Page 63 of Never Lost

Smoothing my shirt and running my fingers through my bedraggled mess of curls, I took a deep breath and set off again, still stumbling across the uneven terrain, my shoes kicking up plumes of dust with each step.

The going was strenuous, but eventually, I reached the cenotaph base. The monument loomed over me, its stone structure rising tall and imposing against the sky. I gulped some air and began climbing up the sandstone steps carved out of the hillside, each footstep echoing hollowly in the stillness.

Finally, I made it to the summit, gasping, legs trembling. The panorama seemed to suck the air from my lungs as I turned in a desperate circle, surveying the vast expanse of desert and lake. My phone screen was empty, reflecting the empty horizon, already purpling. The end ofanotherday.

“Hello?” I called weakly.

My fingers shook with weakness as I opened the map app again, staring at the two dots.

One for me.

One for him.

The dots were practically on top of each other now. It was here.Iwas here.

And it was official. He wasn’t.

After all that.

I dropped like a ragdoll on the stone. The temperature kept dropping, reminding me that my clothes were still damp. I hadn’t cried in almost three hours. Probably a record. But right now, I didn’t have the strength to do anything else.

Through my tears, my eyes settled on the plaque at the base of the cenotaph, glinting in the waning sun, its brass text rubbed smooth by blowing sand.

“Though we may stand alone, we are never alone in spirit. May the path of justice and truth guide us through the darkness.”

A bit melodramatic, all in all, and not the sort of words I’d ever paused to meditate on during a school picnic, or a little later, chugging a cheap beer. But I did now. And also because there was an envelope lodged at the base of the plaque. I dove for it.

But instead of reaching it,Iand the envelope were wrenched violently backward.

In my ear, a hot, throaty chuckle and a toothless, goaty grimace. An arm squeezing the breath out of me, and the tip of a knife at my throat.

Of all the?—

“Don’t cry, princess. Yeah, it’s not the reunion you wanted,” said the voice. “But it’s a reunion.”

16

HIM

Stars.

Antares. Almach. Aldebaran.

Andromeda. Cassiopeia. Perseus. Gemini.

Sternenflüsterin.

“Where’d she go?” Maeve had asked, popping open the skylight of our attic room and clambering carefully up beside me in her hand-me-down nightgown. The cold black slate of the eaves was rough and uneven beneath our hands and feet, and the hazy golden light of Luxembourg City did its best to ruin the stars for two kids who’d been waiting all day to see them. But tonight, it hadn’t succeeded. Not completely. “Where’s Sternenflüsterin?”

I sighed and kicked the eaves, watching rotting roof tile and moss tumble down onto our master’s manicured lawn. I’d be raking that up tomorrow.

She’s not real, you ridiculous kid. You made her up like Frankenstein, from half of Scorpius and a little bit of Libra. There aren’t any pink unicorns with diamond hooves andrainbow manes, in the stars or anywhere else. And if they ever do find one, they sure as hell aren’t going to give it toyou.

“Well,” I said instead of any of that, “we’re always facing away from the sun at night, so we see different constellations as we orbit around it. It’s like… a big game of hide-and-seek.”

“So what does that mean?”

“She’ll come back,” I told her. Maeve yawned and nuzzled my shoulder. Like me, like always, she’d worked a twelve-hour day, and now her fine but tangled blond hair fell across my oversized hoodie, her fingers digging into the fabric, helpless against sleep. “She’ll always come back.”