When Stars Collide

Chapter 22- See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil - Skylar

Once you see ashes, there’s no turning back.

 As I stare at Ioannis who looks so lost, so sad... I’m drowning in his sadness. What he’s feeling... I feel it times a thousand. It’s crushing on me like a dead weight and I don’t know how to tell him that the second he saved that little girl all those years back, the second he earned his trip to the spirit realm... 

That it had all been my fault. The little girl was my vessel. I couldn’t travel to the mortal world after I lost a bet with Eris. The little girl had been my scythe wielding vessel. She silently killed the mafia members in the Ludven, the same ones chasing Ioannis and his team that night. The little girl had been in trouble that night, and the barman who had me pinned down to the ground, was about to kill my vessel and by extension, me.

He swooped in like a hero and wrestled me away from him. He used a broken bottle to render the guy unconscious. Had it been my fault because I wanted to thank him that same night? I never expected the spirits would taint his soul. I had to wrench him out and send him back up to his world before he stayed trapped. I couldn’t tell him that those eyes were driving me crazy. That I yearned to touch him, to tell him everything I wish I could say.

But then he’d hate me. Because now he’s dying because of me.  I stare at him and he surprises me by wrapping me in a hug. I gasp, out of the fear that I could make him turn into ashes. I hold my hands away from his back because this is how it had been with Max.

The last guy I had ever cared about had turned into ashes because of me. I loved him more than life itself, but my hands were like poison. It had worked out so well before. He and I had done everything and everything turned into dust in one night. He wrapped me in his arms, and I hugged him back, completely bare to each other as we looked at the stars and then... he turned into dust. 

I couldn’t breathe. It was as if I had just died. I wailed at the heavens, begged everyone for him to come back, but I was the mistress of death. I couldn’t bring him back. I had lost him, I could never get him back because I had killed him. With just my bare hands. Someone I loved had died because of me and I couldn’t bear doing the same thing to Ioannis. But he hadn’t been afraid to touch me. He grabs my hands and I wrench them away from him.

“What are you afraid of, Skylar?” he asks me and when he cups my face, so bold, so unafraid of staring at death, I can’t stop admiring him. 

Those green eyes were so stunning, I was afraid that the light in him would snuff out like a candle. I can’t speak. There’s a knot on my throat and it feels impossible to tell him everything. But somehow, my heart still speaks and lets out those words I had been so afraid to acknowledge out loud. It had been almost ten years since I last loved someone, and nearly two years since my path with him crossed.

“I don’t want to hurt you, not when I already did,” I tell him and when the tears run down my cheeks, I’m petrified to my spot. 

He brushes my tears away and there’s so much sympathy in those eyes, so much, I wanted to protect it with my life. I wish I could tell him how the mistress of death has been in love with him, has observed from him from afar, has been that constant comfort he seeks for, but I can’t. He kisses my forehead and wraps me in his arms, whispering in a way that his voice carryies in the room.

“I’m sure you could never hurt me,” he says simply, blindly trusting me with his life and I want to push him away. Because he’s everything I’m not. Because he’s so much like Max, yet so different. 

“It’s my fault you’re slowly dying.” I choke out and he strokes my hair as if he were trying to calm me down.

“I know. But you’re helping me now. Plus, we’re all born to die anyway... so if my time is now... then all I can hope and wish for is to at least experience the joy of love. When growing up with none of that, it seems so impossible,” he says quietly and I’m still in his arms, afraid to touch him, but he continues.