With shaking hands slick with blood, I angled it to my own body. My grip faltered once, twice, but I forced myself steady.
Ours is a fate that’s already been written, and we cannot successfully run from it even if we try.
“Sanora!” His roar splintered through me, a thunderclap of grief.
And then I pressed it in, feeling its cold bite pierce through flesh and soul alike.
There was no pain, no agony. All I could feel was bliss, an unearthly calm that seeped into me, soft and consuming, until it felt as though every fracture inside me was mended. And briefly, I wondered if that was what had made Kalimetryna smile so peacefully on the day she died.
I understood now. I could relate.
As the world bled away, distant and soft, the cave walls blazed to life, glowing with a brilliance that swallowed the darkness whole. It was as though the stars themselves had fallen into the stone, lighting my final moments with a beauty too fierce to belong to this world.
And it was beautiful.
With my last breath, I let the glow wash through me, let it carry my love, my sacrifice, across the barrier to where he stood. And though my lips no longer moved, my heart whispered the one thing I desperately wanted for him.
Live.
I could have imagined it, but as I let the light claim me, I heard a voice, one that unmistakably belonged to Kalimetryna.
“Now, it’s time to liveyourlife.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
THRAX
History was repeating itself.
He couldn’t let it happen.
“Sanora!”
Through the dead of night and the roaring storm, his voice tore through the chaos, louder than the thunder, shaking the trees as it carried through the forest. His heart was pounding too violently, his chest heavy with fear. His feet moved of their own accord, the ground seeming to bend for him, paths carving open as he ran.
Sanora.
The only woman who mattered in his life.
He had never despised himself more than he did now. He’d felt her pain, her terror, her grief, her despair. Every pulse of her emotions had slammed into him, yet he couldn’t do anything about it because he’d been trapped inside the house.
It had begun twenty minutes after Sanora left—energy crawling across the floorboards, swallowing the walls, sealing the air itself. He had stood from the bed to check, only to realise he couldn’t touch anything. Runes flared invisibly on the walls, appearing only when he tried to touch them.
He'd realised he couldn’t lay a hand on the walls, the door, or the windows without his skin sizzling and smoking, the ward hissing against him like red-hot iron pressed to flesh.
The entire house had been bound in silence from the outside while he was in bed. By the time he sensed the distortion in the air, it was already too late. The Veil of Ash had been drawn, and he was caged.
He’d texted her instantly, already knowing what Winifred had done. But she had not texted back. She had not replied, and she had not come back home.
He’d lost it.
Even though every surface scorched him, he’d hurled himself at the doors, the windows, again and again—skin burning, healing, and burning anew in a vicious cycle.
He’d done that for hours without pause, until the twins arrived. At first, relief had flooded him—he thought Sanora was with them. But she wasn’t.
She’d been abducted.
That was what he needed to hear. Hours of studying it made him realise that the spell didn’t just burn, it fed off his power. The more he fought, the stronger it got. But also, the more furious and desperate he became, the thinner it grew. Her abduction had triggered a bond surge between them, his desperation channelled into raw, unrefined magic that the seal wasn’t built to handle.
