Page 63 of Fire to the Stars

“I wasn’t wrong to try, was I?” I plead. “No onewantsto die.”

“Some do,” she whispers. “If the pain overtakes the joy.”

I don’t know if she wants me to feel better or worse, so I lower the clothes to the floor.

From the beginning, this was a temporary arrangement. A successful hunt means I will return to the solitary life of a traveling slayer, collecting soleils for a family estate that no longer exists. But if I can’t help Claire cope with what she’s done, I won’t know how to help myself cope with the deaths I’m about to cause.

Again—I’m lying to myself. I just want her to be happy, and to be happy nearme. It took Claire’s absence for me to recognize how quickly I’ve found solace in her presence. She brings levity to the morbid nature of my job, like Madame Afi does. Even just today, I missed her laugh.

Pride, money, and competition. That’s all I had to live for.

Until she shoved an empty wine glass into my hand.

The only right a dragon shall retain is the right to die.

WE HAVE NO RIGHTS.

—Royal decree contested in the diary of Mael Bachelet, 1447 AA

Chapter Twenty-One

Claire

The icy bathwater isn’t what makes me shiver. The moondagger’s tip against my wrist does.

Everything I am, everything the world shapes me to be, narrows into the sharp point. Papa’s stargazing tradition, Anne-Sophie’s mentorship, Étienne’s pride in parading his prey, Abel’s failure to find a cure…all those things coalesce into rot on the rose that should have been my life. Instead of unfurling to a slow and graceful end, my petals are crumbling in Diu’s angry fist.

I want to fall asleep and dream of a different life. A different Claire. One where she gets a human ending and helps Papa through old age, like he deserved.

This life…ithurts. It hurts so much, I can’t think straight. I want to break anything andeverything.

Most of all, me.

A tiny poke of the dagger breaches my skin. I smother a whimper, holding my breath as a bead of blood meets the bathwater.It dissolves in a swirl. The wound fuses with the smallest wisp of steam.

I throw the dagger across the small washroom with a clatter and plunge myself underwater. Bubbles carry my screams to the surface. It took memonthsof travel, sleep powder, and scamming people out of their honest living to find Abel, and not only is there no cure, I cannot choose the time of my death?

This life isn’tfair.

I rise with a gasp and tip my head back to rest on the washbasin’s edge. I watch the tiny flame in the ceiling lamp burn the oil inside.

No wonder the Immortals went mad with violence. Humans were never built to endure forever. They wereluckyDiu made them mortal.

I want to be finite too. Is that too much to ask?

Abel knocks on the door. “Are you all right? I heard—”

“I’m perfectly fine,” I say, my voice distant, even to me.

Without another word, he steps away. My shoulders quiver with muffled sobs as I tuck my forehead against my knees.

Everyone was right. Abel, Étienne, the Church, even Papa. It is the greediest among us whom Diu punishes with his curse. He merely saw the rot in my heart before it fully spread. I’m so terrible, I stole a life from the Dames Blanches.

Human or dragon, I am a monster. The more I fight my fate, the more lives I am destined to take. The only way to protect what remains of my humanity is to die before I do anything worse. But I don’t want to die like a beast on display, paraded and beaten until the Ignition.

Death on my terms—I deserve that.

From corpse-cold water I rise and wipe my face.