Up in the Stars

King, Devil, Angel

Tears falling from her eyes, dousing the last of the flames at her feet.

Dripping onto the floorboards, rising in puddles up to his knees.

Threatening to drown him.

"Dante, you have to save me-" He desperately reaches for her, but she slips away.

"Enid? Enid!" He screams into the darkness.

But she is gone.

His eyes peel open to see Alexander standing above him.

Concerned eyes studying him.

His usually golden skin pale, charcoal black permeating the skin of his eyelids.

None of them had slept for more than a few minutes at a time.

Dante sighs, running a hand down his face.

The salty taste of her tears rich on his tongue.

"Another nightmare?" Alex sits down on the chair across from the couch.

The fire crackles behind him, the smell of burning wood mixing with the scent of old books.

He sits up on the couch, staring down at his lap.

Where her head had once laid.

"Yeah." His voice is rough, exhausted.

The nightmares were his mind's new form of torturing him.

Always starting with a memory of her, a moment he cherished.

Her in his office, peering at notes over his shoulder.

In his class, her hand raised with a clever question between her teeth.

Walking across campus, autumn leaves crunching beneath her boots.

In their library, her head on his lap.

Every room in the estate was inextricably woven with memories of her.

The scene would play out in ethereal shades, her colors vivid.

He would sink into the memories, seeking a reprieve from the ache of her absence.

Just a moment.

Just a moment with her and then he would get back to searching.

But then, the memory would shift.

Distorting and bending into a terrifying fiction.

Sometimes she attacked him, sometimes she screamed.

But the worst was when she cried.

You're the monster.

He shudders as the words bite along his spine.

She was right.

This fictionalized version of her.

He was a monster.

Dante wanted to repent.

Wanted to carve his heart out of his chest and lay it in her palms.

"It's been two and a half weeks." He watches the embers flicker in the fireplace.

They had nearly gotten to her.

Just minutes earlier and she would be here now, safe in their arms.

But Flynt had stolen her.

The constant pressure of guilt tightens in his chest.

His family's feud had taken too much.

First their parents.