Page 10

seven

Grim

I t was bare. Her existence.

After a decade, I would have assumed she’d have more to show for her time here.

After over a century, you’d think she would have collected more than a few bags.

But the room was empty and my finger lifted, leaving chalky dust in its wake as I trailed it along the dresser.

I was almost ashamed of myself for even bothering to touch anything in this room.

Yet, I found myself doing it, each surface reminding me of just how little she had truly gathered.

Her footprint was undoubtedly not small.

She had left a trail of terror in her wake since the moment her curse had set in, but something pricked at my mind when it came to Astoria.

Her existence was gray—washed out, devoid of color and permanence.

It was muddled by the choices she had made, yes, but also clouded by my own interference, overshadowing her small but fleeting attempts at agency.

I set my hand against the windowpane, feeling the temperature of her life inside. There was nothing here. No permanent connection. It was almost as though she couldn’t commit to anything, a wanderer even in her own space.

Stepping foot in her room was suffocating. It wasn’t just the air that felt too tight, though. No, it was the invisible tangle of our immortal lives, intertwined in ways I couldn’t begin to fathom. I hated it. The weight of it.

Astoria slept fitfully, her body tossing and turning in the bed.

It was as if she felt my presence, dragging her into delirium as she slept.

The quilts were pushed down past her waist, bunched up around her bare legs.

Her hair was wild, as always, fanned out around her in a fiery halo.

I resisted the urge to brush a few stray pieces away from her forehead, even though it was tempting.

I could already feel the pull of her humanity as though it were an anchor lodged deep in my chest.

I wasn’t sure what I searched for, but I found myself here more often than not in the last few weeks. After Phoenix, I resolved to leave her be. It worked, for a while. But the temptation to watch, to stay just a bit longer, had become a constant ache.

Besides, I had better things to do than stalk a foolish girl who refused to follow the natural cycle of things. She would die eventually, and then I'd rest, or at least that is what I told myself.

Nothing with her had gone according to plan.

Not for me. Not for anyone. The curse… I had assumed it was something to break, but it was clearly more complicated than that.

It had taken more than I thought to get her to even consider it, and I wondered if maybe she was apprehensive—afraid. At least, since meeting the Kapoors.

Loneliness had always been a close companion of my Star, but something inside her had broken after she fled from Arizona. I never imagined she would take on a job as intensive as nannying, nor did I think she would stay put for as long as she had.

Astoria had a nasty habit of surprising me.

Nothing could be expected of her. She didn’t belong in my carefully mapped out universe, but here she was, defying logic with each breath she took.

I was beginning to think maybe it wasn’t just her that was cursed.

Perhaps I was the one who had been damned from the start.

And still, it didn’t seem to bother her. She hadn’t aged. She hadn’t died. A burden that only seemed to weigh on me, dragging me deeper into the pit of my own indecision. Fortune believed this to be a reckoning—a great awakening, some cosmic twist. And Time…

Time was fucking stupid.

The truth was, Astoria would die and I would be victorious.

I had to believe that. Even if it took five hundred years, she would tire of our game, and she would move on, watching those she loved grow old and die while she stayed the same, frozen in time.

But what if she didn’t tire? What if her humanity gave her the strength to keep going, to press on in spite of everything?

The problem was that she was stubborn. Too damn stubborn. I’d always been able to move through time with precision, calculating each step. But she... she was an anomaly in my perfectly measured world.

And Fate—Fate, the only one I trusted—had said nothing. No sign. No answer. She only looked down at me with her iridescent eyes, as though she had some unspoken knowledge I wasn’t privy to. I couldn’t shake the feeling that she knew something, which only made it worse.

I lingered in Astoria's apartment, looking out over the quiet street. It would have been peaceful, if I didn’t feel their pull.

The souls of the freshly departed were moaning, reaching for me from every direction.

They were relentless, desperate. But in this place, with Astoria’s presence—however dim, however temporary—this was the one place I found some semblance of relief.

If I wasn’t desperate for silence, that fact would have bothered me.

But as it was, I found myself floating back into her room, wanting to be closer to her.

As strange as it was, there was a magnetic force between us, something raw and elemental, and despite my better judgment, I couldn’t seem to pull away.

She was peaceful now. Her body relaxed, her breathing even.

Her face, serene and untouched by the weight of immortality, gave me pause.

The quivering sense of time slipping by—the fact that she would eventually have to watch everything decay while she remained unchanged—it should have been a comfort to me.

But there was a twisted ache that came with watching her, seeing her lie there, untouched by the ravages of time.

Grabbing the tufted quilt, I untangled her limbs from the heavy blanket, tucking her in with a gentleness that surprised even me. My gaze lingered on her face and the freckles scattered across her skin like constellations, the soft lashes that fluttered ever so slightly against her round cheeks.

She was beautiful. For a human, she was enchanting. And in that moment, as I felt the vibrancy of her soul thrumming in the air between us, I realized how foolish I’d been to think I could simply eradicate something so... full of life. As dim as it was.

Her spirit hovered outside her body, a shimmering blue—almost translucent, yet undeniably present.

Most souls, those that were twisted and had grown close to me, were darker, ranging from blue to black.

But hers… hers was sparkling, like ice. And as much as I hated to admit it, that blue taunted me.

It dared me to care, dared me to wish for something beyond what I had been told was possible.

The color wasn’t what unnerved me, though.

It was the fact that I couldn’t deny that I wondered what it would feel like if it all of a sudden shone red.

If her sorrows no longer held her down, would she burn like her hair?

Would she light up the world, leaving a trail of broken hearts in her wake?

Would she— could she—become something even more dangerous?

It was a stupid thought. A dangerous one. One I knew I shouldn’t entertain. But there it was, lingering in my mind. It was a poison I had no antidote for.

I scowled, my brows drawing tight as I concentrated on not waking her.

She’d need her rest. We had a long few days ahead of us.

But as I let my thoughts spiral, I brushed a few stray strands of hair back from her face.

My hand skimming her skin, the touch sending a jolt of electricity through my chest. When my essence brushed against hers, for the first time, I felt something shift within her.

A crack in her icy blue soul, a shimmer that I hadn’t expected.

“What are you?” I sputtered under my breath, running a hand down my face.

An enigma. A human who couldn’t— shouldn’t —exist in my world, and yet, here she was.

I had to finish this. I had to make her fade away, to return balance to my world. But a dark, treacherous part of me wanted to keep her, wanted to wrap myself around her and never let go.

I needed to leave.

Before I lost my nerve.

Straightening my jacket, I stalked toward the door, giving Astoria one last glance. “I am sorry, Tempest. I am what I am.”

But just as I reached for the knob, a small voice broke the silence. It was faint, almost inaudible, yet it reached deep into me.

“Grim…”

Her voice. Barely a whisper, soft as a breeze, but enough to bring my heart to a stutter. She hadn’t called out in fear, and not in terror. She called out for me.

I stood frozen, my hand still on the door, a wave of something raw and unspoken crashing over me.

“Sometimes I wish I could be more…” I didn’t finish the thought. There was no use. What was the point?

This was her story, and I was the end of it.