Chapter 42
Daed
The world crumbles around me, but it means nothing.
Anethesis thrashes beneath my hands, his pulse fluttering like a trapped bird, his breath wet and broken against my knuckles. I should end him. But what is vengeance when the only heartbeat that tethered me to this wretched world has gone still?
Our bond was never just magic. It was fate.
A golden thread woven through every piece of me, binding my darkness to her light.
I felt her in everything, in the pull of the void, the whisper of smoke, the rise and fall of my breath.
She was my constant, the warmth beneath my ribs, the tether that kept me from becoming nothing.
And now she’s gone. Torn away, leaving only this harrowing silence.
I want to fill it with her voice, the way my name sounded on her lips.
How can this be the end? How do I keep breathing?
My hands slip from Anethesis’s throat, falling useless at my sides as I collapse to my knees. My head bows, breath ragged, the fight bleeding out of me until there’s nothing left but the hollow thrum of loss.
Anethesis staggers backward, clutching at his neck, drawing in greedy, wheezing gulps of air. He watches me, wary and bewildered, waiting for the trick, for the snare I no longer have the will to spring.
“What are you doing?” he rasps.
“She’s gone,” I whisper, the words splintering on my tongue. “She was all that mattered. Now nothing matters. So kill me.”
He frowns, uncomprehending. “What?”
“You heard me,” I murmur. “Kill me.”
Hope leaves me in pieces, thin wisps of smoke escaping through my chest. Amara was everything.
With her gone, I have lost more than love.
I have lost the future, the means to bring Estra back from An’kel, to restore what was stolen.
The flame of another Awakened has gone dark, and with it, every possibility their magic could have given us. Just like Zema before her.
Anethesis glances toward the vortex still clawing at the earth. “What do you mean, she’s gone?”
“The earth was healing her,” I say through clenched teeth. “But you wouldn’t listen.”
He swallows hard. “No. She can’t be gone. She’s Awakened.”
I snarl. “And since when has that made them immortal?”
“No…” His voice trembles, panic crawling through it like cracks in glass. “No, no, no. She can’t be dead. I need her. I need the portal. I need to get to Meranor. I need to get home!”
He throws his arm toward the vortex, but instead of rising higher, it collapses. The wind dies, the soil settles, and my hair falls heavy against my face.
Anethesis stumbles forward, half crawling, half running.
Twice he trips before reaching the upturned mound of dirt.
He drops to his knees and digs, fists clawing at the dirt, hurling it aside in frantic handfuls.
The sight of him, this once-proud lord reduced to a madman scrabbling in the mud, turns my stomach.
Through the fog of grief, I drag myself upright. My limbs shake beneath the weight of my despair, but still, I move. Step by step. Until I stand behind him, watching the soil fly.
“Enough, Anethesis,” I say, voice breaking.
He doesn’t listen. He continues to mindlessly dig.
“I said enough!”
But my plea comes too late. The dirt gives way to flesh, and my stomach lurches. Gods. It’s her.
“Stop!” I seize his arm and wrench it back, but he tears free with a wild cry, throwing himself forward again. Nails rake through the soil, clawing deeper, unearthing her an inch at a time.
“Get away from her!” I roar, lunging. My hands hook beneath his arms, dragging him away.
Anethesis jolts in my grip, and when something slams into my ribs, I think he’s driven an elbow into my chest. The pain is blinding, far too strong for the state he’s in. I release him, then stumble and drop to one knee.
Then it strikes again.
Harder.
A violent pulse beneath my sternum.
I choke on a gasp, clutching my chest. Another impact follows. And another.
But Anethesis isn’t touching me.
He isn’t even close.
This isn’t him.
It’s my own heart, pounding like it’s trying to tear free of me. Heat flares bright through my vision. I press both palms to my chest, gasping around the ache, the world tunneling to that merciless rhythm.
And then… a second heartbeat.
I go still.
