Tears streamed down my cheeks as I faced down the darkness, and the promise I knew I would keep.
He needed someone to be his star-twin, a fire to pilot his ship through the darkness.
He needed me.
Chapter Forty-Two
The tendrils snaked around me, caressing my skin. They wrapped around my ankles and wrists and pulled me toward the crack.
Hands wrapped around me, holding on tight.
“We’re coming with you.” Trey’s voice echoed through the void. My three Kings pressed tighter against me, melding their bodies to mine, trying to slip into the god’s embrace alongside me.
No.
No.
No no no no.
“Get back,” I yelled, although whether it was my voice or the god’s that screamed in their ears, I could not know.
“Not happening,” Ayaz shouted.
“You didn’t think we’d leave you to explore space all by your lonesome?” There was a smile in Quinn’s voice, even as he trembled against me.
Trey’s cheek pressed against mine. “Hazy, you’ve been pulling away from us all quarter. Don’t think we didn’t notice. We’re not stupid, we figured out what you did. You promised yourself to the god, trading your life for ours. But what you can’t seem to get through that stubborn, beautiful skull of yours is that our lives are nothing without you. We’re not leaving you, and if that means we go to the stars together, then so be it.”
The three of them tugged against me, holding me suspended between them. The two sides of me locked in bitter battle – the human side that loved and lingered, the monster who longed to burn his engines and set off with his star-lover.
“No!” I cried. “You need to live. This isn’t for me – it’s for me alone. It’s what I deserve.”
The god’s thoughts probed my mind.You and I are the same,he whispered, his thoughts not screams this time but spoken in my own voice, one with me.You have love for them, but they are not of you as I am. They will never feel what you and I feel. They are not the light in the darkness.
They are not the murderers.
I had to let them go.
Trey, Quinn, and Ayaz had already lived a thousand punishments for their crimes. I had yet to pay for mine.
They would have the chance to start over afresh. We’d made sure of that, with new identities for each student. But Hazel Waite still had a scar on her name. The police would close in. And Trey and Quinn and Ayaz – they swore they’d never leave me. If I stayed with them, their future would be tainted by my crimes.
I bent my neck to the heavens, to the stars. It wouldn’t be so bad… I would be queen of a race of gods. I would uncover the vastness of the universe and its secrets. I would love them from afar, gorging myself of the memories we’d made.
I would never see the Kings again. I’d never feel Trey’s lips on mine or breathe in the scent of Ayaz or laugh at Quinn’s… Quinnness.
We wouldn’t even see the same stars.
I sucked in a breath.
“Trey. Quinn. Ayaz. I love you.”
To the god inside my head.I will join you.
With a final burst of power, I slammed my arms down, breaking the grip of the Kings. The three of them crashed to the ground, their skin marred with a lattice of blue flame. I threw my arms wide and pitched myself toward the crack.
Quinn cried, “Hazy, you don’t have to do this.”
I opened my mouth to explain, to order him back, but all that rushed out was a torrent of screams that didn’t belong to me. The voices of a thousand victims. My chest ached as the voices tore through my veins – a sound that burned like fire.
