“The void,” I mutter, realization striking like lightning. “Time moves differently there.”
Zyphoro nods grimly in agreement, but my focus is only on Amara now. I grasp her hand, pressing it to my lips, kissing her knuckles as if I can will warmth back into her skin. But she is so cold. Clammy with sweat, her complexion leached of color.
Her fingers tighten weakly around mine. “Daedalus…” Her voice is barely a breath, pain twisting her features. Her eyes, hazy with suffering, flicker to mine. “Is it really you?”
“Yes, my love,” I whisper fiercely, cradling her hand against my face. “I am here. We are together at last.”
She sobs, the sound fractured, caught between agony and relief. “This isn’t right. I’m not ready. I haven’t carried long enough.” Her breath hitches, and then, in a voice laced with raw terror, she chokes out, “There’s too much blood.”
I press her palm to my skin, closing my eyes, letting the familiarity of her touch anchor me. “You are strong. Our baby is strong. You do not know fear.”
Her body convulses violently. A strangled cry rips from her lips as she lurches forward.
Solena’s eyes flare with panic.
“We must deliver this baby,” she says, voice edged with urgency. “Or we will lose them both.”
The pain tears through Amara, a violent storm that shakes her to the core, and I feel it as if it’s my own. Her body trembles, her cries slipping through clenched teeth and every ragged gasp she takes, every plea she breathes, shreds me further. The ship rocks violently with each wave, rising higher, crashing louder, like the world itself is mirroring Amara’s pain. A sharp gust of wind whips through, snapping the sails with loud cracks while the sky, once a pale canvas of daylight, darkens with an unnatural speed, clouds twisting above, birds scattering, fleeing the encroaching darkness that swallows the sun.
“Hold on, Amara. Please,” I whisper, but she doesn’t hear me.
She’s too lost in the agony of labor to hear me, her grip like a vice around my hand as her body twists and convulses with something far too monstrous to name.
And her eyes… they’re no longer hers.
Where there was once warmth, those beautiful, rich brown eyes that cast their spell on me long before she came into her magic, now there is only black. Slow and creeping, it overtakes them, like ink spilling through water.
Smoke, dark as tar, trickles from her mouth, her ears, her very pores. It spills over her skin, staining the wood beneath her, a spreading darkness that I can’t stop.
I reach for her stomach, my fingers trembling, desperate to calm her, desperate to reach our child. My hand hovers just above her, barely grazing her writhing belly, but my hand snaps back to me when a flash of darkness strikes my vision, and within the shadows, I see him. Gygarth, his shadow looming over me, over her, over everything.
I jerk back, the air around me freezing, suffocating. My skin burns with the imprint of his darkness, his power, the same haunting force that has been chasing us, threatening to tear us apart since this nightmare began. His power is not just in the smoke, not just in her eyes, it is in the very soul of this moment, in the very fabric of this place.
I reach for Amara again, but I won’t pull away this time. I can’t. I won’t let her slip into whatever dark void is calling to her, pulling her under with every breath she takes. The ship rocks violently again, the waves now towering over us, crashing like the world is falling in on us.
“Amara,” I whisper fiercely, squeezing her hand. “Fight this.Fight for us.”
Her breath stutters and her body arches once more, wracked with forces I cannot soothe. And then, for the span of a single heartbeat, I see it. A flicker. Her eyes. The barest glimmer of brown, warm and aching, like a dying ember fighting to burn beneath an ocean of flame.
I do not know how much longer we can defy this. How much longer can I hold her in the light before the dark I summoned claims her completely?
This curse, this shadow, it wears my name. No god nor demon bears the blame for her agony. Only I do. My love wrought this. My yearning. My reckless, ruinous need.
But my wife...
She is forged from iron roots buried deep in the bones of the earth, tempered by the wild, unyielding fury of the untamed world. She is strength incarnate, older than fear, fiercer than fate. Stronger than me. Stronger than any darkness that dares to claim her.
“Amara,” I whisper, my voice raw, desperate. “My queen. Do not leave me.”
Kneeling at Amara’s feet, Solena looks up and though her face maintains a stillness despite the chaos, the tautness of her shoulders and the slight trembling of her hands giveaway the fear that rattles her too. The smoke continues to ooze, slithering along the wood, mingling with Amara’s blood.
“It’s time,” Solena says.
I nod, clutching Amara’s hand, even though I’m not sure she knows I am even here. Her body tenses, her breath shallow as another wave of pain crashes over her. I grip her hand tighter, the sweat on her skin making it difficult to hold on, but I don’t let go. I can’t.
“Push, Amara,” Solena commands, her voice rising over the thunder booming through the sky. “You have to push now.”
She doesn’t respond, but her body shifts, her hands clenching, and I can see the effort it takes her to fight against the overwhelming wave of pain.