Fear and hope collide inside me. I stagger toward the mound of disturbed earth. I hover there, trembling, suspended between terror and desperate belief. I don’t want to see. I can’t bear to, but I make myself look.
The soil cradles her face, the soft curve of her cheek, the slope of her nose, the mouth I have kissed and cursed and prayed for. She lies utterly still, burned and quiet and unbearably beautiful.
Something inside me breaks.
I stumble back, dragging my hands into my hair, pulling until pain shoots across my scalp. My heart riots, a frantic drum. I will tear it out of my chest before I let it lie to me again.
And then her eyes open, bright as the dawn and blazing.
A blinding shock of green light erupts from them, slamming into me with such force I’m thrown backward. I shield my face, but the radiance sears through my fingers, painting the world in emerald flame.
The beam bursts skyward, piercing through the canopy, shattering the night. The very air trembles. The battle halts. Legion soldiers stare, slack-jawed, blades falling from their hands. The beasts retreat, step by slow step, into the dark embrace of the forest.
“I told you!” Anethesis cries, voice shrill with wild ecstasy. “She cannot die!”
The earth heaves beneath us. The wind spirals, keening like the cry of gods, and the stars seem to shrink away, and then she rises, my Amara.
Her arms outstretched, her chin dipped low, her body aglow with that same impossible light.
The earth falls from her like dust shaken from a dream.
The glow carries her upward, wrapping her in radiance and life.
Her wounds are gone. Every burn erased, leaving not even the faintest shadows of what had been. Her skin is even richer, smoother, bronzer than before, her hair longer, spilling in silken waves, tumbling past her knees.
A mantle of living moss and tiny blooms drapes over her body, clinging as though the forest itself had risen to claim her, to mark her as its own reborn queen.
And over her face rests a sheer emerald veil, the fabric is nearly transparent, a breath of green that barely softens the lines beneath: the curve of her cheek, the quiet shape of her lips, the rise of her breath that moves the gossamer like a sigh.
She looks untouched by death.
Untouched by anything but power.
“Amara!” Anethesis’s voice shatters the moment. He staggers to his feet, arms outstretched, his face lit with manic devotion. “Look how glorious you have become! Allow me to ease the weight of that power, sweet Awakened.”
My stomach twists. I see the hunger in his eyes, the same blasphemous greed that drove him to ruin. I know what he means to do before his lips even part. The collar. The curse.
“Don’t…” I choke out, but it’s too late.
Amara moves.
Her hands rise, palms facing outward, and she traces mirrored sigils in the air. I don’t understand the gestures. I don’t need to. The ground answers.
Vines burst from the earth beneath Anethesis’s feet. They wind up his legs, his torso, his arms, binding him tight. He gasps before the vines coil around his throat. One vine pauses, hovering, almost curious and then drives forward, forcing itself between his lips.
His eyes bulge, his body convulsing as the vine burrows deeper. The sound is wet, terrible. I want to look away but cannot. His throat swells and pulses and then, impossibly, beauty blooms from the horror.
Golden blossoms spill from his mouth, delicate petals bursting open, followed by smaller vines studded with heart-shaped leaves.
The growth spreads swiftly, mercilessly, devouring him whole.
In moments, Anethesis is gone, consumed entirely, his body replaced by a towering sculpture of vines and flowers, swaying gently in the wind as though it had always been there.
The air stills. His magic vanishes with him. The collar around my throat loosens and fades to dust.
I rise slowly, circling the floral monument that was once the Lord of House Ithranor. My steps falter as I look to her. My wife.
I have never feared Amara. I have fought beside her, bled for her, loved her with the reckless arrogance of a warrior who thought himself unbreakable.
I believed I was the stronger of us, the darker, the more dangerous.
But as she hovers above me, silent and radiant, her emerald robes flowing like banners of the earth itself, I understand how foolish I have been.
“Wife,” I say, my voice barely a breath. “Amara. My love.”
She does not answer. The veil ripples faintly across her face, concealing whatever emotion might live beneath it.
