“I’ll loseyou in this life and every one after.” His voice cracks. “And Lumi, I will spend whatever’s left of my existence tearing this world apart until my heart stops beating.”
I feel sick—theimage of Andrik, hollow-eyed and blood-soaked, hunting through the snow for a bond that no longer exists, is too much.
Forgetting my face.
Forgetting my name.
Dying alonebecause I was taken from him.
“Then we end this,”I promise, cupping his face and forcing him to look at me. “We find him. We stop him. And then you claim me the way the Gods intended.”
He haulsme flush against his chest, his arms wrapping snugly around my waist. One hand curls into the hair at my nape, forcing my head back, while the other splays across my lower back, crushing me into him until the air leaves my lungs. He buries his face into the hollow of my shoulder, his entire body shudders as he inhales me—not as a lover, but as a man who was drowning and just found his breath. His frantic heartbeat pounds beneath my ear.
“I will end him,Saelûn. I swear it on every star that watches us.”
He exhales shakily,planting kisses down the side of my neck.
When he pulls back,he rests his forehead against mine. We sit there in the silence, breathing the same air, trying to convince ourselves that we still have time.
I curlinto his chest as his fingers thread through my hair.
My eyes startto droop as his voice rumbles soft whispers into my hair.
“Thraen’na. Kael’vasra, luvieth.”(Rest safely. I will protect you, always.)
He nuzzles my neck.
“Nocthae ves kaelûn.Nai’thar ves lûr lumina’ka.” (The night will not touch you. I am here, little light.)
“Lumina’ka ves nai’thar,”I whisper back. (Your little light is here.)
I want to say more,but sleep pulls at me—my body exhausted, my soul bruised.
His arms tighten around me,and I'm finally safe enough to let go.
Snow falls,but I’m not in his forest.
I’mon some kind of... battlefield. The ground beneath my feet isn’t frozen; it’s scorched. Ash drifts from a bruised sky, mingling with the falling flurries until the world is a kaleidoscope of grey and white.
A woman runs past me,her feet bare and bloodied against the black earth. Her breaths come out in sharp, desperate bursts—the sound of someone who’s already run miles, with many left to go.
“Hello?”I call out, but my voice is swallowed by the heavy, muffled silence of fallout. She doesn’t stop. It’s like I’m a ghost haunting her memory.
In the distance,a monolith of white stone pierces through the smog. A temple? A castle?
What is she running from?
A man'svoice rings out, splitting the silence.
“Naya!”
I spin,searching through the haze. A man sprints by, so close the heat of his skin brushes my shoulder. He’s tall, beautiful in an almost ethereal way. Streaked with warpaint the color of dried blood, his face is a mask of panicked agony.
He’s screaming.The words sound like they’re being ripped from his soul.
“Naya, don’t! Please.”
The air turns bitterly cold.A second figure emerges from the smoke. He is a mirror image of the first, but something’s off. Where the first man was fire and warpaint, this one is shadow and silence. He stands perfectly still amid the chaos.
