Chapter 54
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Dorian
I had said the words, though I didn’t remember choosing them. They had come from somewhere deeper than thought, deeper than the place where Caustrix’s power lived, deeper than the brand on my chest. They came from the floor of me, the last and lowest room.
Take it all.
And the dagger listened.
At first, nothing. Just my hand, her sternum. And then a tickling, an aching—the feeling of being emptied, of something flowing from the center of me into the center of her.
My power, my life.
With a jerk, the magic moved like barbed wire dragged through my marrow. My spine bowed. My mouth opened, and I might have screamed. It was hard to know—the current tore through me, drowning everything else.
Death did not arrive as darkness. It moved through me, the extraction of flow and beat and breath.
Fully conscious. Fully aware. This was the hardest thing I’d ever done. But this was the death I deserved, after the life I’d lived. It was the only right thing to do.
My hand did not waver; the dagger did not fall. I lowered it into her lap, kept my fingers around it, and bent forward until our faces were close enough that the rest of the world didn’t exist.
I leaned my forehead against her temple. Any pain was endurable for the right reasons, and I had the very best. The only reason, really, any of us did anything at all.
The light of life. The love of another.
Numbness seeped in at the edges, fingers first, then forearms, then ribs, the pain becoming muted beneath it, and everything slowed. But I didn’t move my hand, didn’t close my eyes. I had to see, to know for sure.
She didn’t move. Her heart didn’t beat, her chest didn’t fill with air. Strength drained from my shoulder. My hand slipped from her body. The dagger rolled from my grasp.
Still the magic seeped out of me, slowed now to a trickle.
Still Eury didn’t move, didn’t speak.
I’d failed, taken too long. She was gone, truly gone.
The world dimmed, and the back of my head fell against the spire. Through the Convergence’s murk, three queens emerged. Come to finish their work, to steal Carys’s inheritance as though it were gold they could claim.
Let them try. Their greed would make them husks.
I would never know the rest of the story; I couldn’t keep my eyes open. My lids closed, the world went dark, and I exhaled from my numb chest.
The world became smaller, smaller… and just before I left it, a sound came from beside my ear.
A gasp. Small, sudden, like a first breath.