Wait for Me, Little Star
The portal winked shut behind me like an eye that had seen enough.
Seven years. Seven whole years of pretending that world had never existed, that the scar between my shoulder blades was just some ranch burn from when I was too little to fight back. Tonight the lie exploded.
Star-jasmine thick enough to choke on, ozone stinging the back of my tongue, marble floors warm under five-year-old feet. Laughter bouncing off crystal ceilings like silver coins. Then the screaming. Lightning that tasted like pennies. Gold-armoured statues dragging me past people who used to sneak me honey cakes, now lying in steaming red puddles. Traitor, someone spat, and the word burned hotter than the iron they pressed between my shoulder blades a heartbeat later.
The scar woke up now, white-hot, like the iron had never cooled. Gramps's death had already torn the scab off; this portal just poured gasoline on the wound and struck the match.
I gagged so hard my stomach cramped. The grass smelled like funeral lilies dipped in old blood. My fingers clawed the alien turf until my knuckles bled. A sound crawled out of me (half scream, half kicked-dog whine) and ricocheted off white spires that hadn't existed when I was five. The new towers looked expensive and cruel, the way a knife looks expensive and cruel.
No one left. No one in that shining slaughterhouse who would ever want the traitor's whelp back. So why crack the door open now? To laugh?
I stayed on my knees long after the light died, the ghost of a tiny hand still reaching through the dark behind my eyelids.
I need to know she's safe.
The thought arrived quiet, but it punched like a war drum.
Elisa. The Supreme Ruler's only daughter. Five years old forever, silver curls full of living starlight, violet eyes too big for her face. The girl who used to ride my shoulders through the orchards shouting, "Faster, horsey!" while I pretended to buck just to hear her shriek with joy. The girl whose grandfather and my great-grandfather had tried to murder each other for seventy-two straight hours on the ash plains of the Celestial War (blades singing, skies splitting) until both old bastards collapsed, laughed once, and called it a draw. From that mutual attempted homicide came the strangest clause in the Treaty Stone history: neither bloodline would ever harm an innocent descendant of the other. A cosmic "we're too tired to keep killing, let the kids live."
That clause was the only reason the palace guards didn't skewer me the day a starving mortal child wandered through the orchard gate. That clause was the only reason they looked away when the Supreme Ruler's heir chased me around mulberry trees shouting "Jack! Jack!" in a voice like wind chimes, smearing purple juice on my only shirt and calling it war paint.
If even a scrap of that oath still mattered, Elisa might still be breathing.
I pressed my forehead into cold human dirt and tasted soil, funeral smoke, and the impossible salt of hope.
Steve's voice cracked the night open.
"Jack! Do you have a death wish now? Because I swear on the old man's ghost, if you make me dig another grave this week I'm putting you in it alive."
I almost laughed. It came out wet and ugly and perfect.
He stumbled closer, reeking of pine ashes and sleepless nights. Moonlight cut him sharp and young and ancient all at once.
"I'm serious," he rasped. "Gramps left the house, the land, thirty-seven dollars in the flour tin, and a half-empty bottle of something that could strip paint. We're rich, basically. Come inside before you catch pneumonia and ruin my inheritance."
I stayed on all fours, shaking so hard my teeth clicked.
He crouched. "Talk to me. You look like you saw the devil and he owed you money."
"I saw a ghost," I croaked. "A live one."
"Yeah? She pretty?"
"Five years old and already outranks both of us."
"Great. Royalty. My favourite." A beat. "She say anything?"
"Just my name."
Steve was quiet long enough for a night bird to scream. Then: "You going after her?"
I didn't answer. I didn't have to.
He sighed like a man already measuring the next grave. "Thought so. Next time you chase ghosts across dimensions, wake me. I'll bring snacks."
The corner of his mouth twitched. "Someone's gotta keep you from getting executed twice."
Steve slung an arm under mine and hauled me up. My legs felt like wet rope.
"Move, idiot," he muttered. "We've got a portal to bully open and a little girl to kidnap from destiny. Try not to bleed on the flour tin money."
I leaned on him and we limped toward the dark house that suddenly felt too small for everything I had to do before dawn.
We pushed through the door. The familiar creak sounded like a sigh.
I stopped dead in the middle of Gramps's kitchen, staring at the flour tin, the chipped mug, the ghost of his hand worn into the table's edge.
Tomorrow I would leave the only real home I'd ever had. Tomorrow I would walk back into the place that murdered me once and ask it to do it again.
My throat closed. The weight dropped on me all at once.
Steve's hand landed on my shoulder, rough and steady.
"Hey," he said, voice low. "You breathe, remember? That's still step one."
I swallowed smoke and starlight and every unsaid sorry.
"I'm scared," I whispered, five years old again.
Steve pulled me into a hug that smelled of pine ashes and sleepless nights. His shirt was damp where my face pressed.
"Me too, idiot," he muttered into my hair. "But I'm coming with you. Someone's gotta keep the little star from blinding you."
I laughed once (wet, broken, alive) and held on until the shaking stopped.
Outside, the night smelled of frost and distant jasmine.
Inside, two boys who had already buried one father stood wrapped around each other, promising the dark we weren't finished yet.
I'm coming, Elisa. Wait for me, little star. I won't let the sky fall twice.