Chapter 43
My magick hasn’t flowed freely in three hundred years. Tonight, only a thin thread of power trickles through my blood, but it’s enough.
And it feels extraordinary. Humming in my veins. Coming alive in my bones. One day, when it finally wakes completely, even the mountains will know.
Raina lies in my arms. The prince almost took her from me, but a clever sorcerer marks what’s his. Raina Bloodgood now bears my rune.
My power.
My seal.
My name.
Alexi of Ghent.
Shared with her.
As snow falls around us, her eyes flutter open. She’s too weak to sign, but I know her face. Every expression. I can read her thoughts in that furrowed brow, see them floating in her deep blue eyes.
“No,” I whisper. “I didn’t save you. I only helped you save yourself.”
I touch the rune on her chest, then press my lips to it.
The truth is that this woman is saving me.
She saved me on the green, in the wood, in the ravine, and she’s saving me right now, just by breathing.
The power she holds over me still feels inexplicable, but it’s real, and it’s so impossibly strong, as if I were born into this world for her alone.
Her eyes close, but her heart still pounds beneath my touch. In another life, I would’ve tried to know her. I would’ve admired her and read her poems written by my own hand. I would’ve walked with her through fields of stardrops, danced with her in the stream.
But this is not another life.
And I’m beginning to wonder if it has to be.