Page 49 of The Stars are Dying

“I-I’m so glad you came…” Cassia’s gaze became glassy, staring skyward. Her hand went over mine, and I clutched it tight, though it created another crack in my heart. “I didn’t want you to feel alone again.”

The splinter deepened, and I bled sorrow and anguish and terrible dread, drowning in my own despair.This can’t be happening.Her eyes fluttered closed, but I rocked her awake.

“You’ve never left me alone. Please—you can’t leave me now.” I broke. I couldn’t stop the helpless flood from filling my lungs as Ibegged.“You’re all I have.”

“I didn’t get to tell him…” she said.

I blinked furiously to keep every image of her clear.

“He told me he loved me tonight, and I…I should have said it back, but I didn’t. Can you tell him for me?”

“You’re going to tell him yourself, Cass.”

“Promise me you’ll tell him I love him.” Her hand shook as she tried to raise it to my cheek, and I held it there, not feeling the stream of my tears until she brushed them slowly.

“I promise,” I whimpered.No, no, no. Cassia has to live.

“We need to win, Astraea.”

“I need you.”

“Do it for me. For all of us.”

I shook my head, unable to comprehend what she was saying when my world was close to obliterating.

“It’s so cold,” she said, eyes drifting shut, and her hand dropped limp in my grasp. She appeared so beautifully peaceful, her skin so perfect and pale, but her chest…it was so still.

No. Shecan’tleave me!

“Cassia.” I shook her, but this time she didn’t flinch. “Cassia, wake up.” I sniffed and panic seized me tight. I shifted up to my knees, trying to rally focus, and laid my hand on her chest. It was warm, and I grasped at threads of fleeting hope in my despair, feeling a hum beneath my palm. “You’re all I have,” I kept repeating as if it could breathe life back into her still body.

Light began to glow where I touched, and I wondered if her soul could be returning to her form. The vampire was dead, and perhaps that meant he would give back what had been stolen.

I gasped when the light glowed brighter, breaking through her skin until my palm came away. Under my touch, the sphere of white and blue shone with a pulse of energy I became entranced by. “Please come back,” I whispered to it, somehow—impossibly—feeling her spirit within it.

“What have you done?”

My fist closed tight with the surge up my arm that burst in my chest as the light winked out. As if the ordeal had paused time and life had only just now returned, my eyes fell to find Cassia deathly still in my arms.

Death.The darkest force that rippled with devastation in the wake of every claim.

It slammed into me so wholly, shattering everything I was, so much so that I thought I felt it reach out a second hand in offering to me.

“Cass,” Calix muttered, his low tone of dread bringing me back to my cruel reality. One that would go on without her, the echoes of death’s laughter fading since it wouldn’t take me too.

“It was…” I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t look at him in the doorway.

“No.” Calix’s steps rushing toward us made me hug her tighter in complete denial, knowing he would tear us apart. “Get away from her!” he snarled.

I gave a sharp sob when he gripped my shoulders, trying to pry me away, but I couldn’t let go. Then cold metal touched my neck, and if I weren’t crying so hard I might have asked him to use the blade. It should be Cassia cradling my body instead.

It should beneitherof us.

“Let her go, or so help me, Astraea.”

I had never heard such a promising threat from him. I looked over Cassia’s face, blinking back my tears in frustration that they might make me miss a flicker of movement since this had all been some sick, twisted nightmare.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.

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