Chapter 44
Chapter
Forty-Four
FINLEY
The cold pressed in so fast, it stole sound from the air. Even the echo of Zaicha’s laughter froze midair.
Alastor’s curse broke the silence. “They shouldn’t be here.” His voice came low and sharp, fear threading each syllable. His body was still in front of us, angled us farther back, away from the small tear that hung in the air. “Eiran, send them back.”
My magic still threaded between us, holding Zaicha against her will. Through our bond, I felt the barely restrained fury Brenton held on to and the edges of our exhaustion seeping in.
Brenton moved closer, one of his hands on my arm. I kept my focus on Zaicha, refusing to let my hold slip.
“Eiran,” Alastor snapped. “Now.”
But Eiran remained quiet. He stood, his usual composure fractured, his shadows slithering restlessly at his feet. He stared at his hands, eyes wide and bewildered.
“I . . .” His voice faltered. “I can’t.”
Eiran’s expression was hollow. Stunned in a way that even a god couldn’t understand what was happening.
Brenton turned slightly to me, his gaze on my trembling fingers.
“What is it?” I asked, attention shifting from Zaicha to the tear.
Alastor’s jaw clenched. “My sister.”
Eiran finally lifted his head to the sky. A quake in the air deepened into a low hum. The faint sound built as pressure pressed down on my chest.
“How?” Brenton gritted out.
Pain lanced through my head, and I stumbled, holding a hand to my temple. “Brenton . . .”
I pressed my back to his chest, letting him steady some of my weight while my magic thrummed beneath my skin.
“You said she couldn’t leave the deep ward.” Alastor’s words shook, almost too quiet to hear. “You swore she couldn’t.”
The sky tore open. Light spilled down in ribbons of color that seemed to devour everything it touched. The ground hissed as frost gave way to ash.
Then Leanora stepped through.
Her beauty was the kind that demanded notice. Eyes the same gray as Alastor’s, hair that looked like it’d been spun in white and red cotton.
The air bent around her, the shimmering returning with her entrance.
Alastor’s complexion turned a sickly, sallow gray. His hand twitched toward his blade, but he didn’t take it.
She smiled, slow and sorrowful. “Little brother.”
“Don’t.” His voice cracked. “Don’t call me that.”
Brenton kept one hand on my waist, the other on the hilt of his sword.
Heat seared through the threads of my magic until the ones holding Zaicha disappeared. She rose to stand at Leanora’s side.
“Eiran brought her here,” Zaicha said, her tone dry but amused. “A gift for you, I’m sure.”
Eiran stared at Leanora, unblinking. “You were supposed to stay behind the veil. You—you were bound to the wards. How?”
“I know your magic as well as I know my own,” she said, her smile soft but deliberate.
Eiran’s shadows flicked around him, like a storm trying to decide whether to break.
“You’ve been—” His breath caught, his words splintering.
He dragged a hand through his hair, the motion rough and desperate, before he faced her again.
His eyes darkened. “You’ve been learning my magic.
” The words came out low and fast. He stepped closer, too close until they were a breath apart.
His shoulders rose and fell with every uneven breath.
“That’s what it was to you. Every moment.
Every word. You weren’t with me. You were studying me. ”
Her smile didn’t fade. “You make it sound so heartless.”
“It was,” he bit out. His hand twitched as if to reach for her or strike her. Maybe both. “I thought you . . .”
Magic pulsed between them. Heavy and electric. His confusion bled into rage. Hers into power. She tilted her head, her features softening.
Alastor took a step forward before he turned those blazing eyes on Eiran. “I told you your prison wouldn’t hold her.”
“Prison.” She scoffed. “I thought you’d be pleased to see me, Alastor.”
“Pleased?” He dragged a hand across his face, squeezing the bridge of his nose. “You killed our brother.”
Something flashed behind her eyes that almost looked like regret. But then she smiled, and the sight of it made me nervous. “I did what I had to do. You of all people should understand.”
“I should understand.” His words came out lethally low. More of a hiss than anything else. “Forget what you did to me. What about Blaise?”
“I freed him of the burden our parents put on our shoulders,” she said, her hands curling into fists.
“You freed him?” His voice rose, brittle and shaking. “His soul hasn’t known rest because of you. He sacrificed himself for you. And you took and took until there was nothing left of him. And even gone, he cannot rest.”
The way Leanora tilted her head looked almost gentle. Caring even. “His sacrifice would’ve meant something if you hadn’t betrayed us.”
Alastor’s hands trembled as his magic burned at his fingertips. His shadows curled into sigils I’d never seen before, and the ground split between them.
“I betrayed him?” Alastor’s eyes transformed to something foreign. Something ancient. The same sigils now shone behind his eyes. “You betrayed us. You imprisoned us. I won’t let you damn him a beat longer.”
Eiran’s eyes narrowed, and just as he wound his shadows around Leanora, magic erupted from Alastor. It was raw and jagged, aimed at anyone in its vicinity.
Brenton moved instinctively, pushing me to the ground as his body covered mine, protecting me from the explosion of magic. He lifted a protective shield, blocking us from the impact.
But Alastor’s grief, his fury, was a living thing, crawling up from the depths of millennia spent as her prisoner. His magic gathered in his palm again, the sigils forming and reshaping until the entirety of his magic burned as a single point that he directed at Leanora’s chest.
Light flared, and the realm itself screamed. But the bolt never reached her.
Eiran moved in front of her, catching it midair. Alastor’s magic shattered around Eiran, scattering in sparks that died on the ground.
“You will not harm my soul-bound mate.” Eiran’s voice thundered, echoing in my chest.
I let out a sound. A whimper, maybe. Even Zaicha’s smirk faltered.
His soul-bound mate.
