〚FEATURED + WATTYS SHORTLIST 2021〛
Someone tried to kill him. Someone nearly succeeded.
A traitor walks among them.
The question is, who?
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"A sky full of stars and he was looking at her."
He was a man with a deep and profound love for the stars...
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"YOU DID WHAT?"
"Repeating myself will not change my answer, Lucien," Stella's blank look doesn't waver despite the tiny tinge of annoyance that begins to bloom in her chest.
Lucien gives her a bewildered look, in the middle of his worried pacing.
"Well, forgive me for being absolutely appalled by it, nonetheless," he says, his eyebrows raised, as his golden eyes survey her. "You chose to save a human."
"Yes."
"A hitman, that."
"For the third time, yes."
"You are not jesting, are you?"
"No, Lucien."
"Stella," the furrow in his eyebrows deepens, "What were you thinking?"
"I," Stella says with a completely straight face, "was obviously thinking about the earth's weather while the man was bleeding out in front of me."
"Stella."
"What do you think I was thinking about, then?" Stella gives him an exasperated look. "Nothing had been going right for the poor man and he was on the brink of death when he should not have been, why wouldn't I save him?
"Do you know the number of humans that have died in his hands?" Lucien ignores her reasoning, as his eyes bore into hers with intensity.
"Nine," Stella narrows her eyes at him slightly, "He has the blood of nine men on his hands, and they were criminals. Terrible, terrible criminals that were practically beacons of darkness."
"It doesn't change the fact that he was dying," Lucien counters, "and you interfered in it. You interfered with his story in the stars-"
Stella throws her hands up in irritation. He's talking to the angel of the stars, and that's the argument he chooses. Ridiculous.
"What's to say that me saving him wasn't written in the stars?" she argues before he can go on, "You know that we write our stories with the universe- and maybe I was meant to save the earthling, did that occur to you?"
"Meant to save him?" Lucien scoffs, "That human? Forgive me, Stella, but I think not."
"To me," Stella says, lifting a challenging eyebrow as she crosses her arms across her chest, "at this moment it really does not matter what you think."
"How utterly gracious of you," Lucien deadpans, copying her action, "if my thoughts did not matter, you would not have told me of this incident."
Stella resisted the urge to roll her eyes or snap back with something smart, biting her tongue instead.
While she could consider the angel in front of her, her 'best friend' as humans put it, sometimes his orthodox thoughts and overprotectiveness annoyed her.
