Page 89 of Fire to the Stars

“I don’t deserve to live anyway.” My voice wobbles. “That night, when I murdered that thief…I was trying to buy sleep powder, but she refused to sell it to me.”

He startles. “Thatwasyour blood on your clothes. She hurtyou!”

I stare in disbelief. “How could you possibly determine that? The obvious answer is thatshebled on me.”

“Because I knowyou. You’d only attack in self-defense. If there was that much blood on you, some of ithadto have been yours.”

“But I can heal,” I cry. “I would’ve been fine.”

“You shouldn’t have to endure pain just because you can survive it!”

“Then don’t do this to me,” I whisper. “Don’t drag out my suffering like you did Micah’s.”

Abel’s inhale is sharp. I hide my face in Lucy’s fur. It’s a low blow, but I need him tostop. I can’t let the hope in. Into him, or into me.

The mattress sinks with added weight. Abel’s arm wraps around me and pulls me tightly against him. Lucy squirms out from between us and gives me room to plant my hands on Abel’s chest.

“Your shoulder.” I push lightly, but Abel’s grip tightens.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

My insides crumple and I curl into him, grabbing fistfuls of his tunic. Sobs rack my body, ugly ones, a dam releasing all the anguish I’ve been concealing since Abel first treated me like a human being. I’ve been ostracized and isolated and vilified for so long. A man who sees my curseandmy humanity won’t feelreal if I let go. But kindness shouldn’t only have come from him. I deserved this from the Church and the rest of the slayers. I deserved this fromeveryone, well before I made marks of them.

“Why did you have to be such a good person?” I cry.

“I’m not.” He strokes my hair. “The good in me only exists because of you.”

That’s a gross exaggeration, and we both know it. He was always capable. He just didn’t fully commit to it until I came along.

His breath shudders in his chest, dread working through him. “Tell me what I can give you. Anything you want. It’s yours.”

I want time. A do-over. A life where none of this ever happened.

But I’ll never stop blaming myself for every crime I committed, so I lock my true desires inside my heart. All Abel can do for me is end this cycle of counting down my final days only to see death slip oh so slightly further out of reach. Only he can put me out of my misery.

“Give me mercy,” I say.

Abel’s hold on me tightens. I let him have a moment for reality to sink in. Sleep powder, caging my dragon form until the Ignition is over…Every solution he can think of, every preventive measure he can take, will never be enough to make my life worth living. I can’t embrace life’s joys if I fear every Ignition, hoping I won’t wake up to the ashen aftermath of the one time we happen to slip up.

“You’ve given me more than I could’ve wanted. All I ask now is that you let me go.” I wish I didn’t have to ask this of him. He already cried for Gérard, a man he came to know only on paper. “Please,” I beg, a tremble in my lower lip. “Please.You’re the man who will change the slayer industry, remember?”

Abel buries his face in my shoulder. After a long, long pause, he nods.

“All right,” he says. “I’ll do it.”

“Promise me.” I clutch him tighter. “Word for word. I trust your honesty.”

It takes a moment, long enough for some of the firewood to crumble, and for his wet cheek to press against mine. We remain wrapped in each other’s arms like that until he sets the day of my death in stone.

“I promise,” he says. “On the Ignition after my shoulder heals, I’ll give you mercy.”

Shall I tell you how I would design your apocalypse? Or should I show you?

—Words of warning from Noctu to the Immortals, Before Ascension

Translated fromThe Tale of Stars (L’Histoire des Étoiles), Part II: The Book of Dark Days

Chapter Thirty