“Auren?” Slade questions.
I don’t answer at first, because I’m too busy listening to the land and the sky. To Annwyn, as she whispers her secrets. As she calls to me.
Then, I feel it—that piece from the ether. The droplet that the goddess tossed down with me. And with a sense of divineknowing, I immediately understand what it is. A gift to stem the curse.
“I can fix it,” I whisper.
Slade steps closer to me.
My eyes flutter closed as I feel that droplet drift up to the surface of my body, and then I let it pour out through my gold-touch.
To heal. To restore.
To bring back life and warmth with this goddess-touched light of a cracked-open sun.
With my palms pressed to the land, the light of the goddesses streams, making the entire deadlandsflare.
The Vulmin were right, this land was cursed. Because a long time ago, a willing connection was made by Orean and fae. A sacred path forged from love and unity.
When fae betrayed that and broke the bridge, it cursed the land. Left it leeched with sickness that spread with death, sucking it dry of all power.
But the stars have been watching, and the goddesses have gifted us another chance.
The drop of power instantly soaks into the land and surges through. It’s so potent, so raw and pure, all my nerves and senses seem to ignite. My entire body is wrapped in warmth and light, wings trembling as this unfathomable, otherworldly magic flows out of me.
I nearly pass out, nearly crumple to the ground, but Slade catches me, with my name shouted from his worried lips.
He holds me while my hands are stuck against the soil like a magnet, unable to break away. I can’t—not until every part of the gifted magic is used.
My hands shake and glow, veins showing through. Light continues to pour, making sweat bead on my skin and heat flare from every direction.
I feel the power banishing the curse. Feel it burning away the poison. Shockwaves spread over the ground, and I hear people cry out as the blinding light pulses, making me squeezemy eyes shut as my body jerks and my wings flare with one last seizing tug that nearly buckles me, and then…
It’s done.
Slade grips me as I fling back, hands released from my duty, his arms catching me as I fall. I breathe heavily as I lift my head, feeling utterly spent.
As the last of the blinding light dims, my gasp joins in with the others who are gathered around us. Tears spring to my eyes, and I blink, looking out at the incredible sight.
My gaze skims over the rolling hills and dappled meadows, past trees that sway against the lavender sky. There’s a city woven through the river, with white buildings and rooftops that seem to bloom with gilded vines. In the distance, mountaintops peak with caps of snow, and forests spread out for miles.
Everything is vibrant and alive.
Ecstatic joy lifts me up, pulling me to my feet as I spin around to look at it all. It’sbeautiful. The landscape now ripples with lush grass and sparkling waters and bursting life.
The deadlands are no longer dead. The curse has been broken.
Annwyn has been restored.
I turn to look at the crust of the world that’s now smoothed and green, where it tapers off with a beveled edge. Beyond it, fog flows down the void in streams of endless white and glacial blue like a waterfall of vapor.
I smile at it all, feeling the rightness of Annwyn humming through me, but then, my smile slowly falls, a frown forming between my brows.
I turn to look at Slade. “Wait, the bridge of Lemuria. Where is it?”
Slade’s eyes meet mine, and his answer makes my stomach drop. “It’s gone.”
CHAPTER 64
