He shakes his head at me, his fist forming against the wall beside my shoulder, as if he can grip this moment and never let it go, draw it out as long as he can.
I don’t stop, my body rising and pushing against his, controlling the thrusts, inhaling every ragged breath he takes, accepting all of the pain in my heart. I tell myself it’s nothing compared to the pain I felt when I thought he’d died. Sweat drips down my torso, my arms tensing with every lift and fall, but my senses spiral before I crash wildly around him.
I take him with me into the crash. His fist hits the wall, propelling us away from it, making us seem weightless as the waves flow through us. Me to him. Him to me.
His arms wrap around me as we stop in the middle of the room, my legs wrapped around his hips.
He grips me. Hard.
His voice is an order. A command. His eyes refuse to let me go. “Stay with me.”
Outside, the moon is full, a large outline hanging above the horizon. The empty space outside this room calls to me. The vast nothing will soon be my resting place.
I try to breathe, but instead, I tip my head back and scream.
My cry hums and vibrates through the room, making the pedestals tremble, the cracks in the wall grow. The magic across the window ripples with starlight, sharp and biting, as my power prickles my skin. It strikes Nathaniel, but he roars out the pain I’m causing him and refuses to let me go.
I close my eyes. The dark abyss I sensed inside the stone opens up, but now it’s inside of me, a part of me, and I can’t escape it.
This is why I was afraid of it.
Because the cold dark is now part of my body. Inescapable.
Opening my eyes, I grip Nathaniel’s shoulders. “You gave me your word. You promised you would fight me with all of your strength.”
His gaze doesn’t falter. Neither does his grip. “I will fight you, Aura. With everything I have. But I will not strike you down.”
Rage and fear burn through me, the coldest oblivion growing inside my chest as the stone’s power—my power—expands. “You will.”
He shakes his head. “No.”
I push against his hold, trying to pry myself away from him, to break the connections between us, both physical and emotional.
“You will!” I shout.
“You can’t believe that I would ever hurt you!” he roars.
He grips my hip when I pry his hand from my waist, grabs my shoulder when I wrench his hand from my back. Each time I try to free myself, he reaches for me somewhere else, forcing me to stay right where I am.
“You have to!” I scream.
“You can’t say that!” His shout rages over me, as if he can make me believe what he believes. “You are not heart—”
He suddenly freezes, sucking air into his chest as his eyes widen. The blood drains from his face in a sickening wave.
“Heartless?” I ask.
The abyss inside me grows wider. An empty hollow filled with sudden truth. It drains my anger, leaving a rising tide of emptiness inside me.
I try to breathe as the memory of Cyrian’s voice whispers inside my mind.
Where is your heart?
“My heart,” I whisper, releasing Nathaniel’s shoulders to grip my chest, my movement threatening to unbalance us both and topple us to the floor. “The stone wasn’t just my power. It was a piece of my heart.”
Nathaniel’s face blurs in front of me, my vision spinning.
“But… how much of my heart is missing?” I ask.
Where is your heart?
Cyrian asked me how I can exist. Mathilda said my heart is hidden from her. She tried to see my intentions and then she backed away from me, pale and shocked.
I run cold, my ears buzz, and my power pours in streams beneath my skin. I sense starlight glowing from the top of my head to my toes, a protective shield slowly forming over my body.
My body, my… everything… is transforming with every new pulse of power.
Drawing air into my mouth, I sense the air slip down my throat. My chest rises in response, but I’m not sure if I’m actually breathing.
How would I know what breathing feels like when I can’t tell what a heart feels like?
A thousand times I thought my heart was beating.
I felt it thud and even stop inside my chest.
I felt every emotion there is to feel—pain, love, loss, betrayal, hope.
I bled, I had a pulse, and I hurt like everyone else.
But all of the voices, all of the warnings, rage around inside my head now.
Darkest of stars.
You don’t belong to them.
You were never a girl.
Aura… where is your heart?
The realization is cold but certain. “My heart was taken from me.”
The glow of my magic grows between my body and Nathaniel’s—a tangible force that pushes him away from me and compels him to release me.
He doesn’t try to fight me this time, uncurling his arms from around me, the press and slide of his skin making me shiver as I slip to the floor and back away from him.
The ache in his eyes would tear my heart apart… if I had more than a sliver of it glowing inside my chest.
All of my life, I thought I knew who I was, where I stood in my world, the path I was supposed to walk. Queen’s champion. Nathaniel’s shield. Wife. Warrior. Even last night, I was certain that, even though my path had changed, I knew what I needed to do. I was certain that I had to die for peace to finally come to Bright and Fell.
Now… my foundations are gone.
“What sort of creature can live without a heart?” I ask. “What am I?”
The moonlight shines across Nathaniel’s body through the wide window, highlighting his sculped muscles, lighting up the flickers of starlight that he shouldn’t have—that he took from me.
His expression is blank now. Broken.
“You are old magic,” he says, his voice barely a rasp. “You’re a Celestial Star.”
I freeze, shocked, as he raises his arm and points through the window at the starlight flickering outside.
“You’re one of them,” he says.
Chapter 15
My shock gives way to my need to know—to understand what I am.
I follow the line of Nathaniel’s arm to the window. Outside, the night sky is calm and clear in all directions. I search the sky for what he pointed at, finding only the moon and a thousand stars, pinpricks of light.
I’m about to turn away when a shape flits across the air outside the window. A formless wash of bright white light appears for a second before it fades again. It reminds me of a feather, twisting and turning lightly, every angle making it appear a different shape.
I grip the window ledge as I peer into the night sky, waiting for the dancing light to appear again.
I count the flickers of light inside my chest as I wait. One… Two… Three…
Another light washes across the sky, farther to my left but closer to me than the one before. It leaves a glowing trail, a vanishing blaze, as it leaps from one spot to another, playing with the air around the tower. Every time it vanishes, it reforms again, traveling a path like a stone skipping across the surface of a lake.
A third light joins it, this one glowing brightly in a single spot that draws closer to me. Ripples of light radiate from its center as it grows larger before it wanes and reappears to the right, glowing brighter and closer still.