Chapter 34
Chapter
Thirty-Four
brENTON
The sea roared beneath the horizon with waves crashing against the shore with the same violence that thrashed inside me. I stood there, staring at the line where the water and sky met, the thick, salty air stinging my face as if it could burn away the memory of Finley’s choice.
She’d been prepared to strip herself bare, but in doing so, she would’ve burned me out, too.
Fae magic wasn’t simply magic. It was marrow and bone. The structure and soul. The breath. The heartbeat. The self. And she’d almost torn that thread inside me without my consent.
“Finley wasn’t thinking about you when she tried to burn herself out.” Hoshiko’s words cut through the storm brewing in my mind.
My laugh came out hollow. “That’s the problem,” I said, voice hoarse as if I’d spent the past half hour screaming. “Too many times she makes decisions for me without thinking about me. I’m a puppet on her strings. A stupid one at that, constantly falling at her feet.”
“She wasn’t choosing against you, Brenton,” he said, not unkindly but without softening his opinion. “She was choosing for everyone else. She believed she could either burn Zaicha out or burn herself out. She was trying to stop Zaicha from using her.”
I barked out a bitter sound that was more pain than humor. “When the Elders stripped me of my magic and exiled me, it was as if they ripped out my bones and demanded I crawl. It was like this constant, hollow wrongness that lived inside me. It felt like something vital had been stolen.”
“And yet she was prepared to lose herself for something bigger.” His golden eyes blinked down at me, patient and waiting for me to grasp his words. “She was willing to live in a world, boneless and wrong, for me. For the other dragons.”
I dragged my fingers over my face as guilt scraped like glass against my throat. “And I’m the asshole who left her when she was trying to do right by you.”
“Neither of you was right nor wrong,” he said. “You’re both doing what you can, making impossible decisions in moments that don’t give you time to think.”
The words hung between us while I turned my attention back to the horizon as if it held answers for questions I didn’t know how to ask.
Something inside me shifted. It started like a tremor, a slight pulse along the tether that bound Finley and me. Then the bond convulsed. My very soul quivered beneath the force of it.
I turned, my heart slamming against my ribs, my attention locked on the direction of the pull.
“Something’s wrong,” I said.
“Get on,” Hoshiko said, already preparing to take flight.
I didn’t waste a breath. My feet pounded on the sand, lungs burning and heart suspended somewhere between terror and fury.
Hoshiko barely made it into the air before he lowered us to the square. Shouts, sobs, and the sharp scent of blood held through the thick air.
All I saw was Finley. She knelt in the center of it all. Trembling, her hands barely held over the small, still body of a child. Her magic thrummed around her like wildfire, eating itself alive. Too much, too fast.
I felt it in our bond how the edges frayed, yet pulled sharper and tighter like a noose.
Hoshiko landed us fast and hard, but all I could hear was the thundering of my heart.
Finley wasn’t simply offering her magic but letting it consume her entirely. Her magic burned wild and bright. Brighter than I’d ever felt it. And Willow knelt at her side, her hands fisted against the grass, trying to hold Finley’s magic steady. Trying to hold Finley steady.
“Finley,” I said, but my voice barely cut through the storm of power ripping off her skin.
She didn’t hear me. Or she didn’t care.
Power flooded through our bond as she reached deeper, pulling too much to try to save the child. Her pulse braided with mine, desperate and reckless.
I felt it the exact moment her magic tilted toward sacrifice.
I stumbled at the realization. No. No. No.
My magic stirred in reply, slamming through our bond to stop her.
Because Finley was going to give everything she had.
Everything she was for this child. If she died, she’d take the weapon that was her magic with her.
Leaving Zaicha with nothing. Because if Zaicha didn’t have a vessel as powerful as Finley, she’d lose her way back into the astral realm.
She’d lose everything she’d worked for. Even with the magic siphoned into the orb, it wouldn’t be enough.
And Finley was once again trying to save everyone but herself. But me.
The bond screamed.
I staggered, hand clutching my chest as Willow’s voice strained against the crackle of magic.
“I can’t hold it much longer,” Willow whispered, her shoulders sagging.
Everly came to me, her eyes black and wide with worry. “What can I do?” she asked.
“Hold her down,” I said through gritted teeth. “I’ll do the rest.”
While Finley had made up her mind, so had I.
She didn’t get to leave me. She didn’t get to give up. Not like this.
We fought. For ourselves and for each other.
I could live in a world where she wasn’t mine.
But not in a world where she didn’t exist.
Finley was a warrior through and through, and in a moment where her magic wasn’t being utilized for its capacity to destroy, I knew that was so tempting. She had a choice. To do right—to heal—when for so long she’d not had a choice and had hated being the weapon.
But I can’t let her die. Not now. Not in this moment. Yet I knew her unshakable grit and determination.
My magic snapped down the bond, brutal and decisive. I wrapped my smoke around her magic and yanked. Pinned. Cut. Severed the threads between her and the child.
The instant I did, the storm died mid-scream, and the child’s heart didn’t start again.
Finley jerked as if struck and slouched against Everly, who held her by her shoulders. The sound that ripped from her was like nothing I’d ever heard. It was grief and fury and defeat, all bound in a single scream that could tear the sky open.
She collapsed forward, her hands shaking, and her shoulders curling inward as she hovered over the child. She ran her hands over his chest, desperate and refusing to accept that he was gone. Magic flickered at her fingertips before it disappeared.
Her head snapped up, her hair clinging to her tear-stained face, eyes like fire when they met mine.
“I’ll never forgive you for this,” she said, her words shaky but firm.
I crouched down in front of her, my fingers aching to touch her but too afraid to do so. Say something. Say anything. But none of the words in me felt like enough. “Then hate me,” I finally said. “Just don’t leave me.”
Her breath hitched, and she winced as if it hurt to breathe.
She rocked, her arms wrapped around herself as if she could hold the pieces I’d just broken.
She wasn’t crying delicately. She was breaking.
Sobs tore from her chest, soundless between the gasps.
The fire that lived in her eyes dimmed like dying embers.
Every instinct in me screamed to hold her. To fix this. But beneath it all was one simple truth.
I’d do it again.
I’d choose her life over anyone. Over any realm. Every time.
That living bond between us pulsed weakly, raw and bleeding like us. Her grief flowed through it like blood. It hurt to breathe with it. But it meant she was still there. She was still alive.
She rose, taking Everly’s offered arm without saying another word. She didn’t have to.
This moment was already carved into us. An open wound neither of us could walk away from.
Her need to save the world.
My need to save her.
Two daggers piercing the same heart.