One moment she was standing there, betraying me, tearing down everything I loved, and the next, she was gone.
Just… gone.
How had I not seen it?
How had I missed the signs?
I should have known.
Should have pieced it together.
Stopped her.
But I hadn’t.
I was too late.
Her body lay crumpled in the center of the ritual circle. Blood trickled from her nose and mouth, pooling beneath her cheek. No movement. No breath. Just stillness.
Something inside me snapped. Centuries of restraint gone.
I fell to my knees beside her. My fingers brushed her hand, still warm, and for a heartbeat I thought—
But no. Nothing.
Her eyes stared past me, unseeing. I closedthem with shaking fingers, smearing blood across her skin.
Her magic, now inside me, pulsed beneath my flesh like wildfire. It didn’t settle—it screamed. It demanded to burn, to kill, to make the world hurt the way I did.
There was no logic left, no strategy, no wisdom.
Only rage.
I didn’t remember how many I killed. Two? Three at once? It didn’t matter. Any Herald who crossed my path fell. My blade, my magic, both found their targets with brutal precision.
The Fraction tried to scatter, but Malek’s soldiers pursued them.
Some fled. Some were caught. The rest… died.
I offered no mercy.
Because the only person who had ever truly mattered was lying broken on the floor.
Maelis.
And she hadn’t died for power, not for herself. She’d died for me, for my people, for the humans who would have chained her the moment they discovered her heka.
A heka that now throbbed inside me, a constant, burning reminder of what I’d lost.
I wanted to hold her and tell her I loved her, because I did. I hadn’t realized how much, until I felt the silence she left behind.
Caelan appeared in the courtyard, panting. His eyes swept over the wreckage, then found her.
He froze. “No… no, no, no!”
He dropped to his knees beside her, fingers pressed to her throat, searching for a pulse that wasn’t there.
“What the fuck happened?” His voice cracked. “How isthis possible?”
