Chapter 79
LXXIX.
brYNN
She couldn't find her edges.
That was the first thing that was off. She'd always known where she ended and the world began. You had to, as a thief. Knowing the exact space your body occupied. Every finger. Every breath.
Now there was nothing to find. She was edgeless. Formless. Aware without being anything at all.
Just consciousness floating in nothing.
Was this death?
The memories came slowly. Disconnected. Fragmented.
Caelum's attack. Golden light blazing toward her chest. His face twisted with rage. His voice: neither shall you have your architect.
The impact. Pain exploding through her chest, so much pain it erased everything except the knowledge that she was ending.
Then nothing.
Then this.
She tried to feel her body. Couldn't. Couldn't even remember what "feeling" meant when you had nothing to feel with.
Tried to open her eyes. Had no eyes.
Tried to move her hands. Had no hands. No form. Nothing to move.
Dead, then. Or dying. Or caught somewhere between.
Forces were pulling at her.
Multiple directions at once.
Reaching for her from different places. Trying to claim her. Trying to tear pieces away like she was something to be divided.
Her awareness was fragmenting. She could feel it happening.
The sense of I becoming we becoming pieces, her thoughts starting to run in different directions at once, memories already beginning to sort themselves into piles for different destinations.
Here, the violence. There, the obsession.
Somewhere else, the unfinished business.
Parts of her being catalogued for distribution.
Like an estate sale. Like inventory being divided among creditors.
She was being liquidated.
No.
The thought came from somewhere the fragmenting hadn't reached yet. Some stubborn core that had kept her alive when her parents died. That had kept her stealing when she should have starved. That had kept her mouth running when smarter people would have stayed silent.
Absolutely fucking not.
She'd survived worse than this. She'd survived betrayal and starvation and ten years of running. She'd survived the Forsaken realm. She'd survived Caelum's torture with her mind intact.
She was not going to let herself be parceled out like disputed property.
And Dante—
He was there. Somewhere. She could feel him, faintly. A presence at the edges of her awareness. Familiar. Safe. Hers in ways she didn't have words for.
He'd come for her. She knew it with certainty.
The pulling intensified. The courts fighting harder.
She could sense them now.
The Violent court wanting her warrior's death. The Consumed reaching for her obsessive determination. The Lingering court pulling at her unfinished business.
And the Forsaken.
His realm.
Reaching for her because she'd died while he was consumed by rage. Unable to protect her. The exact moment of abandonment that defined those who came to his domain.
The Tower of Screaming Winds was calling. She could feel it. The place where she'd relive Caelum's attack until the concept of time lost meaning. Where she'd scream for help that would never come. Where she'd become nothing but suffering echoing through stone.
And Dante would hear. Every scream. Unable to reach her. Unable to stop it. Listening to her break while he stood helpless on the other side of barriers he couldn't cross.
She would rather cease entirely.
She refused to scatter. Refused to break. She was going back.
To him.
To her body.
To life.
She reached for the familiar presence. The sense of him at the edges of her awareness.
Reached and pulled with everything she had.
The pulling from the courts suddenly changed.
Something else was reaching for her now.
Darkness. Familiar shadows that had always been safe.
His power.
Threads of death magic reaching through the void. Anchoring instead of harvesting. Holding instead of claiming.
Multiple threads, white and black intertwined, wrapping around her like hands catching her before she fell. Tethering her. Holding her together when she should have been fragmenting.
And shadows. His shadows. Weaving through the threads. Dark and protective and possessive.
Claiming her.
Marking her as his.
Refusing to let the courts have even a single piece of what belonged to him.
Stay with me. His voice came from somewhere. Distant. Rough. Desperate in ways she'd never heard from him. Don't you dare leave me.
The threads strengthened. More appeared, branching out like roots or veins. A whole network forming around her. Catching every piece. Holding her together.
Pulling her toward her body.
She could sense it now. Distant but approaching. The physical form she'd left behind. There. Intact. Breathing somehow. Heart beating when it should have stopped.
Because he was keeping it alive.
Thief. Steal this. Steal my power. Steal my immortality. Steal whatever you need to come back to me.
His voice again. Broken. Raw.
And through the connection forming between them, she felt what he wasn't saying. What it was costing him.
His body was failing. She could sense his hands shaking against her physical form, his breath coming ragged, his heartbeat growing erratic. Power flowing out of him in torrents. Not a stream. A flood. Everything he was pouring into her with no thought for what it would leave behind.
He was emptying himself. Draining his own existence to fill the void in hers.
He was dying. Giving her his life because he couldn't bear to watch her lose hers.
He wasn't just saving her. He was trading himself for her.
No. No, you stubborn, impossible—
She pulled harder along the threads. Moving faster toward her form. Toward him. If she could get back, maybe she could stop him. Make him stop giving. Make him keep enough to survive.
The shadows helped. Guiding her. Supporting her. Like hands pulling her home.
Her awareness touched her form.
The reconnection snapped into place like a bone setting.
Cold.
That was the first thing. The stone beneath her back, the air against her skin, her own flesh somehow freezing from the inside. Cold like she'd never be warm again.
Then everything else crashed in. Weight. Lungs burning for air. Her heart stuttering, forgetting its rhythm, finding it again. Pain radiating from her chest where Caelum had struck.
Her back arched against stone. Air rushed into her lungs in a gasping breath.
Alive.
But changed.
She could feel him. Inside her. Part of her now.
Not beside her. Inside.
Like a second heartbeat under her own. Like a voice in the back of her skull that she'd never be rid of. His presence taking up space in her consciousness, rearranging things to make room for himself. Settling in like he'd always belonged there.
Their consciousnesses connected. His thoughts brushing against hers. His emotions bleeding into her awareness. The edges of where she ended and he began had blurred.
And through that connection, she felt him clearly now.
Felt how much he'd given. Felt the hollowness where his power had been. Felt his body trembling with exhaustion, his lungs barely working, his heart struggling to beat. He'd poured so much of himself into saving her that there was almost nothing left.
He was a fire burning down to embers. Slipping away while she lay here in the body he'd saved.
She tried to move. To open her eyes. To reach for him.
Her body wouldn't respond.
Too exhausted. Too damaged. Her awareness was back, but her body needed rest.
No. He needs you. He's dying because he saved you and you need to MOVE.
Her fingers twitched. That was all she could manage. Her hand, she could feel his hand in hers, firm but weakening, trembling, his grip loosening as his strength failed.
I'm here, she tried to tell him through the bond. I came back. You saved me. Now stop. Stop giving. Keep something for yourself.
She didn't know if he could hear her.
Through the bond, his presence flickered. The steady flame becoming erratic. Fading.
He'd given too much and was slipping away while she lay here unable to help. Dying because he'd chosen her life over his own.
Dante!
She screamed it through the bond. Tried to push strength to him the way he'd anchored her. Tried to give instead of take. Tried to shove her own life force through the connection, anything to keep him from fading.
But she didn't know how. Didn't understand this new magic or how to save him when he was the one who'd always saved her.
So she gave him the only thing she could.
She squeezed his hand.
One weak squeeze. Everything she had. Her fingers closing around his with all the strength left in her broken body.
I'm here. I'm alive. Don't you dare leave me now. Don't you dare make this a trade.
His presence flickered again.
Weaker.
Darkness pulled at her. Exhaustion dragged her under even as she fought it.
Her last thought before awareness left was fierce and desperate and absolutely certain:
You brought me back. I'm bringing you back too. Whatever it takes. Even if I have to steal your death right out from under you.
Then nothing.
Just darkness.
And his hand still in hers.