Page 144 of The Stars are Dying

I saw their polished, pointed boot first. It uncrossed from their knee, and as they rose my mind wanted to paint their hair a different color, switch the irises that finally turned to me, dancing for my reaction against the flames. I wanted the image to change to anyone else in the world except this one impossibility.

“Hektor,” I choked out. Just to be sure I could speak.

“Hello, darling.”

I shuffled one step toward his advance, shrinking right back into the terrified pet I was to him. He may as well have brought a leash since I was a fool for ever believing I had torn off my collar.

“You’re not real.”

Hektor tipped back the contents of his glass before setting it down. “Then come here and feel hownot realI am. I have missed you more than I can say, Astraea.” His tone was so soft, familiar. Reminiscent of those times when I’d been too frightened to move and he’d had to coax me back.

“How did you survive it? I-I killed you.”

His expression flashed with an anger I knew all too well. With Hektor’s next step toward me, I freed my stormstone dagger. It only fueled more rage when he spotted it.

“I wanted to give you everything, Astraea. I was prepared to riskeverythingfor you.”

“You were going to sell me.”

His fist clenched. “I had a plan for both of us, and all you had to do was becompliant.”

That boiled something inside me, taking my cold fear and turning it into a wrath that could match his. I clutched my dagger tighter, not afraid to have a second try at ending him.

“I am notproperty,” I seethed. “It felt good to drive this through your chest the first time, and now I’m granted a second.”

His smile teetered between rage and amusement. “Do you know what saved me?” he taunted. “You. More specifically, your blood.”

My blood.Something even the soul vampires thirsted for.

I’d spent five years in the arms of betrayal.

“You’ve known all this time there was something different about me. That’s what you kept me for.”

Hektor laughed—a mocking, resonating sound that pricked my eyes with humiliation. “I think only you could look in the mirror and be convinced you weren’t special, darling.”

“Because of you!” I shouted. Pitiful tears for the girl I’d let down so badly threatened to fall.

“How easy it was,” he said.

“Did you ever truly care for me?” I whispered. Why did it matter? It wouldn’t stop the pain within me at knowing all this time I’d been nothing more than a possession. Knowing my own poor will had succumbed to that existence, perhaps I was desperate for anything to explain why I hadn’t broken free sooner.

Love, even in its most manipulative form.

“Of course,” he said, brow pinching with disturbance now, and I believed him. “I care for you now, which is why I am here. It is not too late.” He extended his palm to me, coming close enough for me to take it.

A flicker in my vision caught my attention. I hadn’t known there was another presence with us, concealed behind his tall seat, and when he stood, reality mocked me, threatening to unravel what I believed to be real and true in that moment. This was a trial—was it possible for both of them to be a twisted illusion? I prayed it was, but something felt tooreal.

My lips cracked to whisper, “Calix?” I posed it as a question in the hope he would deny it or turn into some other beast, because anything was better than believing his cold hatred was true. The last memory I had of him threatened to pull me to my knees. The heartbreak and misery of his final look as he’d cradled Cassia’s body. It would forever haunt me.

“How dare you pretend to be her?” he seethed.

My mouth opened, but I floundered for a response, my gut twisting with a sickening guilt. “I’m so sorry,” I said. “I did what I had to do. I had to try to do this for her.”

“I never knew what she saw in you. You’re weak, a coward, always appearing in her path like a weed.”

“Stop.” I couldn’t take it. The hands he sank into the wound Cassia’s death had opened tore it wider with every word, exposing the lie I was within.

“I’ll make it all go away and it will just be us again,” Hektor intervened softly. “No punishment. I promise.”

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