She is there. Safe. Untouched. Staring at me with wide, blue, terrified eyes that are drowning in tears.
My red eyes... his eyes... are fading. The Urog is gone. Namir is gone. Only Threk remains.
I open my mouth. My lips are numb. I push out the only word that matters.
"Betty."
The name is a sigh of love. A prayer. A goodbye.
And I dissolve.
28
BETTY
Silence.
A thick, complete, and ringing silence that is louder than the explosion itself. The world, which moments ago was a symphony of magic, rage, and my own screaming, is gone. There is nothing. No light. No sound. No humming.
And… no weight.
The body that had become my shield, my furnace, my home—has vanished. I am no longer pinned to the moss by his love. I am just... lying here. Alone.
My ears ring with the echo of his final, agonized roar. My vision is a swimming, unfocused blur of black and purple.
A flake... lands on my cheek.
It is cold.
I blink, my vision slowly clearing, and I see another. And another.
It's snowing.
Snow is falling in this impossible, underground world, gentle, white, and silent flakes drifting down from the swirling purple nothing above. The portal is gone. The cavern is still, the air thick with the smell of ozone and ash. Larda is gone.
And Threk…
Threk is gone.
He is not a body. He is not pieces on the cavern floor. He is vaporized. He is dissolved. He is ash, scattered into the magical wind, just like my family.
A sound rips from my throat. It is not a cry. It is not a sob. It is a low, animal howl of such profound, bottomless agony that it tears my throat raw.
"No. No, no, no, no, no..."
The word is a useless, mad prayer, a denial against a truth that is so absolute it is crushing me.
I did this.
Joric was right. Maeve was right. My love is a curse. My touch is poison. I killed my family by trying to be a hero, by hiding a man who was hunted. And now... now I have killed Threk.
I led him here. I gave him this false hope for a cure. I drove him to this. My penance... it wasn't for me to die. It was to live and watch everyone I love die for me.
It is the singular thing I am good for.
I scream. I claw at my own head, my fingers tangling deep in my hair, pulling at the roots until my scalp screams in pain. It is not enough. It will never be enough to match the void that has opened in my chest.
"It's my fault!" I shriek at the silent, snowing sky. "It's all my fault!"
