My hands froze on the exposed skin of his chest.
How did you hold onto something that was ripping itself apart only to fuse itself back together again before your eyes?
His scars flared. The gouge splitting his abdomen blazed, then faded, again and again. Blood stopped flowing and the torturous gash sealed together.
The world exploded with lights and colors, over and over. My heart raced with each flash. Bright. Gone. Bright. Gone. Each burst ripped a sound from his throat. A groan. Then a snarl.
Then silence as his head fell back onto the stones.
“No,” I choked out.
Lorant.
Merrick.
ThemanI loved writhed under my hands as a transformation ripped through him. His chest heaved, his limbs jerking against some invisible force determined to consume him. Red and silver swam under his skin, thrusting against the surface like the colors were trying to claw free.
Words slurred from his mouth. “Bound her. Claimed her. Stole her choice. Fate gave power to her vengeance.”
As his entire body spasmed, the light in his body flared, the glow turning brighter than the blaze of colors overhead. It spiraledout in a pulse, then snapped back into him with each jagged breath.
The scar across his face remained untouched, but his others softened into smooth, unmarred skin.
He stilled.
Not as a corpse but as something new.
His chest rose and fell, the veins of color beneath his skin receding. His eyes, light green now, undeniably Merrick but flecked with darker Lorant, opened and locked on mine.
Gone was the split and the fracture of the men I'd come to love.
What stared back at me was whole.
Not the golden warmth of Merrick or the consuming darkness of Lorant, but someone new, someone balanced.
Breath punched from my lungs, and all I could do was lower my shaking head to his chest.
Him. Both of them. Together.
My Merrick.
My Lorant.
One person to love.
“I'm here, Reyla.Wildfire.” His hand rose to stroke my back. “I'm here.”
A silver beam of moonlight shot down, slicing through the sky, illuminating us in such brilliance that I worried it would sear flesh from bone. The world seemed to inhale, every creature alive or dying holding its breath.
And thenitscreamed.
Not a borgon.
Not a villager.
An ear-splitting shriek ripped through the world before it went silent once more.
As the magic faded, the city erupted again with visceral borgon roars. Cries of fae in terror.
