Chapter Twenty-Seven
SCAR
There is no darkness here.
That’s the first thing that registers through the haze, not that I’m unconscious, not that my body is somewhere cold and still, not that the toxin has closed its fist around my bloodline like a lock finding its key.
What registers is the light. Pale, gray, and lifeless, the kind of light that exists in places that refuse to let you look away from them, the kind that strips the color out of everything until all that remains is the shape of the thing you cannot stop seeing.
Astrid is twenty feet away, and she is dying.
She is always dying.
I know that. Some thin, fraying part of me knows I am not here, that this field, winter-bare, the ground hard with frost that crunches under boots I haven’t worn in centuries, doesn’t exist anymore, and that the woman in front of me is three hundred and fifty years in the ground.
That part of me is so small now.
The rest of me is here, fully, completely, and without escape, watching her fall.
But she’s on her knees.
The violence is gone from her, burned out of her system, leaving only the aftermath behind.
It shows in the way her body trembles, not with strength but with the uneven, failing echoes of it, like whatever has been driving her is finally losing its hold.
Her hands hit the ground first, fingers splaying against the surface without control, and then the rest of her follows, her shoulders folding in, her spine curving as if the weight of everything inside her has finally become too much to carry.
I don’t remember deciding to close the distance, only that I’m doing it, my body responding faster than thought, faster than reason, driven by something deeper than either.
It doesn’t matter how many times I’ve seen this play out, how many times I’ve run it back in my head looking for a different outcome.
It never fucking changes.
I’m still too far away. Still too slow.
Her head lifts, and that shouldn’t be possible.
There’s nothing left in her that should be capable of that kind of control, not after what’s been done to her, not after what Mordain’s poison has spent years carving into her from the inside.
But she does it anyway, dragging the movement out of a body that is already giving up on her, forcing it inch by inch until her eyes find mine.
Everything in me locks when it happens.
Because for a second… just a second, she is there.
Not the broken thing the poison turned her into. Not the aftermath of the rampage. Her. The person I knew. The one I failed.
It hits hard, something in my chest cracking open under the weight of it. I try to close the distance faster, to reach her before this plays out the way it always does, but my body doesn’t move any quicker for it.
It never does.
Her mouth moves.
The first sound catches, barely more than breath, the broken beginning of my name dragged through a throat that can’t support it anymore. My hands curl into fists as I push forward, because I already know what she’s trying to say.
I’ve heard it too many times not to.
I don’t want to hear it again.
The second syllable follows anyway, landing exactly where it always does, cutting straight through everything I’ve built over it. It settles deep, sharp as ever, untouched by time.
‘Thank you.’
She thanked me. For ending it. For ending her.
The ground fractures under my boots as I force my way toward her, frost splitting outward in jagged lines that turn every step unstable. It doesn’t matter. I push through it anyway, because there is no version of this where I stop moving.
She’s still on her knees when I reach her, though it’s a fragile thing, something her body can’t hold for much longer.
I see it in the way her shoulders fold inward, in the tremor running through her hands where they press against the ground, as if the strength that once held her upright has finally burned out.
I drop in front of her without thinking, catching her as she starts to fall. The contact hits harder than it should. She’s still warm, solid, and here, and for a fraction of a second, that alone is enough to make something in me resist what I already know is coming.
“A-Astrid…” Her name breaks under the weight of everything. There’s nothing I can say that hasn’t come too late.
Her head lifts again, the effort brutal to watch, her focus dragging itself into place until her eyes lock onto mine.
Recognition comes first, and it hits with a force that locks something tight in my chest, because I know how quickly it will be gone again if I let this continue.
My grip tightens on her without thought, like I can hold her here by sheer force, like I can anchor her to this moment if I refuse to let go. For a second, I let myself want it, to stay here, just long enough to pretend there’s another way this ends.
But there isn’t.
I have always known that.
Her mouth moves again, the sound catching as it fights its way out of a body that is already failing her. I know what’s coming before it fully forms.
I don’t want this moment to finish the way it always does.
But wanting has never changed anything here.
