assume you have nowhere else to go. ”
He was right. I hated that he was right.
“I have plenty of places.”
“Like where?”
“Like…” I trailed off, my mental list of safe havens coming up empty. No matter where I went, Talon would find me.
“Perhaps this is where you belong, Nova Tershetta.”
Get out of my head!
“Things are only just getting interesting, we’d never leave now.”
Desperate for answers Altair seemed unwilling to provide, I thought back to the moments just before I had ended up there.
Talon had attacked me with a burst of pure magic.
I had pleaded with the stars for help, and they had sent a beam of white-hot magic out of my chest. Talon had begged me to stay. Then…
Then what?
I shadow walked despite the excruciating pain and foggy mind. And I had somehow found Altair? Had the stars brought me here?
“Not us. You.”
Me? How?
They merely giggled, the echoing hiss of their voices fading, as if they were never there at all.
“Where did you go, Tershetta?”
Blinking, I shook my head, attempting to free myself of the prison that was my mind. Altair was staring at me, the smell of burning pancakes thick in the smoke-soaked air.
“You’re ruining your breakfast.”
“Shit!” Whipping around, he quickly grabbed the pan and tipped it upside down over two plain white plates, the pancake steaming as it slammed onto the empty plate on the left. “You’ll have to eat that one. I don’t like burnt food.”
“Oh, and you assume I do?”
“No, I assume you have known hunger long enough to not care about a bit of char.”
“You’re such an entitled prick, did you know that?”
“Yet, here you are.” Altair grabbed both plates, lifting one corner of his mouth as he set them down on a small, pale wooden table.
While I knew he wouldn’t pull out my chair like he had at my house those many months ago, I was still surprised when he plopped down in his own chair and started drenching the pancakes in butter and syrup from tiny ceramic bowls.
“I didn’t mean to come here.”
“Odd, because you had a map of my island. Seemed intentional to me.”
The map!
That was why I had shadow walked to him. Of course. How fucking stupid could I get?
“Why are you even on this island? Why run if you didn’t kill anyone?
” Altair’s head flung up, his eyes widening as he stared me down.
Shit, I shouldn’t have said that. I should’ve at least tried to pretend I still thought he did it.
If only for the slim probability that I’d have any bit of leverage.
“How do you know that?”
“Know what?”
“That I didn’t kill your parents.”
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”
“Who did it? You must know if you’re so sure it wasn’t me.”
My bag felt heavier than normal, digging into my shoulders, though there was no way the nearly endless charm had faded after only a day.
Death twirled around Altair’s ankles where they poked out from beneath the table.
Why did she have to be so cozy with him?
Why did I have to be holding that map when I shadow walked? Why was everything so broken?
“I’m going outside.”
“Wait, I’ll come with you,” Altair rushed out, pressing his hands onto the table as he stood and making the wood groan in protest. Why was he so fucking eager to be around me? He hated me. Why was he even letting me stay there? Why was he helping me?
The questions rattled in my head like a half-filled jar being shaken. They stung with each slam against my skull. I needed to get out of there. To have a second of peace before everything inevitably crashed down.
So, as gracefully as I could, I threw off my bag, ripped open the front door, and ran.
As it turned out, I hadn’t been paying nearly enough attention when I first arrived in front of Altair’s cottage. The vast sea beyond the sharp and plunging cliff mirrored the grey sky, less blue than I had thought it was.
Not that way, then.
On the other side of the cottage was what looked to be a towering mountain, easily three times the size of the one near Elite Academy, the surface nearly black. It seemed to take up almost all of the island, with the peak I stood on being the second highest.
All around me was rubble. Houses cracked and broken, vegetation overtaking stone. The grass was beginning to take on an orange hue, crunching beneath my feet as I ran down the hill. Where I was going didn’t matter, only that I was moving. I’d go back for Death when I could think—plot—breathe.
“Silly girl. You run, but you can’t hide.”
I sped up, my lungs burning as the icy air flooded my chest. If I kept moving, maybe I could outrun the sound of their echoing voices.
“You know that isn’t possible.”
Leave me alone!
My arms and legs ached from the day of disuse. While my mind demanded I continue, my body began to protest, my feet burning as cold rocks dug into my soles. Pumping my arms faster, I leapt over what looked like chunks of a wooden bed, my heart aching at what once was.
We had destroyed everything. For what?
“For us, of course.”
The stars seemed eager to say more, a hum beginning in the back of my mind. I screamed out, collapsing near a large chunk of what must have once been a wall, the faded brick thick with the smell of smoke.
Sucking in the briny air, I noted that the scent wasn’t just on the bricks. It was everywhere. Looking up, I caught sight of a faint cloud leaking from the top of the mountain.
Not a mountain, a volcano. I had read about those before, though I had never seen one. If I had the energy, I might have actually been fascinated. As it was, I closed my eyes, letting my head thunk against the brick as I slumped into the wall.
