I smiled.
“It wasn’t your fault, little Fay. Nothing would have changed that course of fate,” Holt would soothe.
I laughed. “I know that now, Holt. My grandfather is a wily bastard.”
We shared a laugh.
“Is it wrong that I’m grateful for that nudge? Knowing that if you had survived, I never would have left Isrun, never would have met Rohak.” Just the thought made me violently ill.
Holt patted my back.
“No, little Fay. It’s not. Everything is as it was meant to be.”
I smiled and pressed a kiss to his stone before using it to help me to my feet.
“I miss you, Dad,” I whispered. “Every day. I hope you’re proud of me. I love you so.”
Holt never got the chance to answer because pounding footsteps shook me from my reverie to focus on my Bonded running up the grassy knoll.
“Faylinn!” he called, alarm coating his voice. “Look!” His arm whipped out to the west.
I narrowed my eyes before widening them in surprise.
The vortex of Destruction that marred the horizon was gone. No evidence or trace of it remained—it simply evaporated as if it never existed in the first place.
Ellowyn.
I prayed to Fate and whoever was listening that Torin reached her in time, refusing to think of the alternative.
“We need to go,” I called to Rohak. He grunted his agreement before offering his hand, helping me down the steep embankment.
Ellowyn would need me when she woke, of that I was certain.
Chapter Eighty-Four
Peytor
The sting of the fresh Tethering Rune inked on the skin above my heart, directly next to Torin’s mark, faded to a dull throb; the pressure that built from holding Ellowyn’s magic abated soon after. It was different absorbing Ellowyn’s excess power than it was when I completed the tether with Torin. Maybe because Ellowyn was my sister, or maybe because of the volatile nature of her magic. Either way, my soul felt at ease once her tether settled, binding us until death.
There’s no other way I would have it.
Ellowyn lay prone on her and Torin’s bed, chest rising and falling rhythmically now that she was no longer fighting for her life against the deathly tide of her power. Her features were peaceful, less harsh, and not as marred with worry as they were when she was awake.
The last two years had aged her, just as they had us all, but I saw the starkest changes in my sister. Her face was more angular, the hollows of her cheeks more pronounced. There were deeper frown lines on her brow and by the edges of her mouth, places that should only have been marked by happiness.
My heart hurt for her, for the life she was so unceremoniously ripped from and the chaos she was unwittingly thrust into, even if she had taken to it well.
Torin shifted on the bed next to Ellowyn, pulling her on top of his chest as far as he could without waking her. Her pale arm flopped bonelessly with athunkas he maneuvered her head into the crook of his neck. His face relaxed then, when he could feel her heartbeat, her small breaths against his skin. Torin’sfingers, marred by a litany of small cuts and bruises, stroked soft, soothing patterns onto Ellowyn’s arm as he closed his eyes, finally at peace.
“Are you going to tell me what happened? How you found her and got back here so quickly?” I asked quietly, sinking down onto the edge of the bed.
We were the only ones in the room, as per Torin’s booming command when he first arrived in Alvor with Ellowyn cradled in his arms, her Destruction Magic coating her skin and sparking every so often.
Even without Torin’s harshly spoken request, no one would have dared set foot in this room; not with the way Ellowyn’s magic was blindly reaching toward inanimate and living things alike, leaving pockmarks of destruction behind. The wildness in Torin’s honey eyes was an even stronger deterrent.
I’d followed without a word, jogging to keep up with his determined strides, before closing and locking their door behind me. Minutes later, I’d inscribed the rune on Ellowyn’s sternum and over my heart, shocked that I’d remembered the intricate whorls and lines.
“It was . . . unlike anything I’d ever seen before,” Torin said, his voice a hoarse whisper. Ghosts danced in his eyes as he blinked rapidly, trying to clear his mind of whatever dark path he’d strayed down. “The cloud reached for the heavens, a swirling vortex of pure Destruction Magic.”