My hand moves, slower than it should, heavier than it has ever felt, the hilt of the blade settling into my grip with a weight that presses through every part of me. There’s no distance left to hide behind. I feel all of it, every implication, every consequence, as I bring it into position.
“I’m here,” I manage, the words low and unsteady.
Her eyes don’t leave mine.
There’s no fear in them. She knows exactly what I’m about to do, and she lets me.
But that’s what breaks me.
If she fought, it would be easier. If she tried to stop me, I’d have something to push against.
But she doesn’t.
She stays exactly where she is, trusting me with the last thing I have left to give her.
My other hand steadies her, holding her in place because I know if I hesitate again, I won’t do it. I’ll try to save her. I’ll look for a way that doesn’t exist.
And I can’t let that happen.
Not to her.
The blade goes in under my hand, the resistance immediate and real, her body reacting even as she doesn’t fight me. I feel every inch of it as it passes through, ending what’s left of her before the poison can take it back.
Her gaze never leaves mine.
Not for a second.
I feel it before I understand it, the shift in her, the last of the tension in her body pulling tight and then slipping, not all at once, but in small, irreversible pieces.
Her chest stills first.
Not a dramatic stop.
Just… nothing following the last rise.
I’m close enough to see it happen. Close enough to watch the exact moment it doesn’t come back.
My hand tightens on her automatically, as though I can force it and make her take another breath just by refusing to accept that she won’t.
“Astrid—” It doesn’t reach her.
Her eyes stay on mine, but something behind them shifts, the focus softening, not in fear, not in pain, just… slipping. Like the part of her that was holding on has finally let go.
I see it leave.
There’s no mistaking it.
No way to deny it.
One second she’s there, the next…
She isn’t.
Her gaze softens.
Slips.
And then…
She’s gone.
I feel the exact second it happens. There’s no mistaking it, the absence hits like something physical.
“No!” It rips out of me before I can stop it, raw, useless, and already too late.
My grip tightens on her automatically, dragging her closer against me like I can force her back into it, like I can undo what just happened by refusing to accept it. Her body gives under my hands in a way it didn’t a second ago, no resistance left, no tension, just weight.
Empty.
Something in me snaps.
Not clean.
Definitely not controlled.
Violent.
The sound that tears out of me isn’t human.
It isn’t even close. It rips up from somewhere deep and ancient, something that has been held in check for centuries and finally finds a reason to break loose.
It echoes out across the frozen expanse, a raw, jagged roar that cracks through the air hard enough to feel like it should split the sky open with it.
I don’t let go of her.
I can’t.
My other hand slams into the ground beside us with everything I’ve got behind it, the impact detonating through the ice in a violent fracture that tears outward in sharp, splintering lines.
The surface shatters under the force, cracks racing away from us in every direction as if the ground can’t hold under what’s coming out of me.
It doesn’t help.
Nothing helps.
The rage keeps climbing, feeding on itself, on the absence in my arms, on the fact that she’s gone, and I’m still here to feel it. It burns through me fast and brutal, looking for something to destroy, something to punish for this…
But there’s nothing left.
Nothing to hit.
Nothing to tear apart that fixes this.
That’s what breaks it open wider.
My hand curls into the shattered ice, fingers digging in hard enough to grind the fragments into powder, my body locking around the force of it like I’m holding myself together by violence alone.
My fangs are down, my vision narrowed to nothing but white and red and the shape of her in my arms, and for a second, just a second, there’s nothing left of me but the instinct to destroy everything that exists in the same world where she doesn’t.
Then it crashes.
Not gone.
But contained again, forced back down under sheer will, because even now, even like this, I don’t let go of her.
I can’t.
I stay here in the wreckage I just made, holding her against me, the cracks in the ice still spreading outward beneath us, the echo of that roar still hanging in the air like it doesn’t know where to go, and none of it changes anything.
She is still gone.
She is twenty feet away.
And she is dying all over again.
What if you’d gone back sooner?
The thought doesn’t come from outside, it rises from somewhere deep inside me, ugly, ancient, and entirely mine.
What if you had seen it in her before she was too far gone? Before the innocents? Before she made it impossible not to kill her?