My eyes burned as she moved down the aisle, guided by Elowen. I had seen her in wedding gowns before, in other lives, other ceremonies. But this was different. This wasn’t death or fate or my brother’s arrow stealing her from me. This was her choice. Her steps. Her future walking away from me with each measured breath.
She passed close enough that I caught her scent. Honey and sin and fucking perfection. My hands curled into fists, nails biting deep enough to draw blood, the pain a welcome distraction from the void consuming my chest. I couldn’t breathe. Didn’t want to. Breathing meant living through this moment, and I wasn’t sure I was strong enough.
When she reached Archer, she smiled. That real, bright smile that had always been like sunlight. The one that had made me fall in love with her in every life, every time, no matter how much it hurt. I had to remind myself to inhale. To keep existing. To let go.
“Seriously,” Tuck whispered again, “we don’t need to watch this.”
“I need it to hurt enough to walk away,” I managed, the words scraping my throat raw. “Right now, it’s not enough. I have to see it through.”
Minerva’s voice washed over the gathering, speaking of destiny and binding and futures I would never be part of. I had no idea she would officiate, but it made sense. Bind them together with Reason and Wrath and no one would break them. But I could only focus on the way Paesha’s fingers trembled as she took Archer’s hands. The soft catch in her breath that probably no one else heard. The slight tilt of her head that meant she was fighting the voices in her mind.
Their vows pierced through my haze. Each word another blade between my ribs.
“I choose you…”
She chose me once. A thousand times. And I failed her every time.
“Because you saw me when I was lost…”
I saw her first. Across centuries. Across deaths. I always found her.
Her eyes flicked to mine, and the raw emotion in them nearly shattered what was left of my control. What did she see there, in my face? Did she see the breaking? The letting go? The love that would never die, no matter how many times it fucking killed me?
But nothing could have prepared me for their kiss.
The moment their lips met, something inside me shattered. Not cleanly, not quickly, but with the slow, terrible certainty of a mountain crumbling into the sea. Every kiss we’d ever shared, every soft touch, every whispered promise crashed through my mind. A thousand lifetimes of losing her to bloodshed, and somehow this was fucking worse. This gentle death. This willing surrender. My chest caved in. My lungs forgot how to work. The wood beneath my hands splintered as power surged through me, desperate for release.
Tuck’s hand gripped my shoulder, hard enough to hurt. “Breathe.”
I tried. Failed. Fucking tried again. Each attempt felt like swallowing glass.
Minerva raised her hands, and blue flames surged higher. “You have chosen each other, but the land must choose you as well. Kneel.”
They knelt together, bound by the golden thread. Minnie lifted the first crown, a delicate circlet of silver and sapphire that would mark Paesha as queen. The crown that would protect her. The stones set within it began to glow as she lowered it to Paesha’s head.
“Do you swear to protect this realm and its people? To rule with wisdom and compassion? To stand against any force that would threaten peace?”
“I swear it,” Paesha said clearly, and the crown flared with brilliant light before settling onto her brow as if it had always belonged there. As if this had always been her destiny, and I had been keeping her from it all along.
The second crown, heavier but crafted of the same materials, glowed as Minerva held it over Archer’s bowed head. He swore his own oath, and when both crowns blazed with acceptance, the cheers exploded. But I could only hear the sound of my heart shattering as they turned to face the crowd, crowned and blessed and godsdamned married.
She was radiant. Beautiful. Alive.
And no longer mine.
“Let’s go home,” Tuck said quietly, already trying to guide me toward the door. And I knew he meant to Etherium.
“I can’t—” My voice cracked. I swallowed hard, tried again. “I can’t leave her unprotected.”
“The guards?—”
“Are not enough.” They would never be enough. Not for her. Not for the woman who had been everything to me.
So I stayed. Stood when protocol demanded. Bowed when tradition required. Watched as she danced with her new husband, her laugh carrying across the celebration like bells. Each smile was another dagger. Each touch another wound. I had existed for millennia. Had wielded power that could reshape realms. But nothing, not war, not death, not the weight of centuries had ever hurt like this.
When I finally escaped to a balcony, the night air did nothing to ease the vise around my heart. Stars wheeled overhead, as cold and distant as my own immortality. How many nights had I spent searching those same stars for signs of her? How manylives had I spent counting constellations until I found her again? Selfishly, I hoped she’d see me. I hoped she’d join me. I needed her. But she knew better and so did I.
“To the queen,” Tuck said, pressing a glass into my hand.
