“Tomorrow,” he said, and there was an embrace in that word, too.
“I love you, Warrior Prince.”
“No,” I wheezed as they said goodbye.
No, this couldn’t be it. I’d been prepared to give up my life, but Malakai’s? He didn’t deserve this end. I forced myself to sit up and search around us. Pain from the Bind throbbed through me, every breath pressing on an open wound.
Malakai squeezed my hand.
My attention dropped down to him, and he whispered, “Peace.”
Peace. The word filtered through me like an unexpected wind, unsettling and soothing all at once. That was all he wanted after years of pain. And it was what he deserved. So, with Tolek holding my limp body for support, I curved back toward Malakai.
“It’s okay,” I told him over the pain of our shredded Bind, my entire body trembling and revolting at the words. “It’s okay,Malakai. You don’t have to fight anymore if you want to go.” I squeezed his hand, my soul aching. “You can go. We will be okay. You took care of us.”
He’d been fighting for us all for years. Before any of us even knew it. Day after day, he threw himself before blades meant forourhearts. One of them finally struck true.
One was fatal.
“I love you, Malakai,” I said.
His response was a wheezed whisper. “Until the stars stop shining.”
“Until the stars stop shining,” I agreed.
He had been those stars, had been the one that showed me what they looked like as a young girl. My North Star, even after everything we’d been through. I thought he’d be that for years to come once we fought our way out of this. After Echnid and the seraph magic, some reliance had sealed between us.
But Malakai and I never got our happy ending.
His gaze rolled back to Mila, searching her tear-streaked face like he was committing it to memory. His blood wasn’t flowing as quickly anymore. His eyes were dull.
And I swore, time stopped in that moment. Everything froze, taking on this murky, detached feeling like the world moved through mud.
Aimee attended to Echnid’s scorched, bloodied corpse behind us. The khrysaor and the phoenixes burned Echnid’s remaining shadowed beasts. The cerberus and demigods were swallowed by the explosion of Angellight and violet lightning. But none of it mattered.
Because if we lived in a world where innocent warriors had to die for the life of a god, did any of this mean anything? If I was crying over Malakai’s body with Tolek, Cypherion, Santorina, and Jezebel—with the friends who had defended each other andfought for each other at every turn only for one of us to not see the dawn—why had we fought in the first place?
What were we leaving behind? The Angels swore we were their legacy, but they’d offered us up readily, for reasons I still didn’t know. What would remain now?
Malakai would leave behind a hole in our lives. A vast empty space, more permanent than it had been the first time we lost him because this time it would lack something vital: hope.
Tolek and Cypherion were on either side of me, tears streaming down both of their dust-strewn faces as they said goodbye. Rina choked off her own words as she tried to heal his wound, but it was no use. Somehow, that blade had been infallible. Answers we’d never get now.
Vale shook her head, muttering to Erista as her breathing sped. “I didn’t know. This was only one fortune of thousands. I didn’t know he’d choose this.”
The pain ripping through me deepened as Malakai slipped away. My breaths came in seizing gasps. The world already felt so wrong without him.
So, with my own stubborn will, I clung to the slice of Malakai’s soul that was connected to mine. Fed it all of those memories I had stored up over the past twenty-one years. Of us, of him and Tolek and Cypherion, images of the future he deserved. I gripped the thread tighter andbeggedsomeone to change this outcome.
Because though our Bind may be severed, I would never stop fighting for my North Star.
I’d told him it was okay to let go, but I didn’t want him to choose that. I willed him to hang on, to keep the stars shining because his story was not done being written.
Shadows descended around us. The Angels. All but Thorn joined the vigil. My eyes locked with Damien’s purple pair, painbleeding through them. And anger emboldened me to rise onto my knees.
“Fix this!” I raged over the shredding pain in my chest. “Fix it, Damien! This isall your fault!You are the reason we are here—the reason he sacrificed himself!Save him!”
Across the city center, silence had fallen, making room for every one of my slicing, guttural words to land their desperate blows. Pain hummed in my ears, the Bind on fire as I clung feverishly to Malakai’s life.
