She stood in the basin, now dry, lifting a weak arm to beckon Syphon closer. Without hesitation he went, moving with a grace and command that told her he was sure this was as things were meant to be. Hands pressed into her cheeks, and he was as cold as the noxscura had been, claws biting at her flesh. But it didn’t matter. It would be gone soon. All of it.
Celeste was lifted onto her toes as terrible magic pulsed under her skin, trying and failing to find purchase. So strange beside the other noxscura that lived in her locket and so often swam in her veins, the two tussled between her organs, splashed in her bile, gnawed at her bones. She cleansed the pure arcana, and it ate away at her as it changed, and then it heard Syphon’s call.
Gods,couldhe truly do it? He had told her she would have to remain at his side for moons as the noxscura was slowly bled away, but she hadn’t really expected he would ever allow her the peace of being free. Yet Syphon was already leaching it from her, and the arcana purred in blissful response, happy to go, to leave the hostility coating her innards. Even if it took a lifetime, burning away the shroud she existed under was all she had ever wanted.
I don’t want to be like this.
I don’t have to be like this.
But I am…
Celeste lifted her gaze to meet Syphon’s. The hateful things inside her would always be there, she knew that then, but she was notjustthose things. Perhaps she had never beenjustthose things. The citrine in his eyes darkened, silver flecks dancing within like starlight. And it was beautiful.
Syphon’s touch on her face faltered, the pulse of noxscura under her skin dwindling.
Oh, no, you don’t.
Celeste snatched Syphon’s jaw, yanking his face down to meet hers. Panic flashed in his eyes, so misplaced coupled with his confidence, yet it only made her clutch onto him harder. The cleansed noxscura reeled, rushing away from her as she forced it out and into him. Silver burst behind his irises, and beneath her palms, he shook. Surely Syphon had never trembled before, and she was flooded with satisfaction to be the harbinger of his first taste of terror.
“What are you doing?” he hissed, clutching at her wrists, but there was no severing the hold she had on that too-perfect face he wore.
“I’m giving you what you want,” she growled, teeth bared, grip tight. “All of it.”
“Too much,” he choked out, a silvery bile erupting from his lips.
Celeste could feel it too, blood pooling at the corners of her mouth and dripping down her chin. It was too much, too much for both of them, but the sieves in Syphon’s chest began to pulse—a protection she didn’t have. He would use them, deplete them completely if he had to, in order to stay alive, and that couldn’t be allowed.
Celeste dug her nails into the carapace that was Syphon’s skin, and it gave under her insistence with an awful crack. She hooked fingers into his jaw as he screamed a garbled sound and dragged him forward to rest her forehead on his. Panting as weakness clawed at her bones, the noxscura was still there,hernoxscura, and the shadows lifted one of her arms, guiding her fingers until she found what she sought.
Syphon saw his undoing as she plucked it from her knotted hair. “You will be so much worse,” he husked around the fingers she had wedged between his rows of pointed teeth. “Not even I could pity the wretched thing you will—”
“Shut up!” she screamed and plunged the hairpin into his chest.
Syphon’s glassy skin cracked like a fallen jar, shattering around the makeshift weapon. Through the whittled thorn, a warm and attentive magic thrummed into Celeste’s hand, a last, loving caress before the arcana shifted and attacked the beast she had dug her own claws into.
Three sieves tumbled out of the gaping wound she rent across Syphon’s chest. Blobby, amorphous things, they fell to the cavern floor and rolled away, their glows fading into the shadows, free. The arcana rushed away from her then with abandon, and Syphon lost control of the form he had made. Its shape churned and expanded, the shell atop it cracking.
Celeste tried to swallow, but her throat was too thick, breath no longer coming. She fell to her knees, dragging Syphon’s shifting mass with her, and she thrust the last of the cleansed arcana into him. The light flared and then died, his silvery bile turned black as his shape melted around her hands, and Celeste was left with only the gentle glow of the divine arcana Reeve had lovingly put into his gift to her.
And then, darkness.
CHAPTER 30
STRENGTH, TIME, AND LOVE ENOUGH
Eat.”
A bowl of something warm was pushed into Reeve’s hands.
He blinked and discovered Kori was at his side wearing a deep frown.
“Eat,” she repeated, shoving a spoon into his face.
Reeve grunted, taking the utensil only to drop it on the side table and shift away from her in the creaking chair he refused to leave.
Kori clicked her tongue, but then her hand fell onto his shoulder. “If you wither away, she’s not going to be interested in you anymore when she wakes up.”
When.
