I let go.
My magic snuffed out.
Tiredly turning my head, I looked out at Velra.
She smiled sweetly, then a purple haze filled my vision, before I was pulled fully into her illusion.
I blinkedand looked to see that I was in a field of lush red roses, the warm sun beaming down on me as I stood there in a white linen shirt and pants.
I smiled when I saw that the roses didn’t even have thorns.
“Hey.”
I turned around and watched Velra sauntering toward me in a little black dress, her ombre hair cascading ethereally about her face.
She gestured at the flowers all around us. “Your favorite, as I recall.”
“My favorite,” I confirmed.
“How come?” she asked, coming to me and sliding her arms around my waist as she looked up at me with so much adoration and curiosity. So much fucking care.
“They’re powerful symbols of so much. Beauty, love, transformation. Even pain and grief. I guess they encompass everything that life—and death—is about.” I lifted a shoulder. “And they’re stunningly beautiful. Delicate but fearsome.”
“Just like the four of us,” she mused. “And I’m sorry the most overtly fearsome of us all isn’t here right now. I know he’d want to be if he knew. He’d absolutely be here for you.”
“I know he would.”
He’d told me he loved me and that was no small thing for Lazriel Thaine. Those abandonment issues of his made sure of that, along with his insecurities and pain of being what he was.
“It’s best he’s not bearing witness to this. It would break him into pieces.” I sucked in a breath. “Instead, though, he’s in a place where he can be built up, where he can come to terms with the vampire side of himself that he’s so long denied the full extent of.”
“You helped him accept the other thing he’d denied for a long time. You helped him, more than I think you even realize.”
“Well, that goes both ways.” I smiled down at her. “All ways, actually. Thank you for what you’re doing now, and for accommodating a difficult bastard like me into your life. What Cassius is doing in reality right now is no small thing to me either.”
She stroked my back and beamed up at me. “You don’t need to thank us for loving you, Sylas. It’s our pleasure.”
A shudder rolled through me, an unsettling cold coursing through my veins. “It’s happening… almost done,” I rasped, resting my head on her shoulder.
“Yes,” she admitted. “He has your magic, he’s binding it now,” she told me, having one foot in this illusion, and one on the outside in reality.
Normally, I’d be able to see through the entire thing too. I’d made sure after Glasswake Massacre that I could always register illusionary magic.
But not right now.
Right now I… I wasn’t… myself.
“What you did for me… I’ll never forget it,” she told me. “Thank you for saving my life.”
“Like you said, it’s not something to thank me for. It was my pleasure.”
She looked up at me, and although she didn’t speak the words, I could see the grief there. And something just a little deeper.
Guilt.
“I made the decision. You had no control over it. And for that, I’m sorry. I’m all about free will and agency, but I couldn’t stand by and lose you when I had the power to rectify it, to pull you back to the land of the living. And, no, I don’t regret it, so don’t go there, please. I would do it again. For you. For Lazriel. For Cassius. For those we love.”
“Sylas,” she breathed, holding me tighter to her and nuzzling against me.
