Chapter 35
“ Y ou are not dying.” Alandris clenched his teeth so hard I thought they’d crack. “Don’t you dare look at me like you want to say goodbye, because I am not letting you die.”
“Please,” I murmured.
I watched the fragile hold on his composure shatter as he looked down into my eyes, seeing the resignation there. In his own were a swirl of emotion—grief, rage, desperation—and above all—regret. He would never forgive himself for letting me fight, and I would never convince him it would have altered nothing. I still would have hesitated, would have jumped between them, would have made one final effort to change Kallistra’s mind. It was who I was. The one thing I had that allowed me to wrestle hold of my own body was the same thing that damned me. Humanity. Goodness .
Alandris’ hands hovered above my wound, and I felt the warmth of magic dancing across my skin. It wouldn’t be enough. He didn’t specialize in healing and the poison was too far along, faster acting since it’d been administered through a wound rather than ingested. Even a highly trained healer would struggle to repair such damage. I knew that, and I was sure Alandris did, too. It wasn’t logic that drove him to keep trying in spite of this.
“Please,” I repeated, laying my hand over his. There was too much I wanted to say, and too little time left to say it. My heart was slowing, my vision growing hazier with each passing moment. I was running out of time, and I didn’t want to use up the time I had left struggling against what was bound to happen.
He stilled, looking down at me with trembling lips and bloodshot eyes. “I-I can’t.” The tears he’d been keeping at bay fell at once. “I have to save you. If I can stabilize you, then I can get you to a real healer… Do not ask me not to try.”
I curled my fingers around his shaking hand. “The blade was poisoned… There is no time.”
He bent down and pressed his forehead to mine, a sob wracking his body.
“I will come back… I promise.” I brought my hand to his cheek. “Whatever it takes, I will find you again. I will remember you. I swear it.”
Alandris nodded and leaned into my touch .
“I don’t know if I will be the same as I am now, but will… will you wait for me?”
It was a selfish ask. I didn’t know enough about the process of rebirth to guarantee that I would be anything like the woman he loved now. I didn’t know how long it would take to find him again—if I would even live long enough to find him. How many times had I lived and died before this life? How long would he be required to wait with no other guidance except blind faith? It was selfish, senseless, and yet I felt it somewhere deep in my soul—he was worth fighting for, worth living and dying for, worth begging to… wait. In all of my lives, I had never felt love like his. If fate was real, he was it—he was mine.
Alandris pulled away to look into my eyes, his grief mixed with something different—determination. “I will love every iteration of you, Nairu. It is your soul I am in love with. Death is not enough to pry me away from you. So, yes, I will wait for you.” He held my face in his hands with a delicate firmness. His voice strengthened with confidence. “I do not care if the forests burn to ash, if the oceans dry, or the moon falls from the sky. This world be damned. I will wait for you through it all.”
I used the last of my energy to unfasten the dagger from my hip. His first gift to me. I’d never used it on anyone or anything in all of our time together. I had meant it when I said I would only use it as a final, desperate attempt to cling to life. Perhaps I should have used it on Kallistra, but no, that wouldn’t have been right either. This was the end of my life, but not the end of my story, and the dagger was too precious a gift to stain with the blood of someone I’d not truly wanted to kill.
I held the hilt out to him. “Will you protect this for me?”
“It will be waiting for you.” He grabbed the dagger and slid it into his belt. “We will both be waiting for you.”
I left that life with a smile on my face.
“We meet again.”
I opened my eyes to the nothingness of endless darkness. Beside me sat Zaelos as I remembered him from my first life, a cold, lifeless beast. “How many times?” I asked.
He drummed his fingers along his chin. “This is number seven.” A flicker of amusement flashed across his face. “You have gotten us killed seven times. Think you’ll start taking my advice? You see, I have all eternity, but the human soul is not as resilient as a God’s. I don’t imagine you have many more lives before you lose yourself entirely.”
I huffed a soundless laugh. “Would that not be more convenient for you?”
“Unfortunately, no, or I would have smothered you from the inside out many moons ago. A broken mind will cause more problems for me once I take over that body of yours completely. So, I would appreciate it if you would follow the path I’ve laid out for you next time. Do not chase a hopeless dream.”
“You were quiet.”
Zaelos paused. “I was merciful. I knew we were dying. There was no purpose in interrupting your final moments.”
“That is awfully human of you.”
He scoffed. “And you are awfully chatty for a dead girl. Much more than usual.”
I wondered how our conversations had gone in my previous lives. I wondered where we were, and what we were waiting for, and for how long. I wondered if time was passing the same, or if the seconds passing by were years in a mortal life. But Zaelos was the last being I wanted to ask those questions to. It was not as though I would remember the answers. Whenever this—in-between—was over with, I would start again. A blank slate ready to be molded into a brand new Nairu.
I prayed to nothing. The beyond. If there was any way for me to maintain my memories, I was desperate to do so. Any amount of remembrance would have contented me, but I clung to the thought of him. The male I loved, who had promised to wait. Who I’d promised I would remember. If I could take only one memory with me to my next life, I wanted it to be of him. My soul had clung to him in life. I prayed it would cling to him still in death and rebirth. If my mind could not remember his love, my soul would.
“I’ve found a purpose now,” I finally said.
“And what would that be? ”
“There is someone I must find, and when I do, there will be no more ‘we’, Zaelos.”
He laughed. “It has always been ‘we’, my little monster. Do you even remember who you were before me? Do you think you can go back to being her after everything you’ve done? After everything your people subjected you to?”
“No.” I smiled.
His words struck me as intended, but I shoved them aside. Of course, I could never go back to my childhood innocence. I did not need or want to be the girl I was before. I would be stronger, and I would never let ‘my people’ dictate my life ever again. I would not let the wounds they inflicted upon me smother my resolve. I would endure whatever it took to find my way back to the people I cared about. I would never be truly free until I was separated from Zaelos. I could endure my cage for a while longer.
Something tugged at the fabric of my being, like strings tied to my limbs. The feeling of being weaved together in rebirth was the opposite of what I thought the afterlife would feel like. It was not the comforting embrace of finality—it was more akin to being stitched back together without enough skin to work with.
The shattered pieces of my mind, body, and soul were spread taut, transforming into something new. Each weave was excruciating, an agony worse than death itself. It was something unnatural that Zaelos’ curse had done, and I understood now why he’d implied we couldn’t keep doing this forever. The soul could only be stitched back together so many times before it wore away to nothingness .
The sensation had dulled to a faint prick in the back of my mind. The darkness around me swallowed my senses until I couldn’t see my own hands in front of my face. My seventh life was coming to a close, and my eighth was soon to begin. I would not waste it.
“I believe our time is up,” I said.
“Indeed, it is. Until next time we meet, Saintess.”
“Yes, until next time. Our last time.”