Chapter 61 #3
My hands slipped from his shoulders to his nape. For one reckless heartbeat, I hesitated. Then I threaded my fingers through the dark silk of his hair. A quiet breath escaped him.
I closed my eyes.
There was only this.
Only him.
And the impossible, foolish hope that the moment would last forever.
"I have..." The words rumbled through his chest, and into mine. "I have a gift for you."
He eased back just enough for our eyes to meet. His hands rose to cup my cheeks, tipping my face up to his. The softness had vanished from his expression, a faint furrow marking his brow as his silver-flecked eyes searched mine.
His gaze dropped to my mouth. My pulse stumbled.
He wet his lips.
My heart lurched as I waited for him to close the last impossible distance between us. But he didn’t.
"A parting gift."
My mouth tugged downward.
"Tomorrow we'll find the well." His thumb traced lightly over my cheekbone. "If everything goes as it should... our bond will be broken."
The words emptied me.
I’d wanted this. Dreamed of the day I'd finally be free of him.
So why did it suddenly feel as though the ground beneath me had begun to crumble? As though I were standing on the edge of something vast, watching it disappear beneath my feet?
"Elowen." His voice was quiet, almost pained. "Don't look at me like that."
The sting in my eyes was unbearable. "Like what?" I asked, blinking hard.
He rested his forehead against mine. "Like we don't have to do this."
He brushed the backs of his fingers down my cheek, so gently it made my chest ache.
"We'll both finally have what we've been fighting for," he murmured. "You'll be back in Aedric's arms." His voice shook. "And I'll finally find Dannis."
His words scattered like broken glass in my chest.
I hadn’t told him.
The truth I'd hidden. The truth I'd been too much of a coward to give him. How had I kept it from him for so long?
My chin quivered. I tried to speak, to finally tell him, but I fumbled with the words, unable to shape them properly. "Rìan..."
His finger came to rest against my lips.
"Just… let me give this one thing back to you..." His voice roughened, almost too quietly to hear. "... while you're still mine."
He lifted my hands from around his neck and pressed them against his chest. Beneath my palms, his heart beat hard and fast, the only crack in his carefully held composure.
He drew a quiet breath. "Look at me."
I did.
The silver in his eyes brightened. Then it spilled through his irises like moonlight flooding dark water.
I felt it before I saw it.
His magic spread between us, enormous and silent, shadows stretching across unseen ground as they reached for my mind. My Eidra surged forward at once, eager for the touch of his power.
I jerked backward, but his hands caught my wrists, holding them firmly against his chest.
"Rìan—what are you doing?"
“What I do best.”
“You can’t dreamwalk with me—my magic… it’s too risky—” It could swallow his whole.
"Relax." His gaze softened, something naked in his expression rooting me where I stood. "Try not to drain me dry, all right?" he smiled. "I might need some of it tomorrow."
My heartbeat fluttered wildly, a hummingbird trapped beneath my ribs. "Why are you doing this?"
"Close your eyes."
I couldn't.
Fear rooted me where I stood.
Not fear of him—but of what my Eidra might do to him if his magic entered me again.
"Let me in, Elowen."
Again, he spoke my name, and something in the way it fell from his lips made my heart beat faster.
His fingers tightened around my wrists. "Trust. Yourself."
Those two little words crumbled the last walls of my defense.
He wasn't asking me to trust him. He was telling me to trust that I was stronger than the magic in my veins—that terrible, limitless power that could destroy entire worlds.
Somehow, he believed I could control it. Believed I wouldn't hurt him.
He was telling me to trust myself—because he already did.
I let my eyes drift closed.
Immediately, his magic moved, brushing the outermost edges of my mind with astonishing gentleness, so light I might have mistaken it for a wandering thought had every instinct in my body not recognized it instantly. Then, without the slightest hesitation, it flowed into me.
It slipped through the chambers of my mind like cool mist spilling through an open valley, ancient and fathomless, its presence somehow as recognizable and comforting as my own heartbeat.
It was a power vast enough to shatter my mind without effort, to unravel every memory, every thought, every piece of who I was—and yet, somehow, impossibly, every knot of tension inside me melted away as it dragged me into that infinite darkness.
I felt my Eidra yearning for it, longing to entwine itself with the power of its mate after being denied it for so long. Yet it only watched, entranced, as his magic wandered through the mind of its host, not to dominate it—but to soothe.
Ready?
That voice that wasn’t sound but thought—the same one that had spoken to me in the void. It was like finding a familiar hand in the dark.
Yes.
The images flooded me.