“Everything hurts.”
I clenched my eyes, breathing in deeply to cool the molten ire lodged behind my ribs. Spirits, I wished I could kill Titus ten times over. Wished I’d killed him that night Vale had offered to stay in his manor instead of leaving with me.
I’d been so close to it, staring at the knife on the dinner table like a lifeline. But I’d given into what she wanted instead. Guilt speared through my chest, making my next words thick. “Where does it hurt worst?”
But there wouldn’t be an answer because that aching emptiness was beneath the skin. It was the price of an imbued warrior tattoo being severed—a sacrifice that would change her forever.
With one hand still on my chest, Vale pressed the other to her own, right over her sternum. “Here.” Her voice was flat. “It’s a void. Something’s been taken.”
My heart was being ripped out of my chest with every faint word. Titus could die a thousand deaths and they’d never be enough.
“Listen to me,” I said, tilting her chin up. Even in the low mystlight, her expression was distant, skin pallid. “He cannot take your spirit, and he cannot take your heart. Those things belong to you, and you are damn rich in both. Younever belonged to him.” I paused, letting those words settle into the torn pieces of her soul, and I prayed to the Angels they could fill the vacancies. “You are in charge of your own fate—curses, you are the commander of them! And you belong to no one.”
A possessive part of me knew she belonged to me, but not in the way Titus had tried to command her. Regardless, as her lips trembled more with each sentence, that protective voice in my head screamedmine. Screamed for retaliation and the ashes of the chancellor lit in her honor.
Vale repeated, “I belong to no one…because I killed him.”
My spirit crumbled at the loss in her voice. “I know, but that is not why you belong to no one.” I soothed a hand down her back. “You belong to no one because you’re free, Stargirl. I told you once that you’re not some unimportant piece of the universe, no matter how small he tried to force you to be. If you had truly existed as nothing more than an extension of Titus, his death would have done a lot more than take a piece of your spirit. I know what’s missing is irreparable, but you’re still here because you’re so much more than that.”
My fate, my universe, my damn heart. Whatever you wanted to call it, that was what Vale was.
She was silent for a long moment, muffled echoes of the others downstairs and in Malakai’s room drifting through the inn.
And for all of those quiet, processing minutes that she needed, I held on to her. I stroked her hair and soaked in the sound of her heart beating so strongly despite what she went through.
And eventually, she whispered, “I’m happy I did it.” Vale curled her fingers around my linen tunic in an iron grip, and that—that sign of life, of strength—unwound the knot in my chest.
I swiped away the tears slipping down her cheeks. “Happy doesn’t even begin to cover how I feel, Stargirl.” Relieved, elated, desperate—those were a start. “I’m sorry it hurt you, but I’m proud of you, Vale.”
“Proud?” she asked, blinking up at me.
“Yes.” I nodded. “Yes, I’m really proud of you. You survived him, Stargirl. You fought your way out, and you delivered revenge for everything he’d done to you.”
Vale considered that and muttered, “Titus was never proud of me.”
His name on her lips was a wrench through my lungs, and a fire ignited in my blood. But he was dead already, and while a part of me wished I’d been the one to do it, a larger part was satisfied it had been her.
The girl he’d kept as a prized trophy. The girl he’d used and manipulated. The girl he’d tried so hard to break, but who was an Angelsdamned expert at forging shattered pieces into works of art.
“Titus was a fool,” I said.
Was. The force of that word hit Vale like a knife to the gut, her breath stuttering. Her eyes drooped closed. When theyopened again, her vacant stare landed on her dress—on the crimson stains darkening the powder blue fabric, and her breath hitched.
I stood and placed her on her feet, not saying a word as I tugged her dress off her. A part of me wanted to burn it—to turn every reminder of tonight to ash for her—but Vale watched me closely, and something in that focus told me she wasn’t ready. Instead, I folded it, stains hidden, and saved that challenge for another day.
Striding back to where she stood beside the bed, I asked, “What can I do?”
Spirits, I felt so helpless. It was disorienting, not knowing how to solve this for her. But I feared there wasn’t a strategy to healing. None but time.
Vale tangled a hand in the front of my tunic again, eyes on the thin white fabric. “Can I wear this?”
I inclined my head toward the dresser. “Do you want a clean?—”
Her trembling lip cut off my question. Swiftly, I pulled off my tunic and helped her into it, lifting her hair out the back so her wild waves fell around her shoulders. The wrinkled material swam over her frame, but she tugged the sleeves around her hands and held the collar close to her face, inhaling.
“Smells like you. Like home,” she mumbled, and the fucking relief in those words could have sent me to my knees.
“You’re home now, Stargirl. Wherever we are together—that’s home. Us against the Fates.”
