Page 38 of The Stars are Dying

“What are you implying?”

“Who are you, Astraea? All this time since you barged into Cassia’s life she might have been content with your secrets, but I am not.”

“I don’t have secrets,” I hissed.

“Hektor?”

“She knew about him.”

“But not his treatment of you.”

“Because look what happened!” My chest heaved and my eyes pricked with shame. “I knew my life with him wasn’t conventional. I loved him. IthoughtI loved him. Yet I also thought his cruelty was kindness. He kept me safe.”

“From what?”

“Everything. I— I don’t know.”

Calix shook his head, and my cheeks heated in embarrassment.

“Think what you want of me. I don’t need your approval.”

Finally, his features began to soften. My fists clamped tight, fingernails digging into my palm, because I would not show that my trembling insecurity had been provoked by him.

“I wish I could be sorry,” he admitted. “But I will always put Cassia’s safety above anything, no matter what it makes me seem to you or anyone else.”

My shoulders relaxed with the common ground we stood on. I couldn’t take his distaste for me personally when I resonated with him on that despite everything.

The rattle of wheels across stone alerted us both, and I turned to spy the carriage in the distance. We watched it approach, but just before it could stop Calix crept up close to me.

“You have only ever been a danger to her.”

I couldn’t swallow past the marble growing in my throat, but I smiled at the carriage when the door was flung open and Cassia’s bright grin greeted us through it. With the echoes of Calix’s words, accepting her hand inspired a twinge of selfishness. I wouldn’t let him drive us apart.

“How was the send-off?” I asked, settling in close by her side when Calix sat opposite her. I refused to let his face dampen my rising mood.

Cassia groaned, and I chuckled. “Wildly over-the-top. As though it doesn’t only add pressure to the situation.”

I squeezed her arm but had no words of comfort for where we were heading.

“How are you holding up?” she asked, twisting on the bench to give me her full attention.

I mirrored her. Her question threatened to bring too much to the surface at once. Things I didn’t want to confront right now. “Can we talk about something else?”

Cassia gave a knowing smile with her nod. She drew back her cloak, working on a buckle before extending the sheathed dagger to me.

My eyes lit up at the sight of the black wings.

“You haven’t given it a name,” Cassia mused as I took it.

Fixing the holster to my thigh, I hummed. “I didn’t know it needed one.”

“All great blades have a name. Right, Calix?”

Maybe it was childish of me to refuse to look at him and busy myself with a buckle instead, but his last words to me were still branded deep, and I knew I’d see them on repeat in his eyes.

“For warriors, yes.”

I ground my teeth.

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