Stories Unknown

Under a Moonless Sky

Song: Rewrite the Stars, by Zendaya and Zac Efron.

"You know I want you," Kai said, a single tear tracing the angular curvature of his face. Cinder wrung her hands together, longing to brush it from his cheek. Her own eyes burned, despite their lack of tears. The tears that she wished would come; the ones she knew would never appear. Her inability to shed a single tear made her feel so inhuman. She couldn't cry with this wonderful boy as fate tore them apart for the last time. She couldn't shed a tear for the end of them.

"I want to be with you more than anything, Cinder. It's not a secret— and I know you feel the same. I know you love me. I know you don't want to end this. I know it, Cinder. I know it." Kai bit his lower lip, his eyes turning away from hers as the tears streamed down his face.

Cinder looked away, trying to contain the awful choking noises that were attempting to escape her. It hurt too much to watch: the boy she loved, crying over their failure— her inability to commit to their relationship.

"Kai, I do. I want to be with you. If we lived in a perfect world, we would already be married and living our happily ever after. But life doesn't work that way." Cinder's voice broke on the words, everything within her screaming to end it all. To stop the pain.

When Cinder had taken the Lunar Throne, she had known that it would take sacrifice, but she had never dreamed that she would have to lose the one thing most important to her. But it wouldn't work— it couldn't. No one on Luna would accept him as their Queen, and the Earthens had already shown that they would more readily welcome a cockroach as their Empress than her.

She had tried every angle, but everywhere she turned, she was only met by opposition. There was no way for her to change their minds, and Kai was too blind—too loving— to see it. Only she could save them both. She would make the hard decision, even if it destroyed her.

"Our hands are tied, Kai. The future is set. It's just not in our stars." Cinder reached out, clasping both of his hands within her own. Kai shuddered. "So please, don't make this harder than it has to be."

"No," Kai said, dropping her hands. He turned away from her, running a hand through his hair, messing it up in the most beautiful way possible. He paced away from her, his footsteps echoing off the floor and to the ornate ceiling of the throne room of Artemisia Palace.

When he turned back to face her, the tears were gone. Rage consumed his features, burning all the sadness from his countenance until his face shone red.

"No?" Cinder asked, her voice small.

"No," Kai said, firm. "You don't get to just decide that this isn't our destiny, Cinder. So stop saying our hands are tied. You don't get to say that it's not in the cards just because fate is pulling you miles away and out of reach from me to this awful moon."

Cinder clenched her jaw, teeth grinding together painfully. He was making this whole ordeal terribly painful. Couldn't he grasp that she didn't want to do this? She had to do it.

"Kai," Cinder started, her control panel scripting that she needed to calm down. She pushed the text away. "I don't want to do this, but-"

"Don't say you can't, Cinder!" Kai yelled, throwing his hands into the air. "You don't just get to decide to end it all. Not after everything we've been through. You're here, in my heart," Kai grabbed at his chest the crisp white of his dress shirt wrinkling under her fingers. "And no one—no one—can stop me from deciding that you're my destiny."

Cinder turned away, unable to look at Kai any longer. He was both the same sweet boy that she once met at the marketplace, and an entirely new being all at once. There was no longer that shyness, but the same passion still existed within him.