Without a word, Amara turns from me, gliding through the air toward the fallen rabbit, the small, broken thing lying still in the grass with the arrow through its heart.
She descends in silence. Bare feet touch the ground like whispers. Her green robe parts as she kneels, the moss and blossoms pluming around her like breath. One slender hand slips from the long sleeve and hovers over the creature. She traces a single knuckle along its fur, matted and red.
I move closer anyway, my steps slow and careful, wanting her to know I am here, yet terrified she might look at me.
“Amara,” I murmur.
No reply. She doesn’t so much as flinch. Her touch remains tender, as if the rabbit might stir under her hand at any moment.
“Amara,” I try again. “It’s me. Daed.”
Still nothing. It’s as though she’s elsewhere entirely, half here, half somewhere beyond my reach.
I stand close enough to feel the faint pull of her magic, the warmth of the bond that still ties us.
Her scent drifts toward me, earth and rain and the faint sweetness of blossoms, and it breaks me open in quiet ache.
I want to touch her, to fall to my knees and beg her to see me, but I wait.
I’ve always waited. For her beneath the ground, above the clouds, across the sea.
I could wait an eternity more if that’s what she asked of me.
She lifts her hand, her fingers brushing the shaft of the arrow buried in the rabbit’s chest. The wood is slick with blood, far too large for such a fragile creature. She studies it a moment, then closes her hand around it.
“We can bury it, if you wish,” I say softly. My words sound foolish in the hush that follows.
Then, swift as the snap of a branch, she yanks the arrow free. The small body jerks with the motion before going still again. Amara tosses the arrow aside and gathers the rabbit in both hands.
The earth trembles beneath my boots.
A shiver ripples through the clearing, a breath through the bones of the world. I hear voices rising from the forest. Low. Ancient. The language of roots and wind. The trees stir as if remembering something long forgotten.
I turn toward the dark edge of the woods, and between the trunks, eyes gleam. Dozens of them. Watching. Waiting. The forest holds its breath.
Amara’s robes lift in a wind that belongs only to her.
The veil rises with it, and for the first time I see her eyes clearly, blazing green, alive with power.
Veins of light thread through her skin, pulsing like the heartbeat of the earth itself, and that wild energy flows into the small, lifeless creature in her hands.
A sound. A faint sputter. A gasp. Then a delicate chitter.
The rabbit’s eyes snap open, bright and black and shining. Its legs twitch, kicking weakly, and for a moment it simply sits there in her palms, uncertain.
Then, above it all, comes the sweetest sound I have ever heard.
Amara laughs.
Soft and easy. A sound of pure, effortless joy.
The green light fades from her skin. The veins dim.
The forest exhales, and the Souls watching from the trees retreat, melting back into the dark.
Amara strokes the rabbit’s fur once more, her thumb brushing over its ear.
The creature twitches its nose and leaps from her hands, bounding through the grass before vanishing into the trees.
I can’t move. Can’t think. My jaw hangs useless as I stare at her.
“Amara… how did you…” My voice fails. My mind spins. I saw that arrow. I saw it tear through the poor thing’s chest. There was no life left in it. No magic that could restore what had been taken. Dead is dead. Dead cannot return.
Unless…
Slowly, she turns her head toward me, as if I’d spoken the thought aloud. Her gaze finds mine, then she rises and walks towards me. With every place her foot touches, the ground blossoms anew. Grass greening, tiny flowers unfurling, life blooming in her wake.
Gods, I am trembling. My bottom lip caught between my teeth, my breath trapped in my chest.
Her face, the face my heart could sketch in the dark, is alight with warmth and knowing. She inhales and when her lips curve, it almost undoes me.
“Husband,” she says.
The word strikes through me like lightning, and I fall.
My knees hit the earth before I even realize it.
My arms wrap around her waist, pulling her close, clinging as if I could anchor her here by sheer will, and when her hands slip into my hair, fingers threading gently through the dark strands, I break completely.
The words tumble from my mouth like a sacred oath.
“My queen.”