Prologue
DEVORA
Six Weeks in the Future
The world tilted as I crashed to my knees.
He will heal. He will heal. He will heal.
The blade sank into his side. His lips parted in stunned silence, his eyes scrambling to find mine as two dark blooms soaked the front of his shirt.
His mouth formed a single word.
“Tomorrow.”
Our forever will start tomorrow.
My stomach turned inside out, the air torn from my lungs like I’d been gutted. I forgot how to breathe. I forgot how to do anything except scream. The world dimmed around me, and I barely saw the cloaked figures emerge from the surrounding shadows and race forward.
My body wouldn’t move, wouldn’t run, wouldn’t do anything but shriek uselessly at the sky. My magic, however…
Shadows flailed inside me, a tidal wave of despair unlike anything I’d ever felt. They swelled and collided against my ribs, and I no longer cared about holding them back.
Magicexplodedfrom me in a blast of energy, so strong my hair whipped around my face, and my chest caved in from exertion. A ripple of shadows coursed over the ground. It trembled beneath the dark wave, kicking up dirt and sending weapons flying through the air.
But the power was short-lived.
Something cold and hard bolted around my wrist, and as quickly as it hurtled from me, my magic died. The shock of its loss sent me reeling backward into a cloaked figure.
My head snapped to the black cuffs on my arm.
Not again.
I can’t lose him. I can’t lose him. I can’t?—
My stifled magic made my chaotic, raging emotions claw up my throat, trying to get out. They were going to flood me. Drown me.
Blood glinting off the blade in his chest practically blinded me, making my vision go gray at the edges. I felt myself struggling against my restraints, but it was as if I was watching it from afar as a soundless scream escaped me.
The dagger moved to his throat, and I lunged forward with all my strength.
When my assailant grabbed my waist to yank me back, something in my pocket shifted. I blinked, thoughts racing as quickly as my pulse.
The fatesprig serum.
I dug in my pockets for the cool metal cylinder and hauled it out, needle tip glistening in the moonlight.
His gaze met mine as he stumbled to his knees. Even in his pain, even facing his own death, he didn’t attack. He didn’t defend himself.
He was protecting me, as he always did.
My fault.
His eyes widened. His lips curved around my name, a blood-stained hand reaching for me.
I didn’t think. As I watched the blade point to his throat, I plunged the needle into my heart.
The last thing I heard was the deafening, soul-wrenching roar of a dragon.
