Chapter 39
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
The blade tumbles from my hand.
I rush to Mikael, red sand kicking up in plumes of dust from the force of my footfalls. I drop to my knees at his side, tears already streaming down my face as I pull him into my arms, resting his back against my thighs.
I hold him and look upon his face, gorgeous even covered in dirt-streaked sweat. His skin has already turned pallid, ashen and gray. Even his eyes have dimmed, losing their spark.
His tunic is wet, the black fabric even darker with the amount of blood he’s lost. His slow-blinking gaze, going in and out of focus, lingers on my face.
The smile he forces breaks me in ways I didn’t know were possible. I can’t hold back the sob that tears from my throat.
We save each other; that’s what we do.
But there is no saving him.
Magic doesn’t work in the Wastelands—our immortality is stripped and my blood can’t save him.
But now, at the end of these last few weeks… after understanding what had happened to him… happened to me.
It’s unfair.
This is the actual curse.
Having to lose him again, knowing he never betrayed me and never stopped loving me. Maybe our love was always doomed.
“You have been my northern star. The light that kept me from succumbing to my darkest hours.” Mikael reaches a hand up to my face and traces the outline of my ear, then cups my cheek, his fingers reaching into my hair. He wipes the tears from my face. “Finish the last trial for me?”
“I don’t want to do this life without you.” I sob, the weight of this reality crushing my ribs. It’s breaking me. The same pain of losing someone again, but in an entirely different way. How can our fate be so cruel?
“I don’t have a choice this time.” Mikael’s words come out shaky, but with his ever-present sly smile.
“How can you smile right now?” I drop my forehead to his.
“Look at me,” Mikael says weakly and I oblige. He coughs up blood and fights through his next words. “It’s because you made it. You get to live, and that was my purpose. To give you back your life.”
In sync with the slow fall of his chest, a ragged wet breath escapes his lips. Those gorgeous gray eyes slide to the side, and his body goes slack. His fingers slip from my face.
No… No… No…
His hand hits the ground with a soft thud, cementing our end.
“Kai!” His name is caught in my throat, only releasing in broken sobs. I shake him repeatedly, but he remains still. There is no smile, no raised brow, no quip.
Nothing.
My ears ring; the Wastelands blur and fade into the distance as I stare at his beautiful face. The face that I loved, then hated, and loved again.
Everything he’s said to me over these last two weeks comes barreling into my mind.
I’ll beg, and fight for the rest of my life to make it right.
I’m impaled…
I will give up everything for you, sacrifice my entire being.
With each…
You are my partner. Who I bound myself to. I will wait for you until the sun burns out and a new star is born, if I must.
Reminder of how deeply he loved me, even the worst parts of who I became, the person who hated him for centuries.
He still loved me.
Still protected me and gave his life to save mine. Mikael was always there; even when he wasn’t present, he was trying to get back to me.
My chin rests on his head as I rock.
“I can’t go back to the way I was before. Without you, I’ll fail miserably at living. And now.” I choke on my own tears, the drops falling onto his face. “The bond that was restored will no longer exist.”
From the depths of my soul, a scream rises, shredding my throat, obliterating me. We came here to get a piece of my soul back. Instead, I know I’ve just lost half of myself.
“Why?” My voice is raw, the scream barely escaping as a whisper.
If this is how it feels now, when our bond is suppressed in this place, I don’t want to know what it’ll feel like in Eidrfall, where I’ll feel his absence every waking moment.
I could cover up the bond again, but it’s different this time.
This is loss—losing him after learning the truth. And now, I’d have to live for eternity knowing what we had was real and pure. I won’t survive that. I hardly survived when it was born from hate.
His love healed the broken parts of me. Through his patience, he guided me to the old self I’d lost in the anger and bitterness I’d held on to for so long. Helped me realize I could be both, be the best parts of the old Bryn and the new.
The pieces of who I am have been crushed and reduced to dust, like the red sand beneath my knees.
One rogue wind, and I’ll scatter. Lost forever.
A ghost floating through the world.
My vision’s blurred, tears streaming down my face as I rest his head on the sand and remove the branch. I sweep my fingers over his eyes, closing them.
