Chapter 25 #2
It crashes into me, through me. I stagger back and nearly fall, but catch myself before going over the edge. The wave keeps going, coursing across the land bridge, the cliff, the Wildwood below.
I don’t watch. I’m already up again, already moving, my gaze locked on the hulking figure lying face-down near the hourglass.
Amriel. He’s collapsed with an arm outstretched, his gyre resting in the grass just inches away. As if he was reaching for me. As if he fought his way free of his bonds and came for me.
A choked howl rips from my throat as I hurtle toward him. I can’t tell if he’s breathing. He looks too still, his face mashed against the ground, and I’m falling to my knees, watching my own hands paw at him with frantic movements.
Rolling him over takes effort, because he’s nothing but dead weight.
He ends up on his back with his head propped on my lap, and I can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t do anything but sob as my fingers fly over his brow, his closed eyes.
Violet patterns flicker over his cheeks as his skin goes indigo.
Fangs sprout from his mouth, then retract again as his fae form reasserts itself.
Oh, goddess. My Shadow. My Amriel. One and the same again.
His eyes open.
A breath slams into my lungs, then deserts me again just as quickly. One look, and I know I haven’t fixed anything. Haven’t saved him at all, only broken the curse.
Because pain simmers in his eyes, a whole sea of it. “Princess,” he manages, but his voice is wrong—thick and wet and gooey, like something’s broken deep inside.
I curl over him, already broken, too, because I can’t lose him. I can’t. I won’t survive, won’t—
“Don’t cry.” A wheeze punches into him. He tries to reach for me, but his hand doesn’t make it, and I see why. See the horrifying angle, his arm bent where it shouldn’t be.
“No, no, no.” My hands dance over his body as if I can piece it back together. Words come out, but I don’t know what I’m saying, what I can say other than to voice the despair chewing through me. “Why’d you do that? Why’d you let yourself fall?”
He smiles, a dimple digging into one cheek, even as he winces. “Couldn’t… Hurt you.”
“No.” A long, keening cry pours out of me, and I’m rocking him now, pressing his head to my chest, his hair spilling through my fingers.
“It’s…” He struggles for breath, something rattling in the base of his lungs. “All right. Princess. I told you death waited for me at. The end.”
Each word is a cruel dagger driven through my heart.
Tears blot out my vision, dripping onto his face and into his hair.
Someone is ripping me open, pulling my soul out through my chest and my back, dismembering me from two directions at once.
“Amriel, no. You can’t die. I just met you. I just found you. I just—”
“Shh,” he says. “It’s done. It’s… All I wanted was to die uncursed. And look. Now I. Get to.”
Somehow, that only heightens the agony slashing through me.
“And I… Hope you know…” He gasps, blinking against the rising light as some internal spasm wracks his body.
“What?” I sob. “Hope I know what?”
His breathing turns shallow, short little gasps, each one flaying another layer off my soul.
His eyes wander, find my face, struggle to focus.
“Before you, I thought my heart had forgotten how to beat. Now I think I’d…
just forgotten how to feel it. And I hope you know that…
That…” Another gasp. His gaze loses focus, his pupils expanding, the black eating up the gold.
Oh, goddess. I think I’m dying, too.
Another wheeze leaks from his throat. “That I fell in love with you. Fast. So fast. No time at all. Didn’t even know I could. But you… You…”
I curl over him protectively, as if I can shut death out if I just fold him into my embrace. He coughs, red froth bubbling from his lips, and I know what it means. A lung, punctured beyond repair. Probably speared by a splinter of rib.
My chest caves in, collapses around nothing, reducing me to a bleeding husk.
“Just,” he gasps. “Touch me. I want it not to. Hurt. Just once, I want it not to hurt.”
I nod frantically, my hands finding his face, the bond tightening even as his life force slips away. I can feel it fading, departing this tangle of loose limbs and wrong angles.
“Stay ‘til it’s…” The light in his eyes dims. “‘Til I’m… P-promise…”
Fresh sobs boil up from the abyss in my chest. My thumbs brush across his cheekbones, over and over and over, binding us with touch even as the bond wobbles and falters.
Oh, goddess.
I lean down and kiss him, not caring about the blood smearing his mouth. I want his taste flooding my senses, the sting of copper clinging to my lips. I want it staining me. Tattooing me. I don’t want it to ever come off.
He kisses me back. Weakly and without any hope, but he does it.
Another cough. Warm blood sprays my lips. One dimple makes an appearance, only this time it looks different, like the period at the end of a sentence. One that will end a story that was just getting started. “Told you I… Wanted to die with… Your tongue in…”
He doesn’t finish. Can’t. I rear back, fearing the worst, but his eyes are still open, holding mine, the tenderness there robbing me of what little breath I have left.
Ishanna help me. Why did I ever think I could leave him? How could I possibly have considered going through the Aethrolian door? How could—
I stop. Freeze.
The Aethrolian door.
The Aethrolian door. It should be here now.
My head snaps up as I scan my surroundings. Sure enough, two doors hover before me, one arched and draped in vines, the other rectangular and unadorned. That one has straight lines. Hard angles.
Home.
My heart thuds once, painfully. I wouldn’t have gone through that door—I know that now—but on the other side lies the one thing that can help Amriel.
My sister. Carina. The only person in the world with the ability to heal him.
Amriel gurgles in my arms, choking on his own blood, and I lift his head, rest it against a hillock of sand. Then I let go of him and scramble up, knowing every second costs me.
I can’t hesitate. Can’t stop to think about the flood of pain that inundates him, the one he just asked me to banish.
He draws a warbling breath. “S…Sariah… Don’t…”
I turn away, force myself not to look. It’s the cruelest thing I’ve ever done, and something breaks in me that will never heal, but death can’t have my mate.
I turn my head just far enough that he can hear me. “I fell in love with you, too. And I’m sorry I’m leaving. But I’ll come back. Please don’t die before I do. Please.”
I stagger toward the doors. Each step gouges a fresh wound into my belly, but I force myself forward until my hand closes around the knob that leads to Aethrolia.
I don’t look back. Just wrench open the door and hurl myself through, already screaming Carina’s name.