Tears burn behind my eyes, hot with exhaustion, frustration, and anguish. Please, Souls, do not let this be a trick. Do not let this be another cruel illusion. I could not bear for this to be anything but real.
“Daedalus!”
I lean toward the glowing threads, desperate to meet them, desperate to feel him again. The darkness yawns beneath me, the void-demon still clawing at the portal’s edges, but I don’t care. Not anymore. All I care about ishim—his hands on my skin, his arms crushing me against his chest, his lips against mine, erasing the nightmare with a single breath. I don’t even realize I’m falling until the Golden Son’s arms catch me, keeping me from tumbling off Ashen and into the dark.
“What are you doing!” he snaps with disbelief.
“Can you hear it?” I whisper, trembling. “Can you hear him calling my name?”
His silence stretches. He shakes his head at first, resolute, but then, Daedalus’ voice carries through the air again, cutting through the storm of screams and screeches like a blade of pure light.
And the Golden Son flinches.
My breath hitches. My fingers dig into his arm, gripping tight, shaking him. “You hear him! Don’t lie to me! You hear him!”
He swallows, throat bobbing. “Yes, Amara,” he says at last. “I hear him.”
The confirmation almost breaks me.
But before the relief can take hold, agony lances through me, wrenching the breath from my lungs. My stomach tightens, pain so deep and brutal that my vision swims. A cry rips from my throat as I double over, clutching myself, and through the haze, I see my gown, once soft teal silk, now blooming red.
Blood, seeping down my thighs in thick, trailing rivers.
My hands tremble as I press them to my belly. Souls, no. No. Not my child.
Tears spill freely now, raw and frantic, as I scream his name into the void, pleading, praying.
“Daedalus! Help me! Our baby!”
The world tilts, and I am weightless.
Pain pulses like a second heartbeat, tearing me apart from the inside, but I barely feel it now. My body is slipping, my strength unraveling, yet something—someone—holds me together. A warmth cradles me, steady and firm.
“Amara,” The Golden Son breathes. “Hold on.” His hand comes to my face, his fingers brushing my cheek with a tenderness that eases the pain.
But I can barely think beyond the steady drip of my blood, cooling as it slips from my toes into the dark below.
The air shudders with a scream, a thousand voices tangled into one, and I hear it again. My name. Louder. Closer.
The Golden Son stiffens, his grip on me tightening, desperate to protect me. But I know that voice. I know it in my bones, in my breath, in the places of me that have only ever belonged to him.
Another hand finds me, burning hot, familiar. My body knows before my mind does, my skin waking beneath his touch as though drawn to him even now. My fingers twitch, my heart stutters, and I open my eyes to a storm.
Not the howling dark around us. Not the raging void that waits to devour me whole.His storm.
Gray and violent and endless.
“Wife,” Daedalus whispers, his lips parting, his fury and his relief braided into one.
A small, weak breath escapes me, something close to a laugh, something close to joy. My lips curve, even as the edges of the world blur.
“Husband,” I whisper back.
Chapter 20
Daed
The void shifts around me, a swirling abyss of black and deeper black, shifting and writhing. The air is thick here, heavy with something unseen, something that clings to my skin like tar. But I do not stop. I do not hesitate.
