Chapter 30
Vaelor sat straight up in bed, eyes crackling when his head jerked to the door, his chest rising and falling quickly.
I scrambled to my knees, my shift bunching around my waist, the autumn breeze blowing through the open window and sending unnerving chills over me.
“W-what is it?” I asked, searching his face, but he saw straight through me, his face pale and tight.
No, he was looking past me, past the door, down the hall, the feelers of his magic reaching well beyond our chambers.
My breaths came quick, uneven, when he didn’t respond. His jaw clenched as he pressed his palm over my womb, and he kissed me. He kissed me like it was the first and last time, deeply, reaching and touching and caressing every inch of my soul.
My lips trembled. This isn’t right.
He nudged me back softly, pushing until I stood at the edge of the bed before he broke his lips from mine. “Go into the closet, love.”
“W-why? What’s happening?” I grabbed his hands, but he pulled away, his glowing eyes glued to the door. “Look away from the door. Look at me, Vaelor. Look at me.”
He closed his eyes before finally, finally looking at me, his expression broken.
“No… No, this is a nightmare.” I shook my head and pinched my arm. “Wake up.” I pinched harder. Harder. Harder. “Wake up. Wake up. Wake?—”
His eyes snapped back to the door, and he shoved me away from the bed as he crawled out. “Go, Elora.”
I stumbled back, gasping, hyperventilating, shattering, dying. “Vaelor…”
“Now!” He stood with his back to me, blocking the closet.
I stumbled inside on weak legs, sobbing silently, my cheeks soaked. “It’s just a nightmare, though. Just a nightmare.”
I grabbed a pin from the top shelf and pricked my finger with trembling hands and blurry eyes. Tears speckled the floor at my feet as a droplet of blood formed. I turned to Vaelor, and he stilled when I planted a kiss between his bare shoulder blades.
“I love you,” I whispered before tracing the E he’d carved for me and slipping inside his nook.
I lifted the slat barely wide enough to look through when the chamber door slammed open, and I watched.
I watched everything, numb, barely breathing as silent tears slid down my cheeks.
So numb. Immobile. Frozen in time.
I could hear nothing. I could do nothing. I could only watch.
Red wings and red eyes and red blood.
Red blood.
Blood.
Running and pooling and flowing where it shouldn’t.
And then, silver eyes.
Silver eyes met mine.
Silver eyes that no longer glowed, no longer sparked.
He lifted a hand to me, and everything shattered. Splintered.
My world, my reality, my heart was crushed into a million pieces.
Dust.
My heart was dust, scattered among broken, confused stars, but I ripped the door open anyway. My legs trembled when I stepped out of the closet into warm liquid. My gaze fell to see my bare foot in a pool of red, and my knees gave out. I collapsed on a choked sob, and my palms found that red too.
I crawled to him.
My feet. My hands. My knees.
Covered in Vaelor.
“It’s just a nightmare,” I mumbled as my stained hands hovered over him. “We’ll wake up.”
“Sun ray…” His voice was strained, and my gaze snapped to his face, ashen.
I touched a hand to his cheek, and his skin was cold. Too cold.
My hand slid into his hair, and a trail of dark red followed its path.
His breath hitched, a gargling sound leaving his lips. “I love…you, Elora. I have always…loved you.”
“I love you, Vaelor.” I kissed his forehead. His nose. His cheeks. His lips. “I love you and our baby, and we’re going to wake up. You’ll be okay because it’s just a nightmare.”
“Deam meus…es…tu missus.” His words floated around me like a breeze, like a whisper, like his last breath.
I pulled back, but his eyes were closed.
“Open your eyes, Vaelor.” My body shook, and I cupped his cheeks. “Open your eyes. Open your eyes! Open?—”
His chest wasn’t rising and falling. My eyes darted over him, around him, aimlessly searching. I watched his chest to count his breaths like he did mine when he was scared, but nothing. I touched his throat to feel his pulse. Nothing.
“Wake up, Vaelor. Wake up…” A silent sob wracked me so viciously, my vision went black, and I fell back, landing in more of him, more of his sticky warmth. “It’s just a nightmare.”
A hand touched my shoulder. I didn’t move.
An arm tried to turn me. I didn’t move.
I waited.
I waited and waited and waited for Vaelor to wake up, for me to wake up.
But the blood cooled, and Vaelor didn’t move.
The blood cooled, and his chest didn’t rise.
The blood cooled, and he didn’t hold me. He didn’t reach for me. He didn’t say my name.
The blood cooled, and he didn’t wake up.
Because this wasn’t a nightmare.
It wasn’t a nightmare, and I was coated in Vaelor’s blood, and Vaelor was dead.
Dead.
Dead.
“Vaelor is dead.” The words were barely a whisper until they weren’t. Until I screamed.
