Chapter 20

Chapter Twenty

Cypherion

Vale didn't speak the entire walk back to the candle shop.

She kept her head down and hood up as we climbed the stairs to our room and quietly slipped off our weapons and cloaks. It wasn't a tense silence, but it was the kind that bristled against my skin nonetheless. The kind that seemed to heighten every other sound besides the ones you needed to hear most.

I waited as Vale slipped into a nightgown and dumped her clothing on the floor rather than folding it as she usually would. She drifted to the lone window in the room and looked out over the city. I remained beside the mantle, one hand on the wood, fingers drumming in a slow measure to try to steady myself.

When I couldn't take the stillness anymore, I picked up her clothes and folded them, then started arranging each of our weapons, polishing those that had gotten scuffed after days of travel.

But still, a beast roared within my chest. It lifted its head and breathed hot fire at the way the chancellor's name on the door had frozen Vale in the archives.

As I carefully laid her triple blades on the shelf, I remembered how her fingers had reached for the wood. How her voice had been so shocked and betrayed.

I…didn't know…

It was only an office, but to her it was an entire world shattering. Every star in the sky breaking.

It was another abandonment, twisting a blade that was plunged between her ribs months ago.

She wanted in. She wanted to patch that wound and cleanse the knife herself.

And that made my stomach churn.

I aligned the last blade and glanced over my shoulder. Still, she stood before that window. The roaring in my head mounted.

I told it to quiet, because it was clear whatever had been cracking within my Stargirl for months had firmly crumbled tonight. A severance of some pivotal piece of her spirit.

"Vale…" I said slowly, coming to stand beside her.

"Hm?" she hummed, eyes glued to the city.

But they weren't still.

Her gaze roved over each sculpted building, stained glass, and spire, as if searching for what else she may have missed.

Slowly, I leaned my shoulder against the wall beside the window and crossed my arms, not obscuring the view but hoping to catch her eye. "What happened back there?"

"It was just acolytes," she said, brushing me off with a slow tilt of her head. "Next time, we should hide among the shelves. We should have tonight. Then we could be done."

Her voice was like something from a dream, higher than usual and floating around us. Not at all grounded or logical.

"Before the acolytes, Vale," I said. "What happened to you?"

Finally, she met my eyes.

And a scarred spirit stared back through those olive-green irises, so dim and full of surrender.

"His name was on the door," she whispered.

"I saw it." I nodded for her to continue.

"And I did not know he had an office in the temple." Her fingers gripped the edge of her nightgown, crumpling the silk. "I was his apprentice; I was the student he trusted most"—her voice cracked—"and saw the most promise in. And I did not know."

"Vale…" I took in the shadows in her eyes and the frantic grasp of her hands to just hold on to something . Something solid, something real. "Why are you so loyal to him still?"

I didn't know if either of us were ready to have the conversation, but I'd lead her there and hold her through it if she wanted to try.

"Because I have to be."

"You don't," I whispered, shaking my head.

"I do." Her hand flashed to her shoulder, where that tattoo gleamed in silver ink.

"Just because he saved you once doesn't mean he's incapable of putting chains around your wrists again, Stargirl."

"No, he didn't." She shook her head, retreating as if the window was suddenly a cliff's edge she teetered over. "Titus is g-good. Titus wants the best for me."

Again, she clutched at her tattoo, pain twisting her face.

Anger ripped through me to see her like this, to witness everything she thought she knew being overturned, clinging to the beliefs planted in her mind. I swallowed the rage that burned up my throat and tried my hardest to focus on her trembling hands and sharp breaths. To not let my frustration out.

"Maybe, it's time we talk about the possibility that he doesn't want what he's claimed, Vale. That he has other motives?—"

"He gave me everything ," she snapped, fists tightening. "I am only here because he pulled me out of Lumin sixteen years ago!"

"Only to stick you in another cage!" I said, much more aggressively than I intended. The jaws of my anger opened wider, finally letting loose all the thoughts I'd kept behind barbed teeth. "Titus has manipulated you for years, Vale! He's used you—why? He's had you scheming and lying for him, risking lives for his secrets, and what did he do when you needed him?"

Her jaw ticked, lips pressing tight together, and one hand still clawing at her shoulder. But we couldn't keep dancing around this, not when the slightest push had toppled her resolve.

No matter how badly it hurt us both to shove her into this truth.

"What did he do when the secret came out and Ophelia and I tried to make you a prisoner?"

"He saved me," she muttered, barely opening her lips to speak. Like if she did, she'd free fall over the edge of the cliff, the truth weighing her down and stealing every shred of control.

