Chapter 52
“NO!” Dominic bellowed as Adara’s limp body crashed into the dark, icy, unforgiving Plagued Sea.
Primal rage stirred within him at the thought of her sinking into the depthless sea, where not even her magic could save her, descending into a void of watery darkness, and drowning with the shadows and monsters.
Death taunted him as it took Adara by the throat and dragged her beneath the undulating waves.
At least, if she died in the sea, part of him would always have her. She would rest with his shredded heart. One dark, broken soul alongside the other for all of eternity.
But he was not going to let her die. He’d lost his heart. He would not lose her, too.
The scar on his hand burned with the promise of their blood oath. Burned as if her magic was tethered to him, and it called for him to find her.
He didn’t care to be certain the lykren was dead or that its kin wouldn’t follow to avenge it. He’d dive unwaveringly into the Plagued Sea and mingle with the maws of monsters to get her back.
Dominic’s body went rigid as he made contact with the freezing water.
His skin sizzled with the lykren blood clouding the ocean, but the venom did not penetrate his skin, rendered useless by the water.
Salt stung his eyes as he peered through the dark sea.
In the distance, Adara’s shadowed, lifeless figure sank deeper and deeper.
He rushed toward her, arms propelling him through the water as fast as possible, though it seemed as if he wasn’t getting any closer.
Fading into the dark sea, her body began to disappear, sinking far too quickly for him to reach her.
Dominic concentrated on the water shifting around him. Cold and deadly. Head pounding, his power streamed out of him, a force to be reckoned with as he shifted the current of the sea to drag him down toward Adara. His muscles barked in protest at the strain of his magic, but he didn’t care.
Dark tangles of shadows plucked her from before his eyes and yanked her down at an alarming speed toward her watery grave.
The dark seaweed, a living, writhing hand, pulled her farther and farther down into the depths of this treacherous ocean.
Deep down to where the monsters would devour her body and soul, leaving nothing behind.
Down to their own Helfarrow in the world of the living.
Pushing harder, Dominic strained to keep air in his lungs as he descended lower and lower beneath the surface. A valiant yet futile effort to save her. He might die down here with her. Nothing left for their friends to find, the memory of them washed away with the tide . . . just like Silas.
But Dominic was not ready for death. Never would be. This was not the end.
Water surged, a riptide pulling at him. He clung to it with pained force until he plunged deep enough to grasp onto the tendrils of seaweed that had latched onto Adara’s ankle.
It pulled them both down, down, down until not even the bright moonbeams above could pierce the dark veil of the murky water.
Blindly, Dominic reached for a knife in his boot. A clean swipe had the plant releasing Adara. It retracted back into the shadows like a wounded serpent.
With no time for hesitation, his fingers wrapped around Adara’s wrist, and he forced the current to shift.
They flowed upward, faster and faster, until they broke the surface.
A breeze hit him with the force of an icy storm.
Water dripped from his hair. Despite the shiver it sent through him, he embraced it, gasping at the cool air flooding his lungs.
Wind ripped at their clothes as Dominic gripped Adara and speared through the night sky, toward their ship floating away on gentle waves.
His cheeks burned, and his eyes watered.
Adara’s blood dripped through his fingers, taunting him with her life slipping right through his clutches.
Her head lolled against his chest, no warmth in her face.
No flutter of her lashes, which cast shadows upon her cheeks that seemed as if they’d grow darker and duller until they swallowed her whole.
At the ship, he placed her gently upon the deck.
His pulse quickened at the sight of her unusually wan complexion.
Her clothes were charred at the tattered ends, exposing her stomach and lower leg where the lykren had bitten her.
Hope ignited within him at the sight. Her skin was not sloughing off, peeling away to reveal infected organs like Silas’s.
No, her scales must have protected her, for her skin was mottled red and black with blisters but not broken open.
“Rhyes,” he said gently, brushing strands of wet hair from her face.
She didn’t stir.
Dominic grasped her by the shoulders, shaking lightly. “Phoenix,” he said with a little more urgency. “Adara, wake up.”
Her chest didn’t move, no steady rise and fall of breathing. No breath that cast clouds in the chill night from her parted lips. Scrambling for her wrist, Dominic pressed two fingers to her skin. It was still.
“No,” he whispered, the world caving beneath his feet, pulling him down with it. A king without her key to claim. A thief without her heart to steal. What was he without her?
“NO!” he repeated, voice rising in panicked hysteria.
The world couldn’t collapse beneath him, not with her right there.
It couldn’t take her, he wouldn’t let it.
He wouldn’t let that weight that barreled into his chest drag either of them down.
No, she deserved to be here. She deserved to go home with the Andreilians, who crowded around him and Adara’s body in a circle, their whispered words nothing but muffled sounds to his ears.
He wanted her here with them. With him.
Hands immediately on her chest, Dominic began alternating between compressions and breaths, pumping life back into her heart, breathing air back into her lungs, willing her to stay with him.
“Come on, Adara,” he encouraged through gritted teeth.
“Wake up!” He shoved his palms against her chest more frantically, begging for that gasp of breath to come from her sensuous lips at any moment.
Come on. Don’t do this to me, he thought. Still, she did not move.
A hand on his shoulder. “Dominic, you can’t—” He shoved whoever it was away.
His motions became more frantic, more forceful as he tried and tried to just make her live.
“Wake up!” he snapped, voice rising in anguish.
His hands pumped against her chest. “You will not fight alone, till death and beyond, remember?” he said breathlessly.
Dominic’s vision blurred as he breathed into her lips once again, droplets of water splashing onto her face.
“You can’t die on me,” he said, muscles straining with the effort of trying to restart her heart.
