Page 54 of Bonds of Starfall

Nova Zone 21 was the perfect place to view Vesperin in action—right next to one of their small underground facilities.

"She ended up in a hospital," Sabine said coolly.

"After killing all of the surrounding Rogues with her Stella. I have faith in Vesperin. I think she is the one we havebeen waiting for to uncover the death cure." Talor’s brown eyes darkened, and Sabine saw her son in them. "We have no interruptions now with Kiton out of the way. Nothing is stopping us. We’ll let her rest, and tomorrow, we will try again."

She realized how much she loved her husband when he spoke so clearly, turning her problems into something simple to overcome. Her lips curved into a victorious smile as she stared at Vesperin. "Tomorrow," she agreed.

A monthwithout Kit was like a month in hell for Rin.

Maybe hell would be easier than this.

She couldn’t bring herself to go back to the Academy. Sabine and Talor had been reassuring her,It’s fine. Take all the time you need to grieve.

We need to stick together,Talor told her—time after time

We’ll take care of the Hunter’s Guild and Director Ilsa. You can go back whenever you’re ready and not a minute sooner,Sabine had said when Rin voiced her muted worry over missing her training.

She realized what that meant. It solidified the fear she had during her Admittance Ceremony: they were using the Blackfall name to keep Rin’s spot at the Academy.

Whatever. Rin didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything anymore.

The bags under her eyes were worryingly dark, her head was in a constant state of fogginess, and she kept waking up with strange bruising on her arms. Nights in a row, she’d awaken with a pounding heart and throbbing temples, pain and soreness coursing through her limbs as sweat soaked her sheets, the canopy fluttering in her air-conditioned room. She barely evenfelt it. Her body was so overheated that even cool air seemed scared to go near her, lest it turn hot and dripping with ash.

The only time she got out of the house was when she saw Lucien for her weekly check-ups, but that didn’t stop him from constantly sending her texts to check in with her, nearly daily; though, he never came over to the house.

One day for her check-up, she had sat before him on the hospital bed, her knees brushing his as he had checked her heart. The touches had gone from clinical to not, within the span of a blink. He had set the stethoscope aside and held her hand, the pad of his thumb pressing against the pulse point on her wrist, eyes closed behind his glasses as he had felt her heart, thumping away muted and despondent, just like her.

When he had seen the bruises on her arms, he grew pale. And when he asked what happened, she couldn’t recall what she told him, maybe she lied and said she had fallen to not worry him, or maybe she had just stared off into space.

Lucien’s concern brushed against her like a phantom—impossible to ignore; though, she tried anyway. If things were different—if she didn’t feel like lying atop the freshly churned grass over Kit’s coffin in the cemetery and falling asleep until she withered away and became one with the lilies rotting beneath the earth—maybe she would have asked Lucien why he suddenly cared... What had changed? Why was he unable to look away from the purple and blue bruises on the inside of her elbow? Why did his brows raise to his hairline when he took her bloodwork? Why did he turn the screen of his computer away when she tried to follow his gaze? And why was it a daily struggle not to fold herself into his chest and never leave?

But she asked none of those things.

Lucien and Rin balanced on a tightrope. Somewhere behind her, Sabine and Talor shook the rope, threatening to dislodge her from her rooted spot, and ahead—so far she couldn’t evensee his shadow—Kit rippled the rope with ghostly hands, making her wonder if the fall would be so bad.

It all came to a screaming,stuttering halt when Lucien finally broke and forced Rin to give in.

"Vesperin, come stay with me," Lucien said from across the table at the bustling cafe. He gripped her hand, fingers long and slim, precision etched into the way he held himself on the cozy booth. He wore a simple green button-up, the top few buttons unfastened, revealing his pale, smooth chest. His glasses were tipped down his nose, but he didn’t let go of her hand to fix them. Two steaming cups of coffee were set before them both. Hers, untouched; and his, half-empty.

The chatter in the cafe was distant. The soft, classical melody playing over the speakers bounced off her ears.

"Why?" she asked, hating the way her voice broke. She hadn’t been speaking much.

"Why?" Lucien echoed. "Vesperin, it’s been a month. You’re getting worse. You’re—" He broke off. "You cannot live like this."

The table next to hers was filled with a group of friends, heads tipped back as they laughed.

"What if I don’t want to?" she whispered, looking down at their hands atop the dark wood of the table.

Lucien’s fingers flexed against hers. "Vesperin,no, please do not—" His brows winged up in sorrow, and she hated that she made that look appear on his devastatingly handsome face. "Let me help you. I’m trying to help you. I know that I have not done as I should, believe me. All these years, and what do we have to show for it?" he rambled lowly. "But I’m trying now to be here for you, and you’re not letting me.Letme."

His cold, icy facade had been melted in the month since Kit had…

Rin couldn’t even think it.

But Lucien was no longer some untouchable man whom she had innocently crushed on when she was a little girl; nor was he just her doctor whose soothing, quiet voice made her stomach flip as he checked her heart. He wasmore, now. Not an idea, but an inevitability.

A small part of her broken Soul yearned for him. She would never forget Kit—ever. So long as her heart beat in this life, wherever she went after, he would always own a piece of her. But she couldn’t deny that Lucien had always been there for her, too, in a reserved, quiet way. Long-sufferingly watching her, waiting for her.