Page 21 of The Night the Stars Fell
“Look… I can help. If you’ll let me,” Phoenix said finally, his voice softer than I expected.
I didn’t even try to hide my bitterness. “Can you let us go?”
He exhaled, not in frustration but like someone who already knew the answer would hurt. “No. But I can heal him. If you want.”
My eyes snapped up to meet his. I was prepared for mockery, for smug satisfaction. But there was none. Only something that looked dangerously close to pity.
“And what would it cost me?” I asked, my voice stripped raw.
“Nothing.” He paused, then added, “Well… maybe your cooperation.”
My lips curled in a bitter smile. “Cooperation,” I echoed. “For what?”
“Your powers are rare,” he said. Carefully. Like he didn’t want to spook me.
“Are they?” I let out a hollow laugh and shook my head, more at myself than at him. “Of course they are. I should’ve known. Tell me, should I swear my soul and my mind to you now? Or wait until you torture me in the cells?”
Something flickered across Phoenix’s face—guilt, maybe, or a truth he didn’t want to admit.
“I’m not your enemy,” he said quietly.
“Yes you are,” I murmured, returning my gaze to Finn’s pale face, “and so is your cowardly king, collecting powers like coins for his collection. And if you serve him, what does that make you?”
Phoenix didn’t answer.
The silence was answer enough.
Finn moaned again, a low, pained sound that sent a spike of panic through my chest. I pulled him tighter against me, shielding him as if I could somehow will the pain away with my body.
“Your friend wouldn’t want this,” Phoenix said at last. His voice was low, but firm. “He wouldn’t want you to fight us.”
I snapped my gaze to him, my grief flaring into rage. “And what would you know about us?” I spat. “Aboutme?”
He didn’t flinch, but I saw the flicker of something in his eyes. Regret, maybe. Or discomfort. Good.
“We are just trying to keep the order…”
“Order?” I scoffed. “You Shades swoop down from your fancy high towers and just take whatever you want from this godforsaken city, and you call itorder,” I went on, my voice trembling with fury. “Your king forces our loyalty, our devotion, not through respect—but through fear. Through blood. And you wonder why we don’t trust you?”
Phoenix opened his mouth, but I didn’t let him speak.
“And those you don’t drag off in chains?” I hissed. “You leave us to starve. To rot. To die in the gutters like animals. You look down from your walls and let usfade away. And you don’t give a crap about it.”
My throat burned. My eyes stung. Finn stirred again in my arms, and I choked on the lump rising in my throat.
“So don’t you dare speak to me of what Finn would want,” I said, quieter now, but every word laced in steel. “Because you don’tknowhim. You don’t know anything about what it means to lose everything.”
Phoenix was silent.
And that silence? It told me everything.
He just looked at me—really looked—and for the first time, I saw it. The careful stillness. The way his jaw tensed, not in anger, but restraint. Like he wanted to argue, but didn’t trust himself to say the right thing.
“I don’t know him,” he said finally, his voice low. “And I won’t pretend I understand what you’ve been through. I don’t.”
He leaned forward just slightly, enough that I could see the faint shimmer of firelight in his grey eyes.
“But Idoknow what it looks like when someone is dying in the arms of the only person left who loves them. I’ve seen it more times than I’d like to count.”
