Page 93 of The Stars are Dying

The one that spoke aloud, but always with a note of distance I’d never questioned deeper.

Then there was this—the unmistakable surety of a real voice, and I wanted to slap myself for ever believing the others.

“How is this possible?” I took in the thick iron clamped around his wrists, attached to heavy chains I couldn’t fathom the need for. He was only one male. Then there was my incredulity—because they were not bonds he could slip in and out of, and this dwelling was not a place of any comfort. His clothes were far simpler than anything I’d seen him in before: only a plain worn shirt, dirty black pants, and old boots. His hair was a little longer and far more disheveled, but still he was breathtaking. Because those molten eyes never changed, nor did the perfect angles of his face. And though it was near covered by his hair, the scar from his temple to his cheekbone was real.

“I’ve been here a long time,” he said.

It would take some time for me to adjust to the true vibrations of his voice, but I wanted to hear it again. And again.

“Who did this to you?” My gut was wrenching, my heart aching, and I didn’t want to feel these things for someone I couldn’t yet know was deserving of them.

“That doesn’t matter,” he said, stalking a little closer, but he halted, eyes flinching. Because I’d taken a step back in response. “You said you trusted me.”

I shook my head. “You can’t expect to hold me to that when I’m staring at someone bound in chains in an underground prison.”

His jaw worked. “Then what will it take, Starlight?”

“Don’t call me that.” I couldn’t take it. How personally he addressed me, and now I couldn’t be sure who it was I’d accepted so desperately as a guide in my vulnerability not to be alone.

I wasn’t alone anymore. I had Zathrian, and what would it matter if I died in the Libertatem anyway?

“That’s not going to happen,” he said darkly.

“Stop that,” I snapped, finding the courage to step closer.

“What?”

“Reading my mind—answering my thoughts!” My eyes scrunched shut as I walked to try to calculate what the hell was going on. “How have you been here the whole time? Even back in Alisus?” It didn’t make sense, and I was close to succumbing to the waves of dizziness as I tried to sort through the explosion of a puzzle I’d thought I was slowly piecing together.

“That’s not important right now.”

I laughed without humor. “You’re not exactly in a position to decide what’s important.”

The gold of his eyes turned the darkest I’d ever seen them. Impatient anger clouded them, and that was enough to confirm my wariness was justified and those bonds somehow necessary.

“Astraea.” He said my name with a firmness I’d never heard. “I thought you were ready.”

“For what?”

“To handle this.”

I blinked, taken aback. “I’d say I’mhandlingthis madness pretty well.”

“You’re in denial.”

“About the one who’s been stalking me by some impossible means? Yes, I think I’m granted that.”

“I need you.”

That stole the rest of my words. “What could I possibly do for you?”

“Free me.”

I huffed a laugh, then a chuckle, before the eeriness of my own sounds chilled me, because he had to be fucking joking. The sternest expression remained on his face, so unlike the handsome confidence he’d come to me with many times, and I decided I liked my own version of him a whole lot more.

“When you came to me…” I took a deep breath, struggling to comprehend what I was asking. “How could I see you? I could touch you…and you touched me.”

“Because you wanted it.”

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