And it seems to shatter her too. I can see every line that cracks through her eyes, every thought that breaks across her face.
“I remember…” she whispers upon a trembled breath. “Great Divine…Iremember.”
Her expression looks haunted yet awed, a thousand words caught there, and I want to release every single one.
My eyes burn, my chest feeling ready to explode, but I reach forward and clasp her beautiful face. Drag my thumb over her soft cheek to catch the first tear that falls.
“You found me,” she whispers, lip trembling.
The relief and heartbreaking joy is so intense I have to shove it aside before I can answer. “I’ll always find you, Goldfinch.”
Always.
A devastating smile breaks out across her face, watery eyes spilling over and flooding right into me. Then she leaps into my arms and I catch her.
I hold her so tightly against me in a way that threatens the Fates if they ever fucking dare to separate us again.
“Slade…Slade…Slade…”
She says it over and over again. Just my name. Repeated a thousand different times, in a thousand different ways.
I press my face into her hair, breathing her in, squeezing my wet eyes against the golden strands. Her legs are wrapped around my waist, arms holding me tight, and I clasp her to me so there’s no space between us. Never again.
“Slade…”
“I’m here, Auren.”
I’mfinallyhere. Right where I belong.
With her.
CHAPTER 33
SLADE
As I hold her tight, Auren clutches me just as fiercely, and everything in me finally settles. The rage, the terror, the unrelenting pain of being separated from her.
Then my attention is pulled when I feel something else wrapping around us, something soft yet strong, and I turn my head to look.
And there they are.
Golden tendrils flowing from her back like rays of sunlight.
My entire body stills with shock, and I blink, expecting the incredible sight to disappear, but it doesn’t.
“Auren…” I choke out. “Yourribbons.”
A sob snaps off from her lips, left in pieces against my neck. “They’re back,” she tells me, but it sounds like she’s telling herself too. Reassuring herself that her ribbons really are there. That she has them again.
“Let me see you.”
She leans back in my arms just enough so we’re face to face. Eye to eye. Breath to breath.
She hiccups, cheeks glistening as she stares at me like she’s in as much awe as I am. “How?” I ask, just as the tendrilscome up around us, stroking me, curling around my shoulders, slipping around my arms. They wind around us, like they’re tying Auren and me together.
“I don’t know,” she answers, and I can see the joy in her gilded irises—can see the utter relief. And then she cripples me. “They’re back, and so are you. I’m whole again.”
I’m whole again.
