Chapter Seven
I wake. Confused.
“What is it?” Rowan asks, making me jump. I push up onto my elbow and glance over at him still laying in the grass on his side.
The cloak lays around me to shield the world from my nakedness, and above us, the night’s blackness has wiped away the unnatural red of the sky. It sits uneasy on me.
“Did you take some of my soul when we…”
“Made love?” he asks, fingers dancing over the bare skin of my back. “No. That was us, the bond pulling us together, making it tighter and stronger.”
I’m not sure how I feel about that. Do I want to be bound to one who needs others? I may for a while, but no matter what he says, he’ll have to absorb another woman’s soul eventually.
“You mentioned the curse before,” I say, as a cricket sings. “That it could be broken. Is that actually possible?”
“Curses are meant to be broken,” he replies. “In one way or another.”
“Do you know how?”
He hesitates. “I…don’t.”
I huff out a quiet breath. “So you’re trusting that a way exists, even if you don’t know what it is.”
“I hope,” he says softly. “I always have. It’s the only thing that keeps me from surrendering to the darkness.”
That isn’t exactly comforting.
“But meeting you,” he adds, “has given that hope a new life. For the first time, the answer feels within reach.”
A smile tugs at the corner of my lips. Rowan is the opposite of Titus in every way.
Speaking of the monster, I glance to where his body once lay. The ground is empty now, save for the crushed grass, a faint imprint of his existence. Rowan must have moved him while I slept.
“Until then, you still need to feed,” I say.
“I’m not draining your soul,” he says, amusement running through his voice.
“Not me. Another innocent woman.”
He sighs. “If I don’t, my wings won’t regenerate. I’ll be cast out of heaven and bound to earth forever.”
“Mortal?”
“You have killed and killed before, but still they look like…like this.”
“Very perceptive,” he says, pulling me to him. “They heal in increments. Very slowly. It’s part of the punishment, to keep this cycle long into eternity.”
“That’s cruel.”
“Curses are meant to be by design.” He pauses, his free hand running over the cool grass. “But I’ll never hurt you, Lyra.”
Peering up at him, I’m caught in his dark eyes that show the glimmering of his soul. There’s kindness there, and a hatred for what he’s been cursed to do, but there’s also something else that flashes bright with certainty. With compassion.
It all could make my idiotic human heart fall for him.
Do I feel something for him? I’ve spent so much of my life focused on hating creatures like him, hunting them, and now I find he’s both what I was told and nothing like it at all. He’s so much more.
Or maybe it’s just the bond? He told me of fated beings being two souls forged from one and he also told me how fate taunts, too.
I’m not sure if I believe all of that yet, but whatever is happening does feel bigger than us.
I suck in a breath and look away, tiredness pulling at me. But while I know this peace must come to an end soon, I’m not ready to give him up just yet.
Because…
Even if I’ve somehow gone and fallen in love, he must go. I may not want to kill him anymore, but he isn’t of this world. And when he takes another soul, he’ll return to the heavens until next year.
No matter what he says, I can’t return with him. I’m not divine; I don’t belong there, either.
Fate is wrong.
We can never be.
Emptiness.
I open my eyes to find the warmth beside me gone. The place where Rowan lay is already cooling, the faint impression of his body pressed into the earth like a ghost of him remains. Panic claws up my throat as I sit upright, heart hammering against my ribs.
Where is he?
The bond hums.
He wouldn’t abandon me. Not after everything.
Unless he had to.
The thought sinks its teeth into me. A woman. A soul. The curse he can’t escape. Shame twists through my chest, sharp and bitter, because part of me understands. Part of me hates that I do.
He’s gone to take another innocent.
I find the scraps of my tunic on the ground and wrap the shredded material around myself. I tie my belt at my middle to keep everything in place and then pull on my cloak.
The second I drag on my boots, I leap on my horse and gallop back into the forest.
The trees blur as I follow the pull in my chest. The invisible tether that stretches tight between us hums with warning that something is terribly wrong.
The closer I get, the more his fury vibrates through the bond. My skin prickles, and when I glance down at my hands gripping the reins, red lines streak along my skin. Dozens of tiny nicks, all erupting across my arms from an invisible foe’s blade.
Not my foe. Rowan’s.
What’s happening to him?
Then the wind is ripped from my lungs, my stomach caving from a powerful hit. It almost sends me tumbling off my horse. But by some miracle, I stay on.
This isn’t the feeling of hunger from a creature who’s seducing a victim and taking her soul. This is something else. Something violent. It feels like Rowan is fighting for his life.
