Chapter 7
Lore
Wind swept past, even in this fractured place, and rattled the shards like discordant chimes.
Another fragment, perched high on a leaning fountain, reflected endless darkness. My chest tightened even as I walked over and reached for it.
A cavern. Dirt floor. Shattered bones. Echoing cries.
Reyla stood at the mouth of a vast cave, a sword in her hand, her chest heaving. Others dressed in leathers like her battled creatures like the one she’d killed in the village. Screams rang from every side. The air hung with the rank smell of blood.
She ran toward a tall blond man fighting at the center of the chaos, his movements crisp and unrelenting, his blade a blur. She placed her back to his, and for a breath, they moved as one. Perfectly aligned. Trusted. Known.
I’d never seen her more beautiful.
And then the beast struck.
Its claw slashed him wide open, and he fell…
“Kinart,” she screamed. She dropped beside him, pulling him into her lap. Her sword slipped from her hand. I doubted she noticed.
“Kinart, no. No, please.” Her hand shook as she pressed it against the wound like she could hold the life inside him by force. “Stay with me. Please. Please don’t go.” The anguish in her voice gouged the air.
His face had already gone pale. His mouth moved, but no words made it to me. She cradled the back of his head.
“I’m here,” she whispered, over and over, her lips trembling as she kissed his forehead. “Don’t go. Don’t go. It should’ve been me.”
She said it like a confession. A truth she'd lived with for a long time.
When his body stilled, she cried out. Such a guttural sound. She leaned over him, shaking, breathing in broken sobs, clinging to him, praying for the world not to take him.
After a long moment, her shoulders stiffened. Her hand moved to close his eyes. She grappled to rise to her feet and lift her sword. After wiping her face on her sleeve, she gave him one last look.
My breath caught because I was watching her shove her grief behind a wall deep inside, giving her mourning no home.
I staggered backward, pressing my hand against my chest where my heart threatened to shatter. “You loved him.” The words scraped up my throat. “You loved him completely, and watching him die broke something inside you.”
My knees hit the fractured ground again, and I didn't try to stop the fall.
“That's why I see both healing and heartbreak in your eyes when I tell you I love you. Those words bring you joy and terror in equal measure.” I dragged my hands through my hair.
“You're not afraid of dying for me, Wildfire.
You're afraid of living through losing me.”
The wind howled through the broken landscape, carrying echoes of her anguished cries. “Every time you've held yourself back. Every wall you've built. It wasn't to keep me out. It was to keep yourself from shattering again.”
Understanding roared through me. “You think loving me fully means I'll be ripped away. That caring completely is a death sentence for the person you love.” I pressed my palms flat against the glass-strewn earth.
“I won't let fear of what might happen steal what we have right now.
Loving me isn't what will destroy you, Wildfire. It's what will save us both.”
My voice dropped to a fierce whisper. “Whatever happens, I need you to know that loving you has been the only real thing in my life. I can't promise you forever, love. I wish I could. But I can promise you that every moment I have left will be spent loving you without reservation.”
Her strength wasn’t a duty. It was her punishment, a quiet sentence she carried for not dying in Kinart’s place.
Pain like that didn't fade. Not ever. It left a gouge across your soul.
These shards were pieces of her and their edges cut deeply, but I’d come here knowing this might be tough. I’d willingly accepted that I would give everything I had and more if needed.
A darker shard loomed to my right, and I walked over, bending down to take it into my hand. Stroke my finger across the smooth surface and it…
In this one, Reyla as I knew her now, sat bound to a wooden chair. Vines wrapped her wrists, her ankles, her throat. They twitched with magic. She strained against them, her jaw clenched, her breath coming fast.
A man crouched in front of her. Handsome. Polished. But his eyes were void of warmth. He smiled calmly, like he was owed something.
He pressed his thumb to her forehead.
She screamed, and it tore through me.
“Stop,” I choked. “Don’t touch her.”
He leaned closer and whispered something I couldn’t hear.
Her eyes widened, and her lips parted, but no sound came. Her eyes went glassy, and her limbs sagged.
The vines did not loosen.
Her magic poured from her into his waiting hand. He drank it like wine meant for kings, his lips parted, a peaceful expression on his face. Entitled, as if this was his right.
