Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Vale

I kept my chin high until the door closed behind him.

Until the creaking of the staircase was no longer audible through the thin walls.

Until I could breathe around the heavy weight on my chest and the stinging in the back of my eyes.

But his bergamot and sage scent crowded the air, and the avoidance ripped at my heart.

It hurt, the way he looked at me now. Or the way he didn't, I should say. Like the wishes on stars and secrets exchanged in the quiet mountain nights meant nothing. Like each kiss had been me digging out the earth for his own grave. That's what he believed. But every word I'd said to him, every confession and comfort, had been true.

Just because I'd been lying for Titus did not mean I let those things bleed into whatever had dawned between us.

I had to lie. I had no choice. Titus was my…well, I didn't know what he actually was. I wasn't sure I ever had known.

As Starsearchers, we did not just read fate. We were tied to the Fates—a distinct difference most other clans did not understand. There'd once been twelve Fates, but one had died a brutal, betrayed death when only the gods spun tales in the skies.

As children, we learned of the eleven remaining, but it wasn't until we grew in our searching practice that we were drawn to one over the others. Sometimes, rarely, more than one. And Titus had me swear I would never reveal my truth about the Fates.

No matter how badly I wanted to.

No matter how much that hurting pair of blue eyes pierced my soul each time I caught them looking to me for an explanation. For some way to make my secrets make sense.

Alone in the room, I rubbed a hand against my sternum. My entire chest was tight. Not just from Cypherion's avoidance, but from the pressure of my magic begging to be released. I'd never stifled it.

I hated stifling it.

Incense snuck beneath the crack in the door. Not enough to consume me, but enough that, maybe, I could try to read something. Tentatively, I closed my eyes and grasped for the readings sitting beneath the surface of my skin.

Reaching into my magic was like dipping a toe in a pool of starlight. But instead of the ripples cascading outward, they shot into me. The voices of the Fates crowded my mind, blurred so I couldn't read a word they said.

Flashes of white fire, like the tails of falling stars, burned behind my eyelids, and in them, I could barely make out muddled fortunes. They should have been painted there, clear as the dawn. The voices shouldn't have been layered but guiding.

My limbs shook, darkness consuming the edges of my session. It was heavy, like the darkness I'd once seen surrounding Ophelia. Opening its maw, it tried to swallow me down.

With the force of the Fates, I wrenched myself from the reading and stuffed it all back down.

Panting, I braced a hand on the window. That reading of Ophelia—the one that showed darkness converging on Gallantia—was one of the last true readings I'd done when I first arrived in Damenal. Titus had claimed it as his own and instructed me not to conduct any more sessions while with the Mystiques.

I'd still tried when requested, but I'd burned herbs that would counteract any true reading.

And by the time I was truly attempting to read again—after the Battle of Damenal when my secrets were exposed—nothing worked correctly. My position with the Mystiques had been shattered, like a delicate pane of glass.

And Cypherion did not want to discuss any of it. No explanations, no excuses. I curled my fingers against the glass and breathed in deeply—just once. Then I let it go, as I let him go every time he turned his back on me these past few months.

Despite the way it sliced my heart right down the center, I let him go.

I had to let him go.

Releasing a breath, I looked out the window. Lumin Lake stared at me like a sheet of deep blue stained glass, roughly half a day's journey away.

The temple containing all my earliest memories stood proudly on the cliff on the southeast side. Barely visible from here, sure, but I knew it loomed. As if it was a fate I couldn't escape no matter how hard I tried.

Those pillars formed some contrived combination of safety and shackles. The two ideas melted together in my head, as they did every time I tried to pry them apart.

What was the truth?

How was I supposed to feel?

My chest ached.

The window was cold beneath my palm, but I let the sting settle in as the memories did. Diving in the lake during those early summers and playing on balconies swarmed by incense as the sun faded into stars. Stories and lessons and training to be the defense of the secrets buried within our sacred spaces. Slaps on flesh and loud, assuming remarks?—

I inhaled sharply, eyes squeezing shut and hand trembling against the glass.

Not those memories. You were rescued from those . Something within me tugged at the reminder.

