I stood with my heart heavy and lying at the bottom of my ribcage, casting a shadow across my bones. People were pushing and shoving into each other, some delirious, some dejected, some delusional, and I wished to trade places with any of them. Anything was better thanwistoragiccrawling inside me.
I suddenly felt closer to this word, clutching my chest aswistoragicwrapped around my heart, sounding more like a lethal virus trapped in a planetarium than a feeling. I suppose this was what love could feel like should I have fallen into it—a sickness born from stardust. It sounded magical, but it wasn’t. Not at all.
Just then, in the cobblestone cracks between my feet, a pale green vine sprouted through melted snow—the first alive thing I’d seen in weeks. I looked to my left and right with my heart slamming against my palm, unsure if what I’d seen was real.
When I looked back at the root, a beautiful black lily sprouted from it and brushed my ankle. I bent down and quickly plucked it from the street before anyone noticed.
The petals were silk between my fingers, and I closed my eyes, imagining Stone.
He’s okay,my heart screamed. I held the lily close to my chest. Somehow, he let me know he was okay, and a smile ghosted across my chapped face.
There was a sense of someone watching, and when I looked to my right, Julian’s little sister was staring at me. She was wearing an oversized black sweater, a tiny black skirt, tights, and knee-high boots, her only layers to combat the cold. She had a lot of hair falling around her, the color of crushed black velvet with a sheen. It slapped her cheeks and hid her profile when she quickly averted her attention.
From the corner of my eye, Cyrus gazed down at me with a smile, and I shoved the flower into my coat pocket. He stepped behind me, laid his hands on my shoulders, his thumbs stroking my neck.
He dropped his mouth to my ear. “I get it,” he said over the crowd. “You miss your sisters. But you know Ivy would never agree to come out here, let alone allow Fable out of the house in the middle of the night. Try to enjoy yourself.” He moved my hair off my shoulder. “We don’t get many nights like these anymore.”
Jolie glanced back over, her face young, naïve, watching Cyrus with smoky, caramel eyes embellished with black liner, as if I wasn’t standing in his arms.
“Your stalker’s here,” I said, pushing Cyrus’s attention off me.
He cocked his head just enough to catch sight of her—the girl who’s been obsessed with him since she was nine. Cyrus then dropped his head back, looking up at the night sky for a second, either gathering or releasing something. And when he came back to earth, he drummed his fingers on my shoulder. “Don’t pay her any attention. She’s harmless.”
“I don’t know, Cyrus, I’m your fiancé now ... A crowded room, everyone distracted ... she may just slip past me and stab me in a lung.”
Cyrustsked. “I would be more inclined to believe you would do something like that rather than her.”
Each Valentine’s Day, Cyrus received a letter from a secret admirer.
He’d never let us read these letters, fearing we’d taunt the girl, but we all knew it was Jolie. I didn’t know why the poor girl couldn’t drool over someone from her own coven, and someone her own age. She set up her heart to break from day one.
I looked up at Cyrus, but he was already looking at her.
My head fell back against his chest, and I studied how she was looking at him, wondering what she was feeling.Does it hurt, Jolie? Does your hurt, hurt more than mine?
I sighed. “I bet her tender heart is crushed after finding out the man of her dreams is getting married.”
“The Heathens aren’t here.” He was distracted.
“So?”
Cyrus scanned the crowd and all of Town Square. Then he looked back at Jolie. “Julian would lose his mind if he knew she was here alone.”
Then a tear slid down her cheek. I hadn’t known for sure until she caught it with her finger. “She’s crying.”
I shook my head with a slight smile. Shecouldcry so freely in a crowd in front of Cyrus without the worry of anyone believing she was crazy or weak, and I had to swallow mine. Suddenly, I was jealous of a fifteen-year-old. I thought her to be brave, like the snow, letting herself go and not apologizing for it.
“Give her a break,” he said, wrapping his arms around my chest from behind, still watching her from the corner of his eye. “Don’t you remember what it was like at that age?”
At fifteen, I had no time to dote or dream. There were dresses to be designed and a mother to take care of. I swapped the thought of boys with the thought of blood, love for murder, and sipped Heathen tears to send myself off to Euphoria whenever I was alone. “Hormones were all the rage.”
Kane pushed through the crowd and joined us. The top three buttons of his dress shirt beneath his coat were opened, and I couldn’t tear my eyes away from his throat, imagining silver and red—steel and blood.
“Aren’t you two just adorable,” he said, pulling a tiny vile from his front pocket. He dabbed a crimson drop onto the pad of his thumb and sucked it off. “So, Cyrus,” he had the nerve to swipe my bottom lip with the same thumb without warning. “How are we going to do this sharing thing with Adora? Do you prefer lunch or dinner?”
I didn’t have a chance to react, and it only took half a second for Cyrus to leap around me and shove Kane in the shoulder. “What’s the matter with you, man?”
Kane’s palms flew up in the air in front of him. “Calm down, calm down, it’s my bad, all right?” he shrugged, his smile glistening. “I forgot you’re a brunch guy.”
