This was who he made me—a weapon, a defense of the gods, his unending salvation. But instead, I took that image,and I became his beautiful undoing, drenched in the light of the seraphs.
And though something within me was severing, a fate was sealed as I watched the god die beneath my seraph magic.
The Vincienzo dagger clattered to the stone stairs, light crackling and sparking around me, and I ran. Not toward Echnid—toward Malakai.
The tearing of my chest, my lungs, sent my knees buckling and the world spinning. Something vital was being severed, but I forced my feet to carry me—stumbling—to Malakai’s side. Or maybe it was my broken heart that was doing it, the girl who loved the boy with the freckles and forest-green eyes like her life depended on it.
I collapsed beside him where he had propped himself against a chunk of a fallen pillar, both of us struggling to pull down air. Blood across his chest. Face so pale. My body went numb aside from the endless tearing behind my ribs.
“Malakai,” I said through a rough breath. Tears poured over my cheeks, every word ragged. “Malakai, why in the Angels did you do this?”
Malakai’s hand fumbled through the air, and I gripped it tight, meeting those forest-green eyes for the thousandth time in my life. “You don’t deserve to die, Phel.”
“Neither do you!” My voice cracked. I squeezed his hand tighter.
“Tired of us all fighting. Had to stop.” He repeated the worries he’d confessed to me earlier tonight, but my argument still stood.
“You fought, too,” I growled. “You never wanted to be a part of this. You shouldn’t have had to.”
Years ago, he’d signed the treaty willingly for the good of the Mystiques, but ever since the truth of that deceit was exposed, he’d been searching for a way out. He didn’t want to be a ChosenChild or anything connected to it. But he always had been because of these tattoos we’d naively marked ourselves with at seventeen years old.
Teenagers who unknowingly had the power to change the tides of ancient wars.
Whose spirits weighed as much as a god’s when it came to the fate of the realms.
Because I was the life that had to be given for Echnid’s, but Malakai…Malakai had a piece ofmysoul within him, tied to his own. The Bind may have never worked properly—had never been meant to be—but that didn’t mean it hadn’t been so very real. A true born link between our spirits.
And when Malakai drove a dagger through the home of that connection, he didn’t only give his own life. He killed the piece of mine that lived in him. He sacrificed himself soIcould live.
I breathed over the pain of my soul dying, curling on the ground beside Malakai as my body trembled with sobs. He rolled his head to face me, and if there wasn’t such destruction around us, tears pouring over my cheeks and blood staining his chest, I could have thought we were sixteen years old and back in our clearing.
For a moment, we were. The world fell away, tall grasses curving up to shield our shadowed frames and a star-flecked night overhead to protect us.
He’d never been tortured.
We’d never been ripped apart.
We were living out that beautiful future we thought we’d have, so full of innocence and hope.
Perhaps in another life, we’d get that.
My vision was going dark from the pain of the Bind severing and the strength the seraph magic took from me. As I saw myself reflected in those green eyes, I thought his were darkening, too.
People moved around us, the air growing warmer with their bodies. Tolek and Cypherion. Santorina and Jezebel. Vale. Mila.
Mila.
She threw herself at Malakai’s other side, brushing his hair back from his face. Sobbing, she pressed her forehead to his, saying things I couldn’t hear, but my heart broke even further for the both of them.
This wasn’tfucking fair.
“Gorgons,” Malakai croaked, still checking on her. Even now.
“All dead,” Mila sobbed.
Malakai hissed, shifting. “I promised nothing but death would take me from you, General.”
Mila shushed him, kissed him. “Tomorrow,” she said. “Every tomorrow.” Her words were acceptance, but the pain was in her trembling lips.
