Chapter 70 #2
“I know what you’re thinking,” he said, and that sad smile—gods, that fucking smile—spread across his bloodied lips. “That you can’t do this. That this will destroy you.”
I was shaking, my whole body rejecting what my mind knew had to happen.
“But you can.” Blood trickled from his mouth. “You can do this, Isara. Because you’re stronger than you think, and because—”
His eyes flicked toward Fenric, toward the writhing, broken form of the man he loved, and the pain that crossed his features was so raw it carved something out of my chest.
“Because he’s dying, and you’re the only one who can save him.”
“Linc—” The word came out as a sob, broken and desperate.
“Shhh.” He was still smiling, that terrible, beautiful smile that said he forgave me before I’d even done anything to forgive. “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”
No, it wasn’t. Nothing about this was okay. Nothing about this would ever be okay.
But Fenric screamed again, and Linc’s face crumpled for just a moment—pure anguish flashing across his features before he forced that smile back into place.
“He’ll understand,” Linc whispered, and his voice broke just slightly. “Fenric will understand. You know he will. He’d do the same thing if our positions were reversed.”
He would. Gods, he absolutely would.
“Just do it,” Linc said, and there was something almost pleading in his tone now. Not for his life, but for me. For my ability to live with what came next. “Save him. Just do it.”
My hands were trembling so badly I could barely grip the knife.
“You’ll be okay,” he said, and somehow he made it sound like the truth. “You will. You’re going to be okay, Isara. All of you are.”
The certainty in his voice nearly undid me. The absolute faith he had in our ability to survive this, to keep going even after—
I took a step forward.
Then another.
My vision blurred with tears I couldn’t shed, not here, not in front of Xyliria, who was watching with that horrible, satisfied smile.
“That’s it,” Linc whispered, encouragement threading through his words like he was coaching me through sword practice instead of his own execution. “You can do this.”
I was shaking.
Unravelling.
Breaking apart at the seams.
Linc’s voice wrapped around me, but I was slipping.
“It’s not your fault,” he murmured, as though trying to convince me. As though he already believed it. “You did what you had to do.”
The dagger in my hands—
It was heavier than the world itself.
The only thing holding me together was the steady warmth in Linc’s eyes, the absolute trust written across his face. Trust that I would do what needed to be done.
Trust that I would save Fenric.
Trust that I would survive what came after.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“Don’t be.” That sad smile widened. “Just make sure he remembers I loved him.”
I raised it, the blade catching the torchlight, casting fractured shadows across Linc’s face. He didn’t flinch. Just kept looking at me with that steady, unbreakable faith that made me want to scream.
You can do this. You have to do this.
But even as I thought it, my body was rejecting every instinct, every rational thought. My muscles locked up, refusing to move, refusing to—
The magic around Fenric suddenly released.
He collapsed to the stone floor like a broken doll, gasping, shuddering, barely conscious. But even through the haze of agony, even with blood streaming from his nose and mouth, he saw what was happening.
Saw me standing over Linc with a blade.
“No—” The word tore from his throat. “No, no, no, Isara, please—”
Tears mixed with the blood on his face, his sobs echoing off the walls like something dying.
“Please don’t—I can’t—please—”
Linc’s jaw tightened at the sound, devastation flashing across his features. But his eyes never left mine.
“Just look at me,” he said quietly, ignoring Fenric’s broken pleas. “Don’t look at him. Look at me. We can do this.”
We.
As if this was something we were doing together. As if he was somehow sharing the burden of what I was about to—
I couldn’t breathe.
The blade trembled in my grip, my whole body shaking with the effort of trying to make myself move. To bring it down. To end this.
To take him away from Fenric forever.
“I can’t. Linc, I can’t—”
“You can,” he insisted, that terrible certainty shining in his eyes. “You can, Isara. For him. For all of us.”
But I was staring at Fenric, at the way he was reaching for us with shaking hands, his face streaked with tears and blood and absolute terror. At the love written in every line of his broken body as he tried to drag himself closer, tried to stop what he thought was about to happen.
At Linc, who was trying so hard to be brave for all of us. Who was willing to die to save the man he loved.
And I knew with sudden, crystalline clarity, that I couldn’t do it.
I couldn’t hurt Linc. I couldn’t take him away from Fenric. I couldn’t live with the sound Fenric would make when the blade found its mark.
But I could save them both.
My grip shifted on the dagger, angling the blade inward, the point now hovering over my own heart.
The dagger trembled in my grip, but my heart had never been steadier.
This—this I could choose.
I took a breath. A shuddering, final breath.
Just one movement. One push. One decision that I could control.
The world had stripped everything else from me. But this was mine.
My fingers tightened on the hilt. The blade kissed my skin, the first prick of pain a whisper of what would come.
A promise of release.
“Don’t you fucking dare.” Linc’s voice shattered across the chamber, no longer gentle, no longer steady. Pure panic, raw and desperate. “Isara, don’t you fucking dare.”
Cindrissian was shouting something in a fae tongue that I didn’t understand but could feel the desperate edge of.
But I wasn’t listening anymore.
The stone beneath me was slick with blood, fresh and old, the stench of iron thick in the air. My breath came fast, shallow, my lungs too small, the walls too close, the weight in my chest too much.
I could hear Darian raging as he fought against his chains. The scrape of metal on stone, the sickening crack of flesh meeting iron as he struggled. “No. Fuck—no!”
Varyth roared, jagged in a way I had never heard from him before. “ISARA!”
The walls around me blurred, the torches flickering weakly, casting long, twisting shadows that stretched like clawed hands.
I pressed the dagger harder. Felt it pierce the skin. My own blood. My own choice.
It will end here.
It will end—
The shadows exploded around me.
A storm of sound. Of song.
Not words, not truly, but I heard them all the same.
A single, resounding command. Not a plea. Not a whisper. A roar. Fierce and endless, the voice ancient and wild and full of will.
My breath stalled, the dagger hovering over my heart.
The shadows were everywhere now, crawling across the stone, climbing the walls, swallowing the torchlight. They wrapped around me as though they were trying to shield me from the world.
Live.
I couldn’t breathe.
The song was too much. A thousand threads of music woven together, layered with fury and grief and something else—beautiful and broken and familiar.
The blade in my hand trembled.
The voices were inside me now. Beneath my ribs. In my blood.
Live.
And it was more than just a word. It was memory.
Of Mireth’s laughter, Eryx’s hand in mine, Navaire’s warm laugh.
Of Varyth standing like a wall between me and death, Linc’s steady calm, Brynelle’s quiet comfort.
Of all the things I thought I’d lost, all the reasons I should be gone—and all the reasons I wasn’t.
Not yet.
My hand faltered.
I could feel the dagger’s kiss, cold against my chest. But it no longer offered relief. Only silence. And for the first time in what felt like forever…
I didn’t want silence.
The shadows didn’t retreat. They rose. Cradled me. Sank into me. Became the rhythm of my heartbeat, the air in my lungs.
And still, the song thrummed.
Live.