Cass stepped onto the porch.
And stopped.
The sky was huge above him. Stars scattered across black velvet, more than he’d ever seen in Springfield Gardens’s carefully controlled atmosphere dome. The Collective sprawled out in the darkness—low buildings, wild gardens, paths winding between structures that looked like they’d grown rather than been built.
It was beautiful. It was the most beautiful thing Cass had ever seen.
And he was leaving it. He was making Riot leave it, because everything he touched turned rotten eventually.
He thought about the circlet on the dresser. The note underneath it.I’m coming back, he’d written, like he had any guarantee that his negative energy wouldn’t poison this place too, given enough time.
And Honey was waiting for him. Honey was counting on him. What could Cass actually do to save her?
He couldn’t fight. He couldn’t plan. He couldn’t even walk across a room without making too much noise.
“Cass?” Riot’s voice was soft. “What’s wrong?”
The tears came before Cass could stop them.
“I’m sorry,” he choked out. The words felt like shards of glass in his throat. “I’m so sorry.”
“For what?”
“For everything.” Cass wrapped his arms around himself, suddenly cold despite the jacket. “You were—you had a life here, Riot. You had people. You had a home. And I just—I showed up and I ruined it, I ruin everything, that’s what I do—”
“Cass—”
“Brother Matthias was right.” The words tumbled out, ugly and true. “I’m spiritually deficient. I have negative energy and it poisons everything around me. I couldn’t love Honey the right way and I couldn’t finish Chrysalis and I couldn’t even do my mission, I was supposed to bring people back and instead I just—” He gestured helplessly at himself. “I just needed things. All the time. And you kept giving them to me and now you’re—”
His voice cracked.
“Now you’re leaving your home because of me. And your grandma is angry at you because of me—”
“My grandma?””And I hit you, Riot, I hit you and I’ve never hurt anyone before and now I keep hurting you, over and over, and you’re so—”
He couldn’t breathe. The spiral was pulling him down like dark water closing over his head.
“You’re so good,” he whispered. “Everyone said you were scary but you’re not, you’re good, you held my hair back and you picked me flowers and you bought me something beautiful when you didn’t even know if I’d—and I don’t deserve any of it, I don’t deserve you, I’m just—I’m just a stupid missionary who can’t do anything right and I don’t understand why you’re—”
He was sobbing now. Real, ugly sobs that shook his whole body.
“I don’t understand why someone like you would want someone like me. I’m not smart. I’m not strong. I’m not anything. And I keep needing and needing and needing and everyone around me gets hurt and I can’t—I can’t stop, I don’t know how to stop, I don’t know how to be anything except—”
Broken.
A burden.
Wrong.
He couldn’t even finish the sentence. He just stood there on Lilac’s porch, wrapped in borrowed clothes that didn’t fit, crying like the pathetic thing he was while the stars wheeled overhead and everything he’d ever believed about himself finally collapsed into rubble at his feet.
He was ache in the shape of a body.
Riot grabbed his face with both hands and kissed him like he was trying to swallow any more words before they could finish, like he was drowning and Cass was air, like the world was ending and this was the only thing that mattered.
Cass tasted salt and felt wetness on his cheeks that wasn’t his own.
When Riot pulled back, his eyes were shining. Gold flickered in them, dim but present, and they were wet. His face was twisted with something that looked like pain—like Cass’s words had hurt him, like watching Cass fall apart had broken something in his chest.
