Ash drifted on the shoulders of his white cloak, like grey, muddled snowflakes, as he stepped nearer. The end of his scythe dragged over the ground. "Vesperin, you know now, don’t you?"
Lucien’s arms tightened around her, then she pulled away, and they dropped. She stepped out of his hold, her white hair violently whipping around her in the fierce winds.
"Yes," she said quietly. "I remember everything." It was as though her eyes could not focus clearly on them. She looked at them and did not see them. She saw echoes of who they had once been. Haunting her.
Theyhad been the darkness in the corners of her room, making her toss and turn in her childhood bed as she’d wished to be held. Memory was a monster, and it had tracked her down to the here and now. She could not run any further. It was finished.
Her brain swelled, temples throbbing, and her nose tingled, a hot wet rush of blood slipping from her nostrils and collecting above the bow of her lip.
When her lips parted, she tasted iron. "I saw Kit when they took me." She didn’t call him Kiton, because he would always be her Kit. What she called him in gasped whispers, her lips pressed to his flushed chest as he took her. Or in the sweet moments, when she would look up and find him already looking at her. "He can be saved." She smiled. Though faint, it was there.
Her palm pressed to her sore stomach. She was no longer sad. She had already lost a child once. She did not feel as though that was something planned for her. At least… not this life.
Death stood mere inches from her. She felt its cold touch, whispery fingertips brushing against her arms as she wavered.
"I think—my head, it hurts," Vesperin whispered faintly.
Auren surged forward and caught her before she fell. His scythe dropped to the brittle grass with a low clang.
His arm banded behind her back. His blue eyes gleamed like pools of moonlight.
"Your scythe," she breathed, staring up at him.
Auren shook his head. "I was wrong, Vesperin. My allegiance is not to the Celestials or Stars. It is to you." His lips parted, but words died on his tongue—just as before.
Cyrus’s fingers shook as he touched her arm. "Hey, doll, you’re okay.God—" His voice broke.
Auren helped her straighten, and she leaned her weight on his chest.
She hadn’t realized the glow of the Aether in her veins had dulled, but now, with them all around her—or perhaps because she merely thought of it, and it answered to some unseen call in her Soul—it surged anew.
Awe filled Cyrus’s purple eyes. "You’re glowing, Ves." His hand left her as he traced over the air before her, a faint blue from the power that raced in her veins.
"Stella," Lucien breathed. "Your Stella…"
Vesperin raised her hand, staring at it. She tried to see what they did, but couldn’t. She only saw herself.
The ground trembled, and Auren’s arm snapped up, wrapping around her protectively.
Rhyden, who had been quiet, raised his gun. "Rogues. We’re in a fucking Nova Zone. How did you get here, wife?" The word was soft as his red eyes moved over her.
"I have always been here in some way," she responded, with effort. She wanted to ask how they’d known she was here, but some things could not be explained with mere words.
Her head was a constant throb now, rebelling from the contents it held.
The wind grew fiercer, and it brought such sweltering heat she coughed. Auren’s gloveless hand pressed against her jaw, forcing her face into his chest. Her eyes burned as she squinted into the red fog. It was like fire.
The skywason fire, with streaking Stars.
They all stared up, helpless but to look.
"Will we be okay?" Vesperin asked, and for a second, she felt likeheragain. Rin.
Lucien ripped his glasses off, wiping the lenses on his dirtied shirt. His lips moved, but she didn’t hear what he was saying.
Rhyden was the one to assure her. "We’ll keep you safe." He cocked his gun and turned out to the foggy streets of her neighborhood. The ground thundered. "They’re coming." He looked at her from the corner of his eye. "They sense your Stella. Either do something about it or go hide."
Auren’s hand tightened around her. "I will protect her."