I had few earlier memories than life at the Lumin temple. Fuzzy things that poked into dreams every now and then.

Bursts of laughter and bare feet on cobblestones, soft jungle moss between my toes and sunlight peeking through ferns. The earliest years of life that no one truly remembered in detail, mainly drowned by the polished marble floors and harsh instructors that came later.

I had more recent recollections, too, but the thought of touching them had my pulse racing.

I brushed them all away, one by one, and turned my back on the view of the temple. The good and the bad. Tucked it all into that dusty, worn box in my mind where the lid was peeling back at the edges from constant opening and closing.

Especially in recent months.

I'd hidden it away for good once I received the tattoo on my shoulder…until someone convinced me to open it up, one truth at a time.

It hadn't been enough, though , I thought as I perched on the bed.

Curling my feet beneath me, I leaned against the pillows, full and feathered, despite the ramshackle state of the inn. I toyed with the corner of the soft sheets, my gaze automatically swinging between the door and the window every few seconds like I was some weak-minded, simpering young girl, desperate for a hint of acceptance.

I wasn't.

I couldn't be.

If I was, being back here would surely destroy me. I'd withstood barred cages my entire life, had learned what they were comprised of. I could summon their familiar iron-strength and forge it within myself.

My gaze caught on that cursed sleeping mat unrolled before the fire.

I'll take the floor , he had said. Cypherion Kastroff was always such a stars-damned gentleman. I hated it.

No, that was a lie.

I wanted to hate it. But I'd seen the other side of him. The one I suspected he rarely let anyone see. The one that drove him to fighting rings after the Battle of Damenal and kissed like he wanted to consume you. It was possessive and passionate and—Spirits, heat gathered in my core at just the memory of it.

I'll take the floor .

"Valyrie's tits!" I cursed, throwing the pillow across the room. It knocked a statue carved of blue stone from the mantle, sending it shattering to the floor. I didn't bother to pick up the pieces.

If I could go back to those long nights in Damenal when we'd begun cracking open wounds, to the eve of Daminius, when a fear I'd never seen in Cypherion turned those blue eyes gray, I would.

"I need your help."

"I'll do whatever I can."

Perhaps I could have found a way to help while still keeping Titus's secrets.

Titus…his name crawled along my skin.

A captor, a pseudo-father.

A teacher, an iron fist.

A savior, a friend.

No matter how much it fogged my brain, he was all of those things.

But his decrees over my readings had torn apart the safe haven I built for myself within the arms of Cypherion Kastroff, and despite all the chancellor had done for me, resentment burned through me at that fact.

And Titus's silence now only confused my thoughts more.

Reflexively, my fingers drifted across that tattoo on my shoulder. The brand I'd been given as a child to mark me as property of Lumin Temple. A ring of eleven stars inked over in glittering silver when I was taken in by Titus. A burn made beautiful.

I didn't have the answers for how I should feel toward the man, but losing Cypherion had deepened the hole the chancellor's actions dug within me.

Perhaps it wasn't too late, though.

Cypherion had avoided me as much as possible on this journey, but he was here . And that meant something, even if honor was forcing him into it.

We needed answers if I was truly going to prove my alliance with the Mystiques and read anything of the Angelcurse and the darkness I'd once seen surrounding the Revered.

He is only here on orders , I reminded myself. And to get the answers his friends need. Because he loved them fiercer than most loved in their entire lives.

But Cypherion had been there each time my readings malfunctioned. When I woke in the Labyrinth in Mindshaper Territory, dazed and weak, he was the face looming above me. His was the voice whispering it was all right.

He has barely spoken to me or looked at me since .

I dropped my head into my hands. I kept coming back to Cypherion's actions rather than his lack of words. The gentle—reluctant—care he sometimes showed.

Rising from the bed, I drifted back toward the window. Placed my palm against the glass, blocking the temple.

And I swore, if there was a part of Cypherion Kastroff that still cared for me, a part not completely scorned by my lies, I would find it.

And I would earn his heart back, even if only as a friend.

Be meek, be quiet, be observant , Titus had instructed me when we first went to Damenal. I was done with it all. I was blessed by the Fates, and I would let that starlight burn through me.