And my wildfire wilted. She was left to wander a desert ether alone while he drained the only thing that was truly hers.
The shard tore away from my hand.
I stumbled back, breathing hard, a bitter taste in my mouth.
Rage thundered through me, but there was nothing to strike, nothing to save.
I snarled, my hands shaking with the need to wrap them around that man's throat. “She wasn't yours to take from.” I paced through the shattered glass. “It was her magic, her voice, her very essence, and you drank it like it belonged solely to you.”
My chest heaved with helpless fury. “She fought for her mind while you stole pieces of her soul.” I slammed my fist against a broken pillar, welcoming the bite of pain.
“Do you know what you took? Not just power. You took the part of her that makes her laugh, that makes her burn bright, that makes her who she is today.”
Dropping my head, my voice broke. “No wonder you guard yourself so carefully, love. No wonder you hold your magic close. Someone taught you that letting go means being devoured.”
This wasn’t only a memory of violation, it was a warning. She didn’t fear death but the emptiness that came after, the slow undoing of who she was until nothing remained.
The wind carried away my anger, leaving only hollow understanding behind. “That's why you’ve been so careful when you learn about power. You'd rather fight alone than risk someone else taking what's yours.”
She’d spent her whole life holding herself tight, sharp, and composed, though not to survive, but to stay herself. Because power, for her, wasn’t pride.
It was protection.
Let go, and someone would take everything.
She knew that. And now, so did I.
Another shard rotated in jerking circles in the air beside me, whispering in fractured sounds. I latched onto it.
Now she stood between Lorant and Merrick, between the two men we used to be. Her head turned one way, then the other. The fists at her sides trembled, her knuckles white with strain. Her chest rose in shallow bursts.
“I don’t… I can’t choose,” she rasped. “They’re both you. You’re both real. Vital. What do I have to give up to keep all the parts of you? Because I love them all.”
She wasn’t afraid of making a decision. She was afraid of what that decision might destroy. Choosing one part might mean killing another. She didn’t want to lose any of it, not after what she’d been through.
She’d lived a life where survival meant sacrifice. And now, even love felt like a test she had to pass by holding everything close, even when it tore through her.
“No one’s asking you to give anything up.” My voice was only an echo in this twisted world. “You fused us into one. You made us whole. You were never supposed to be forced to choose.”
The shard stretched and dissolved, and the image shifted.
A sharp scent of blood hit first, followed by acrid smoke and smoldering wood.
Evergorne's marketplace. The borgons. The attack.
I battled in the center of town, defeating one enemy after the next, until claws slipped past my defenses. Pain erupted in my side. Blood flowed too freely. My body collapsed to the cobblestones, warmth gushing down my side.
And Reyla sobbed, shouted, and sprinted toward me like I was the last thing in the world that mattered.
The beast roared. She roared louder.
She fought for me, like I was worth everything to her.
Standing over me, she slashed, struck, and screamed until the attacking borgons fell.
And when she dropped beside me, her hands found the wound.
Magic sparked from her fingers until her arms shook, and her voice shattered under the weight of her terror.
I was barely conscious. The blood loss had taken too much. But I remembered one thing, telling her I loved her. The curse had never let me speak the words. That’s when I knew I was dying, because nothing was holding me back.
She screamed for me to stay. Shouted that she loved Merrick. Lorant. All of me.
She gave all she had. Her magic. Her body. Her soul. Because to her, love had to be enough to save me, or else it meant nothing at all.
It was so clear to me now. She didn’t only love deeply. She measured that love by whether it could stop a monster. Reverse a curse. Stitch a life back together with her bare hands.
And if I died, she wouldn’t only lose me. She’d believe she failed, that her love hadn’t been strong enough to save me.
When the image faded, I laid my palm on my side, over the same place where I’d been wounded. An ache bloomed again, from knowing the truth.
Reyla never loved lightly, but she never believed that loving was enough on its own.
She was the fierce one.
The soft one.
Both.
And she still didn’t know that her love had already saved me. Long before the battle. Long before the blood.
She’d saved me the first time she chose all of me.
Another shard trembled nearby, this one glowing green gold. Calling for me to pick it up and take on another bite of her pain.