His motions slowed, arms tiring. His breaths came in strangled sobs as he realized there was nothing more he could do. It was useless. He was useless.
The world held still, echoing the lack of life inside both their chests. Yet Dominic still lived, and she did not.
What did he do to deserve this? To be handed this beautiful, fierce girl who made him wish he had a heart if only so it could beat for her.
To be condemned to a fate with her, where none of what he felt could be real.
To be doomed to an end that left only one of them alive, wondering if all of this was worth it.
He’d done much to deserve this. He did deserve this, but he would not accept that.
He would not accept that he’d lost her again. Lost the one who mirrored him in every way. The one who had made promises to him, despite his malicious reputation.
A promise to keep each other alive.
A promise to no longer fight alone.
“Please,” he murmured against her lips as he breathed into them one last time.
His chest burned, and he didn’t know if it was from breathing into her lungs through his strangled cries or if it was the last piece of her soul, fiery and courageous, leaving.
Icy tears slid down his cheeks. “Please, don’t leave me here to fight alone. ”
He begged and begged on his knees for her to come back to him. There were no gods out there to answer his prayers, just this Flamecarrier with the power of one to have him worshipping on his knees.
“Dominic, she’s gone.” Sawyer’s strained voice of reason rang in his ears, but he refused to listen.
Tears streamed down his face, tasting of salt on his tongue. He wrapped his arms around Adara and pulled her close. “No,” he whispered, a broken, desperate plea. “D-don’t leave me here alone.”
The frozen feel of her pallid, wet skin seeped into his bones.
The warmth of life—the warmth of the fire in her veins—sputtered out.
Sobs racked his body as he brushed hair away from her face, beautiful and enchanting even in death.
He kissed her forehead, held her to his chest, and decided he never wanted to let go.
If death wanted her, it could take him with her.
He held onto her, squeezing her flush against him as if it would keep her spirit from drifting away. He’d sell his soul to the God of Death if it meant keeping her safe—if there even was a god to bargain with.
He couldn’t lose her. Not after everything.
Not when he needed her key.
Not when he needed her to tell him the location of the remaining two relics of the Realm Fracturer.
But most importantly, not when he just needed her.
Needed her to keep making his cheeks ache with smiles and laughs that hadn’t come from his mouth in what felt like centuries.
Needed her to keep looking at him like he wasn’t some monster to be feared.
Needed her voice to bring him back from the brink of insanity.
Her voice that he’d never hear again. Hel, he’d already forgotten the precise melody of her ethereal laughter. The exact shade of blue of her flames that matched her eyes.
Tears ran down his face, rushing harder at the thought that he never took the time to cherish what he had. And now it was too late.
Hunching over her, Dominic nuzzled his face into the crook of her neck, as if his warm embrace could bring her back. He took her cheeks in trembling hands, angling her head to face him. “I hate you.” His broken whisper was barely audible through cracked sobs. He waited for her snarky response.
But of course, there was only silence.
Rage and sorrow and grief sluiced through him, sending tremors sliding along his bones.
His fingers curled in her dark hair, gripping the soaked strands tighter.
“I hate you . . .” he said through the ache in his chest. “I hate you . . . for leaving me,” he seethed through his cries.
For coming to Andreilia and proposing a war of hearts and a suicide search for the Realm Fracturer, leaving both unfinished.
For smiling at him like he was all she needed and making him think he was finally enough.
For making him crazy enough to fight for her every second of every day.
For making him wish this bloody war of hearts didn’t even exist and that her key belonged to him . . . and his to her.
It felt like his chest was cracking apart. Like that gaping hole where his heart was supposed to be expanded and dragged his lungs down into the abyss, pulling him down with it.
The lifeless body in his arms abruptly shot up.
Water spurted from Adara’s mouth as she leaned to the side, coughing the ocean up from her lungs.
Dominic’s breath hitched. His hands trembled as he hastily wiped the tears from his face.
Tentatively, he reached out to touch her.
He needed to feel that this was real. That Adara was truly alive, and it wasn’t some image conjured from his imagination.
Dominic’s fingers grazed the back of her shoulder, and she weakly collapsed into his arms. Relief flooded him at her feeble movements, his breaths quivering and his pulse slowing.
Adara’s back lay against his chest. The heavy rise and fall of her chest reassured him that she was truly here.
Alive. Those gorgeous sapphire eyes found his, and he took every moment he could to memorize them, admiring the way her irises shimmered like dancing flames that burned the hottest blue.
Her lips parted, and oh, how badly he wanted to press his mouth to them, to feel her reassuring breaths.
A fractured laugh racked her body. “I think you broke my ribs,” she muttered through wheezes.
A collective exhale from the Andreilians sounded across the deck.
“Better to have broken ribs than to be dead!” Asher exclaimed from somewhere behind Dominic.
Adara’s fingers laced with his. Something slick and smooth pressed to his palm as her hand slid away.
His fingers curled around the object, hiding it in his clutches.
It was flat, hard like a stone. Lines creased his brow, eyes narrowing on her.
A gentle smile curved her lips, and she nodded toward his hand. He slowly unfurled his fingers.
A glistening blue dragon scale lay in his palm.
The fourth out of the five relics they needed to forge the Realm Fracturer.
Whoops and hollers ruptured the silence, the others suddenly alive with enthusiasm. “Looks like we’re calling this ship The Flamecarrier now!” Caleb yelled in triumph.
That earned another broken laugh from Adara. Dominic didn’t have the energy to celebrate, but a broad smile spread across his face. He pulled Adara closer, careful of her injuries, and breathed her in, holding on tight before he could fall apart.