24. Gracie
Gracie
Nothing greeted me on the other side.
No pain. No countdown. No grief. There was nothing waiting at the edges of my mind, nothing ready to rush in the second I let my guard down.
I existed in a place with no ground beneath me and no sky above, just an endless gray-gold light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.
I breathed, slow and easy, for what felt like the first time in months.
I couldn’t sit and I couldn’t stand. There was nothing but the sensation of drifting in space without any of the usual demands attached to it. I wasn’t even sure I had a body anymore. I felt weightless, formless, as if I was more an idea than flesh.
I could have stayed like that forever.
The thought arrived so easily, so naturally, that it took me a moment to realize how dangerous it was. There was no war, no impending sense of doom, no decades of trauma waiting to resurface.
But there was also no Ravik. No Thornar. No Basir.
Yet I understood that the sensation was purposeful, that this space was reaching into all the tired, broken places inside of me and offering exactly what I’d needed for so long: rest.
I let myself rest a little longer than I probably should have.
Then, quietly, I forced myself to focus.
There was nothing forcing me to move forward. But something in me, some part that had survived a decade of captivity, understood that this peace wasn’t the point. It was a resting place, not a destination.
“Nyxarra?” My voice carried strangely in the endless light, swallowed almost as soon as I spoke. “Vaelithra?”
The light around me shifted, parting like something alive, and I felt them before I saw them. Warmth bloomed outward from two distinct points on the horizon that hadn’t been there a second before.
“Gracie!”
Nyxarra stood taller than I remembered from any of my visions. There was nothing wounded or weak about her now. Her eyes held a sharpness I hadn’t seen since the first time she’d reached for me in a dream—something fierce.
“Are you…are you free?” I asked breathlessly, a surge of excitement rushing through me.
“Yes!” She crossed the distance between us in an instant, pulling me into an embrace that felt like being wrapped in a cool blanket. “You absolute wonderful menace. Do you have any idea what you just did? I felt that cage shatter, Gracie. I felt Kaevorak choke on it.”
I’d never been called a “wonderful menace” before, but I would take it. It had worked!
Beside her, Vaelithra didn’t so much stand as loom.
She was vast in a way that bent the light around her, power radiating off of her like the sun’s rays in the summer.
Where Nyxarra was sharp edges, Vaelithra was raw, immense force barely restrained, and for the first time since I’d known her, I understood exactly why the old texts called her the “Mother of Fur and Claws” rather than just fur. She was absolutely terrifying.
Behind them both, the space around us flickered, and for one dizzying second I saw glimpses of another place entirely.
A moonlit forest stretched endless and silver behind Nyxarra, and behind Vaelithra, something wilder, dense green and roaring water and creatures too large to belong to any world I knew.
Their realms were bleeding through, now that nothing held them back.
“We’re free,” Vaelithra said, and her voice shook the space around us. “Truly free, Gracie. For the first time in longer than you could ever imagine.”
“Because of you,” Nyxarra added, pulling back just enough to look at me, her sharp gaze softening into something closer to reverence.
I shook my head, throat tightening. “I didn’t do it alone.”
“No,” Vaelithra agreed, “but you were the one who chose to give instead of take. In this world, that is not a small thing.”
I hesitated. “Ivan is gone. Did everyone else…”
Vaelithra offered me an understanding look. “Some lives were lost. Not all of them. Not the ones closest to you.”
I hoped she meant my mates. The idea of them not…
I wouldn’t let myself finish the thought.
“There’s something you should know. Before you go back,” Nyxarra said carefully.
“What?” I asked, feeling a pulse of concern.
“It’s gone,” she said, gently. “The bond scar. The tether that let us reach you—the visions, the pull, all of it. It broke the same moment the cage did.”
“What do you mean?” My hand rose instinctively to my throat, to the mating marks I could still feel. “My mates, the bond, are you saying—”
“No.” Vaelithra’s voice cut through my panic before it could fully take hold. “That was never ours to give or take, Gracie. The bond between you and your mates was built from your own hearts and your own choices. It doesn’t belong to us.”
My relief was so overwhelming that my knees nearly buckled beneath me.
“What’s gone,” Nyxarra continued, quieter now, “is only the piece that was ours. The visions. The dreams that pulled you toward us. That connection is severed now, and it isn’t coming back.”
“You won’t hear us anymore,” Vaelithra added. “Not the way you used to. If you need us—truly need us—you’ll have to come to a temple, the same as anyone else. We won’t be able to reach you first, but we will always answer any priestess calling on your behalf.”
I felt the loss of it settle into my chest…and then pure, unreserved gratitude.
“Thank you,” I said, and meant it more than I could express.
I thought about the girl who’d carried a vial of poison in her pocket, certain there was no other way out.
I thought about who I was now, at this moment.
“For choosing me. For helping me find the strength I needed to defeat him, to keep everyone safe.”
Vaelithra smiled. “Thank you, Gracie Holloway.”
Nyxarra’s expression shifted into a more casual smile. “Go home now. Go back to the people waiting for you—they aren’t patient.”
I laughed. My mates were many wonderful things, but “patient” wasn’t a virtue I’d ascribe to any of them.
The light around me had already begun to shift, pulling gently at the edges of wherever I actually was.
“Goodbye,” I whispered, to both of them. “Thank you. For all of it.”
Then the light took me.