Then her body jerked again, spine bowing into the air, a raw sob catching behind her teeth.
Two more stars slammed into her like celestial spears, the power coursing through her so violently that the ground cracked under us. A network of golden light exploded beneath her skin in the shape of a spiderweb, crawling up her neck, across her arms, through her ribs, weaving through her body as though she was becoming the sky itself.
Blisters bloomed at the edges of the glowing veins, swelling like tiny suns beneath her skin. They rose and burst, leaving ribbons of molten gold weeping down her arms. The scent of scorched skin and starlight filled the air. I could feel the heat radiating off her in waves but didn’t dare move back. If she burned me, then so be it. I’d take whatever the universe threw at me until I found a way to draw this rune.
Her breathing hitched and then faltered. A faint, rattling sound trembled from her chest and it was one I knew all too well from previous battles and the time I’d spent in the hospital looking after Amelia. It was the kind of sound that meant the body was preparing to die.
“I’m losing her,” I whispered, the words splitting as they left me. My hand hovered uselessly above her heart, too terrified to feel her heartbeat slowing. “I’m fucking losing her.”
The truth of it hollowed me. It echoed in the space between one heartbeat and the next beneath my palm until all I could hear was that rhythm faltering.
The part of me that had always been so damned steady fractured in the moment. The logical, methodical part that counted breaths and could command an entire army was gone.
She was glowing from the inside out, her light beginning to swallow the courtyard. My eyes burned from the blazing inferno as I lifted my dagger again, hesitating over her skin that was already blistering away.
“I don’t know what to do,” I whispered. “I don’t—” My voice broke. “Please. Please, Kieran. You can’t give up now. You can’t leave us. You can’t leaveme.”
A fissure split the air as another star screamed down through the atmosphere, and the ground shook once more as her body absorbed it. I threw myself over her, muscles trembling, praying to the Creator that the next star would strikemeinstead—to let it burn through me, if it meant sparing her.
All I could do was whisper, “Don’t you dare go where I can’t follow, Princess.”
I barely registered the bond flaring to life in my mind, but then the voices broke through my haze of emotion—distant but steady.
Gabe’s voice came first, low and unshaken, the same tone he’d used when we were barely out of training, when everything felt impossible and yet he still managed to make the impossible feel like a plan.“She’s still breathing, Steele. That means you haven’t lost her. Don’t stop now.”
My throat tightened, and my grip on the dagger went white-knuckled.
Then Ronan. His voice was raw, crackling with strain, but it carried the weight of his devotion in it.“She’s strong, but she can’t carry this alone. That’s why you’re there. You’re the Rune Maker to her Star Keeper. Finish it, Steele.”
Behind his voice, I felt his pain and exhaustion. The way his bones ached under the weight of every strike he’d taken tokeep others standing. Still, he wasn’t thinking of himself. He was thinking ofher.
Niz followed next, his thoughts fierce and relentless in his wyvern form, but the belief in his words shook me.“No one else can do this for you, Steele, and we believe in you.”
Even Bastian’s presence hummed through the bond, sharp with effort, blood coursing through him. He didn’t speak—not in words—but I felt his focus shift, just for a breath, towardus. Toward her. Trust passed through our connection, unspoken but real. Like he believed I’d pull this off even as he witnessed so many of our comrades dying around him.
I felt all of them. Their wounds, their pain, and their love for Kieran.
And it hit me then that this wasn’t just about me and Kieran alone. It was aboutus. All of us.
Because she loved every one of them, and they loved her back with a kind of ferocity that made them worth fighting for. Worth bleeding for. And whether I’d meant for it to happen or not, they were becoming important to me too. A found family forged in impossible odds and the singular light that washer.
They were going to fall if we didn’t find a way to help, now. I couldn’t let her or any one of them down.
I inhaled shakily as I shifted to sit back once more, pulling the tip of my dagger to her skin.
This wasn’t the time for fear.
I had one job:create a rune that could hold the fucking heavens at bay.
And I would, because I wasn’t letting her go.
I closed my eyes and shut everything else out, even our bond. I pushed it to the background, letting it hum quietly while I folded inward, past panic and noise and helplessness, until there was only one thing left anchoring me.Her.
Kieran—who had shattered through every steel-bound wall I’d once believed unbreakable, who met every dark and ugly part of me without flinching. Who held the worst of me in her hands and still reached for more. The woman who had asked me to trust her with everything—and in return, had given methis: her life, her love, her belief.
I just breathed her in and let her presence fill me.
She neededme. All of me. The version of Steele that was sharp and brutal andhers—not despite it, butbecauseof it. I inhaled, and let go. Not of her, but of the fear. I let go of the rules and runes etched by dead men who’d never known her name, or her love.
