Page 183 of The Stars are Dying

“I’m going to take it away, just for you to rest,” he said softly.

I nodded, laying down the fight against him to accept this because I feared I wouldn’t have the chance to achieve my retribution if I didn’t.

“You’re safe, Astraea.”

In my mind, a shadow engulfed the troubles bartering for my attention. One by one it silenced them.

“Do you believe that?”

I shuffled down until I lay as my body became weightless. My eyes fluttered with the drowsy waves. Through the grim gray, all I saw were flickers of gold. Flickers that had once made me believe…

“Yes,” I whispered.

52

“Iwish that room had been empty,” I said.

I didn’t know how many days had passed. Each one dragged me deeper and deeper into the greatest test of physical endurance I’d ever felt. I was so fuckingangry.

Sitting with my back to Nyte, I tipped my head back against the cell bars. We hardly spoke. But he never left. He sat against the wall behind me.

“No, you don’t.”

I laughed, mocking his confidence. My head rocked—barely a shake when it felt like a boulder atop my shoulders. My limbs were weak, arms limp at my sides. “I had an uncomplicated life,” I reflected to myself, closing my eyes as even the moonlight I loved added to my throbbing headache. “Why couldn’t I have just been content?”

“You were dying slowly. Your spirit. It was never destined to be contained. You were surviving, not living.”

“You don’t know that. You don’t know anything about me.”

“You know that’s not true either.”

“Then it’s notfair—!” My palm stung against the stone as I slapped it. My emotions were exhausting. Triggering. I couldn’t contain them. “You promised no more secrets. Everything we had was formed of them.”

“Does it not speak truer to your feelings now there is nothing to influence them?”

“Not when everything I was falling for wasn’t real. You were never real. Only what I wanted you to be.”

“You don’t believe that.”

I smiled though he couldn’t see it. Something dark and ugly within me wanted to take his notes of hurt, amplify them, and kill him with them. “You’re just like him,” I drawled. “He would lock me away and say it was for my own good. That he was helping me.”

“Do not compare me to him.” The threat that crept over my shoulder broke a shiver. I delighted in it.

I went on, “You all like to think you’re different. Everyone believes their intentions are the right ones. But you are all different faces of the same monster.”

Shuffling sounded behind me. I didn’t care to move. Maybe I hoped he would reach his hands through the bars and wrap them around my throat to end my misery instead.

He didn’t.

I felt him behind me, sliding down to sit until the warmth of his back seeped through mine between the iron bars.

“You’re right,” he said calmly.

My brow pinched. I was in so much pain I wondered if heartbreak could kill.

“Sometimes…I wish I wasn’t the villain I was born to be. I think that is life’s true challenge, to make us want things that were never meant to be ours, and to be anything other than what is paved for us in destiny.”

A tear slipped down my cheek and my eyes closed. “Do you think destinies can change?” I asked quietly.

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