Chapter 10

Chapter Ten

Cypherion

The sky didn't seem as dark here. In Damenal, the mountains sometimes swallowed up the light, and the stars peppered a black sheet. But here, the space between them seemed to melt into their glow. Deep pockets of navy faded into lighter and darker blues effortlessly, all of it softening together like weaving a story.

After tonight, I wasn't sure what tale they told.

I tried to decipher it from the tiled roof outside the window of the room we'd taken at the tavern in Lumin. After getting Vale back here and swiping the sweat from her face with a damp cloth, I'd sat beside her bed for a while. She wasn't stirring, though, and the room was stifling. Choking me.

Instead, I'd crawled onto the first story roof our room overlooked. I sat against the wall beside the open window so I'd hear any noise she made and watched the stars.

Why had they given her this fate? What had they written for her that was causing such torment?

She deserved better. Every time she was taken by her sessions' seizing, I'd thought that. She was only trying to help my friends. No matter how angry I was with her, no matter that she would leave, I could acknowledge that she was going out of her way—endangering herself—to assist in the emblem hunt.

"Fucking Angels." I dragged a hand down my face.

As I asked the universe these pressing questions, I tried to wave off the thought that Vale might be doing this for me, too.

Because she knew how much I depended on my friends. Months ago, on the eve of Daminius, I'd torn down my walls and shown her how much I needed them all to survive this.

There was only one place I could go right now. One person who could find some kind of answer to the desperation that had been clawing through my chest since Santorina shared that passage about the Angelcurse a few days prior.

There is no cure but blood for seraphs kissed by Angels. Death is the ultimate sacrifice.

Death. Ophelia's death.

She couldn't fucking die. That wasn't an option.

Malakai had lost any semblance of control when Rina read that aloud. Jezebel had nearly devolved right there on the floor of Lucidius's study, rage and denial bursting from her small frame. Santorina went quiet, and that was almost the worst one. I didn't know how to help silence.

Erista had taken Jezebel, and everyone else who was not as personally tied to Ophelia left, so it was just Malakai, Rina, and me.

They were near opposites in their fear. Mali stormed and huffed around the room. Rina reeled every drop in, answering with a sharp tongue when prodded.

And I'd held on to them. We sat there trying to find answers for hours, until we were too exhausted to continue, then began again the next day. We'd found nothing. But I held on because it already felt like Ophelia was slipping away from us all with this Angelcurse. We couldn't lose someone else.

And Tolek…

Damien's cursed fucking Spirit, I didn't know how Tolek would respond to Ophelia's approaching doom, but it wouldn't be good.

That was why I was knocking on Vale's door now, hours after the sun went down, on the eve of Daminius.

"Cypherion?" she greeted, surprised.

I didn't think the curiosity was about me being here—we'd been sneaking into each other's rooms for weeks, because I didn't want to answer my friends' questions yet.

No, it was likely no surprise that I was here. But a surprise that I was here now .

"I need your help," I confessed.

Vale stepped aside and let me into her suite, leading me straight to the bed chamber and the couches forming a semi-circle before the fire.

"What's wrong?" she asked, immediately adding, "Sorry, that's a stupid question." She tugged her silk robe tighter around her shoulders.

I slumped into a seat, my elbows braced on my knees and my head in my hands.

"Cypherion," she said my name again softly. Always my full name. I loved the way she said it, any way she chose to, but when she said it in that quiet voice, it felt intimate. Like she wasn't only saying it but looking at me. Truly looking.

"I need you to read about the Angelcurse." And then I was pacing before the fire, the words fast and uncontrollable. "I need help—I need an answer, to be able to go back to my friends with a plan because they are all fucking losing it, and I need to hold them together right now." I shoved my hands through my hair, tugging at the ends.

"Ophelia definitely knows about this Angelcurse if she had Santorina searching," I said, "but I also know she doesn't have a plan or she would have come to us. So, I need to find the plan." I stopped, bracing both hands on the mantle and watching the fire. "I need to give them a way to keep their pieces together or we're all going to disintegrate along with her.

"We lost Malakai once, and it nearly pried Ophelia from us. We only held on to her because the rest of us gave into the denial and accepted his death." I shook my head. "It gave us a false foundation. We tried to carry on, but that damaged all of us in one way or another. None of us are the same people we were when he left. But what happens when another piece of a still-healing foundation is permanently ripped away?"

My voice cracked on that last word.

"We won't survive it, and I fucking need them, Vale. I need them," I admitted, turning to her. "Help me, please."

Vale rose, standing toe to toe with me, over a foot shorter but her stare searing down to my soul. And it was a sad fucking stare.

"I don't know what I can do."

"Please. Try. See if there's a way out of this." Every word I spoke was painfully vulnerable. Some instinct in my head told me not to say anymore. Not to further confess how desperate and lost I was.

Vale's eyes flicked to mine, a war being fought in her gaze. Then, she assessed her table of various reading supplies that I was only beginning to understand the uses of. Her shoulders sank, but she turned back to me.

"I'll do whatever I can."

She led me to a chair, and I sat on nervous pins as she silently attempted readings. For hours we remained in that smoke, and each time she was unable to pull an answer from the Fates.

We spent the entire night together. First with her readings, then in her bed. I worshipped her body, showing her exactly how grateful I was for her help, and when she fell asleep and promised she'd keep trying, there was a bit of a regretful limp to her words.

I hadn't understood then that it was guilt.

And in the morning, when she told me that she'd be returning to Valyn after Daminius as per the agreement between Ophelia and the chancellors—when I thought my chest would cave in because I was losing someone else now, too—I left without a word.

I'll do whatever I can, she had said. Five words that haunted me months later. Made it impossible to let her in again.

Vale hadn't truly tried. She'd sabotaged those readings—ruined any chance of glimpsing that the Engrossians were about to sack the city, too—and given me hope rather than tell me an ugly truth.

And then, she was just going to leave.

It had been the fist through whatever story the damn stars were writing for us at the time. One I hadn't been able to let go of, months later.

I believed now that she didn't mean to harm the Mystiques with her secrets. I understood it was Titus's manipulation holding her hostage. But when we were done with this mission, Vale was going to leave again, and who would she take out in her wake next time?

I stared at the moon, begging its luminescence to burn the image of her bare beneath me on that night from my mind. Erase every memory of what she'd said, too.

All of that…and she'd been hiding things.

She hadn't had a choice .

And why shouldn't she lie to me? It was easy to be angry with her about it when we were in the mountains or traversing the continent. Seeing her here was different. This territory tore her up, and she wiped scars away every time, like stray tears.

I sighed, tipping my head back against the wall.

Immediately after the Battle of Damenal, I hadn't necessarily believed she had no hand in lying. I thought when we returned here, that secret would be exposed, too. She'd be back to life as it had been, but after tonight, I couldn't keep trying to believe that lie.

Not only was her power turning on her, but the land itself was jumbling her thoughts. Perhaps Vale was as confused as I was.

Weren't we all just a bit lost? Comprised of pieces of broken dreams lodged inside of us like shattered stars careening through the heavens.

"May I join you?" I hadn't even heard her wake up, but just as she had been that night, Vale was there. And I didn't know how to decipher the defensive hunger in my bones at seeing her now.