Chapter 70
Chapter
Seventy
Pain bloomed bright behind his eyes, each heartbeat a scream of fire in his veins. The darkness started to swallow him. Even though Kaen’s last spell had ripped through his ribs like flame, he could not fall. He knew she would not give up and would foolishly risk her life for his.
The shadows whispered to him. "Let go,” they hissed, curling around his limbs like lovers, like chains. "She is gone now. Save yourself to save her kingdom."
Thorne’s breath came in ragged gasps. He closed his eyes and reached, through blood, through pain, for the bond that had once been a constant. He reached for Vornokh.
"Help me," he whispered inwardly.
Vornokh’s voice cracked through his mind like stone splitting in winter. “Do not do this. You know the cost.”
“She’s gone.”
“If you reach for the dark magic, there will be no return. I will not follow you into that pit, Thorne."
His heart broke open. "Then don’t. Just let me go."
"NO!" The roar inside his skull made him gasp. "I will not lose you, too."
"She is everything," Thorne breathed. "And if I burn to bring her back, then I burn."
Vornokh’s grief surged hot and wordless, a tremor of ancient love lost again.
Thorne felt it, the snap. Like the tear of silk. Like a heartbeat vanishing in silence. Her bond. Gone. His scream was silent. There was no voice left in him. Only the soundless shatter of something vital cracking inside his chest. He slammed his fists to the ground.
“No, Gods, please, not her,” he whispered, voice cracking, hollow. “Take me, not her.”
All the years he had trained. All the fights he had fought.
All the power he’d carried. None of it had ever broken him like this.
Not when his mother cried in her tower. Not when soldiers screamed on the field.
Not even when he’d touched shadow for the first time, but this, this was losing the only thing that ever burned bright enough to find him in the dark.
He remembered her laugh, sharp and defiant on their first day.
The way she used to challenge him in training, eyes flashing like flint.
He remembered her trembling breath when he first kissed her, the tremor in her fingers when she reached for him beneath the stars.
He remembered the night she fell asleep in his arms, and he whispered, "I would burn the world before I’d let you fall. "
He had failed. Then silence. Thorne let go.
The shadows surged at his call. He didn’t fight them.
He embraced them. As he reached into the rift between life and death, he gave himself to the dark to save her.
It cost him everything. His body collapsed, lifeless.
His world ruptured. He felt her go. His soul tore open with a howl that never made it to his lips.
Vornokh’s roar echoed it, a dragon's scream of agony and denial.
“No,” Thorne gasped, crawling forward to her lifeless body through smoke and ruin. “Please. Please, I gave you what you asked in return for me to save her,” he told the Dark Master.
Thorne reached for her. For the flicker.
For warmth. But she wasn’t there. She was dead.
His heart became a grave. His breath hitched, and his hands shook.
He tasted blood, dust, and sorrow. And in that silence, he screamed.
The kind of scream that rips from bone. That defies language.
That begs the Gods to unmake the world. "I can’t lose her. "
The shadows surged again, and this time he tore them open with bare hands, reaching, clawing, sobbing into the void.
"Take me," he begged. "Take me in her place,” Thorne screamed with pure desperation.
He begged again to anyone or anything that would listen.
“Take me, take all of it. Bring her back. "
The darkness listened. It swallowed him and welcomed him.