The bike hummed beneath Star as she carved through the open road back to the city. The sun was still up, high and generous, painting the sky in shades of blue that felt almost mocking. It had been nearly two weeks since she'd been back in Crestfall proper. Two weeks of trying to piece together a life that kept shattering in her hands.
Lucian had stopped speaking to her—well, not stopped, exactly. He'd gone selective. Every conversation circled back to the marriage discussion and then died there, like a bird flying into glass. But even in his anger, even in his stubborn, immovable refusal to give his blessing, he'd found a way to ground her. Literally. Every morning at the Chateau, Lucian had drilled her and Safe in the makeshift training room: how to block, how to strike, and how to turn an attacker's momentum into their own broken nose. It had been exhausting. Bruising. And absolutely worth it.
Now it was time to get back up there.
Adrian had called three days ago to tell her the university had reinstated her. The expulsion was gone, wiped clean, and she could continue her studies. The catch—because there was always a catch—was the pregnancy. But Adrian, being Adrian, had already found a solution. She hadn't asked what it was yet. She'd been avoiding him.
Star pulled the bike to a stop at the edge of campus, cutting the engine. She didn't get off right away. She just sat there, hands still on the handlebars, looking at the buildings through the dark shield of her sunglasses. Oversized sweatpants. Oversized hoodie. Not an inch of skin showing. Everyone still thought Star was missing, and no one trusted the media these days, so a girl in baggy clothes was practically invisible.
The campus moved around her like a memory she wasn't sure she still belonged to. Students laughing. Backpacks slung over shoulders. Professors speed-walking with coffee cups and permanent frowns. This place had once been her sanctuary. The only spot on earth where she could breathe without hearing her mother getting hit, without watching her father manufacture chaos out of thin air.
Her eyes drifted to a spot near the main walkway. Empty now. Just pavement and a patch of grass. But she could still see herself there—at a folding table covered in sweets. Selling candy to students who'd become her regulars, her friends, her tiny community. She'd built something out of nothing on that spot.
Star smiled softly. Then she sighed, swung her leg off the bike, and headed for the admin building.
The registrar's office smelled like paper and bureaucracy. Star checked herself in with the kind of efficiency that came from not wanting to linger. Forms signed. ID reissued. A schedule printed on crisp white paper that felt like a contract with a future she wasn't entirely sure she'd live to see.
After that, she heads to the Res Department.
She pushed open the door and found Mrs. Welma at her desk, glasses perched on her nose, buried in paperwork that looked like it had been breeding. Star crossed the room, lowered her hood, and slipped off her sunglasses.
"Mrs. Welma?"
Mrs. Welma looked up. Her mouth fell open. The kind of open where words tried to form but got stuck somewhere between shock and relief. She didn't even blink before she was on her feet, rounding the desk, and pulling Star into a hug that smelled like lavender and regret.
"Oh my god. Star." She pulled back, gripping Star's shoulders, her eyes scanning Star's face like she was memorizing it all over again. "I'm so sorry. I let you down."
She hugged her again. Tighter this time.
Star let herself be held. It was strange—being touched with care instead of calculation. She'd almost forgotten what it felt like.
Mrs. Welma guided her to the couch, one hand never leaving Star's arm, as if she was afraid Star might vanish again.
"I heard about your mom." Her voice dropped, soft and careful. "What are the police saying?"
"They're still investigating." Star's tone was flat, practiced. "You know Crestfall. Cases die here all the time."
"I'm personally sorry." Mrs. Welma pressed a hand to her chest, and the gesture was so genuine it almost hurt. "Truly."
"It's okay, Mrs. Welma."
"So... are you returning?" The question came wrapped in concern, in curiosity, in the kind of hope people tried to hide and failed. "You said you'd be back."
"Yeah. Um." Star exhaled, a small breath that carried more weight than it should. "I'm returning. But I won't be using Res anymore."
Mrs. Welma nodded slowly, understanding settling into the lines of her face. "I understand. If you need anything—anything at all—you tell me. And I promise, this time..." She met Star's eyes and held them. "This time I'll make sure I listen."
They talked a little more. Small things. Safe things. Then Star gave her a polite smile—warm enough to pass, distant enough to protect—and left.
The house was exactly where she'd left it. And nothing like she'd left it.
Star pulled her bike into the driveway and killed the engine. The silence that followed was thick, the kind of silence that had been sitting here for weeks, undisturbed. She stared at the front door and felt her stomach clench.
The last time she'd been in this house, she'd just learned the man who beat her mother her whole life wasn't her biological father. The walls had absorbed that revelation, along with every other memory this place held. Painful ones, mostly. The kind that didn't wash out.
She bent down and fished the spare key from under the rug. It was still there. No one had bothered to move it. No one had bothered with anything, apparently.
