“Isme dolunde vaten crew.” Daric murmured the words she’d taught him yesterday so that Rain wouldn’t have to say them. His mouth puckered. “Is it supposed to taste this sour?”
“All magic tastes rotten,” the witch answered. “That’s why it eventually rotsyou.”
Daric had no intention of becoming a sorcerer or succumbing to their curse—and he wanted to know Rain’s opinion on the strange words.
“Rain?” he prompted.
“Yes.” She glanced away from him. “They taste foul to me as well.”
Rain had livedher last day as human, and she had no idea what Braylian might do with her next. Her one regret, the dread making her heart twist and jerk, was losing Daric. But she’d loved him in every way possible—and been loved in return. Coulda woman ask for more, or better than that?
She’d known joy, fear, excitement, sadness, affection, desire. Rain was complete, just not anywhere near ready for this life to be over.
And Daric… How would he fare? He had so much passion in him that it could easily turn to rage and despair.
Braylian’s Cauldron was no strange place to her. She’d lived in it once. She’d also paid homage to the greatgoddess from outside it, watching elements erupt from the circle as she’d prayed alongside her adoptive family. The people of Leathen came here to worship, in awe and fear and hope and hardship. She’d been no different from them these past fifteen years, no different from anyone else asking for Braylian’s blessing.
It was a calm day, both for the weather and for the Cauldron. Rain and Daric hungback while the Barrow Witch performed her mysterious task of discovering which of the stones making up the wide circle held the key to breaking curses. Daric had the objects they needed, and Rain stood beside him, wishing they could have had another night together, just the two of them, tangled and touching and loving each other more than anything.
The witch finally backed away from the Cauldron,pointing an unsteady finger at a stone that suddenly pulsed with darkness. “There.” Her voice was reed-thin and exhausted. She stumbled over to a large tree and sat, slumping almost lifelessly against it. As they watched, her skin turned ashen, and she seemed to age a decade. Gray streaks now patterned her hair, and Rain knew without a doubt that the witch had sacrificed more than they’d everintended.
Perhaps she’d known what this day would cost her, just as Rain did, and had accepted her role anyway.
Visibly worried about the witch’s condition, Daric took off his cloak and tucked it around her. She didn’t stir, clearly depleted by her long and strenuous ritual.
Rain and Daric approached the Cauldron together. When they reached the stone they needed, she turned to him and lovinglytouched his face. “A kiss,” she whispered, her heart splintering. “For luck.”
Daric gently drew her closer. His lips brushed hers and Rain clung to him, sealing their mouths together. The kiss turned deeper, a little frantic, and she feared her desperation had begun to show. She was deceiving him, and he might never forgive her. But springtime would come to Leathen again. Daric wouldn’t marryAstraea. He would punish Raana and make Leathen the most powerful kingdom on the continent again.
Daric pulled back too soon, his eyes glittering with a mix of desire and determination. “Will you marry me, Rain? The moment we return to Ash?” He kissed her again, quick and hard this time. “Please say you’ll be with me—always.”
Instead of euphoria, nausea churned inside her. She chose her wordscarefully. “Nothing would make me happier than being with you forever. I love you, Daric.”
Smiling, he tucked her hair back. “I love you, too, my silver raindrop.”
Tears burned in Rain’s throat. In a flash of memory, Daric was young again, calling desperately into the Cauldron. It had been impossible not to go to him then, just as it was impossible not to help him now.
Daric bent and laid outthe bloodstones and the mockweed as the Barrow Witch had instructed. He straightened and gripped Rain’s hand, bringing her fingertips to his mouth and kissing them. “And now it ends,” he said.
She pressed her lips together to prevent her breath from shuddering out. Then she nodded. “Talk to Braylian. Explain the curse.”
Facing the Cauldron, Daric called out to Braylian. Years ago, Braylian hadn’theard him—or else had ignored his pleas. She, Spring, had left her seasonal wanderings and come instead, seeing nothing but a handsome young prince amidst a strange and impenetrable darkness. He’d shone so brightly that she couldn’t resist.
Now, Daric once again explained the curse, told of the crippling drought, and begged for springtime to return to Leathen.
When he finished talking, fireerupted from the previously quiet Cauldron. It shot high, a ferocious and roaring inferno reaching for the sky with angry fingers. In all their years coming to the Cauldron with supplications and apparently useless offerings, Rain had never seen anything like it. This time, Braylian had heard them.
Daric’s eyes met hers, his bright with triumph and the reflection of the blaze before them. Rainlifted her chin and smiled in encouragement. She would leave him with bravery as well as sorrow. “Say the words. End the curse, Daric.”
“Isme dolunde vaten crew,” Daric called out solidly, his voice carrying above the firestorm in the Cauldron.
I sacrifice that which I love most.The bloodstones were to get the goddess’s attention, the mockweed to reveal the source of the curse, and the wordsin the language of sorcery… They offered an exchange of sorts. Daric was asking for something, which meant he had to give something up. And not just anything—the thing he loved above all else. Rain had no doubt it was her, which was both a comfort to her breaking heart and a dagger straight through it.
A great force pulled at her, ripping her from Daric. Rain screamed. It was too soon! Now thatit was upon her, she wasn’t ready—not for this end, not for Daric’s desperate yell, and certainly not for the terror in his cry when the fire seized and engulfed her.
Energy exploded through Rain, transformative and fracturing. All sound from her lips stopped. She lost form and features. Everything she’d been since the moment she’d decided to look like a human girl, so she could dance with ahuman boy, disappeared in fragments. She rose toward the sky in a great ripple of power, but even as she soared once again as she had before, something of the person she’d become remained, clinging to an essence that now stretched far and wide across the continent. That part of her belonged to Daric. It still beat like a human heart, steady and strong. The rest of her was Spring.
Above Leathen,Rain gathered herself into a low, churning cloud pregnant with water.How many times can a heart break? For how long?She unleashed her tears, and they were the first spring showers the kingdom had seen in Daric’s lifetime.
Braylian had taken her back. She was enduring again. Timeless. A season like three others. But she’d forgotten nothing. Rain wept, watering Leathen with a heavy, miserable,persistent downpour that splattered the ground below her.
In the sacred clearing, Daric turned his face up to the raindrops and howled like a dying animal.
She rained harder. Thunder was her only way to scream, so she split the sky with bolts of lightning and their tremendous cracks cried back at him.
Their hearts broke together. Hers would break over and over, and until the end of days wasa terrifyingly long stretch of forever.
