“I thought, if you found a way to unite with Callan, the worst might be avoided,” I admitted.
“I can’t imagine what it’s like for you, wondering if and when the time will come. I’m sorry—for my parents’ mess becoming your problem, for my father—for Ire—asking this of you.”
“Do not apologize. I can never regret knowing you.”
Her eyes brimmed with tears that she refused to let fall. “A spoiled brat, like me? You sure?” she teased. “And you’re willing to fight beside me anyway?”
“I’ll fight for you,” I said, voice rough. “I’ll be your blade, Aurelia. Point me where you need me. Wield me against every enemy that stands in your path. Until my last breath.”
Her eyes shone, fury and grief warring in them. “Don’t say that.”
“It’s the truth.”
“I don’t want your death, Rydian. I only want your love.”
“I refuse to hurt you by giving you both.”
Silence. The kind that hurt like an arrow in the chest.
I brushed my thumb along her jaw, memorizing the shape of her. “You were born to end a war. I was born to end with you. For me, it will be enough.”
And before she could speak, before she could make me refuse her again, I kissed her once more—softthis time, final—and turned away.
Her voice followed me, quiet and breaking. “Rydian?—”
But I didn’t look back.
The shadows welcomed me like an old friend, like I knew they would in the end.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Aurelia
Ididn’t move for a long time, just stood there with the brittle wind on my face and the taste of him still on my lips. I thought I knew pain—war, loss, exile—but heartbreak had its own kind of cruelty. It lingered. It burned without flame or smoke.
Rydian’s words spun through me on a loop I couldn’t silence.I was meant to be your shield. Not your equal. Not your choice.
The gods had made him into my weapon, and me the reason he would fall. How could the Fates be so merciless as to weave love into a prophecy designed for ruin? Then again, it hadn’t been the Fates at all. It had been my father. The Furiosities. Hel’s godsmeddling, as Patamoi had put it. I was starting to agree.
I thought I’d guessed Rydian’s secret. The heir to the Onyx Throne. But there had been a much heavier burden behind it. One he carried on shoulders made of steel, it seemed.
When he’d walked away, the shadows had swallowed himwhole, as if the realm itself had conspired to swallow him up. Maybe it had. Maybe it would before everything was over.
I didn’t sleep that night. I tried—gods, I tried—but every time I closed my eyes, I saw him walking away again, saw the resignation in his face when he said it would be his honor to die for me.
No one should ever look so beautiful while saying something so tragic.
By the time dawn broke, I’d buried what was left of my heart beneath the same armor I’d worn since the night my own court had been cursed to sleep. And I swore to use the jagged pieces of my broken heart to cut them all down before I was done.
Beneath my skin, my furyfire burned and burned. It had been growing ever since the night I’d used it on Duron. As if doing so had unleashed some torrent I hadn’t known before. Whatever well of magic I’d felt these last years, it was suddenly much deeper.
I’d woken a beast—and that beast was me.
I had a feeling, when I was ready to unleash it, the destruction would be absolute. So, for now, I left it sleeping, waiting in a sort of hibernation that only stoked the embers hotter for the moment I’d let it come alive once more.
The air outside the tent was crisp, laced with pine and decaying leaves, the ground covered in frost. The camp slept—tents still and quiet in the pre-dawn. I went to work, stoking the fire and setting out water to boil for coffee and tea.
Keres slipped out of the tent behind me, dressed in fighting leathers and a thick cloak that one of the Withered had gifted her. Her hair was braided and coiled at the nape of her neck. She sat near the fire pit, sharpening her blades in slow, deliberate strokes. The sound of steel on stone broke the stillness like a heartbeat.