The door swung open.
Empty. Not just unoccupied—empty. Every sofa. Every television. Every lamp, every rug, every spoon in the kitchen. Gone. The walls stood naked, dusty rectangles marking where pictures used to hang.
"Frieda really made her visit known," Star murmured, her voice echoing slightly in the hollow space.
She walked through the house slowly, her footsteps loud on the bare floors. Her parents' bedroom: stripped to the bones. Not a curtain, not a pillow. Even the closet rods had been cleared.
Her own room was the only one still breathing.
"At least she has some dignity," Star said, stepping inside.
Her things were still there. Dusty, untouched, waiting for her like a loyal dog. Her nightstand. Her bed. And there—her sketchbook, sitting right where she'd left it, coated in a fine layer of neglect.
Star picked it up. Brushed off the dust as she opened the pages.
The Chateau stared back at her. Every turret, every window, every impossible detail she'd dreamed onto paper years ago. She still didn't know who'd built it for real. Who'd taken the images from her head and turned them into stone and glass and safety. She'd been busy lately—being killed and being in and out of comas—to hunt down her savior from Frieda's men. Her mind flicked to Alex. The doctor she'd seen when she first woke up. He'd been there. Maybe he knew something.
But that was a question for another day.
She tucked the sketchbook under her arm. That was all she'd come for. That, and maybe—just maybe—a sign of Tomas. The last time she'd seen him, at the restaurant with Senator Lydia Manuel, he'd been clean. Handsome, even. A gentleman. The kind of man you'd never suspect of being a womanizer, an abuser, or a coward who hit his wife for sport. If someone saw him now, they'd think he was decent.
She snorted softly at the thought and headed back outside.
Star swung her leg over the bike, settling into the seat. She adjusted her mirror—and froze.
A black sedan was parked further down the street, far enough to seem casual, close enough to be watching.
That sedan had been there for days now. Different streets, different times of day, always the same dark shape in the corner of her vision. She'd noticed it the first time leaving the Chateau, and every time since. That was the whole reason she'd asked Lucian to train her harder, push her further. She knew Maria had picked up on something. She didn't know what yet, but her instincts had been screaming ever since the scanner incident in Maria's room. If Maria was a villain—and Star was increasingly certain she was—then of course she'd send people. And of course they'd come.
In her free time over the past two weeks, Star had done more than train. She'd researched. Hacked into Maria's office at Stark Architect—nothing too flashy, just enough to follow the money. What she'd found was worse than she'd expected. Embezzlement. Decades of it. The ratings hadn't just dropped this year; they'd been rigged for years, cooked to perfection in Maria's own office, under Maria's own watch.
The discovery had made Star rethink everything.
Marrying Adrian to save his company had seemed like a clean solution. A contract. A signature. And divorce when the mole was caught.
But now she had no idea how deep Maria's claws went. The woman wasn't just a bad mother. She was a parasite wrapped in Chanel. And Star, who'd spent her whole life watching monsters hide in plain sight, recognized the species.
But Adrian. Adrian still moved something in her heart. Something stubborn and inconvenient and utterly unwilling to be reasoned with. That was why she'd been avoiding him for two weeks. Not because she didn't care. Because she cared too much, and caring had never once led her anywhere safe.
Star revved the bike. The black sedan stayed where it was. Watching.
She pulled away from the curb and didn't look back. But her eyes flicked to the mirror every few seconds, tracking the dark shape that pulled out and followed at a careful distance.
***
The restaurant was modest—the kind of place where the food arrived fast and the lighting didn't ask questions. Star slid into a corner booth, her back to the room, her oversized hoodie swallowing her whole. She was mildly hungry, which was a lie she kept telling herself. The truth was she was ravenous. Hollow. Like her stomach had become a bottomless pit that no amount of food could fill.
Her belly had started to show. Just a small bump, barely there, but enough that she'd been living in oversized clothes for days now, hiding in plain sight. She'd ordered chicken and spaghetti. It was already half gone.
"Thought I would find you here."
The voice came from above her. Then a body slid into the chair across the table, smooth and uninvited, like he owned the place and possibly the whole block.
Star looked up. Adrian. Smiling so wide she could have hung laundry on his cheekbones. Even through her sunglasses, even through the hoodie and the disguise, he'd found her. Of course he had.
She didn't return the smile. Instead, she made her voice low and hoarse, scratchy as sandpaper. "I'm sorry... who are you?"
Adrian's grin didn't budge. If anything, it expanded. "Oh, you're being messy, huh."
He reached across the table and pulled her food plate toward him.
Star's hand shot out. Her mouth opened, a yell building in her throat—Ad—!—but she caught herself just in time. Her eyes blazed behind the sunglasses. Disturbing her lunch was one thing. Taking her food? That was an act of war.
