Reyla dropped down beside me, wrapping her arm around my back. “Only when touched by what first broke it will they remember what they were.”
“What we need does not begin with fire,” I said, staring into the pool. “It begins with the wound. Pour yourself into it. Bind not them, but what they represent.”
“The blood was just the beginning,” Reyla said. “It opened the connection, but the talismans need to remember their originalpurpose. They need to feel what love actually is, not what Aricor twisted it into.”
“Um…how do you know all that?” Dorion asked from nearby.
I dragged up a brief smile. “We learned it from a very wise elder. What was broken, was not meant to break. What was sealed, cannot hold forever.”
“Blood keeps it intact.” Reyla finished what Isodine had written in her diary.
I recalled Isodine's words more clearly now. The wound she wrote about wasn't just Prager's heartbreak, it was the damage done to love itself. And healing required more than acknowledging pain.
“Prager’s wrath didn’t only shatter love,” I said. “She shattered something older. Something that should never have been touched. My ancestor tried to force Prager to love him. He sought something forbidden, a device capable of altering will, of binding someone else’s fate. Iskar Cor. Before the talismans were scattered, they were one. A single artifact forged from magic far older than even Prager’s bloodline.”
“Three fragments, scattered like stars, await their reckoning.” Reyla repeated what Justifar had said after our wedding. “None will yield to force. None will answer a hand that doubts.”
“I think it wants more,” I said. “A promise. Not something broken or something remembered. It took what we offered and gave us nothing in return because it already knew those parts. It didn’t need them again.”
Dorion pressed his lips together. “Then what do we do now?”
Laphira leaned against Dorion’s side, resting her head on his shoulder.
My wildfire looked up at me with those gold-flecked brown eyes that had seen every broken piece of me and still chose to stay.
“Show love,” I said. “Not blood or pain or sacrifice.Love.”
The pool rippled. Deep below the surface, the thing stirred as if it had been waiting for us to finally understand.
“The talismans weren't meant to be bound by force or sorrow,” Reyla breathed. “They were meant to be united by the one thing Aricor tried to corrupt.”
Love.
Chapter 54
Reyla
The talismans lay within their circles like bones after a burial, silent. Still not fused. The curse loomed, and I didn't know what I could do to keep it from stealing Lore from my arms.
Time was running out, and with it, Lore's life.
I didn’t know how I knew, but the magic inside me had started to tug, panicked and wild. Lore’s life was tied to that, and I could feel the bond between us unraveling. He was still with me, but his soul was coming undone piece by piece, and I couldn’t stop it from happening.
Dorion didn’t speak. Laphira stood close to him, her shoulders hunched the same as mine.
Farris didn’t move. His ears remained pricked forward, his whole body ready to attack something that wasn’t here.
I stared at the pool, the cold stone sinking into my skin. The surface remained smooth but the ache it stirred made me want to crawl into the ground.
“The magic didn’t answer.” Shame burned deep inside me. “Because I didn’t give it everything. I’ve held this fear inside me so long I forgot what it felt like to say it out loud.”
My friends watched me.
“Everyone I’ve ever loved has died or been taken.” Only my brother and best friend remained, but I'd left them. “My mother. Kinart.” I was certain Lore would die, too, and the fact that I'd never been completely certain I could save him had slowly sucked away my hope. “Even Farris. I thought—” My throat caught. “I thought I was cursed. That my love meant death. So I didn’t completely let go. All of you gave your truths. You gave your pain. I gave most of mine, but not all.” My voice broke again. “I kept a piece back, just in case. A little space I knew I’d need when everything shattered.”
I looked back into the pool. “But that’s not love. That’s fear pretending to protect, and if I’ve learned anything over the past months, it’s that true love can shatter the world.”
Or fuse talismans?
