I would never let go.
Chapter 3
Lore
Dorion came over to stand next to me. I didn’t look up, but I felt how still he stood. Heard his ragged breathing.
“Lore…” His voice fractured. “What’s wrong with her?”
“What do you mean, what’s wrong with her? She’s wounded. Dying. Dead. Look at her!” My voice dropped to almost nothing. “Look at her.”
I pressed my palm against her chest and poured healing magic into her, giving her everything I had and more. Energy brushed across her skin, but it didn't sink in. It unraveled into nothing, drifting away. She wasn’t cold; her heartbeat still echoed beneath my fingers. She was here. Still here. She had to be.
“I don’t—” He shook his head. “She’s not dead.”
“Then why won’t she wake up?” I bellowed.
“I think she’s…lost.”
Her wound pulsed, spilling blood, and the power inside her shimmered under her skin. It sparked, then jolted again,twitching like a dying firefly. It didn’t match. It stuttered where it should have flowed. It fought itself.
“What do you fucking mean?” I croaked, my voice nearly gone.
“Look at her shadow.”
I turned my head slowly. Moonlight shone down on us as if this was a twilight of beauty instead of something blindingly horrifying.
Behind her, where our bodies should cast a simple silhouette on the grass, her shadow stretched away from mine, across the ground. It thickened at the edges, rippling like it breathed.
Her shadow turned to me.
Whatever Prager had done wasn’t just poison or fire. It was theft. Of Reyla’s light. Of herself.
I didn’t know if I could love her back into being or if I’d already failed.
My breath caught in my chest. I’d seen someone else’s shadow move like this. Farris, when we thought he was alright and discovered he wasn’t. Prager had done something to him, and it impacted his shadow. Now she’d done it to Reyla.
The forest darkened. Trees creaked. The world bent. Not in any way that would make someone scream magic, but I felt it. A silent ripple at my feet, as if a thread of the world had twisted out of alignment and snapped back into something new. My spine locked, and I peered around.
Farris stiffened, his ears pricked toward the woods again, his nose twitching.
Wind slithered across the meadow, whipping through the tall grass. Cold air snaked up from the ground, wrapping around my legs, my waist, my throat. Something old was coming. I could feel the age of it in my bones.
Something massive slipped around the thick trunks at theedge of the clearing. Scaled and ancient. Their head lowered, and they did not speak, but the words stamped themselves into my mind like a heartbeat.Will you honor the bond Evergorne promised?
Evergorne? I'd suspected this…dragon who'd helped me inside the labyrinth might be related to my court, though I didn't know how. The runes of a dragon in the room below our thrones told me something was missing from our past.
I froze, ice plunging through my veins.
I knew that voice. Not only with my mind, but with that marrow-deep instinct that senses danger before a sword is drawn. They’d spoken to me once before.
Reyla was dying, her chest barely rising as I tried to heal the putrid wound on her arm. Without magic, I couldn't do a damn thing. I'd held her. Begged her to stay. And washed the wound that only festered further. Our time left had been measured by her slowing pulse, her jagged breathing, and the way her cries of pain broke through the night.
My love for her crushed me. I’d called out to the shadows, to the silence. To anything that would listen inside that cursed labyrinth.
“Heal her,” I’d bellowed until I was hoarse. “I’ll give anything.Anythingin exchange.Just don’t take her from me.”
And something answered. A shift in the air, a pressure from deep within the labyrinth, a crackle of fire in the dark. I’d looked up into nothing and saw glowing eyes, a large form sliding through the night. Watching my every move.
