30. CHAPTER THIRTY #3
“Kiernan couldn’t be certain what mistake had brought her here—to the gilded steps of the Forgotten Temple.
There were too many to count. All she knew was that if she didn’t go inside, Dom would be lost forever.
Her heart thundered in its cage, and the irony wasn’t lost on her that if she had given it to him before the Crumbling began, married in secret as they had planned, it would be safely kept in the Hall of Betrothals beating alongside his from now until eternity.
If eternity still existed.
There was so much they didn’t know about why the realms had Crumbled and why others were saved. It was a miracle, a testament to the Goddess Arachnia herself, that Kiernan still had two feet to stand on, two arms to fight with, and a heart left to waste beneath her chest.
Kiernan steeled herself to enter the once pious ground, but her hand trembled as she reached for the heavy wooden door.
If Dom was still inside, would he even recognize her?
Would he still want her? Would he ever forgive her for fleeing when the ground had fallen from beneath them and his homeland had joined the Void?
It was all she could do to stay upright.
The image of his haunted face as he’d been hauled away from the Edge by the acolytes of the Forgotten Faith seared into her memory.
He had feared for her safety then, made her promise to do whatever she could to stay on solid ground, but the betrayal in his eyes as she ran hurt more than any blade.
He truly believed she wouldn’t come back for him, and it had broken Kiernan’s heart.
The Forgotten Faith needed a new Conduit, and who better than her prince—a man for whom reading emotions came easy, who lived life with fervor and joy, who spoke to the cosmos with ease and elegance?
But he was not theirs to covet, and if any of them fought her in freeing him, they would come to know her bloody wrath.
Kiernan unsheathed her blade and willed herself into the candlelit sanctuary. The stone was damp and moss-covered, evidence of the centuries of disuse. Pews crumbled before the stone dais that housed a single bench .
A bench where a hunched figure, unclothed from the waist up, bent over his knees, his dark curls hanging limply in his eyes. Shackles around each wrist bound him to the floor, the chains barely long enough to allow him to stand.
Which he did as Kiernan approached.
Her stomach ached as she took in the sight of him. Gashes like tally marks peppered his torso—the bloodletting of the Conduit to allow the acolytes to speak with the Crossed Over. Her eyes burned. Her words caught in her throat.
‘Kiernan?’ he rasped, his voice hoarse and coated with emotion.
Kiernan’s knees wobbled as she closed the space between them. She reached a hand toward his cheek, but he jerked from her touch. ‘Let me explain,’ she pled. But Dom’s eyes took on a hardness she wasn’t sure she could break.”
Hope’s minuscule pause was the only indication Brayden had that reading this had become a challenge for her. That she bared some part of her he hadn’t seen before. He could barely fill his lungs.
Hope continued.
“‘They’ll be back shortly. You should go,’ Dom barked before resuming his seat on the bench. Despite the weeks, months maybe, that he’d been kept here, he was still as strong and imposing as ever. His muscled shoulders rippled with tension as he avoided her gaze.
‘Not without you,’ Kiernan asserted. She crouched before him to examine the shackles.
Pure iron with an intricate lock that she couldn’t easily pick.
She tried anyway, slipping the tip of her sword into the keyhole but to no avail.
Panic flooded her system; she hadn’t thought this far into her plan.
‘There are fates worse than this. Go.’
‘No!’ she bellowed, and she hoped it didn’t summon their enemies sooner. She dropped her voice so only Dom could hear. ‘No. I left you once. Never again.’
Kiernan kneeled before him, his legs spread wide enough in his seat that she could shuffle between them, bringing her face to meet his. She reached out a tentative hand, and this time he allowed her to cup his cheek, to comb her fingers through the tangles of his hair.
‘Your realm should not have fallen. I was blindsided in the chaos and I was . . . I was so scared. Scared to die. Scared to lose you should you choose the Void like so many others before you. I didn’t know if I could take it, so I let you go into the Crumbling alone.
When I realized that we might stand a chance at stopping it together, I got to the Edge as fast as I could, but they already had you.
It was a trap and I was a coward.’ She cast her eyes downward and clutched her hands to her chest as the tears fell.
‘But I didn’t run because I didn’t love you.
I thought it was the only way for me to survive long enough to get back to you.
If I had been caught . . . if they knew what you meant to me they would have used you against me, and I cannot bear the thought of you hurting.
But that day I vowed that whoever brought a blade to your flesh or a wound to your soul, I would return to dust, because yours is the purest heart I know, Dominique Revengaard.
It is kind and joyful and far superior to mine.
I only wish that you could forgive me my cowardice, forgive me the mistakes I have made when all I ever meant to do was give my heart to you fully.
When I surrender to the Void as stardust and darkness, when all that is left is pitch-black nothingness, I will carry the flame of my love for you.
Wherever eternity ends, you will still find my love waiting.
I just hope to prove it to you from this breath until my last.’
Dom’s strong hands drew her face toward him, and his rough thumb brushed away the tearstains from her cheek before his lips crashed into hers in a fiery kiss that melted away any bit of darkness that remained shrouding her iron heart.
He rested his forehead on hers, his depthless brown eyes alight with the love that had never truly faded between them. ‘To the end of eternity, my love.’
The groan of rusted hinges snapped them to attention, and they were no longer alone. The heaviness between them meant only one thing—eternity might very well end today.”
Hope’s eyes had reddened as she read, but she appeared to use the thunderous applause as an opportunity to cage her emotions once more.
Brayden stood slack-jawed in the crowd. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t remember anything logical. Which meant he couldn’t stay.
Before he could think about what he was doing, he beelined for the exit. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of Hope, utterly wrecked at the sight of him fleeing from the edge.