Panic seizes me.
I kick my horse’s side hard, urging it to go faster. Branches tear at my skin, roots threaten to send my steed sprawling, but I don’t slow.
I have to get to him. I have to—
Another blow, this one to the side of my head, sends me reeling. My vision spins, my limbs go weak, and before I can react, I’m sliding from the saddle, rolling across the forest floor with a grunt. Every inch of me aches, and my ribs pinch painfully as I try to sit up. Broken. Must be.
Before I can catch my breath, my horse bolts, hooves thundering against the earth, and vanishes into the dark woods.
Then I hear it.
Shouts. Steel clashing. Cries of fury and of pain.
Slowly, I rise and creep toward the noise on wobbly legs. When the trees thin, a clearing opens before me, and what I see has my blood turning to ice.
Rowan stands at the center, encircled by a dozen of the Order’s most lethal men, their swords gleaming with runes meant to kill any creature, mortal or non.
“Don’t let the Cursed One escape!” someone yells from the group.
When they rush for him, he moves with deadly precision, every punch, kick, and strike meant to kill.
His torn wings whip through the air and stab like spears into anyone who gets too close.
One man swings a sword at his side, aimed for Rowan’s head, but he twists last minute, the blade only grazing him, and the same cut flares across my arms, sharp and burning.
“Monster, you’ll pay for your sins!” another with the Ashen Flame’s fire symbol on his vest bellows as he lunges from behind.
Rowan seizes him and wrenches him sideways, slamming the attacker into a second man.
Bones snap. Men crumple to the ground, groaning.
Rowan kicks, punches, and slashes, using everything he has—his fists, his legs, even his broken wings—to keep them at bay.
Arrows whistle past him, but he ducks and weaves, striking back with brutal efficiency.
Every strike he takes leaves a mark on me, mirrored pain ripping across my chest, arms, and legs. My stomach twists with dread. I need to help him.
I nock an arrow, hands shaking, and take aim from the shadows.
I release and the arrow flies true. A man cries out as it buries in his stomach and he drops.
Quickly, I string another arrow, pull back, and let it go.
This one sails mere inches in front of Rowan’s face, but strikes another of the Order’s men in the neck.
Blood spurts and within a blink, he hits the ground, dead.
But the sudden appearance of my arrows has Rowan’s gaze swinging my way, a deep worry creasing his brow.
“Lyra,” he shouts. “Go!”
In that second of distraction, one of the warriors comes up from behind him, sword drawn. I ready another arrow, but I’m too late. The blade drives straight into his back, straight through his chest and the glowing gold veins.
I try to scream, but my voice has been stolen from me.
The world shudders.
Light erupts from Rowan’s chest in a blinding surge. The ground cracks beneath him as power screams free. The remaining men stagger back in terror. One of them shouts an order—Retreat!—and they run, vanishing into the trees like frightened animals.
Then, pain. All I feel is the pain.
It tears through me, a blade of fire driven into my own heart through the bond. I collapse to my knees as blood erupts from my chest.
But I have to get to him. I have to.
I’m too slow. The wound tears wider as I crawl toward him, every movement agony. Every breath burning.
Rowan lies on the ground, light flickering weakly beneath his skin, breaths shallow and uneven. His eyes find mine as I reach him, and I collapse over his body, hands pressing uselessly against the wound that’s killing us both.
“I’m here,” I sob. “I’m here.”
The bond drums wildly, unraveling, pulling us closer even as it drags us toward the same end. My vision begins to darken at the edges. The forest tilts.
We’re going to die. Together.
Rowan’s fingers tremble as they glide over my hair. He swallows hard, pain tightening his face, and when he speaks, his voice is barely there.
“This isn’t the end,” he says, taking a shaky breath. “I’ll…I’ll find you again…in the next lifetime. Maybe then…”
“Shhh…”
My heart is breaking. I just found him. Just got a taste of what love could be and…
My breath stutters. Love. The thing I’ve been refusing to name. The truth I’ve been circling, terrified of what it could mean if I admitted it. But there’s no running from it now, not with our blood soaking into the earth, not with the bond tearing us apart from the inside.
I love him.
“I know…” he says, reading my mind again. For the last time. “I know… And my heart will forever be yours.”
Tears blind me. “In the next life then.”
“I’ll find you. I’ll always find you.”
The light beneath his skin surges, flickering out like a dying candle. The bond surges, white-hot, and I cling to him as the pain crescendos.
Brightness erupts from his chest, and like when the bond was formed, swallows us whole.
And then, nothing.