A lump formed in Cassiel’s throat at the sound of his voice. He didn’t think he would ever hear it again.
“Let us forget about life-debts,” he muttered. “I have lost count of how many times we have saved each other’s lives.”
Rawn chuckled weakly. “Agreed.”
Zev groaned as he sat with their help. He examined his chiseled abdomen, expression contorted with disbelief. Even the old chain scars around it had vanished, leaving a circumference at his center. “It’s as if nothing was ever there.”
“The power of Celestial blood,” Rawn said. Both he and Zev looked at Cassiel with a reverence that left him uncomfortable.
He didn’t understand what happened. He thought for sure Zev had died. They had heard him take his last breath.
“What did you see?” Cassiel asked. “Did you cross through Death’s Gate?”
Zev blinked at the storming sky with a dazed look on his face. “No.”
Now wasn’t the time to dwell on it.
Cassiel stood. “We have to go. Tarn took Dyna and the map.”
Zev’s eyes flashed yellow and fur sprouted along his arms. “I’m truly going to enjoy killing that man.”
“He does not possess the map,” Rawn told them as he got to his feet. He reached in his cloak and pulled out an old piece of folded parchment that matched the pages of the journal. “Lady Dyna removed the map from the journal. After what happened with Lady Lucenna and Von, she thought it best not to leave the map in the one known place we kept it. Since then, I have carried it on my person at all times.”
Cassiel smirked. “Clever girl.”
“Let’s go get her.” Zev tore the bloody wet shirt off his back as he shapeshifted into a snarling wolf.
Rawn whistled at Fair, and the white stallion galloped over to him. Zev ran into the darkening woods, taking the direction Tarn went. Wings flaring open, Cassiel launched into the sky, and led the search for his wife. He was confident they would find her, for there was one thing Tarn hadn’t accounted for. The bond. No matter where that man took Dyna, he would always know where she was.
Cassiel followed the beacon of her soul to the north, letting it guide him.Dyna, I’m coming—
An invisible blow struck his chest, and he knew nothing but absolute agony. It ripped the air from his lungs, splitting his mouth open in a silent cry. The world skewed on its axis. His wings lost function, and the wind ripped at him as he plummeted back to earth. Crashing through the trees, sharp branches speared his wings, nearly tearing them off his back. Cassiel collided with the ground and his leg snapped. He barely registered the pain of broken bones when another part of him was splintering.
An unbearable torment slashed at the edges of his body, mind, and soul, splitting his sense of self. He couldn’t think, move, or even breathe. It was taking from him, taking something deep from inside of him. Cassiel couldn’t grasp at it. There was no fighting it. He only knew that he was losing something dire to his existence. The unbearable pain grew and grew, the pressure completely crushing him until it severed him clean in half, shattering a core piece of his being into a million pieces.
It felt like death.
When he thought it would annihilate him, the pain suddenly ebbed. There was no solace in it. Only the anguish of loss that left behind a deep hole in his soul where Dyna had once been—where their bond had once been.
Her presence was simply…
Gone.
He couldn’t feel her. Their bond had been cleaved away from him, and its absence could only mean one thing. Dyna was dead.
All reason slipped through the cracks of his rationality like trickles of sand. Then the rest of him broke. His guttural scream tore through the woods, taking the beat of his heart with it.
Epilogue
Dynalya
Searing pain slashed through Dyna’s body as the bond ripped apart. Agony twisted through her veins, tearing into her soul, splitting it in half down the middle. The half that had been Cassiel’s soul, where it had merged with hers, fractured like glass and shattered. The shards fell away, leaving behind a vast emptiness. Her bonded was gone. She knew it with certainty at his missing presence inside her. They had hacked him out of her heart.
Someone was screaming.
Dyna writhed on the wet ground, leaves sticking to her skin as she was blinded by tears and pain. The pressure on her chest was too much. It was crushing her. She was trapped her under the entirety of the world, threatening to eradicate all that she was. By the burning in her gasping throat, Dyna realized she was the one screaming.
“What is wrong with her?” Tarn’s annoyed voice filtered through her screams. “Silence her lest the others hear.”
