Chapter Forty-Five #3
Shifting into golden threads, they battered Craos relentlessly.
He roared in fury, swiping and clawing at them, but each time they touched him, he recoiled like he had been stung.
Craos was forced to withdraw his arm from the earth and retreat into the gateway.
The threads stretched themselves across the rift’s edges, forming a lattice of spectral lines.
As more and more wove themselves together, the lattice tightened, forming a seal over the opening.
They were buying Owen and me time to reach Charles. But as Craos fought back, hammering at the lattice and ignoring the stings, the threads began to snap and dissolve.
I swallowed a scream and pushed my legs to run faster.
As we arrived at the Yew, I cried out at the sap and blood seeping from Charles’s roots, at the tendrils of smoke rising from the charred wood, at the slowly drifting ash where the Druids used to stand.
However, in the middle of the cracked trunk, deep within the Yew’s roots, I glimpsed a faint swirling of mists.
“Charles,” I whispered. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t focus.
Owen spun me to face him. Breathing hard, he grasped the back of my neck with one hand. The other held his sword dripping with blood. A wraith tried to attack us from the side, but he cut it down without sparing it a glance.
“You listen to me!” he yelled above the screams rising from the battlefield, his eyes burning into mine. “I love you, Kira, and I will always love you. In any life. In any world. But I’m sorry, love. Granddad told me there was no other way, and I need you safe.”
He kissed me hard, like he was committing me to memory, and then pushed me through the crack into the Yew.
Onto the Root Path. The last place with a bit of magic.
And as I left Earth, more threads locked into place—the threads of my parents, Ava, Sophie, Marion, and Joan peeled away from the others in the lattice.
A seventh, unknown thread joined them, but I had no time to wonder at its identity.
They settled alongside the others in my heart, mere seconds before the rest of the spirits faded completely.
But Owen didn’t follow.
Before I could run back to him, he lifted his sword and drove it into the ground before him, somehow locking the Root Path from both sides, and I was left pounding on an invisible wall, helpless to do anything other than watch the unthinkable happen.
“What are you doing?!” I screamed. My panic made it hard to breathe. Hard to think. This couldn’t be happening. He wouldn’t leave me. He said he would never leave me.
Owen regarded me with such pain and sorrow that I could almost feel his heart ripping apart along with my own.
Chest heaving, from pain or exertion or both, he placed a hand against the invisible wall.
I tried to touch it, tried to push through.
I scraped and kicked at the wall, but the wall was impenetrable.
Finally, my attempts slowed, and I simply rested my palm against his.
“Owen…no.”
“Granddad told me that if he was struck down, I needed to get you to him. He said that there might be a tiny part of the Root Path left—a small part of him left alive—and that you would be safe within it. But I can only seal it from the outside. The sword knows how. It won’t keep Craos out completely, but it will buy you time. ”
“To do what?!”
“I don’t know.” He looked exhausted and defeated, like he had been fighting for this very moment, and now that it was here, he was ready to lay down his sword and rest. That realization terrified me more than anything I had yet faced.
“I don’t have a plan, love, at least not beyond the next few minutes. All I know is that this will buy you some time. If there is something that can be done, if any hope remains at all, I know you’ll find it. And you’ll save us.”
“You promised to always follow me!”
“I know, love. I promised to follow you to the ends of the Earth.” He looked at the solid ground beneath him and then at the swirling mists beneath me, and his lips quirked.
“Maybe I have kept my promise after all. But I also promised to protect you, with my life if needed, and that’s what I’m doing. And I always will.”
He took a step back and dropped his sword, staring at me with infinite love and grief.
I was frantic to tell him how I felt. If this was it, I needed to tell him how much I loved him, but there was no time to speak all the words in my heart.
“Owen,” I whispered, my voice breaking, “you are worth everything. Do you understand? I would do it all again, even knowing we had only a short time together. I would do it all again, Owen. I’ll never regret taking the risk. With you.”
Owen’s love for me shone through his tears, his gaze never leaving my face, and I screamed as Craos stepped through the portal and a wall of fire thousands of feet high erupted from his mouth. It devoured the battlefield and everyone on it.
I stared at Owen the entire time. I watched him turn to ash, and then I watched that ash drift away.
And somehow, I saw beyond the battlefield, and I witnessed the fire roll over mountains, evaporate cities, and boil the oceans to nothing.
There was no escape. No place to hide. The planet was left a smouldering sphere, drifting through space. Blackened and silent.
Craos had won, and Owen—everyone—was dead.