Rin let her hand fall away fully, staring up at him.
She touched his chest—right over his heart. He looked at her.
His eyes shone. A tear clung to the tips of his lashes, then fell from the end, right onto her face. It was wet and real. She felt it slide further down her cheek.
Kit cocked his head. "You cry."
"No, Kit, you are."
He reached up, with his real hand, and touched beneath his eyes, confused as more tears glistened on his fingertips.
She gripped his face. "I’m going to make them pay for what they did to you." He leaned into her hand like he was starved of physical touch and comfort. His lids fluttered shut. "You’re not all gone. I see you." Her hand dropped to his chest; she felt his heartbeat, firm and true, beneath her small palm. He was not all metal. "In here, you are still my Kit."
"You are not just mine." He echoed the words from so long ago—the graveyard.
She clenched around him, suddenly desperate at this glimpse of the man she loved.
"I will not let you die," he vowed.
He moved deeper within her, and when she was forced to the edge against her will, she finally came. Only a slight moan escaped her before his prosthetic covered her mouth. The metal had warmed from their shared body heat. She gasped wetly against it.
With his real hand, he held up her hips until they were nearly off the bed, and she was almost folded in half, as he thrust inside her—methodical, once more. He was soundless as he came. Theonly indication he ever felt anything as he released within her was the slightest of furrows between his brows.
Kit held himself away from her, only connected to her where he was seated deep within her and by his hand over her lips. "I did not want them to hear." He pulled his hand away, and she saw that the palm of the dark, sleek prosthetic was foggy with her breath. He stared at it.
She tugged at her gown, ensuring it covered her still splayed thighs. Kit was utterly nude above her. She was sore, from the procedure and from what Kit had been forced to do to her. She couldn’t help but wince as he pulled out. She closed her legs, feeling their shared, treacherous arousal drip out of her.
Kit sat back on his heels, head still bowed. He refused to look at her. He didn’t seem to care about his nudity, or the fact he was bared to the mirror and the watchers on the other side. While Rin kept herself covered, shivering as she wrapped her arms around her middle.
She stared at the low, dark ceiling. "What happens now?"
The answer came in a hiss of grey fog. It filled the room from the corners, heavy and unrelenting. It was so quick that neither of them had the chance to say…
Goodbye.
Before their eyes met, and she lost herself.
Atlas knew it was time.
He had known long before she had ever been born in this life, in this body, sleeping soundly in a white room adrift in space. It was time.
Everything he had done since the moment of her—and their unborn child’s death—in the village of Luxuria on the firstplanet, Stella, had been leading up to this moment. Ever since that wretched, fate-written day, he had worked toward the moment he could have her again. Forever.
In one’s life, there were always pivotal moments, marked by grand occurrences, shaping the entire trajectory of a life’s course.
For Vesperin Vox, there were many. Much more than the average being.
When she had been born, because they were so linked. Her very birth had been ordained.
When they first met, sparking Atlas to find her on the floor of her childhood bedroom, gifting her his Nova to ensure she did not yet die; gifting her a piece of him, so he could always find her.
When Kiton had died. The start of her journey to discover her Soulbonds. Because otherwise, she never would have gone to Sibeth—she and Cyrus never would have met.
And when she had confessed her love to Lucien, making him want to protect her. Her love for him had drawn him in, tied a string around his Soul, leaving him unable to stand aside any longer.
And nowthis.
When the Celestial touched Vesperin and imparted upon her a locked-away corner of her mind. There was a reason Souls did not remember everything in startling detail about their past lives. It could drive one to insanity. Too much for a mind to contain, memories upon memories—unable to fit within a single mind.
