Chapter 46
Ellaryn didn’t know what dying would feel like.
Not really dying.
Not the kind she had known before, where the world went black and then came rushing back in again, her lungs dragging in air like punishment, her heart splintering itself back together with a fresh scar to mark the lesson. Not the kind where she woke gasping and broken, but alive.
This felt different.
Final.
She could still see the King’s lifeless eyes staring up at her, empty now, stripped of all the cruelty and control that had once defined him.
Her knees began to weaken beneath her weight, and for a moment she allowed herself the smallest, most fragile sense of victory.
She was glad she had been the last thing he saw.
There was a bitter, quiet irony in the fact that he had forged the very weapon that killed him.
But she didn’t want him to be the last thing she saw.
She didn’t want to carry him with her into whatever came next.
So she turned her head.
And she saw Xander.
He caught her before she hit the ground, his arms wrapping around her as if he could hold her together through sheer force of will alone. Tears streamed down his face, falling onto her cheeks, warm and endless, until she could no longer tell if they were his or her own.
She smiled at him, though it hurt.
“You did it,” he whispered, his voice breaking under the weight of it. His cheeks were flushed, his expression torn open with pride and grief and something that looked dangerously like regret. “You really did it.”
Her chest felt heavier now, every breath a battle she wasn’t sure she was winning.
“I love you too,” she said softly, the words catching between sobs. “I thought you should know before—”
He stopped her with a kiss.
It was desperate and trembling and unfinished, his hand cradling the back of her head as he pulled her closer, rocking her gently like he could soothe death itself out of her.
“Ellaryn, what’s happening?”
Sailen’s voice broke through everything.
Through the pain.
Through the fear.
Through the dark.
It always did.
She reached for him, her fingers finding his and holding on tighter than she meant to.
“It’s okay,” she whispered, her voice barely holding together. “I’m just… going away for a while.”
He started crying before she could finish.
“But Xander is going to take care of you,” she said, her throat closing around the lie.
“No,” Sailen choked, shaking his head violently. “No… You promised. You promised you’d stay with me.”
His face crumpled, sadness transforming him into someone older than he had any right to be, his small body shaking under the weight of something far too big.
“What about the party?” he asked weakly. “You promised me a party. You said you’d never leave me.” He pleaded as tears streamed down his face.
The question broke her.
“You’ll have your party, right?” She said, looking at Xander.
“Yeah, buddy, we’re gonna have the biggest party you could ever imagine,” Xander said through tears.
“I’m sorry,” Ellaryn whispered. “But you’re going to be safe now; I kept my promise… I got you out like I said I would.”
He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her forehead, his lips warm and trembling.
When he pulled back, he was smiling through his tears.
“I forgive you,” he said. “You’re not a bad person. You’re not Ruin. Not to me.”
His voice cracked.
“You’re everything to me.”
Ellaryn’s vision blurred.
And for the first time since the end began—
She was afraid to close her eyes.
She felt herself slipping away.
She had always imagined that when death finally came for her, it would bring her past with it—that her life would unfold behind her eyes in a final act of remembrance. She thought she would see the worst of it—The blood, the pain, the things she had done and the people she had lost.
But she didn’t see her life.
She saw Sailen’s.
She saw his smile first.
That smile that could have melted an ice age, bright and unguarded and so full of warmth that it made the world feel softer just to witness it.
She saw him on a beach she had never been allowed to give him, his small feet sinking into wet sand as he ran between the shoreline and the sea, unable to choose between them, laughing with the kind of freedom she had spent her entire life trying to protect.
She saw him happy.
Truly happy.
She saw him grow.
She saw scraped knees and crooked grins and the quiet pride in his eyes the first time he realised he was strong enough to stand on his own. She saw him make friends, saw him laugh with them in the open air, unafraid of shadows or Kings or cages.
She saw Xander beside him.
She saw the way he looked at him, steady and protective and full of a love that would never ask for anything in return. She saw Sailen become someone whole under his care, someone untouched by the darkness that had made her.
And sometimes, in those quiet moments between living, Sailen would think of her.
Not with fear.
Not with pain.
But with love.
He would stand at the edge of the sea and look out toward the horizon, and though he could not see her, some part of him would know she was there.
Watching.
Waiting.
Loving him still.
Wanting him to know that she would do it again.
That she would choose him again.
Every time.
A thousand times.
No matter the cost.
No matter the ending.
No matter what it took to give him the life she never had.