I drove her toward that drop.

" What did he do, Vale?"

"HE LEFT ME!" she shouted, chest heaving. "He—he left me."

It didn't feel good to hear. To see the acceptance shattering across her face, her body, like her bones were fracturing. It had been a different sort of cage holding her up, one she'd formed within herself around her captor's manipulation.

It was the base of her. And now, as it rippled across her features, as her shaking hands dragged through her hair and tangled at the roots, trying to grasp onto one steady thing in reality, she free fell into the loss.

"He left me," she repeated, voice so small. No hint of the starlight that burned through her veins or the strength I loved so fucking much. "Not one letter. I wrote to him every week, begging him to negotiate with Ophelia, to get me out of that prison."

Ophelia. And me .

I'd been as complicit in Vale's pain as the chancellor. The realization was sour in the back of my throat, a stampede of warrior horses pounding through my chest.

"I just wanted him to help me. I just needed help…help. I needed him to care." Her words were rushed, eyes stuck to the floor. "I needed him to care like he told me he did. I needed him to be a mentor like he said he was."

Her knuckles went white as she tugged on her hair, knees buckling. I raced forward, catching her around the waist. Vale's eyes flashed up to mine, teary and wrecked. They widened, like she'd only just remembered I was there.

Then, her hands gripped my arms, and she was talking to me again.

"He swore to me when he took me from the temple that life was going to be better. And it was . It was so much better here, but it was just another chain around my neck. By covering the brand, he was only making me beholden to him."

I nodded, swallowing past the thickness in my throat. "Not all motives are innocent. Sometimes, a gesture that seems good-natured can have expectations weighing it down."

Her nails dug into my skin, but I let her use me to ground herself. I'd bleed out before her if it was what she needed now.

"I don't think he ever loved me," Vale admitted. I thought she might have been considering it for a while, maybe even knew it for sure, but hadn't wanted to say it out loud. Today, though, after the archives and the discovery of his secret office, after the feel of this city against her skin and the memories it pushed forward, she finally did.

"You should not have to guess if someone loves you," I said.

"The last time I knew love was when I was four. I barely remember how that felt, it's just a haze of memories." The tears stopped falling, her gaze turning more thoughtful and desperate as she sought mine. "I saw it when I came to Damenal, though."

"Tolek and Ophelia?—"

"You, Cypherion." She squeezed my arms, easing her clawing grip. An emptiness settled in me. I wanted it back. Wanted her marks on my skin to remind us both that I was here with her through whatever she might face. "The way you love your friends…it's deep. It's true and unquestioning. That's the kind of love that would never die."

The kind she wanted.

The kind I wanted to give her.

I swore to Damien I'd show it all to her.

"I'm sorry," I said, "for the part I played in your imprisonment. For not trying to see past my own selfish pain and understand what he was doing sooner."

"Pain isn't selfish," Vale corrected. She was fully supporting her own weight now, but still we stayed entwined, her body against mine, so every breath pressed her tighter. "It can turn us rotten, certainly, but to feel hurt is not a selfish act."

"I indulged it. Used it as a guard and kept you away because it was easier than exploring the alternative."

"I hurt you," she tried to justify, her voice kicking up with a hint of stubborn argument.

"And I added to your pain," I shot back. Spirits, were we really going to argue over who hurt the other more? Who deserved to feel more guilty? "The details of it don't matter. We're here. Together. And Titus is never going to slip that chain back around your neck."

She stiffened at his name. I ran a hand down her spine, the other cupping her cheek.

"He left me," she repeated, but there was more clarity in her gaze now.

"I'm so sorry he did that." I pressed a kiss to her forehead. "It's not a reflection of you, your magic, or your worth." Pulling back, I swiped away the tears streaking down her cheeks. "You are worth so much more than someone who leaves you, Stargirl. You outshine every damn star in the sky, outweigh every Fate."

"I don't know what comes next for me without him."

"Do you still want to go back?" My heart stuttered.

But she shook her head. "I don't think I can."

Relief loosened my chest. "None of us truly know where we're going."

"But I'm his?—"

"You don't belong to anyone, Vale," I said, quickly shutting her down. "You are your own warrior, your own Starsearcher. Powerful enough that the chancellor wanted your magic at his disposal. You can defy any ruler, any fate written." And I would help her do it. "I would do horrible things before I let him take you back," I promised, ducking to kiss her and seal that vow between us.

Vale deserved freedom. She deserved to understand the tangles of her own power and embrace it.

And even if it meant I plunged a blade through the Starsearcher Chancellor's chest, I would see that she won it.