Last Ride of the Umbra Fae

33. Ryder

33

Ryder

Earth’s Fall

W e never had any time to process a gods-damn thing. We could be gone in the next breath, no time to strain against reason.

Survive. Live. Fuck. Laugh. Repeat.

End’s Wrath died, and I didn’t even know if he’d had a name beyond the legend. Vessa was the only extension of the man he had been, a father who had tried his best. I bit back the sting of tears trying to form—holding them in, but they were a force on their own.

I’d failed Vessa.

I’d failed End’s Wrath. I’d failed him no matter what he had said to Vessa.

In the beginning, all I’d cared about was saving my soul. Now, here I was, wishing I could have traded places to save his. I hadn’t been fast enough, and I would have to carry the shadows of that moment for the rest of my fucking days. Her cries would become a darkness shrouding my heart.

There was no ambush waiting at Earth’s Fall; they must have assumed we’d all been taken by that Sheriff Dawson. I knew we’d reached Blightstone Hollow’s end when a thick wall of haze lined the entrance of the forest.

“ Don’t stop. Keep riding,” Vessa said along the bond.

I wanted to say I was sorry, but if I spoke, I knew she would end me. I briefly peeked down to see the vacancy in her eyes. I’d made a promise. I would get her to Earth’s Fall even if it killed me.

I squeezed the horses’ sides to ride faster, holding my breath as my stallion leaped into the thick, steamy fog, exhaling when we landed on terrain no different from Blightstone Hollow’s. It was the chill that suddenly swept across the land that snared me. The climate changed within the blink of an eye as a cool breeze grazed our skin. My stallion slowed to a trot. We rode up to a fountain filled with crystalline waters. The fountain of the Eternal. Giant stone statues of unknown warriors whose tales had been forgotten surrounded it. We dismounted.

“Wait here,” she said, briefly glancing my way. A heaviness settled onto my chest as she spoke those words, but I watched her leave with my head tilted in observation. She confidently walked the path as if her soul had been here before. To my surprise, she walked past the fountain to a waterfall I hadn’t seen until she stood on its ledge. Beside it were statues of gods who each of our powers belonged to.

Moments passed in silence. I thought I heard Vessa’s voice carry through the wind. I could call upon my nai to listen, but I was done prying. She had many things to sort through, and I hoped, by the end of it, she would still see me in the same light she had when I’d first met her in the saloon.

The ground furiously shook before my next thought could form, throwing me off balance. The fountain of the Eternal and everything around it rose, unearthing the entire expanse from where the Earth’s Fall truly began. My eyes desperately narrowed on Vessa. I’d never seen a light so luminous in all my life, none as blinding as hers. Shadow and light surrounded her the same way nebulas brushed the night sky.

Lavender, like the freckles that glittered across her face.

I dropped to my knees as Vessa expelled every ounce of power from her chest. Her loud cry cleaved a deeper mark on my soul than ever before as she destroyed the stone within a simple breath. Panic swept down my spine in fear that she could end herself in the process. The winds picked up. I gritted my teeth, sensing the heaviness taking residence in my heart as a gale force pushed me back. The fucking hells would open up before I ever let anything take her away from me, even death itself. For the first time in a very long time, I felt the recesses of my mind tearing apart, revealing a feeling I’d kept hidden for so long.

Loss.

I was afraid to lose her the same way I’d lost my mother. I was afraid to be alone again.

Flashes of Vessa were engraved into my mind, from the way she looked down as she smiled, to the simplicity of her touch that could undo me every time, to the stoic strength she held in a world that was always at her heels.

This was how she’d chosen to live her life.

Hard and fast.

Another deep breath.

A roar tore through me as I mounted my stallion without question. I was out of my fucking mind riding toward an unearthing mass of destruction. Wind Fae had no home, but I saw one possible with her, and I would go wherever the wind carried her. I called upon the power of Nai , begging it not to fail me now as my horse jumped into the air. In desperation, I sent a silent prayer into this sacred place to carry me to her. My soul reached into our bond.

In the final leap grew a blinding light that swallowed me and my stallion whole.