Alastor stared, horror carving new lines across his face. “This is why you imprisoned her rather than sentencing her to whatever Enfierna awaited her. Why you kept her hidden in some dark corner of this realm.”
Eiran’s expression broke into something that mirrored grief. “Do not speak as if you do not already know the agony you will drown in for the one bound to your soul. You think yourself cursed now? You will die at the hand of the one you still reach for.”
“Leanora cannot exist,” Alastor said. “She will not stop.”
“I know.” Eiran’s shoulders lowered. “I know this now, but . . .”
When Alastor lifted his blade, Brenton moved swiftly and with control. He caught Alastor’s wrist before the strike could land and shook his head.
“Allow me to do this for you,” Brenton said, his tone calm and sure.
I understood why he offered it. This wasn’t mercy. That was obliteration. Destroying her soul. Ending her forever.
As much as I felt Alastor’s fury, it was twined with grief. Not just for his brother, but his sister too.
I stepped beside them, my magic curling at my palm. “We’ll do it together.”
Eiran’s shadows rippled. “None of you—”
“You don’t get it,” I snapped. “I cannot leave this realm with her free to kill and torment. She has done enough, Eiran.”
My magic surged before I could think about what I was doing. It was instinct. A desperate swipe across Leanora’s chest.
But, again, the blast never landed.
Eiran’s shadows collided with my magic and swallowed it whole.
He stood between us, his shadows wrapping protectively around Leanora and Zaicha. His gaze found mine. Not a god now, but a father trying and failing to reconcile these two dividing sides of himself.
Brenton’s smoke thickened around me in that same protective manner.
My magic rose. Not in rage, not in fear. But life and death were intertwined. Unstoppable once set in motion.
“Eiran,” I said softly. “You taught me to appreciate my magic. How to wield both death and life.”
His eyes widened, seeing my plan before it fully formed in my head. He hesitated, then nodded.
I raised my hands and called my magic, feeling the surge when Eiran’s joined mine. Not to strike but to bind with mine.
The realm trembled, light bleeding through the crack in the sky Leanora had made. Zaicha’s breath shuddered, and when she rushed forward, Eiran’s magic wrapped around her and held her back.
Zaicha gasped as silver bands formed from the air and coiled tightly around her wrists and throat. She struggled, snarling and cursing, but the shackles held. Ancient and absolute and held by Eiran’s will.
“What are you doing?” Leanora asked, her hand on Eiran’s shoulder as he held her against his chest, his hand cupping her lower back. His arms locked around her, his grip unyielding yet somehow tender as the same bindings slid into place around her, glowing faintly as they secured her.
“I am doing what I must to protect all those I love,” Eiran said.
Leanora’s expression shattered. Confusion warped to fury.
“You can’t,” she said.
Alastor stepped beside me, his hand finding mine as he joined his magic with mine.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his words hushed but steady.
Brenton’s smoke wrapped around the red threads of my magic, merging into one single current. Alastor’s sigils flared, and I felt a wave of heat flood me as they strengthened me.
The crossing, this threshold of the astral realm, cracked. Light flooded from the ground and walls like blood flowing from an open wound. My magic, joined with Brenton’s, Alastor’s, and Eiran’s, tore through the air, unraveling the threads that held this corner of the realm together.
I felt the weight of my actions instantly.
Every soul in this realm would be suspended in an unknown, unable to pass until Eiran rebuilt this space.
If rebuilding it were possible. The astral realm was Eiran’s domain, but this was the meeting ground for the dead.
The place between endings and beginnings.
And I was ending it, closing the doorway that let the dead pass through.
But it would also prevent Leanora and Zaicha from escaping.
Eiran searched my face and nodded again. Slow and heavy.
“I waited too long to know you,” he said, his voice breaking through the roar of the collapsing world. “In that time, I tried to be what you needed.”
His words cracked through the crevices of my chest. My magic trembled between my hands, pulsing in rhythm with my shattering heart. The edges of the crossing burned, and when I hesitated, he moved.
A single wave of his hand sent a ripple through the air. The realm bent to him, and Leanora and Zaicha disappeared, swallowed by light and shadow, and carried to a far corner of the astral realm untouched by this unraveling.
Then he was in front of me, his hands closed over mine. His touch was cold and unbearably gentle. My magic still burned at my palms, the force of it rattling through the dying realm.
For a heartbeat, the realm quieted. The space where their presence pressed against mine emptied, and with it the understanding I hadn’t let myself name.
I wasn’t ending this battle. He was staying behind to guard what I would’ve destroyed.
“You can let go, Finley,” he said. “I will finish it.”
Tears spilled hot against my cheeks.
My magic resisted. Not violently but desperately.
“I will rebuild,” he said. “And when I do, I will come back for you.”
The words should’ve comforted me. Instead, they landed like distance measured in lifetimes.
“Not as a god but as the father you always deserved. Until then, the world will be safe from them.”
The crossing screeched as its structures folded. Skies collapsed. Starlight burned away. But beyond this fracture, I still sensed the vast expanse of the astral realm, still intact.
He turned to Alastor, and his shadows twisted through the air until a small glowing sphere appeared. The Orb of Sacrifice. “Take it,” Eiran whispered amid the destruction. “Ask the living book how to free Blaise. Free them all.”
Alastor took the orb and cradled it to his chest. “I swear it.”
Chasms widened, the heart of the crossing imploding.
Brenton’s arms came around me as the last of Eiran’s magic flooded around us, cocooning us in darkness.
Eiran’s final whisper brushed against my mind. “Live, Finley. That is all I ask.”
“I’m sorry . . . Father,” I replied.
But he was gone, and the bond I’d only just allowed myself to feel answered with silence.
The threshold folded in on itself. The last thing I saw was Alastor clutching the orb, tears carving down his face as the light devoured everything.