“You know, Nova Tershetta, you are on the precipice of something quite big.”
And what is that?
“Ask Azazel Altair.”
As always, I could sense that they were done with the conversation, their hushed whispers and incomprehensible ramblings fading to the back of my mind, where they so loved to fester in my subconscious.
Ask Altair? What answers could he possibly provide me?
He’d been burrowing away like the snake he was, brumating before striking when the time was right.
There was nothing he could give me. He was vile, hateful, egotistic, violent, and despicable.
Impossible in every way. All he could do was annoy me at best and kill me at worst.
Though I wished it wouldn’t, my mind strayed, as it always did.
I thought of the letters Mama had written him.
Had he written back with the same kind tone?
I hadn’t had time to look through Mama’s drawers and find them, nor had I thought to.
By the way she responded and the fact that he had kept them, I assumed he was compassionate towards her.
Fine, there was one redeeming quality about him then. He knew Mama’s value. Not that it took much to see her for the beacon she was. Still, I’d give him that one thing. Nothing else, of course.
For the first time in a while, I wished the stars would speak, if only to tell me more.
Sighing, I let my torso slowly tip, my shoulder hitting the prickly grass and scattered bits of debris.
Every inch of my body ached already, so a bit more pain didn’t really matter.
Comfort was the last thing on my mind as I curled into a ball and let myself cry, anyway.
It was a useless waste of time to let my emotions loose, but I needed to break while I was alone.
Because, despite my best judgment saying I couldn’t trust Altair, I knew I had to go back to him.
***
Altair was still at the table when I got back, his feet propped up and Death in his lap, purring as he stroked her fur. Both of their eyes were already on the door as I walked in, gazes piercing. As always, my anger burned bright in his presence.
“Back already?” His voice was steady, a slow drawl that sounded almost bored. Death leapt from her place on his lap, dashing my way. Though she was a traitor, I still reached down and picked her up, holding her close to me as if she was an anchor to reality.
Saying nothing to Altair, I slammed his door closed and strode over to the table, slowly sitting in the stiff wooden chair across from him. Bright grey eyes widening just a fraction, he used his foot to shove a plate towards me, his sock almost touching a pancake that sat near the edge.
Scrunching my nose, I leaned forward, accepting the food despite how degrading he made it feel. Of course he did, nothing came easily or freely from Azazel Altair. But I guessed I should have been grateful he was helping me at all. So I ate.
Silence twirled in the air like a tornado, sucking the sounds of my chewing, Death’s purring, and Altair’s breathing into a vortex until they couldn’t be heard anymore.
The butter was soft, the syrup sweet, making the slightly burnt pancake taste better than I’d thought it would.
As I chewed, I thought of what Altair could gain from helping me.
Rather quickly, I settled on the assumption that he wanted to use me.
I had the stars after all. That was enough to have many teaming up with me when they would normally want me dead. Case in point: Iblis Altair.
“You know, Murder, begging is normally reserved for dogs from what I hear.” My eyes flicked down, catching the way Death stared at my plate. Murder?
“Her name is Death.” Altair tilted his head, the barest hint of a smile ghosting across his lips.
For the first time since waking up, I fully took him in.
There was a bit of stubble growing on the bottom half of his face, his skin slightly less pale than it had been before.
His hair was longer on the sides, with bits chopped in odd places, as if he had cut it himself.
It was also lighter than I remembered, now closer to silver.
He had purple shadows beneath his eyes too—worse than in Elite Academy.
While I would have expected him to be leaner from seclusion, he wasn’t.
His body took up an unnecessary amount of space, his arms and chest straining against the sweater.
“Who names their cat Death?” he retorted.
“Who names one Murder?”
We stared at one another, neither wanting to back down from the trivial argument. Probably because we both had questions that the other clearly didn’t want to answer. Luckily for me, he didn’t seem to enjoy the awkward silence.
“Do you want more food?”
“Where did you get the food? And why did you choose this place to live? How is it still intact when everything else is destroyed?” I practically vomited the words, desperate to understand what was right in front of me. My mind couldn’t reason with it all.
For a breath of time, he just stared at me, his face unreadable. In the months I had known him, he hadn’t shown that he had any nervous habits—especially none like I did—but I watched in surprise as he tugged his full button lip between his teeth, nibbling on it.
“I get a bit of my food from the island. Anything I can’t find here I outsource by shadow walking.
” That made sense, though it was hard to imagine Altair hunting for food from the land.
Even the idea of him getting dirty seemed impossible, despite the fact I’d seen him disheveled before.
“As for the cottage, I chose the one in the best condition and fixed it up myself. It isn’t perfect and it wasn’t easy, but I managed. ”
“Seems a bit meager and small for your taste.” A low blow, one I wished I could take back when he scrunched his eyes closed. Not that I cared if I hurt his feelings. He was, at best, a bigoted prick.
“It reminded me a little of your house. It felt…warm.”
With that, the cottage grew silent once more.