Chapter 23 Rhianelle
No, this isn’t real.
My hands reach for his wounds. I press my palms against them, trying to channel Anastarros’s blessings with everything I have.
“Please,” I whisper. “Please work. Please, please, please—”
But nothing happens. He doesn’t move.
The silence that follows is suffocating. I feel their eyes on me, on us, the weight of every stare like a hand pressing down on my chest. No one moves or speaks.
“Wake up. You have to wake up,” I say, shaking him. “You’re a Strigon. You heal.”
Bas presses his trembling fingers against Arescaine’s throat, then moves to his chest. He listens for a heartbeat that never comes.
His face crumples with the grief of a healer who already knows the answer but cannot bring himself to say it.
“The curse is gone,” he whispers. “Lilith broke it.”
Bas looks at me.
“Andras is human now,” Bas continues, his voice breaking. “Mortal, and the wounds—”
“Please make him better.” Great, heaving sobs shake my entire body. “There has to be a way. There is always a way!”
I press my hands harder against Arescaine’s chest and force more of Anastarros’s blessing through me. Golden light gathers beneath my palms, flickering weakly across his blood-soaked clothes.
“Come back,” I beg. “Please come back to me.”
The blessing comes, but it finds nothing to hold onto. It slips away like water through a cracked cup.
Rainer steps forward, his face pale.
“Let me try,” he says, his voice rough and exhausted.
“Uncle, no.” My gaze drops to the dark veins beneath his skin. “The poison is still inside you.”
“You can’t,” Shade says sharply. The wounded Grimsbane reaches for Rainer but nearly collapses from the effort. “Using the blessing will make the Nevrin spread faster.”
Rainer looks at me. I know that expression. He has made his decision, and nothing I say will change it.
“It’s fine. Let me help him,” he tells me quietly.
“But I could lose you too,” I mutter.
“You won’t,” he promises.
I remember every promise he has ever made me. Rainer does not break promises.
He kneels on Arescaine’s other side, and his hands begin to glow.
The soft golden light of the blessing washes over Arescaine’s still form. It slides off him with nowhere to go. There is nothing to heal.
Because he’s not alive to receive it.
“No,” I whisper.
Heavy, uneven footsteps cross the broken floor behind us. Each one is followed by the scrape of a boot and a strained breath.
I look up to see Landon approaching. He’s barely standing with one arm missing, his body covered in wounds and blood.
Landon collapses beside me and presses his remaining hand to Arescaine’s chest. Light flares. Different from Rainer’s. This is Fae healing magic.
I watch with desperate hope as the green light surrounds Arescaine. It sinks into him, searching for something, anything.
It finds nothing.
What lies before us is just a body with no spark and no soul.
An empty shell with no life.
Landon’s hand falls away and the light dies.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, and he won’t meet my eyes. “I’m so sorry, Rhianelle. He’s gone.”
“No.” I shake my head. “No, you’re wrong. He needs time—”
A small gasp interrupts me.
I look up through tears to see Blight standing a few feet away. The little goddess is watching me with her head tilted.
“You really do love him,” she observes.
“Yes,” I say, and the word comes out certain. “Yes, I love him—”
I stop. I realize what I’ve just said. Who I’ve said it in front of.
Landon.
My mate.
I turn to look at him, expecting anger, hurt, and betrayal.
But there is only resignation on his face.
“Landon, I—”
“It’s all right,” he says softly. “I understand—”
“It’s not all right. You’re so much better!
” Blight chimes in, skipping closer. “Landon is wonderful! He’s brave and strong and handsome!
You are so alike. You share the same wounded past and survived things that should have broken you.
And he has a spider friend, just like you do! You two would be perfect together!”
Blight keeps talking. I can hear her voice, bright and wandering, bouncing from one thought to the next the way she always does. She continues listing every reason Landon and I belong together, but her voice fades into meaningless noise.
I need to focus on reviving Arescaine. I bend over him again and press both palms against his chest. I summon every fragment of blessing left inside me, forcing it into his motionless body until my arms begin to shake.
“Please live,” I whisper. “Please, Arescaine. Please.”
“Rhianelle,” Blight says in a less playful voice. “I have a confession to make.”
She lowers her head and scuffs the toe of her shoe through the dust, suddenly looking more like a guilty child than an ancient goddess.
“I took something from you,” she continues, and she sounds sheepish now.
On any other day, I would have smiled and entertained her strange games and endless mischief. She is a goddess after all, and I have learned it is safer to humor her than not.
But what does it matter now?
What does anything matter if Arescaine is gone?
No.
I press my hands harder against his chest, forcing the blessing deeper, refusing to let it slip away.
Arescaine is not gone. He cannot be gone. I will not let him be gone.
“I’m sorry. But seeing you now...” The little goddess trails off. “I think you should have it back.”
Blight touches my forehead, and the world explodes.
Memories come rushing back. Lost and found and mine.
