“What hurts, Stargirl?”
“My soul,” she whimpered. My heart squeezed in my chest. “Like a piece was cleaved off.”
Cypherion’s brows pulled together. His gaze drifted across Vale, down the powder blue chiffon gown draped gracefully around her, and that was when I saw them, too. The crimson stains.
Rage darkened Cyph’s voice. “What happened?”
“It’s not her blood,” Celissia answered. “It’s Titus’s.”
My breath left me in awhoosh. “Titus?” I asked. Cyph looked between Vale and the Engrossians as if reluctant to take his eyes off her.
Dax’s lips pressed into a line, and he mouthed, “She killed him.”
The whole room fell silent.
Vale had murdered a chancellor—herchancellor. Another gone. I looked up at Tolek as he reentered the room, eyes hard. Worried. Jezebel, Erista, and Santorina—even the fae—were all still, as if the heaviness of this new threat weighed on everyone.
With Titus dead, who would come for us? What punishment waited?
But Vale shuddered into Cyph’s arms, whispering again in a voice so broken, “It hurts.”
Her soul, she’d said. Her soul hurt. And Titus had died.
It wasn’t a physical injury, nor was it sadness. It was something deep within Vale that ached, that felt like a piece had been sliced off, because the chancellor had bound them on a soul level through the tattoo on her shoulder.
And to kill him was the only way to sever that oath. The result…something irreparable torn within her.
Reluctantly, my eyes dropped to my own tattoo, the ink beating an ominous tune on my arm. And then my gaze lifted to the ceiling, as if I could see Malakai’s matching North Star resting in that bed above.
A warm hand rubbed my shoulder, and I swallowed thickly at Tolek’s comfort, shoving down the fear writhing within me. The fear this entire night planted.
“Vale,” I said softly, limping toward her and Cypherion, “do you need a healer for anything?”
Her head rolled to the side. The tear tracks on her cheeks glistened in the mystlight. “Ophelia,” she muttered. “I have something for you.”
“For me?”
With tremendous effort, she lifted the hand clutched to her chest. I stepped closer, palm outstretched.
And she tipped her hand toward mine, an abstract gemstone tumbling between us. It glinted an array of deep sapphires with iridescent rainbows in the light.
Instantly, my skinned burned in welcome. A slice of something both familiar and foreign slid into place in the gaps within my spirit.
Based on the jagged bit of gold on the bottom, it might have been ripped from a setting in a necklace, or maybe a statue. And though I had no clue how Vale had found it, I knew exactly what it was.
“Valyrie’s heart,” I muttered, awe coating my words. Blistering heat spread through my palm, up my arm, soaking away a bit of the fearful chill that had claimed me.
“The Fated Lovers,” Vale exhaled.
As she said it, I looked closer. The crystal wasn’t an abstract form. It did appear to be taken from something, and it was worn with age, but it almost looked like two individuals wrapped around one another.
Turning back toward Cypherion and letting her eyes fall closed again, Vale breathed, “I hope you didn’t go to the catacombs. I tried to write to tell you I had it, but Titus found out. Spied on me and Harlen. Think that’s how he put together what he was planning. I’m sorry.”
Her words were thick with sleep, so I didn’t bother to tell her wehadgone to the catacombs. That it had been an utter disaster and a pointless mission. Based on the warning in her slurred words, it seemed she knew what waited down there.
I didn’t ask her now, though.
Instead, I said, “Don’t be sorry about anything, Vale. Thank you.” I curled my fingers around the emblem. “Thank you for getting this for us. Perhaps later, you can tell me how you managed it.”
