"No. Not you." I study her face in the moonlight, memorizing every detail. "You're going to give up immortality to save people who aren't even your species."
"They're your people. That makes them mine." Her smile is radiant and heartbreaking. "Besides, what's the point of living forever if we can't live with ourselves?"
The wisdom in those words makes my chest clench. Maya approaches sacrifice like she approaches everything—with logic and love intertwined so completely they become indistinguishable.
She moves to the heartstone with the steady grace of someone who's made peace with her choice. When her palms touch the obsidian surface, the entire grove comes alive with responding magic. Ancient runes carved into the stone begin to glow, and I feel the first stirrings of power preparing to flow.
"I love you," she says without looking back. "Whatever happens next, remember that this is my choice freely made."
"I love you too." The words feel inadequate for what's passing between us. "More than my own existence, more than the continuation of my line, more than everything I've built across eight centuries."
"I know." Her voice grows distant as divine power begins to flow from her into the heartstone. "That's why this matters."
The transformation starts slowly, like water finding its level. Golden light seeps from Maya's hands into the obsidian, and I watch her divine enhancement begin its exodus. The glow beneath her skin dims incrementally, and the impossible presence that's surrounded her for months grows lighter.
But as more power flows into the stone, the process accelerates.
Light pours from Maya now like sunrise contained in human form. Her dark hair lifts in winds that exist only around divinemagic, and her feet rise slightly from the earth as the fertility goddess power struggles against its own dissolution. She gasps but doesn't pull away, forcing every drop of enhancement into the ritual that will save my people.
"Maya—" I start forward, but Lady Elvinia's hand on my arm stops me.
"The process cannot be interrupted," she says quietly. "Any interference now would kill her and fail to restore the court's fertility."
I watch helplessly as the woman I love burns with divine light, her mortality fighting to reclaim what magic transformed. Through our mate bond, I feel echoes of her experience—not pain exactly, but a profound sense of separation, as if fundamental pieces of her identity are being carved away.
The heartstone accepts her sacrifice greedily, drinking divine power like parched earth drinks rain. With each passing moment, Maya becomes more human and less goddess, trading the extraordinary for the merely miraculous act of choosing love over power.
Around the grove, I feel my court's magic responding. Trees that withered yesterday begin to bud. Flowers bloom spontaneously from winter soil. The scent of fertile earth and growing things fills the air as eight centuries of accumulated fertility magic flows back into its proper channels.
But Maya...
Maya is fading.
Not dying—she's too stubborn for death to claim her easily—but diminishing. The impossible presence that made her capable of channeling divine power is leaving, and in its wake stands a woman who looks suddenly, heartbreakingly human.
"It's working," Lady Elvinia breathes, her ancient features alive with wonder. "I can feel fertility returning to the court. Thesterility is lifting, the magical channels reopening. She's actually doing it."
She's saving us all at the cost of her own extraordinariness.
The final surge of power tears from Maya like a scream made of light. Her hands burn against the heartstone as the last drops of divine enhancement flow into the grove's foundation, completing a sacrifice that will restore hope to five thousand Fae who trusted their king to protect their futures.
When the light fades, Maya collapses.
I catch her before she hits the ground, gathering her suddenly fragile form against my chest. She weighs nothing and everything—light as human mortality, heavy as the love that chose wisdom over desire.
"Did it work?" she whispers against my throat.
Around us, the grove blazes with renewed fertility magic. Every tree buds with unseasonable growth, every flower blooms with impossible vibrancy. Through my connection to the court's foundation, I feel the restoration spreading outward like ripples in still water—touching every Fae in my territory, returning the gift of reproduction that my sacrifice had stolen.
"It worked." The words come out rough with emotion I can't contain. "Maya, it worked. You've saved them all."
"Good." She pulls back to meet my eyes, and the change in her takes my breath away.
She's still beautiful—will always be the most beautiful woman I've ever seen—but the otherworldly glow is gone. Her skin has returned to the warm tones I remember from before her transformation, alive and perfect but no longer shot through with veins of divine light. Her eyes remain their natural brown, clear and intelligent but lacking the supernatural awareness that marked her as something beyond mortal reach.
She's become what she was always meant to be—my queen, immortal through our bond but no longer carrying the impossible burden of goddess-level power.
"How do you feel?" I ask.
