That he only stoop to a semi-evil Fallen status? That his mind only become half-polluted? That he only carry out the occasional terrible demands?

This was the worst thing he could have done! He had to know that!

And it was incredibly stupid.

The door opened and Nate and Serena walked in. Serena’s hair naturally flamed bright orange. Her head looked like she was on fire, it was so bright and shining. And golden skin radiated Light constantly because she was always fighting, or flying. She wasn’t meant for Earth and had never learned how to be human. Only here temporarily, she was the epitome of the constant reminder of the Warrior’s life I would never lead- the one off planet and where most of my compatriots were.

Nate was the quintessential Warrior. While Stars were as different as night and day, with our array of hair and eye colors, our height differences and body shape variables, Warriors seemed to fit into the same mold with varying degrees of gorgeous. Their skin color was always a rich, golden tan, their hair the same naturally highlighted deep brown and bodies muscled to the max and well fit for fighting. The eye color and facial features changed from Warrior to Warrior, but all of them looked like they could be brothers, my dad and Nate included.

“We’ve seen him,” Nate announced. He walked over to the sink and immediately filled a glass of water for Serena and him.

“He’s with them,” Serena explained, taking the glass and draining it. Clearly they had flown directly here and landed just outside the house. They were out of breath and a bit windblown. And they were covered head to toe in leather- leather pants, leather jackets, and thick leather boots. I hadn’t climbed on the bad-ass bandwagon yet, preferring to fight and fly in my yoga pants and t-shirts. But they rocked this look with their otherworldliness. “We found them in London. Seth was with Aliah, Seven and a few more Fallen that we recognized.”

“What were they doing in London?” I demanded. The words fell from my lips before I could stop them, even though it felt like hearing the answer would kill me.

Serena shared a look with Nate and then turned her bright blue eyes back to me, “It looked like they were celebrating.”

“Celebrating?” I choked.

“Stella,” Nate started in his authoritative, rumbling voice and I knew he was about to confirm our deepest fears. “Seth is Fallen. Serena, we…. it was confirmed. He is Fallen.”

The words echoed around my head like marbles in empty space. They just kept rolling and rolling, bouncing off my skull, but never settling. I didn’t- couldn’t- wouldn’t understand this.

“It’s not possible,” I insisted.

The room was silent in answer. There was no response to my complaint, because everyone else had accepted what I wanted to believe was a lie. He wouldn’t have done that to me.

He wouldn’t.

A knock on the back door drew all of our attention. In unison we looked up and stared at it, like it was its own life form. Slowly my dad stood up and walked over through the mudroom to find out who it was.

When he returned into the main part of the kitchen, relief sagged his shoulders and he half turned to me, “Stella, it’s your friends.”

Piper. In all the craziness, I forgot she promised to come over.

“Oh, right.” I stood up, feeling like I had to push against the weight of the world to get to my feet. “I’ll go outside with them.”

I reached the door, feeling a building excitement to get out of this house and away from these people. I needed to be around my friends- the ones that wouldn’t abandon me, the ones that had nothing to do with the ugly side of my life.

“Stella,” my dad called out to me. “Whatever his thinking, or reason for doing what he did, he cares about you, Sweetheart. I believe he did what he did out of concern for you, not because he truly defected.”

My shoulders dropped and I felt the treachery of tears prick my eyes. “But it doesn’t matter, does it? He still did it. He’s still Fallen. No matter why he did it, or for whom he did it. The outcome is the same.”

Nobody had anything to say to that, so I opened the door and walked outside. Away from the ringing disappointment that Seth had just ceased to be a part of my life.

Forever.

Chapter Eight

“Hey,” Piper smiled at me. “You really do look like hell. I’m sorry I ever doubted your close call with death.”

I tried to smile back but it fell flat. I was a mess, teetering on the edge of losing it completely and holding it together for just five more minutes. A tear snuck out the corner of my eye and trailed slowly down my cheek. I didn’t even have the energy to wipe it away.

“Stella, are you alright?” Tristan stepped forward and held my arms in his strong grasp. “Do you really feel this terrible?”

I shook my head and slipped off the precarious edge I was barely holding onto. Tears tracked down my face now, in streams of messy ugliness. “Seth is gone,” I whispered.

My friends heard me and immediately converged on me. Tristan pulled me into a hug, even though I knew it kind of killed him to console me over Seth. And Piper wrapped both of her arms around one of mine and laid her head on my shoulder.

“What do you mean, he’s gone?” she asked in a gentle voice, but hearing the words repeated back to me felt like razor blades against my heart, no matter how softly they were spoken.

“He left,” I sobbed. “He left me.”

“Where did he go?” Piper pressed, sounding a little hysterical with her confusion.

