Once, she’d cried after rejecting Luc. Once, she’d clung to him like he was merciful aether after she’d been holding her breath for an aeon.
Now, she’d lived with Castor for too long, catering to his whims and cleaning up his messes. She didn’t want to belong to Luc, but only because she didn’t want to belong to anyone. Even if she loved him, as Eva claimed, she didn’t want him to offer her anything with himself attached to it, like a condition.
Out of one cage, into another.
Out of one world, into another.
Even if it were possible, was that what she wanted? To live in another angel’s shadow?
No. She wouldn’t leave Castor to be half an angel for anyone else.
“Luc, I hate Castor,” she amended. “I don’t want to hate you. Let’s stop talking about this, please.”I want to remember you how I remember you. Because that’s what keeps me from falling apart. Please don’t ruin that for me. Please don’t show me you can be cruel too.
Taking her hammer in hand, Lila began the squaring process, beating her frustrations into the steel. She felt herself barreling over the edge of her worst fears, but she couldn’t slow down. Seeing the humans earlier had made something inside hersnap.
“Castor doesn’t deserve you,” Luc doubled down.
“And you think you do?” Lila set her hammer down and spat out the worst of her fears. “Both of you have only ever wanted me for what I could do for you.” The words were acid, spilling over what should have been a pleasant moment.
Luc tugged her arm and spun her toward him. Suddenly, he was right in front of her, chest heaving and eyes narrowed.
“Well, what about you? Back then, you used me, too.”
“If I had asked you to teach me for nothing in exchange, would you have done it?” Lila tilted her chin up, defiant.
Luc’s silence told her all she needed to know.
Tears brimming in her eyes, she continued, “Don’t you see? What I want, no one can give me. And even if they could, they wouldn’t.”Because I’m the angel without a soul of her own. And when you have no soul, others treat you as if you don’t exist.
“Well, if that’s what you think of me”—Luc gave her an unfriendly smile—“perhaps you should leave before I take advantage of you some more.”
Lila stared at him, the fire in the forge crackling in her periphery. Luc’s eyes glinted like silver quartz, the sparks flickering throughout his irises. Tiny flames or…stars. Those glittering bodies he’d charted across the cosmos. One light, then some distance away, another light. Another, then another.
The lights danced inside his eyes, and she stood there, lost in them.
When they became impossible to track, she looked away, conscious that she was no longer scowling and that his own scowl had changed into something unreadable, but no less intense.
She shouldn’t have come.
Foolish Eva.
“Iwillleave,” she managed.
“Good. You should.”
“I will.” Lila stepped back, but her spine hit the anvil, and she jolted in surprise, moving closer to Luc than she had been before. Close enough to feel his body heat. Close enough that they could touch if she took one tiny step forward.
Luc seemed inclined to do that, but Lila could not. She sidestepped him as he leaned in and fled without another word. Through the series of rooms that led to the outside world. Past the door. Past the barrier. Past several houses before she paused, her back against the wall of one house, her heart pounding like it might erupt from her chest.
Thiswas why she avoided him. He made her feel too much, want too much. Things he could give her…and things he wouldn’t.
She didn’t want to feel. She didn’t want towant.It hurt. Everything hurt, and now she was crying, and she never cried.
Not since he’d held her at the edge of the Void, an aeon before.
One and a Half Aeons Pre-Great War
You can’t use it.
