Blinking slowly, his green eyes boredinto mine. Emerald. Beautiful. But sad and resigned.
“Lyr.Mekara.” Rhyan shook his head. “Even you can’t heal me now.”
He turned his back on the abandoned shoreline and held his arms out as the waves rushed forward, racing toward us. Thewaters surged, swallowing the rocks on the beach, as it covered the ground, moving faster, and rising higher.
“RHYAN! ” I yelled.
He frowned, suddenly taller as he looked down at me. And I realized, to my horror, his eyes had changed. The green of his irises that I’d dreamed of for years, the green I knew so well, that I loved since I was a girl, had been replaced with red. The glowing red eyes that only meant one thing.
Akadim. A demon. Death.
The waters burst behind Rhyan, the waves reaching like tentacles for his body, until it wrapped itself around him. Trapping him, binding him.
His hand reached out for mine one last time. “Lyr … I love you.”
And I screamed, as the water swallowed him whole, pulling him beneath the tides. “RHYAN! ”
There was a burst of light behind my eyes, the sound of thunder crashing, and rain pouring.
I jolted awake, my eyes soaking wet. I was already sobbing, hugging myself, my entire body convulsing.
“Rhyan! Rhyan!” I cried out his name, but the sound was choked, barely more than a strangled whisper. Still shaking, I tried to take in my surroundings. To remember where the hell I was.
I was in a cave, laying on a blanket I didn’t recognize, not far from the mouth. I was close enough to see outside, to see the beach in the dark. And I remembered. I was on Gryphon Island. For the first time in months, I was back in Bamaria.
My home country.
And sitting at the edge of the beach, its onyx stone glistening as the rain covered its body in heavy sheets of water, was the Guardian of Bamaria. Tall, and regal, the gryphon’s body pointed to the ocean, to the waters of Lumeria. For a thousandyears it had guarded our shores, and watched over our land. It was the first to spot visitors traveling by boat— those coming from the North, and those visiting from the East, from Lethea.
But no more. Its eagle head was gone. In my rage, I’d stabbed the Guardian, and beaten the stone until I’d decapitated him. I tossed its head into the water … and then … Gods. The water had receded. A tsunamihadbeen brewing.
Enough to destroy the island. To destroy the Empire.
To bring a second Drowning.
But I’d stopped. I’d let go of myRakashonim.Let go of the burning fury and anger that had fueled my Goddess power and strength. My connection to Asherah. We had been seconds from destruction. From the pain finally stopping. But I’d let it go. I’d released the waters, the storm … I had released everything.
But only because …
A crackling sound had me turning my head. The torches within the cavern had been lit. But not by me.
My heart thundered, and I walked deeper into the cave, following the lights through its labyrinthine halls. They were familiar to me and left a stinging ache in my chest.
I had come here once before. With Rhyan.
The night the akadim attacked Bamaria. The night of Valyati. The night we’d lost Haleika and Leander. The night Rhyan revealed to me his vorakh.
And it was on that night, in this cave, that he first told me he loved me.
I’m in love with you. And no matter how wrong, or how much it scares me, there is no oath in Heaven or Lumeria that could stop me. Lyr … Lyriana, I love you.
My vision blurred, more memories from that night haunting me. And before I knew it, my hand had fisted, and I was punching the wall, slamming my fingers into the rough rock. I didn’t care that it bruised my knuckles. Didn’t care that when Ihit it again, I scraped my skin. Nor did it bother me when after my next punch, I’d started bleeding. I didn’t care that it hurt.
Because nothing could come near the pain exploding in my heart.
My grief was like a rage that had nowhere to go. Nowhere to be released. I needed a way to unleash the pain. The sorrow. If I didn’t, I’d combust. I’d dissolve.
I raised my arm again, ready to let loose, ready to break my Godsdamned fingers if it made this pain go away.
