chapter fourty-six #2
The next minutes blur into blood and chaos. We fight side by side, but every strike costs her more. Her lightning grows erratic… too bright and too wild. Each strike leaves her breathing harder, shoulders sagging lower.
She stumbles, and I catch her again as a lacwyvern barrels toward us. I fling it aside with tidal influence, but another dives from the blood red clouds, and Sirena raises her hand… but nothing happens.
Her eyes widen.
Then lightning erupts all at once, uncontrolled and devastatingly catastrophic. It blasts outward in a wave that incinerates three lacwyvern and throws both of us backwards.
We crash into the crimson snow.
My lungs seize from the impact, and I gasp in rapid breaths as I push myself back onto my feet, but Sirena doesn’t get up.
I scramble to her side, heart slamming. “Sirena!”
Her skin is burning.
Not warm.
Not fevered.
Burning.
“You’re in burnout,” I choke. “You’re in it.”
She shakes her head faintly, lashes fluttering. “No… I’m just… tired.”
“No, you’re dying,” I whisper.
Her gaze sharpens for a moment, just long enough for something like fear to flicker behind her eyes, but she smothers it as quickly as it came, pushing herself upright.
“I’m not dying.” Her hand grasps the heating rune, tearing it free, and a sigh escapes her throat as the cold air brushes against her skin.
She staggers forward, determined as ever… only to slam into Kaden’s arm.
His eyes search mine briefly, the panic behind his gaze palpable but smothered by authority in a single heartbeat.
“Stop being so fucking stubborn, Sirena. You need to rest; you’re only putting yourself and everyone here in danger.”
“Kaden, I’ve got this—”
He cuts her off, voice a low tone that oozes with authority and something that makes even me feel like shrinking away.
“You don’t. Your magic is too unstable; you’re more likely to kill us than them. So, are you willing to kill your comrades just to prove a point?” His hand lashes out, snapping the necks of six lacwyvern diving straight for us.
Cole’s lightning strikes all six a heartbeat later before their bodies even hit the crimson snow.
“I… no.” Sirena slumps against his arm, defeated.
I slither my arm around her waist, holding her upright as she shifts her weight into me.
“You okay?” Kaden presses a swift kiss to my forehead.
I offer a small smile, “Yes. I’m alright.”
He nods, then his voice cuts through the chaos around us.
“Retreat beyond the tree line. Now.”
Everyone shouts back in exhausted acknowledgement and begins to move, inching forward through the blood-soaked snow.
Then a shadow drops from the clouds as a lacwyvern dives fast and silent, its wings folded tight, barrelling straight for Thane’s exposed back.
“No!” Sirena screams.
She doesn’t hesitate.
Lightning erupts from her in a blinding storm, bolt after bolt ripping through the sky, shredding the creature midair until it shrieks and crumples, crashing into the earth with the force of a fallen tree.
Sirena collapses in my arms, and I hold onto her with every bit of my strength, but it’s like trying to hold onto someone already slipping away.
Her body convulses once, then goes terrifyingly still.
“Sirena…” I whisper.
Thane falters across the clearing, clutching his chest as if something inside him has already broken.
Another lacwyvern dives for him from behind. I lash out, snapping its neck with tidal influence before its jaws get the chance to close around him.
“Sirena…” he breathes, eyes widening. “Sirena—no!”
He breaks, shoving through the chaos toward us at a run.
I begin lowering her to the ground, my arms slowly giving out from the weight of her tired body.
She’s alive, but barely.
Her skin is scorching, and her breath comes in shallow, rattling pulls that scrape painfully against my ears.
Thane hits the ground hard behind us, skidding on his knees through crimson-stained snow until he’s gathered Sirena into his trembling arms.
“No, no, no, no—” The words tumble from his mouth in a frantic plea.
His hands shake as they frame her face, like he’s terrified she’ll shatter beneath his touch. Tears streak down his cheeks, dripping onto her skin.
“Angel—angel, stay with me,” he pleads. “Please. Please. Come on… come on, open your eyes.”
Her lashes flicker open weakly as I tear through my pack with shaking hands. Tonics, spellcloth, water… everything I grab feels wrong, useless, too small to stop what’s happening.
Kaden’s shadows rise around us, creating a protective cocoon as we frantically work to stop her burnout.
Sirena’s breath rattles and wheezes, chest shuddering with each slow and shallow breath. Her fingers curl around Thane’s hand with the faintest grip, a whisper of strength she no longer has but is fighting to hold on to.
“I wasn’t afraid,” she breathes, a ghost of a smile lifting her lips.
