EPILOGUE Bishop #2
Hero appears at my side and lies down beside Arden, but I can’t see beyond my own grief. I pull her against me tighter, as if I can love her enough to make her heart beat again. To make air fill her lungs. I cling to a dream that’s been ripped away from me.
“Arden.” I press my lips to her forehead. Cold. Too cold. “Come back to me.”
A shadow passes over my head, and the oscen lands on the ground beside me. It blinks its curious eyes at me and lets out a shrill caw like it’s trying to tell me something.
“I know she’s fucking dead.”
Dead. The word undoes me.
Cassiel was wrong. She’s not going to wake up. She isn’t a scion.
Something wild and fierce claws at my chest as I raise my face to the night sky, as I curse at that one lone star in the swath of darkness. At the lie I let myself believe.
But I was wrong to hope. Wrong to think the Stars might bend for once.
That star that split the Night’s Scar fooled us both—only I wasn’t willing to risk it. And I never even told her.
Because part of me wanted her to be like me. To be immortal.
A selfish thing I thought I’d carved out for myself.
I wanted to love her forever.
I look at the dagger lying where I flung it. All of this to start a war.
For power.
To claim a throne.
As if any of that matters. Only a man who’d never met the other half of his soul could think it did.
“I should have told you the truth.” My voice is hoarse, my throat raw.
I embrace the pain and beg for more than I deserve.
“Wake up, and I will. I’ll tell you about everything.
Never leave a moment of my day out. I’ll tell you what I thought when I first saw you.
What I think every time you fall asleep in my arms. Every stupid thought I have.
Every terrible joke. You’ll hate it, actually. ”
I bury my face in her hair, drink in the faint lilac scent that always lingers on her. I try to memorize it even as panic tears through me at the thought of forgetting. But I can’t force the air past the pain long enough to fill my lungs.
“I’ll spend the rest of our lives making it up to you. Just wake up.”
I’m no longer scared of the fury. The cycle. Any of it.
I’m only scared of losing her. Of never getting to tell her that I love her. Of facing my darkness without her light.
“I needed a reason to fight. To really fight. I have one now,” I whisper. “You’re my reason.”
And I don’t care if she is the harbinger.
If this tears apart the entire world.
If war is the cost of hearing her heart beat again … I will bleed for her. For this.
Some loves make the world bearable. Hers made it worth living in.
“I love you,” I whisper into her hair. “I love you. Come back.”
Silence.
And then—
A faint thump.
Another.
Hero sits up, head tilting, as if he hears it, too. But I go utterly still, afraid any movement, even breathing, might steal that sound from me. I close my eyes and count the heartbeats as they grow stronger.
“Whatever comes, we face it together,” I whisper. “I’m not afraid anymore.”
The rhythm beneath my palms steadies into a fierce beat, pounding its way back to the world.
Faint red shapes thread across her skin, barely visible. But it isn’t a birthright. It’s vestiges. Hundreds of lines mapping themselves on her arms, over her hands, across the strip of collarbone visible under her bloody shirt.
I look up. Search for her star in the Night’s Scar. But as the sky overhead darkens, it’s as if the night has dropped a veil.
Her star fades, winks out, then blazes back to life.
And the Night’s Scar splits like an unhealed wound torn open once more, and behind it …
Stars.
Hundreds of them.
Thousands.
They were never gone.
They were hidden.
And something grips me. Something ancient and primal, rising from the cage I’ve been holding shut. It demands blood.
Demands I pick up that dagger and carve out her heart.
The power inside me strains, snapping its fangs, digging its claws, and for a single, terrible breath, I see myself reaching for the dagger.
I see myself reaching for her.
I shove the beast back down with everything I have left. Slam the cage shut. Lock it from the inside. The effort tears something in my soul that won’t heal as fast as the rest of me.
Not her. Never her.
She gasps, chest heaving under my hand, drawing breath in long, ragged pulls.
A small, whining bleat splinters the air beside us, and Hero shoves his nose against her shoulder, whimpering. Slowly, her eyes flutter open to meet mine.
But I find no salvation there.
There’s something else—something wrong. Her gaze skids around the balcony like a trapped animal’s, and when it lands on me, it lands like I’m prey.
“Arden.” My voice is wrecked. “It’s me.”
She jerks upright, wrenching out of my arms.
“Stay away.” She’s on her feet faster than a woman who just died should be able to manage. She snatches up her fallen sword. The point sways toward me, then steadies. “Stay away from me.”
I stand slowly. “It’s Bishop. Arden, it’s me.”
Her face crumples even as the blade stays level. “What’s happening to me?”
She’s looking at me like she’s sees every reason she has to live—and trying not to drive her sword through it.
“Arden—”
“I d-don’t want this—” Sobs tremble from her, the sword shaking in her hand. “I don’t want this, Bishop. Make it stop. Please, make it stop—”
Something is rising inside her. Not the same beast clawing at my cage. It isn’t the fury. I don’t have a name for it, but I can feel it calling to my own blood.
And she’s in there with it. Alone. Holding it back with nothing but her own will.
But her will is the only thing that’s ever mattered.
“Look at me.” I take a slow step forward. “Look at my eyes, Arden.”
She does.
The sword lowers a fraction. Lifts. Lowers again. A sob breaks out of her. “I’ll kill you. I can’t stop myself. Don’t come any closer—”
She lunges.
I’m faster.
I catch the flat of her blade in my gloved hand, twist it out of her grip, and crack the pommel of my own sword against the side of her head in one motion. She blinks once, mouth open like she’s about to yell at me, and then she collapses.
I catch her before she hits the stone.
“Fuck, you’re stubborn.” I scoop her into my arms, pausing only to kiss her forehead. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. We’ll figure it out. I swear we will.”
I carry her stubborn ass off the balcony, Hero bounding behind us, back to where she’s always belonged. Here. With me. With us.
And I don’t care if I’m walking toward war. Toward a fight I never saw coming. No matter what it costs me.
She’s worth dying for.
Because if any soul can defy the Stars, it’s hers.