A hand clamped over my mouth, but I didn’t stop. I screamed like my heart was being ripped from my body—because it was. I screamed like I’d watched the world end—because I had, and now I was simply waiting for the rest of us to crumble around him: me, the castle, Ravaryn, the realm.
I screamed until my throat was shredded and blood coated my tongue too.
A figure sat in front of me, blocking Vaelor from sight, and I shoved them out of the way with everything I had. I scrambled forward and collapsed on his chest.
He didn’t smell of sea storms or leather or warmth anymore.
He smelled metallic.
Because Vaelor Wrynwood was dead.
“Elora,” a voice said.
I scrunched my eyes, shaking my head as I held onto Vaelor’s body. He’d told me of the veil, of the other side, and I knew he wasn’t here, not in this body, but I couldn’t let go. I screamed into his chest, sobbing, wailing, begging him to hear me, to return.
“You promised, Vaelor. You promised…”
You promised to return to me every day, every fucking day, so return to me.
“Please.” My voice cracked, choked and blistering in my raw throat. “Please. Please.”
Now, I understood that wife, willing to do horrible things to bring her husband back.
I understood why Alden grieved for two hundred years, waiting day by day with one foot in the grave for the moment he would see her again.
I understood why Vaelor was terrified, why he was willing to sacrifice centuries to fear and restraint.
I understood pain—slicing, suffocating, deafening, drowning pain with no end.
“I’m going to die, Vaelor,” I mumbled. I sucked in breath after breath, but no air came, and I didn’t fight it. Not when my vision tunneled on his face and my chest burned, not when stars sparked in my sight and I pretended they were Vaelor’s raindrops. Because physical pain was easier, more manageable. “I’m drowning.”
Suddenly, I was thrust back under that icy water. His body was cold, his blood cold, his damned heart—once so warm it felt like the sun inside my chest—cold, and I was drowning, my sticky hands trembling, tingling, fingers numb.
I’m going to join you because this will kill me. This will end the world and destroy the realm and shatter everything.
How could it not?
“Listen,” the voice said again, this time with more…power.
A dark fog settled over my mind. My sobs eased, and I looked up to find rusty red irises staring back.
Adon knelt on the other side of Vaelor, his eyes wild and bloodshot, panicked. “I didn’t—I wouldn’t have?—”
“Did you do this?” My voice was hoarse and broken, barely audible. It felt like white-hot daggers in my throat, but I screamed the words so they’d come out like whispers. “Did you do this, Adon?”
He shook his head. “No. No, I didn’t know. I didn’t… Adrastus said he just wanted his throne. He was going to imprison Vaelor, and my family would take the crown again. I-I didn’t know. He s-said?—”
“You killed him.” My voice was hollow. My chest was hollow. My soul was hollow, and I was numb.
“W-what?” Adon’s eyes snapped to me. “No.”
My lips trembled. “You brought Adrastus here, didn’t you?”
Adon scrambled back, fisting his hair, shaking his head over and over. He muttered words I didn’t care enough to hear.
I stared at Vaelor’s face, pale and lifeless.
Dead.
Adon’s voice grew louder, but still, I didn’t listen, not until he used some kind of magic in his voice and forced me to hear him.
“Forget.” His expression was manic, his nostrils flared and face red. Sweat beaded on his forehead, disrupted by a drop of blood sliding down his temple. His hands, coated in Vaelor, had soaked his hair too.
Vaelor was everywhere he shouldn’t be.
“Fuck, h-how do I do this? Fuck. Fuck!” He fisted his hair again, ripping out a few strands before lunging for me. “Forget.”
“No.” I shoved at his chest, but he came right back and gripped my arms. “No, Adon! Do not take him from me.”
I kicked and fought and bit and clawed. His fingers dug into my skin, tightening until I thought my arms would snap. Still, I didn’t listen. I didn’t stop.
“Forget,” he said again, and that dark fog slithered over me like death, cold and icy and unnerving and dead.
“Do not take him from me, Adon! Do not take him!” I needed to remember. I needed to remember everything, every painful detail: his smile, his laugh, his kindness, his love and compassion and scent, his death, so I could tell our daughter. I had already forgotten my parents. I would not forget him too.
I could not.
Forgetting him would be to forget the other half of myself.
“Forget I was here.”
I stilled in his hold, his vile fog infiltrating my mind until I could see nothing but darkness.
“Forget we ever tried to rescue Rogue Draki.”
A silent tear slid down my cheek.
“Forget you ever met me or Drakyth or saw the Sanctuary. Adrastus killed Vaelor alone. No one else was here.”
I finally met his gaze, and he flinched.
“Find Vaelor’s healer and his father and leave, Elora. Go to Auryna. Marry.”
And just like that, every part of me that mattered withered and died.