Chapter 37
Chapter thirty-seven
“Perhaps death is not cold, but rather light, warm, and welcoming? I hope so. I hope one day when I take that journey, warmth and love, not cold, will embrace me.” – from the diary of Oren Byrne, age nineteen.
Flashes of light and a mix of voices assaulted me. My eyes weren’t open, nor could I gather the will to open them. I tried to pay attention to what was happening, but the throbbing and burning chill consumed me.
“Iris, please,” Aidan begged, making me snap to attention. He needed me. I could feel it; I could hear it. Aidan needed me. Me.
“I am not a healer,” she snarled. “I am doing the best I can.”
My eyes opened. I was lying on a stone floor in a small cottage—Iris’s home, maybe? When had she come back to the woods? Hadn’t she fled? How much time had passed?
Aidan and Cethin hovered around me. My brother’s face was pinched and pale, making his scattered freckles stand out in the filtered light shining through the windows.
There was a fire roaring behind them, but I did not feel even a tinge of its heat.
Cethin kept reaching for Aidan as he paced, but my brother shook him off every time.
Abnus. His name was like a shard of ice to my heart. Where was he? I turned my head to the side, and Abnus was right next to me, his hand holding mine, our fingers laced together. He was staring at me, though he was paler than usual and blood pooled around him.
“Oren,” he said in his rumbly voice.
He would live. That was all that mattered. Cethin would hold Aidan together, and Abnus would go on with his life. He’d never loved me anyway, which was a blessing in this moment—one that I thanked the sweet Lord for.
My eyes closed as the pain grew, and yet my peace swelled. It would all be alright. I might pass from this realm, but I wouldn’t become a shade, and those that I loved were safe.
“No, Oren,” Abnus snarled.
“What’s happening?” Aidan demanded as a sudden wind buffeted the windows in the small stone cottage.
“He won’t stop bleeding. The necromancer bitch did something,” Iris said, her hands rough on me. “I’m not a healer, Aidan. I don’t know if I can save him.”
“No,” Aidan shrieked as the cottage shook and thunder rumbled. “No. I will not lose him.”
Something scraped on the floor as someone grabbed my chin. “Oren, look at me.”
My eyelids felt like they weighed a ton, but I forced them open because that voice meant so much. That voice held my heart. That voice belonged to the love of my life.
Haggard and pale, Abnus hovered over me, looking more beautiful than ever. “I will not let you go. Not ever.”
“Abnus,” Cethin said, voice low, “Don’t. You are too weak. You could both die.”
“I don’t care. Life without Oren is not worth living. I have waited an age for him, and then waited more. I shall not breathe in a world without him beside me.”
He bent down, pressing his lips against mine, making me moan at the subtle warmth. Abnus kissed my lips open and breathed. Ice rushed down my throat, eliciting a shiver, and something started to itch and wriggle on my left arm.
Abnus fell backward, and Cethin pulled him close. The ice continued to grow as it flooded my limbs, freezing me in place while I whimpered for Abnus to return to me. I didn’t understand what was happening, but his face was the last that I wanted to see in this life.
“Help him,” Cethin demanded, looking at Iris.
“I can do what I did to help you some months ago, but he is far more injured. He needs to go back to the Night Court where the moon and darkness shall flood him and your own healers can attend to him.”
No. I tried to reach for him, but my body refused to respond. Abnus. I needed him right here. I was going to die, and I needed to see him. I looked at Aidan, who gripped me tight, but he didn’t understand the longing in my eyes.
“Go,” Aidan ordered. “I shall make the path easy.”
Cethin glanced at me, then back to Aidan.
“Oren isn’t strong enough to go,” Aidan said, holding even tighter to my hand. “He has more of a chance to survive here with Iris, but they both need to survive for any of this to matter.”
“You’re right, dearest.” Cethin lifted his cousin into his arms and called as he raced out of the cottage, “I will bring a healer back for Oren.”
The last thing I saw before my vision faded was Abnus’s pale, drawn face and his barely open eyes looking straight at me.
Sunlight washed over my face, and I sighed. If this was death, it wasn’t as bad as I’d thought. I was warm and comfortable. Yes, I hadn’t gotten to tell Abnus of how I felt, but he would live a long life and find another to make him smile.
My heart clenched. I guessed not even death could strip me of all my possessiveness of that man. Well, I was sure God, if he existed—though if I was indeed in heaven, the chances had increased—would make allowances for true love.
I shifted on the silky bed, hoping to be greeted by my grandparents, or aunts and uncles who’d passed away, but I was not. A broad figure faced the window—a very very familiar window.
Pulse in my throat, my gaze dragged over the figure standing in the burning light.
Aidan’s hair looked to be on fire, and his shoulders seemed so strong, and his spine straight under the burden that he now carried.
On the frosted glass, his elegant finger formed a seven-pointed star—like the mark on Abnus’s sternum.
“Aidan,” I croaked.
He whipped toward me and sagged as a smile as bright as the sun itself pulled onto his lips. “Oren. Thank God.”
“What happened?”
“Do you remember Ilene Maher attacking you?”
I nodded. I wished I didn’t. I’d killed her. Two people now. I couldn’t bring myself to feel too bad about it, though. She’d been hurting us, killing us, and she had, in the end, appreciated me taking her life, or finding her. She’d been so lost in her magic, and I had found her.
“Iris did her best to help you, but she didn’t think you’d survive until…” He lifted my left arm.
My eyes widened. I jerked my arm out of his hold and stared at it. Thorny vines curled around my arm and even appeared to stab through the skin, moving and wriggling. They looked real and so familiar. Abnus. He’d claimed me.
Tears burned the backs of my eyes. He only wanted to marry his mate, but he’d given that up to save my life. Abnus shouldn’t have. He’d sacrificed his one chance for me, as my family had continually sacrificed for me time and time again.
I didn’t want to be a hothouse flower any longer; I wanted to stand on my own two feet, and yet, here was another that I loved who’d given up what they truly desired for me.
I glared at Aidan, and he pulled back, blinking. My voice deep and harsh like shattered glass as I spat, “How could you let him do this?”
“Oren.”
“No! You shouldn’t have let him do this. You should have let me die, Aidan.”
I loved Abnus, but he didn’t love me. Now, he was stuck with me. My romantic heart wanted someone to love me as much as I did them. Abnus never would, because I wasn’t his fated mate. What would happen when he met them in the future?
This was a fucking mess.
“I know this isn’t what you wanted,” Aidan said carefully. “School will be much more difficult with Lord Abnus now as your mate, but he saved your life, Oren.”
“I don’t care.” School could go to the devil. Abnus had sacrificed his happiness for me, and he would never forgive me. Resentment built so easily in this kind of situation. Neither of us would be happy. It would be an eternity of us circling each other.
“Give him a chance,” Aidan said quietly.
Giving him a chance wasn’t the problem. The problem was that Abnus had fucking sacrificed everything for me. “Where is he?”
“In the Night Court. Healing. He’ll be back soon.”
“No,” I said.
“What?”
“Keep him out.”
“Oren,” Aidan said, voice heavy with censure.
I needed time to figure out how to apologize, how to repay such a gift.
I needed to figure out what I was going to do, and if Abnus was here, pretending to be fine, I would scream.
I knew Abnus, and he would make the best of this situation, even if he didn’t want me.
Oh, he wouldn’t lie, but he would certainly not tell the truth either.
“I don’t want to see him,” I snapped, rolling to my side, then hissed as the bruises and scabs pulled from my ordeal in the woods.
“As you wish, little brother.” Aidan stepped out of the room, and I fought bitter tears. My life was never meant to be one that I got a choice or one I could be content in, it seemed.