Unworthy.
"You're so much weaker than Lux was, and she had guardians and a platoon of warriors protecting her. Do you truly think you can stand up to me?"
My heart stutters in my chest as darkness bands around my ribcage, constricting like a vice. My light dims as the darkness meets it, just enough for Khadyr to plunge a shadowy hand into my chest.
CHAPTER9
REZNIK
Iwake with a warm arm slung over my hip and a tail curled around my calf and sigh, content for the first time in centuries. I was remade in Lucy's arms last night and as I crack my eyes open to take in the morning sunlight, I leave all the darkness, the doubts and the misgivings behind in the Longest Night. It's a new day, a truly Blessed Yule.
But the arm slung over my hip isn't Lucy's. It’s Yaelyn's. Curious. I remember falling asleep with Lucy nestled between us. Perhaps she couldn't sleep or slipped to the bathroom. Perhaps she's sneaking Yule cookies in the kitchen as we speak. I rub at my chest with a frown. There's a twinge of pain, but nothing like what happens when we're separated from her.
Yaelyn mumbles out her name, only half awake. I brush his gunmetal hair away from his face and press a kiss to his forehead. He curls into my arms, snuggling close.
"Where's our troublemaker?" he yawns.
"Hopefully not trying to make us breakfast." She's an utter disaster in the kitchen. So unlike Lux, and yet she feels right to me in a way I never would have expected.
Yaelyn rubs his chest with a grimace. "Can we please go find her?"
I can tell he's feeling out of sorts, so I go to grab his robe for him, only to discover it missing. Stolen. I can't help my chuckle. She always did like Yaelyn's robe, preferring his even after we got her one of her own. I snatch my discarded sweater up off the floor and bundle him up in it. "Come on, love. Let's find our spark."
The bathroom is dark and empty, but I'm sure she's in the kitchen or perhaps curled up in front of the fire like a contented cat.
Then I see the unlit tree and I know.
My hearts crack in my chest, sharp, bitter pieces like jagged glass. Ripping me open and letting the darkness in.
She stole the last shard she could from us.
I roar out a curse and slam my first through the drywall. She's fuckinggone. I trusted her. I loved her. And she's gone.
Yaelyn drifts around the great room, pausing to touch one of the baubles on the tree. Her favorite, the one she couldn't stop admiring on the drive home. He yanks it from the tree and dashes it to the ground. It explodes in a shower of shards and dust.
"I failed her," he utters, before falling to his knees on the glass-strewn floor. His head drops and he scrubs his hands through his hair, tugging at it. "Rez, I failed her."
"Youfailedher? She betrayed and abandoned us again. She's probably laughing all the way to the bank right now. Come on, love. You're getting all torn up." I gently lift him into my arms and then set him on the kitchen counter so I can clean the glass from his bloody knees. A single white piece of paper catches my eye and I snatch the note up off the counter and read the three lines over and over, trying to make sense of them.
This was the only way. I couldn't let Khadyr get the shards. Protect the rest. I love you always and forever. – Lucy
I shove the note into Yaelyn's hands while I stomp into the bathroom for the first aid kit. Yaelyn heals quickly—not as quickly as I do—but I need to do something. I feel like a volcano about to erupt, helpless anger roiling inside me.
"Make it make sense," I beg Yaelyn as I carefully clean the bits of glass from his wounds.
"She's the Light Bearer," he says despondently. "Lux's soul or magic or... or I don't know what, reborn."
"Impossible," I growl.
He strokes my hair back from my horns, running his fingers through it. "When she said the shards were safe but not in a way where she could give them to her buyer, she meant she was carrying them inside her, just as we do. We were drawn to her because the shards sensed that we would protect her."
"I was drawn to her because she's an... an impossiblemenace. Brave. Funny. Reckless. Beautiful. Strong." Fuck, my breath burns in my lungs, and I want to put my fist through something else. I want to smash every ornament on our Yule tree. Lucy's the Light Bearer?
"Oh, Rez," he sighs, the faintest note of humor in his voice. "I meant the curse. It wasn't a curse at all. That's the draw I was talking about." He sets a hand over one of my hearts. "You love her because she's an impossible menace."
I shut my eyes and let out a ragged breath. "She's really the Light Bearer?"
"She glows, Rez. That first night, after you'd both fallen asleep, her chest started glowing faintly. That's when I began to suspect."