"There." Adrian slid the plate back, perhaps sensing that he'd come dangerously close to losing a finger. Star looked, in that moment, like a wild animal who'd decided not to maul him. Barely.
"What are you doing here?" she hissed, pulling the plate protectively close. Then her eyes narrowed. "Wait... are you the one who's been tailing me for days?"
"What? No." Adrian's face registered genuine surprise, then something sharper—concern, maybe. "Mrs. Welma told me you stopped by."
"That was hours ago."
"Yes, I know." His voice softened, the playfulness draining out of it. He leaned forward, elbows on the table, eyes searching her face through the sunglasses. "I miss you, Star."
She looked away.
"Why have you been ignoring me?" His voice was gentle now, careful, the way you speak to something you're afraid might bolt. "Is it because of the marriage?"
Star exhaled. Long. Slow. She set her fork down. "Can you order something? I'm hungry."
Adrian blinked. Looked at her plate—half a chicken breast, a mountain of spaghetti, sauce glistening. He looked around the restaurant as if recruiting witnesses. "You're eating," he said, almost loud.
"Yeah." Star's expression was pure annoyance, the kind that came from a hunger that wouldn't quit. "I've been eating for weeks now, and it's like hollow. The food just..." She gestured vaguely, a wave of frustration. "Please just order. I'll have what you have."
Adrian flagged the waiter and ordered: a salad, some fries, and a burger. The waiter hadn't even fully set the plates down before Star pulled the burger toward her and bit into it with the intensity of someone who hadn't seen food in weeks.
Adrian just sat there. Watched.
There was something right about watching Star eat. Her lips glistened with grease. Her cheeks puffed up like a small, furious hamster. She became, against all logic and reason, unbearably cute. He hadn't seen her in two weeks—two weeks of calls gone unanswered, messages left on read, her absence sitting in his chest like a stone—and here she was, glowing. Actually glowing. Her skin had a radiance that made the restaurant lighting look like it was trying too hard.
"Did you dye your hair?" Star asked, her mouth still full, gesturing at his head with a fry. "It's going gray now."
Adrian touched his temple self-consciously. The gray had been creeping in for a while, but it had accelerated lately—stress, probably. Or genetics. Or both. Star, however, didn't seem to be complaining. She was staring at him with an expression that had shifted from annoyance to something hungrier.
He was just in a white shirt, unbuttoned two buttons down, and suit pants. Simple. Devastating.
"Damn," Star muttered out loud, not quite meaning to.
The next thing she knew, they were in Adrian's car.
The seats were reclined. Their breathing was ragged, uneven, the kind of breathlessness that came from a kiss that had started and simply refused to end. Star stared up at the car ceiling, her chest rising and falling, her lips tingling. Adrian was beside her, also staring up, also breathless, his shirt more unbuttoned than before.
"We should never be apart again," Star said to the ceiling.
Adrian tilted his head toward her. The words he wanted to say were right there—I love you, I've loved you, I'm going to keep loving you—but they jammed in his throat. Two weeks ago, when he'd told her he wanted to marry her, she'd refused. Flat out. No hesitation. She'd only listened when he added the word contract, when he promised divorce, when he made it clear this was business and not a cage. The memory sat between them now, unspoken and heavy.
"I'm going to show you something." Star rolled onto her side, facing him. She lifted one finger and pressed it across his lips. "So don't... even think about laughing."
Adrian nodded, her finger still against his mouth.
Star sat up. Slowly, almost shyly—which was ridiculous, given what they'd just been doing—she lifted the hem of her hoodie. The fabric slid up, revealing the small, rounded bump of her belly.
Adrian didn't laugh.
He was absorbed. Transfixed. His eyes went soft in a way Star had never seen before. He reached out, hesitated, then laid his head gently against her stomach, his ear pressed to the tiny swell as if listening for something only he could hear.
"You look adorable," he murmured into her skin.
"But... you're not even up to two months." His voice was muffled against her belly.
"I know, right?" Star's voice had an edge of nervous wonder. "I mean, I've never been pregnant before, but do they really grow this fast?"
Adrian didn't answer with words. He rubbed the bump gently, his thumb tracing small circles, his expression utterly undone.
"Oh, god." The words slipped out before he could stop them. Barely a whisper. "I love you."
He felt the rush of it immediately—the thrill and the terror, the freedom of saying it and the sudden, cold realization that he couldn't take it back. His thumb stopped moving. His body went still.
Seconds passed.
Star stared down at him, her expression unreadable, her heart slamming against her ribs in a rhythm that had nothing to do with kissing and everything to do with three words she wasn't ready to hear and desperately didn't want him to take back.