Tristan held me closer, absorbing my racking pain into his own body. His hand tangled through my hair and then stroked the length of it. I buried my face deeper in his chest and let him hold me. There was no reason to feel guilty anymore. No more voice in my head told me to pull back from Tristan because Seth could catch us like this. What was the point? Seth was gone. I was free to do whatever I wanted.

My heart split open at that thought and I cried harder. I didn’t want to give up on Seth. But now I felt more confused than ever.

“Stella, where did Seth go?” Piper repeated firmly. “Did he run away?”

Did he run away? Yes. Could I tell Piper that? No.

“He left to go live with his family.”

Well, that was true.

“I thought he lived with his grandpa?”

“Some of his other family,” I emphasized.

“And he’s not coming back?” she asked a bit desperately.

“Never,” I whispered.

And then I cried harder.

They continued to hold me until I grappled some control over my emotions. I finally pulled back and used my t-shirt to wipe off my face. I hadn’t bothered with makeup today, so I didn’t need to worry about that, but I felt how puffy and swollen my eyes were and how inflated my lips were.

“I’m a mess,” I whispered.

“You’re beautiful,” Tristan argued. He put a finger under my chin and tilted my head up so that I had to look at him. “It’s going to be alright.”

“No it’s not,” I shook my head, my blonde hair falling around my shoulders.

“It is,” he promised. I stared into his green eyes, the color of emeralds. They were steady, solid and familiar. I sucked in a breath and…. and started to believe him. “Are you up for a walk?”

I nodded and we took off.

We used to do this all the time as kids. Piper, Tristan and I had spent days exploring the acres of land my parents’ house sat on. We jumped hay bales during harvest, we got lost in the rows of corn during the summer, and during the spring we would splash in the huge puddles the tractor tires made until we were covered head to toe in mud.

We’d given up those games sometime around the start of puberty, but every once in a while we enjoyed walking the land together. There was something so organic and wholesome about conversation on a walk. We talked about everything, anything…. nothing. And it all felt right.

And sometimes, like today, it felt like therapy.

The sky was filled with dark storm clouds, heavy with rain yet unshed. The air was cool and smelled like the brewing storm that it was. There was a greenness to the horizon that could mean tornado warning, depending on the storm system. The weather fit my mood perfectly.

We walked for a while without talking, until long after the house was out of sight. Piper had a million questions, I could see them simmering behind her hazel eyes. Her bangs were even longer than usual and swept thick and heavy over her eyes, but beyond her veil of hair I could tell how much she wanted to drill me on this.

Eventually we found a crop of trees that were mostly cleared in the center. There were two young trees that had fallen over and not been removed yet. They tangled in each other with their dead branches and elongated upraised roots.

I sat down on the bent over trunk and ignored the dampness of the bark under my thin leggings. Piper crawled up next to me and linked her arm with mine before laying her head back on my shoulder. Tristan leaned a hip next to me and looked off into the distance as if the answers to my heartbreak were somewhere out there.

And I supposed, in a way, they were.

“Tell us what happened, Stel,” Piper commanded.

I took a few steadying breaths and then I admitted, “I don’t really know. I mean, I now my…. sickness scared him, a lot, but I just talked to him this morning and everything seemed fine. He had…. come over to check on me, and he was really sweet. But then when he left me, he like really left me. He just went to his family, completely turning his back on me and Jupiter and my family. He didn’t even say goodbye- not really, anyway.”

“He didn’t even tell his grandpa he was leaving?” Piper asked in disbelief.

“Nope, he just left. We found out later.”

“How did you find out? Did he call you? Leave a note or anything?”

“Mutual friends just happened to see him, with his family.” I shrugged. This was mostly the truth, although there was no way she could pick up the gravity of my words, or their ugly meaning.

“So they live close by?”

“Not at all. He flew there.”

“He bought a plane ticket and just took off?” Piper gasped.

I shrugged and then echoed, “He just took off.”

“What’s his grandpa going to do?” Her voice was sadder now, as if she was finally accepting that he was gone.

“Nothing,” I admitted. “What can he do? Seth’s with his family. He’s obviously where he wants to be. There’s not a whole lot his grandpa or any of us can do.”

“I’m so sorry, Stella,” she whispered. She pressed a kiss to my shoulder and then laid her head back down. “What a bastard to just leave you like that, though.”

“Well, we weren’t exactly a couple or anything.” The words burned in my throat and ripped and clawed at my heart. We weren’t- but we should have been. Could I have prevented this all if I’d just given into the inevitable? Was my stubborn independence what drove him away?

But we had been growing closer recently. Lately thoughts and feelings for Tristan had been fading into the background because of a dominating attraction to Seth. There were moments when I knew what was growing between us would last forever, would surpass everything else.