Page 250 of Starside

I’m blinded by rage as I stab him over and over, with both blades, wailing, screaming. I stab him so many times that I’m covered in blood when I’m done.

I thank the person that made it easy for me, who traced the line across his neck that I now run across with my blade until I hit bone.

Only then do I let both swords fall to the ground.

Dripping blood, I walk out of the cave.

44

He betrayed me.

I promised I wouldn’t think about him again, but the reminder of the night, and the sinking feeling of discovering him gone, won’t go away. Not as I chew the leaves from the sprig he left for me to find, a flower I recognize, a remedy for afterward. Not as I claw my way up the side of the mountain and sink to my knees when I reach the peak.

My blood-crusted eyes prickle, watching the world from this height, because it is beautiful, and that just makes everything so much worse.

I don’t have my sword anymore.

I don’t have a partner.

I don’t even have clothes.

There are just days left of the Questral. At this point, I won’t make it back to the gates, especially without my sword. I know that.

All that’s left for me is this one purpose, and I don’t know how to reach it. Not alone.

I look up at the sky, my chin trembling.

The only thing of mine I have left is this diamond necklace. It was waiting, on a rock next to that sprig. Raker must have held it for me and left it. It’s almost like a message. Go to him instead. But he doesn’t get to do that, he doesn’t get to leave and then tell me what he thinks is best for me, he doesn’t get to growl at me to take the necklace off then leave it for me to find.

Besides. I don’t want it anyway.

With a shaking hand, I offer it to the skies, and say, “Please. Please, come back for me. I—I need you.” Tears fall, blurring my vision. “I won’t make it without you.”

I cry, letting my agony spill out, my shame, my everything, every hope and want that shouldn’t belong to me but did and is now in tatters. It all comes out in raking sobs, tears falling and falling and falling, until something sparkling blocks my vision.

But it isn’t my dragon. No, it’s a beam of light melting into the form of a woman. I lift my arm, blocking my eyes against the brightness.

When I drop it, the woman in silver is tilting her head at me. “You look lost,” she says.

The diamonds tremble in my palm. “I am lost. I have been lost. I have lost everyone I have ever loved.”

The star on her brow glimmers as she studies me. “You remind me of myself.”

I laugh without humor. “We do look so much alike, don’t we?” Me, covered in blood, my hair knotted with it. Her, glowing with ethereal beauty.

She doesn’t laugh at all. “At one point in my life, I looked just like you,” she says. “Covered in the blood of my enemies. Bellowing to the sky for someone to help me.”

“Then help me,” I say through my teeth. She says nothing, and I sink deeper into the ground, the fight leaving me. I will beg. I will plead. I have nothing else left. “Please, show me the way. Like you did before.”

She shakes her head. “I don’t need to. You already know the way.”

“I don’t.”

“Ask me a different question,” she says. She says it quickly, like we don’t have much time, and I suppose I don’t.

I have so many. So many. Very few will help me now.

But … but there is one.