A soldier behind her slams his gauntleted fist into her spine with enough force to send her crashing to her knees. She criesout in pain, and I feel that sound like a physical blow to my own body.
“Cashira,” the soldier growls, his voice carrying the authority of someone used to being obeyed without question, “you are under arrest for treason against the Night Court. Your lies and manipulations end here.”
“No!” I step forward, trying to run to her aid, but my legs move like I’m walking through honey, each step taking forever while getting me nowhere closer. “Stop this! STOP?—”
“Some things can’t be prevented,”that same haunting voice taunts, and I can hear the cruel satisfaction in it, the way it feeds on my helplessness.
I try to run after them as they tether her to a horse and force her away through the trees, but the scene is already shifting around me, the forest fading into something else, something worse.
Snow. Endless white snow stretching as far as the eye can see.
I know this place. I’ve been here before. My eyes find Sam’s body lying motionless in a drift that’s stained crimson with his blood, his beautiful brown wolf form twisted and broken in ways that make my stomach lurch.
“No. No. No.” The words tear from my throat like prayers to a God who isn’t listening.
I collapse beside him, my hands fluttering over his still form, afraid to touch but unable to stay away. His breaths are so shallow they’re barely there, and his warm eyes, lock onto mine with an intensity that breaks what’s left of my heart. He tries to shift back to human form, his body morphing grotesquely as his magic fails, but it’s too late. I can see death creeping in at the edges, stealing the light from his eyes one heartbeat at a time.
“I won’t let this happen,” I whisper, pressing my forehead against his, my tears falling hot against his cooling fur. “I swear to you, I won’t let this be real. I’ll find a way, I’ll fix this, I’ll?—”
“You have the power to mend, to heal, to make him whole,”the voice whispers seductively in my ear.“Remember what you are, daughter of water and earth. Remember what you can do. . .”
His chest rises one last time, falls, and then stops forever.
I scream again, shaking him, sobbing until I can’t breathe, begging whatever cruel deity that might be listening to let me die right alongside him. My mother, my son, my mate, everyone I love, everyone who gives my life meaning, torn away from me one by one while I watch helplessly.
“I can’t lose anymore,” I whisper into Sam’s lifeless body, my voice breaking on every word. “Please, I can’t do this anymore. Let me go with him. Let me go. . .”
My body collapses to the frozen ground and I’m swallowed by darkness so complete it feels like being buried alive. The scene around me dissolves, leaving me floating in nothingness while pain cracks my chest wide open like an egg.
Then, without warning, a new vision slams into me with enough force to make me cry out, and suddenly I’m hovering above a scene that makes my blood turn to ice in my veins.
Micah stands in front of a cave, Lyrik beside her, facing a man whose very presence radiates power and barely contained menace. He’s handsome in the way that predators are beautiful, sharp features and knowing eyes and a smile that promises things you’ll regret wanting.
“You’ve made your choice then,”he murmurs, his voice soft and almost gentle, like a lover’s caress that hides a blade.“Now, all you have to do is reach inside your pocket and hand me her letter. It’s as easy as that.”
Lyrik stands beside Micah, and I can see the desperation in every line of his body, the way his hands shake as he reaches for her.“You don’t have to do this, Meus Amor. Miss Blu, she wouldn’t want this. You know she wouldn’t want you to sacrifice yourself for?—”
“I do have to, Lyrik,”Micah interrupts, her voice carrying a conviction that sounds like death itself.“I do. I can’t let you go. She will understand. She may not feel me anymore through the bond, but she’ll understand what I had to do. I know she will.”
Micah extends her hand with obvious reluctance, and in it is my letter, the one I’d given Miss Margaret to deliver to her, the one that was supposed to explain everything, to let her know I was alive and safe and thinking of her always.
I want to scream at her, to ask what she’s doing and why, but I’m just a passenger here, helpless to do anything but watch as she makes whatever terrible bargain this is.
The man’s fingers brush against the parchment, and the moment he touches it, my entire body ignites with agony. A raw, searing pain erupts in my chest like someone has reached inside and torn out something vital. I double over, mirroring Micah’s movement as she cries out and falls to her knees, and I feel something inside me snap like a rope pulled too tight.
The Tether. Our bond, the magical connection that has linked us since the moment we met, the thing that let has connected us across any distance, it’s gone. Severed. Cut away so cleanly it leaves nothing behind but emptiness and the phantom pain of something that used to be there.
“Oh God, no.” I can barely form the words through the agony. “Micah!”
But I can’t feel her anymore. The space in my mind where she used to live is empty, silent, cold as the grave.
“Some things will change, but will remain,”the voice says with solemn finality, like a judge pronouncing sentence.
“Fuck this!” I shout into the darkness that surrounds me, my voice raw with rage and grief and a pain so deep it has no name. “FUCK ALL OF THIS!”
I let myself fall to the cold, unforgiving ground, wanting nothing more than to let go completely, to give up and surrender to whatever death wants to claim me. What is there left for me now? What reason do I have to keep fighting when everyone I love is gone, when everything I’ve ever wanted has been stripped away piece by bloody piece?
“Loss is only the beginning,”the voice says, and now there’s something almost encouraging in its tone, like a teacher guiding a difficult student toward understanding.“You can either lay here and die like all the others who came before you, let yourself become just another set of bones scattered across this cursed ground or you can mend what is broken, fix what can be fixed, overcome the insurmountable odds that stand before you. You have that power, daughter of witch and fae. Claim it all or die forgotten.”
