He had to reach her.
Even if it cost him everything.
Rune tore from the mountain like a storm unleashed. The sunlight blinded him, burning through his vision. Still, he raced down the slopes, screaming in pain and wrath.
He reached the base of the mountain, where the forest’s shade granted fleeting reprieve. Darkness swept through the trees, seeking her warmth.
The faint trail of her scent led him to a tangle of thorns. There, caught in a beam of sun, lay a blood-red ruby nestled in black ore.
Alora’s ring. The sight of it fractured his senses like a glass.
The echo of her song drifted on the wind, slipping through his grasp once again. The sunrise shone beyond the forest like a wall, bright and cruel. Barring him from the one he desperately wanted.
Rune took a deliberate step out from beneath the canopy of the trees.
His flesh blistered where the dawn touched him, smoke curling from his cheekbones. He needed the burn to quell his fury. The shadows shrieked, writhing around him, desperate to pull him back. His skin hissed, but he didn’t stop.
He had always believed darkness could consume anything. But it could not hold the light. Not hers.
Rune knelt, picking up the ring, clenching it so hard the edges cut into his palm. The resonance of her magic was fading fast across the horizon.
Fire seared him down to bone, yet it wasn’t pain that brought him to his knees. It was the hollow ache in his chest. And the knowledge that, once again… he had lost her.
Not to death this time.
But tochoice.
Alora fled into the dawn with the one meant for her.
And deep within him, something ancient and starless—snapped. Wings tore from his back with a brutal crack. Horns curled above his brow. Claws extended from his fingers and feet. Scales rippled across his skin like molten night.
He slipped backward into the shade. The shadows stilled. Waiting.
Deep within Karag Dûr, the Gate quivered, sensing the shift in him.
Rune stared at the horizon where she had gone with one thought on his mind.
When night fell, he would hunt.
CHAPTER 36
Alora
Light swallowed her.
Blinding, golden, and endless as it took her away. Until Alora stumbled from the tree’s hollow into an unfamiliar forest, her boots scraping stone before giving way to moss. Her knees buckled. Caelum caught her before she fell, but her breath still left her in a violent rush.
The traces of her song faded.
And with it…him.
An impression of Rune still clung to the wind. Alora pressed a hand to her chest, as if to keep something from breaking loose inside her. The wind was cool here, tinged with earth and pine. Birdsong filtered through the trees. And yet she felt… unbalanced.
As if some vital thread had been cut.
Caelum shifted beside her. “We made it.”
She nodded but didn’t speak. Couldn’t. She trembled, not fully understanding what had happened. The air shimmeredaround her, remnants of the spell she had somehow sung into existence.
