I have no choice.
Another heartbeat. I jerk.
Where am I? Is this real?
I’m back in this forsaken mountain, freed from Everett’s magic, but wait, what is that warmth in my chest, gripping my heart, forcing it to beat?
I know if it weren’t there, I’d be… with my mate. Losing her should have killed me.
“Selene,” I rasp. I crawl back to her, no longer a man, more animal on my hands and knees.
I splay her out, close my fist, and demand that her heart beat again. I push and shove, forcing my lips over hers as I breathe.Again and again. She’s like a balloon; my breath inflates her, but so quickly she deflates.
Nothing happens.
Her eyes don’t open.
Why do I sense an invisible part of her floating up, up, and… away?
Gone. Except for that magic forcing my heart to beat until it’s strong enough not to need her magic keeping it alive.
She must have truly loathed me to have placed me in a perpetual state of torture, forced to survive this outcome.
My lips part, but no man's voice comes forth. Agony. Anguish. A beast unlike any the lands have encountered howls. My magic pours from me. Spews like molten fire. Useless tears, unheard pleas.
All I see is fire and lies. It’s what this world is built on.
How am I to change that?
Why should I?
I hand over my control to the beast, allowing it to do its worst, stretching far and wide, filling the room, rushing down the tunnel, as I set fire to everything. I don’t block out the heat; I feel it coat my skin. I won’t burn. Never have.
Maybe if I push it hotter and hotter, I can change that.
Hopefully, I can.
Hope…
I snort. You wanted me to have hope. Here’s hoping I don’t live to see tomorrow. Here’s to hoping I wake up, or hoping that I died on that battlefield when I fought Everett, and this is the afterlife I deserved to suffer in.
Here’s to hoping that hope burns.
Chapter
Fifty-Two
Sofia
Inever want to fall in love. Never want to feel what my brother felt as he drove that dagger into Sable.
He loved Sable. I can’t understand how, but he did.
Hector tried so hard to change Sable, but no matter how you chisel stone, in the end, it’s made of the same thing. Whether it’s fashioned into a boulder, brick, pebble, or dust, it’s the same matter.
“Selene’s dying!” Hector’s panicked whisper pulls tears from my eyes.
Can Titus see it as he begs her to live? She is death. Her skin has already given up.
