Page 96 of Starchaser
“Not to me.”
“Onlyto you.”
There’s a long moment of silence—too long—in which we both can’t seem to look away.
“Aster?” he says finally.
I yawn, my eyelids growing heavy. “Titus?”
His lip quirks, but his eyes are full of sadness. “Will you tell me goodbye? Before you leave?”
I reach out, covering his hand with mine. “I’m not going anywhere.”
He lifts our clasped hands, placing a chaste kiss on my knuckles, his eyes drifting shut.
He remains like that for so long, his lips merely an inch from my hand, and I don’t move—don’t risk waking him if he’s fallen asleep—but as I feel my own body begin to relax, feel my mind wandering, I whisper, for reasons I can’t begin to understand, “What was her name?” I hope he understands the question I’m asking—feeling as if he’ll know I mean his mother, the woman his father executed to hide his own shame.
He doesn’t answer, and I close my eyes, savoring this moment with him—my hand in his, our clothes drenched from the sea, the briny scent clinging to our hair, our skin.
“Mina,” he murmurs. “Mina Avery.”
When I wake in mybed, Titus is still here, asleep in the blue armchair in front of the fireplace, the early-morning sun dappling his golden hair with apricot light. He must have carried me up the stairs after I fell asleep, but I drifted off into such a pleasant, dreamless slumber I didn’t stir.
Carefully, I tiptoe out of my bed and start for my wardrobe, but I stop short, my breath catching. A shimmering blue gown hangs from the door, glittering in the sunlight like my beloved ocean.
“It took the dressmaker a couple of days to get the dye just perfect,” Titus says, his voice rough from sleep.
I turn to find him already on his feet, and though Will healed his wounds, he winces as he stretches his arms over his head.
“Well?” he says, motioning for me to step behind the screen on the far side of the room. “Go ahead, try it on.”
I hesitate, my bottom lip caught between my teeth. There’s so much I want to say to him, but I can’t seem to find the words. In a few hours, he’ll be married, and if the Order succeeds in overthrowing the Crown, Titus will be king. He’ll be free—free of his father’s control that forces him to act as the Reaper, free of his stepmother’s cruelty that demands he endure unspeakable torture. But if Morana truly has fled Castle Grim… without a cure, when the sun drops below the horizon, Will begins his transformation into a Shifter.
I can see in Titus’s eyes that he’s thinking the same thing—that no matter what happens today, if Will turns… we’re not done. We will have no choice but to go after Morana—to find her and force her to give us the cure. However long it takes, we’ll have to keep working together. Only, I’m not sure what that looks like after today. Will Leo join us on our quest? Will the Order offer its support? Will my siblings remain on land to help Mother and the Order fight in the coming war, or will they come with me, unable to resist the pull of the sea?
I think of theStarchasergliding over open waters, Titus at the helm as we set out to defeat the queen of Underlings, and shame twists my gut.
How can I so easily picture a future without Will, even if that future is because of him?
I hurry to duck behind the screen, gown in tow, if only to tear myself away from Titus’s gaze. My thoughts spiral as I dress, but all thoughts of Underlings and curses and weddings dissipate when I realize I can’t clasp the gown on my own.
Holding the gown together as best I can, I step out from behind the screen, intent on asking Titus to fetch Margaret, but the moment I catch sight of myself in the mirror, I can’t seem to form acoherent sentence. And as Titus closes the distance between us in a few long, almost urgent strides, his gaze roving the length of my gown, my gut twists for an entirely different reason.
It took the dressmaker a couple of days to get the dye just perfect.
“Why this color?” I ask, my voice thick, heart racing as I meet his stare.
The subtle spark of delight in his eyes reminds me of warm, summer days spent at sea. “May I?” He inclines his head, indicating the gown, and I nod. He takes a step toward me, closer now than before. “It’s my favorite color.” His arms wrap around me, his hands finding the clasps with ease as he brings his mouth to my ear to whisper, “The color of the ocean.” He hooks each clasp, moving higher and higher, his every touch like a spark of electricity as his fingers work against my spine. When he reaches the last clasp, his fingers skim the exposed skin of my shoulder blades, sending a shiver through me. “The color of your eyes.”
He draws away slowly, and it’s as if I can feel his heartbeat pounding in tandem with my own.
“You told me it was your favorite color, too,” he says, “the night I found you.”
My mouth goes dry. The night he—Captain Shade—saved me from theDeathwail. Vague memories of him asking me questions, trying to make conversation with me in my feverish state, bubble at the surface of my mind but never fully form.
He remembered. After all this time, he remembered something as insignificant as my favorite color.
“‘Not just any blue,’ you told me,” Titus says, a grin tugging at his lips. “It’s ‘the color of the sea at dusk, when the sun is just about to set—right before the stars twinkle into being.’” He backs away,opening the door to the servants’ passage. “You spoke a lot of nonsense that night, but that…” He shakes his head as he enters the passageway. “That was poetry.”
