“And why should that stop you from telling me?”
He laughs at that, and I cherish the low rumble of it. “I suppose you’re right. It came to me in a dream.”
I arch a brow at him. “A dream?”
“Indeed.”
“That’s not at all concerning. The solution to the plague that’s ruining my life came to you in a dream.”
“Would it comfort you to know it was the good sort of dream?” he asks, a violent blizzard in his eyes as they flicker to meet mine.
A rush of emotions floods my limbs, and I chew on my lip. “That depends. What constitutes a good sort of dream for you?”
He blinks and for a moment looks startled, but he recovers quickly enough. “I don’t see why it should matter to you where the idea came from so long as the logic behind it is sound.” His face is pleasant, but his voice is tight.
I cross my arms, more so I can hug myself and squeeze away the contracting feeling in my chest than anything. “Then please. Go on with your explanation then. Consider me a captive audience.”
“All right, then. The thought didn’t initially occur to me, since stars aren’t widely used for harboring celestial power. There’s a host of them, of course, but it makes them difficult to channel directly. In this dream of mine, you suggested I simply take hold of a star and grind it to powder, like I’d do with any other element. At which point I realized I could do just that, given I obtained a fallen star.”
“Are those just lying around for the taking?” I gesture open palmed to the object in question, pointedly ignoring his admission that he’d dreamed of me. “How did you get your hands on one so quickly?”
He turns his back to the counter and leans against it, gripping the edges with his hands. He rolled up his sleeves earlier to work with the star powder, and it takes a great deal of effort for me not to admire the deep cut of his forearms.
“There’s a crater not far from Ermengarde where a fallen star bored its way into the earth hundreds of years ago. Most of the site has been excavated, but there are still remnants of the original star scattered about the place if you know where to look for them.”
“So you traipsed out to a crater and dug around in the dirt in the middle of the night?” I ask.
“Mhm.”
“Why go last night? Why not wait until today?”
Nox’s eyes flicker with something I don’t recognize, but he’s smiling down on me, and it’s hard to focus on much of anything when he’s looking at me like that. “You aren’t the urgent sort, are you, Blaise?”
I bite down on a grin and cross my arms, pivoting my upper body back and forth as I hug myself. “Not if it means interfering with my sleep, I’m not.” I settle onto my heels and ask, “So you think you’ll have something ready by the next full moon?”
“The next full moon?” he asks. “I don’t see why we can’t have something ready today.”
“Today?” My eyes go wide and I fumble for words.
“What? You’re not ready to be rid of me yet?”
What if I’d rather keep you?
I swallow, but I find my throat has gone dry, and I’m suddenly acutely aware of how near Nox is. “No, it’s not that. I just…I thought we needed the full moon to channel enough power to get this thing out of me.”
He palms what’s left of the fallen star and tosses it in his hand. “Why would we need a moon when we have this?”
He has a point. I suppose a celestial object in the hand is better than one in the sky.
“And the blood sacrifice?” I ask.
His irises go thin as his pupils widen, but when I blink, I decide it must have been a trick of the light. “I think we can get away with a different sort of sacrifice.”
“I can’t say I like the sound of that,” I admit.
When he pulls out a pair of scissors from the counter drawers, my blood stills.
“How attached are you to your hair?” he asks.
It takes everything I have not to sob as Nox takes the scissors to my hair. It’s not the hair, exactly. It’s not even Nox.
It’s just that I’m not seeing Nox at the moment. And when the blades slice a lock clean off the ends of my hair, it’s not Nox’s scissors I hear.
The foul odor that stings my nostrils isn’t a byproduct of Nox’s concoctions, but of a thick layer of grime and tears from where I’ve scrubbed the waste bin clean.
And when Nox brushes a tear from my cheek, it’s not his hands on me, but Derek’s.
“Are you okay?” Nox whispers, his voice as even as death.
I grit my teeth and force a smile to my lips. “Yeah, it’s just”—I hastily wipe the tears from my face—“I just like it long, that’s all. It’s silly, I know.”
It’s a stupid explanation. My hair is still long; he cut only a lock from the nape of my neck.
He cocks his head to the side and examines me. Like he can tell it’s not the loss of a single lock of hair that has me bothered. But he doesn’t push.
Nox’s grimace is impish, guilty. But then he winks, and my nauseous gut does somersaults.
“What?”
