Tears of Astoria

by J.B. Wright

We finally walk by my parents and sister, who stand in the grand entryway with stone-cold faces. I find each of their eyes. “Please.” My voice is raspy and utterly broken. “I want to stay. Please.” My father’s jaw clenches— annoyed. My sister’s gaze narrows into a thing of cruelty. But it’s my mother who truly guts me. She looks at me with disgust, and then she doesn’t look at me at all. Mother walks away without so much as a backwards glance as I am dragged out of my home and thrown into the transport.

My lip quivers. “But you could hardly look at me.” “I couldn’t look at you, Aislinn, because each time I did, I lost all sense of time. Of surroundings. I was crawling out of my skin just to be near you. To breathe your air. I couldn’t look at you because the hole it opened in my chest knowing you were marrying a lord…marrying anyone who wasn’t me. I couldn’t look at you because I knew, I fucking knew, the second your hand accidentally brushed against mine and you turned those gorgeous green eyes to me that I would let all of Katova burn for you and that if you were ever hurt, I’d be the one burning it. Because in the depths of your gaze I saw my future. I saw my home.”

My soulllll

“Well, either way, I think we were fated to be together. I have been drawn to you since the first moment my eyes met yours, even when I shouldn’t have. Even when I tried not to be. It was irritating as all Haile, but I ached for you, every moment of every day.” His grin changes into something a bit more devious. “Do you still ache for me, baby?” I kiss him and answer against his lips, “More now than ever.”

“Don’t you understand that if something happened to you, I’d have to burn the whole damn realm to ash?”

I lean my head into him. “She’s incredible…but the greatest thing she has ever made is you. You are my favorite fallen star.”

Welp there goes my heart and soul. Again

DeLuca holds my face and looks as though he is memorizing it. “You look beautiful in the moonlight, like it shines for you and you alone.” I smile and look down. “Don’t do that. Don’t hide from me ever. I think you are the most beautiful creature to exist. In this realm or the next.” He plants a gentle kiss on my temple and then pulls me into him so my head naturally rests on his shoulder.

DeLuca doesn’t waste a beat. Doesn’t hesitate. He captures my head with his hands and looks me in the eye. “I have no life without you, Aislinn Theodora. No family. No friends. No home. You are everything. If we can make Erebus mortal, we can make me mortal too. I don’t want any of this without you. I’d rather live eighty years with you than an eternity alone with nothing but a beautiful memory to haunt my every waking moment.”

“Will you dance with me, baby?” he asks. “Dance with you? There’s no music!” “Dance with me to the sound of the rain.” He holds out his hand, and I accept.

I’m going to die a virgin.

“Now that I know what that tongue can do, you’re not allowed to die. Ever. In fact, I may just have to find a way to make myself immortal too because that is surely better than anything the Afterlands has to offer me.”

I cry out, “Oh gods,” when I think I am about to come undone again. DeLuca stops, stilling my hips before rotating so that he lays on top of me. He takes my chin with his hand and drags my lips to him. The kiss is bruising and has me rocking against him, begging for more. “Baby, there is only one god here tonight. In this bed I want you to only call out my name.” He grabs my leg from behind the knee to angle himself deeper. His name falls from my lips like a prayer, over and over again.