Thane breaks, broken sobs ripping from his throat as he presses desperate kisses to her fingers, her knuckles, her palm.
“I know, Angel… please, please don’t go. Fight through this for me.” His shoulders shake, “Please don’t leave me. I—I can’t… my heart doesn’t know how to beat without you. You’re my life.”
Her gaze softens as she looks over him… full of love, of pride.
“Thane…” A shuddering inhale. A fragile exhale. “I love you.”
“No,” he begs. “Don’t you dare give up. Let your shield down… please. Let me help you.”
She shakes her head weakly, breath hitching. “I can’t. If I do… we both die.” Her gaze never leaves his. “You will live. Live for me. Live for us.”
His grip tightens like he can anchor her by force alone. “I love you. I love you so much. Please… don’t leave me.”
She lifts a trembling hand, guiding his face down to hers.
Their kiss is slow and reverent.
A goodbye without words.
“You have been,” she whispers, “the gift of my life.”
Her chest stills.
Eyes frozen half-open, fixed on the man she loved until her last breath.
Then screaming. Screaming. Screaming.
As that thing in his chest, as his heart… shatters.
It’s the agonised sound of a joint soul splitting in two, of a future collapsing in on itself.
He folds over her limp body, sobbing so violently it rocks them both, his fingers digging into her clothes as if he can anchor her here by sheer will, as if movement itself might undo death.
“No, no, no, no.”
He pushes against her chest, trying to force her heart to start beating, breathing air back into her lungs, willing life back into her body.
“Come on.” He chants with every compression. “Come on.”
Again.
Again.
Again.
His hands slip on the blood coating her skin, but he doesn’t stop.
He can’t stop.
Because the reality of it if he does, is too much to bear… Sirena is gone.
Sirena, who was kind and gentle and warm. Sirena, who would burn the world for her friends. Sirena, who had been planning her wedding only hours ago.
Kaden drops to his knees beside Thane, shadows lashing violently around us like they’re mourning too, then dropping away completely as grief consumes him. It hits the bond in a brutal wave, sharp enough to steal my breath entirely.
Tears burn down my cheeks in a hot, relentless flood as my heart caves in on itself, as Kaden’s heart breaks and shatters into inconsolable pieces.
Raw, heart-wrenching sobs tear from Thane’s throat as he cradles his soulmate in trembling arms. Rocking her gently and hopelessly, like he’s trying to lull her back to life.
With every broken beat of Kaden’s heart, with every second Sirena doesn’t move, with every shattered cry that leaves Thane’s throat, my grief grows and evolves. Warping into raging despair and anger, it presses against my ribs like a heavy weight, suffocating, hollowing me out from the inside.
My magic stutters under the weight of it, shield beginning to flicker like dying stars.
The world narrows until all I can hear is my own pulse and the echo of Sirena’s heart stopping. I want to curl inward, to sink into the snow beside her and pretend this is all just a bad dream, a too-real nightmare.
But the screeches drag me back.
My head snaps up just in time to see it.
Cole stumbles.
It’s barely a misstep, barely a hitch in his stride… but exhaustion has finally caught up to him, lightning fading from his hands as his knees buckle.
A lacwyvern peels away from the flock, wings folding tight as it dives straight for him.
No.
I stand on shaky legs, the world narrowing to him.
My brother, my lifeline, my home.
I will not lose him too.
My shield shatters with a force that nearly knocks me sideways, and grief-driven anger ignites, white-hot and braided with a fury so deep it feels endless.
“You had Varo!” I scream, my voice shredding itself raw. “You had Sirena!” Power gathers in my chest, burning, blinding and all-consuming. “You will not have Cole!”
Light erupts.
Silver-blue and radiant, it explodes outward from my heart in every direction, ripping through the space around us like an endless beam of moonlight.
Every lacwyvern freezes mid-flight before dropping dead from the clouds, their bodies hitting the ground in a rain of broken wings and shattered bones.
Strong arms catch me as my legs finally give out, pulling me tight against a solid, familiar chest before the ground can claim me.
Cedar wood and cinnamon flood my senses as the world fractures at the edges of my vision, sounds blurring into panicked shouts and broken voices I can’t quite make sense of.
But beneath it all, there’s Kaden.
His pulse thunders in my ears, and each beat of his heart echoes beneath my ribs. I cling to that rhythm as if it’s the only thing keeping me tethered to life.
I breathe him in, grounding myself in the feel of his arms, the heat of his skin, the familiar strength that has always felt safe.
His heartbeat carries me, lulling me, until exhaustion finally wins and the darkness tugs too hard to resist.
I let go.