I grip my thighs, squeezing my eyes shut, and breathe.
Again.
And again.
Letting the hot, acrid air of the Wastelands in through my nose and out through my mouth. I open my eyes, gaze dragging back to the blackened starburst.
Finish the last trial.
Only because Mikael asked will I do it.
Even though this place is void of magic, and I cannot feel mine, I’m going to force it to respond. Force it back into the land.
I rise and head in its direction. Everything is muted—colors, sounds, the temperature, time, space. I’m just once more a vessel headed to my ending. Doing what was a dying man’s last wish because I no longer care.
How can I, when everything I loved has been destroyed?
The city I built will no longer be mine. If I do nothing, I’ll die anyway.
Mikael is gone.
My own father betrayed me.
I’m certain I’m no longer the heir to the crown.
The only thing left is Peylin. But she even deserves to be free of me. She deserves Varithen. She’s loved it and has run it as equally if not more than I have.
I reach the blackened ground and slam my knees into the middle of it. My breath catches at the familiarity of this position, of being in the same spot I was centuries ago. Shoving my hands against the ground, I dig into the sand until my fingernails tear and bleed.
I close my eyes and focus harder than I ever have. Searching my hollowed-out core for the spark of magic I know still resides within me. A light I need in my darkest hour. Deeper and deeper, I fall into the well of the past, my faults, and my pain.
I reach the edge of breaking, but then something else surfaces.
All the conversations with Peylin, everything over the last two hundred years, everything since Mikael showed up.
Things I couldn’t see in myself until now.
Until all the negative thoughts and emotions had been ripped away.
My resilience that I took for granted, and all the good I never gave myself credit for fuel me further. The good I can do by restoring what I ruined.
“Do you see what I’m doing? Do you feel it?” I tilt my head back and scream at the sky, at whoever or whatever magic created the curse.
I could be speaking to myself, a crazed female at the edge of the world as she knows it.
Or I could have an audience, a scryer who’s been watching this whole time.
Or a fucking Fate for all I know
Or no one.
It’s all ending in a pointless disaster, our bodies never to be found in this desolate place.
“Take it!” I bellow, voice full of fury and loss, igniting the spark that will set me ablaze, and burn away every part of myself that’s left.
“My magic returned along with each piece of my soul, but I’m giving it back to this land.
I will never be able to replace what was taken, but one spark of life can spread into hundreds more.
My last soul fragment, and every other part that was stolen by the curse, is now yours.
I will gladly give my life to undo the mess I created. ”
I pull at the spark within, force it up, and shove it outward.
Light builds beneath my hands, as I work my magic into the ground, sending it deep and wide. The light gets brighter and brighter, the muted haze morphing into colors and shapes as it spreads out around me. Giving back what I stole. What wasn’t mine to bargain in the first place.
I thought my body had reached the limit of what pain I could endure. But as I force my magic out, layer after layer of my very essence is shredded. Searing, agonizing pain makes me want to stop, to quit giving over the essential part of who I am as a fae.
I pitch forward, tears once again cascading to the ground. It absorbs the salty water, greedy for what it has lacked for years.
If I’ve learned anything recently, it’s that I won’t give in. I’m a fighter. A famed warrior.
So I keep gutting myself until the light dims beneath my hands and the pain is snuffed out. There is no longer any magic within to resist my actions.
My body collapses, and I fall onto my side.
Mikael.
I want to be near him.
My muscles are too lax, too drained to support my weight when I try to stand. I crawl instead, my movements slow, but each inch is another closer. He doesn’t deserve to be alone in death. When I reach him, I wrap my arm around him, dropping my head against his chest.
I push myself up and lean against his frame, returning the smile he tried to give me earlier.
“We were robbed of so much.” I bring my lips to his in the softest kiss I’ve ever given, like a breath against skin. “This wasn’t supposed to be our ending.”
I take the dagger I retrieved on the way back to him and drive it into my heart before I can change my mind. My breath leaves in a ragged rush, and I collapse onto him, my body curled over his.
Where it will stay for all eternity. Where it belongs.