They come rushing in like a flood, drowning me in moments I had forgotten I lived.
Arescaine and I in the cottage, his hands gentle as he braids my hair. Arescaine and I dancing in the snow. Svenn and I in bed, his body wrapped around mine, whispering promises in the dark. Wait… Svenn?
Arescaine is Svenn.
My husband.
“I love you, Rhianelle.”
“I love you too, Svenn. Always.”
Our wedding returns to me in fragments of silver and moonlight.
The forced ceremony with the elders, officiated by Balthazar… and the real one in the forest under the stars. It’s just us and Coral and the moonlight.
His hands holding mine. The wonder in his eyes when I spoke my vows. The soft tremor in his voice when he answered with his own.
“You’re my wife,” he’d said, sliding the wedding ring onto my finger. A ring I don’t remember having. A ring I—
I gasp and look down at my hand. There is a ring on the finger I believed had been bare for months.
The ring itself is a simple woven vine, enclosed within a gleaming silver setting.
It was always there.
I just couldn’t see it.
More memories flood in.
Svenn teaching me to fight along with his shadow Coinneach.
Svenn holding me when I cried about the war.
Svenn laughing when Coral knocked him into the mud.
Svenn making love to me and calling me precious.
“You’re my forever,” I’d told him once.
“And you’re mine,” he’d replied. “In this life and in death.”
“No,” I whisper, shaking my head. “No, no, no—”
The bond with Landon had never felt entirely like mine. It always felt like wearing someone else’s skin. Suddenly the golden thread between us snaps.
It doesn’t hurt.
Breaking a mate bond should be agony and tear the soul in half. But this just feels like waking up. It’s like opening my eyes after a long, confusing dream. Because it was never real.
Landon was never my chosen.
Svenn was.
Svenn is.
And I forgot him.
I forgot him.
“I’m sorry,” I sob, pressing my face against Svenn’s cold chest. “I’m so sorry. I forgot you. I forgot us. I forgot our wedding and our promises and everything. I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry—”
His body doesn’t respond. Svenn doesn’t move or breathe.
Because he’s gone.
My love… my real, true, only love is gone. I can’t even tell him I remember.
“Svenn… please wake up.”
I can’t tell him I love him. I can’t tell him that every moment we had was precious and perfect.
“I remember,” I whisper against his chest, my tears soaking into his blood-soaked tunic. “I remember everything now. I remember loving you. I remember being loved by you.”
I lift my head, pressing my forehead against his. His skin is so cold.
“I remember our vows,” I continue, my voice breaking. “You promised to love me in darkness and in light. In life and in—”
I stop.
In life and in death.
That’s what he said.
In life and in death.
My hands are shaking as I pull back. As I look around the throne room with new eyes.
Everyone is staring at me. Everyone except Bas. He kneels beside Svenn with his head bowed, mourning the brother he has only just regained.
My gaze passes over the others. Rainer kneels beside Shade, his grief hidden behind the stoic mask he has worn for centuries. The wolf—Lucien remains close to them. Garrett stands among the broken remains of the throne room. Landon watches me with sad, understanding eyes.
“I’m sorry,” I say to him. “I’m sorry for—for everything.”
“Don’t be,” he replies softly. “You love him. That’s not something to apologize for.”
“But you’re my—” I stop to correct myself. “You were supposed to be my mate.”
“I know.” He smiles and it’s genuine despite the pain in his eyes. “But some things aren’t meant to be. Even when Fate itself tries to force them.”
Movement flickers behind one of the pillars. Blight peers around the stone, hiding most of herself from view.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers.
I turn back to Svenn and I make a decision. I rest my forehead against his chest one more time, feeling the terrible stillness where his heartbeat should be.
He’s gone.
My fingers are still shaking as I reach for one of the discarded weapons on the floor. Shade’s blade is sharp enough.
I press the blade against my palm and pull.
The pain is clean and bright. Blood wells up, dark red and alive. It drips onto the stone, steaming faintly in the cold air.
“Elven Queen, you are bleeding,” Bas whispers, alarm in his voice.
I begin to draw.
My blood is my ink and the floor is my canvas. The rune comes easily, flowing from my memory. It’s just like the ones I’ve drawn before.
“What are you summoning?” Shade asks warily.
The first line of the rune drinks the light around it. A tremor reverberates through the shattered throne room at the second rune. By the third, every flame gutters low, and a silence deeper than the Hollow settles over us.
Shade inhales sharply. He recognizes what I am drawing.
“Rhianelle,” he warns.
I do not stop.
The shadows in the corners of the room deepen. Frost spreads across the floor as the rune becomes more complex. I finish the last line and place my bloody palm in the center of the rune.
The blood beneath my hand turns black. A pulse travels through the circle like the beat of a heart buried beneath the world.
Every shadow bends toward me. The air grows heavy, pressing against my lungs as something ancient turns its attention upon the throne room.
I summon one of the Un.
Death.