1
She was dying.
I could feel it on the wind.
Hear it in the quiet hiss and pop of heated crackling coming from within her depleted husk.
Could see it in the quiet glow still flickering in her veins, where dying embers glowed a soft, gentle blue in muscles with nothing left to give. Her body intact, and yet… badly compromised.
Death.
It was there in the pull behind my ribs, where she’d touched me with her gifts. Where she’d built protection I had thought to be a trap. Blinded by my helpless fury and never-ending quest for vengeance.
My impotent, boundless rage… and helpless, unforgivable ignorance.
And now it was too late. My apologies would land on ears that only looked perfect. Their inner workings intact, the structure sound enough, but… connected to nothing.
The Head Priestess couldn’t be saved from the bone chilling void.
I knew it.
Deeply.
Still, I reached for her. Crushed beneath the protective weight of a possessive male, I extended one trembling hand and took her ankle in hand. Wrapped it in fingers grimy with soot—stained by the ashen remains of the elites she’d sent to escort her into the void—and threw everything I had into the abyss.
To bring her back.
Fueling her dying body with what little remained of my corrupted gifts.
“Mila.”
It was a warning in a voice I didn’t quite hate.
One I ignored as I wilted beneath his weight, faltering with the effort needed to sustain her broken shell when I had so little to left give. Desperate to hold her here, on this side of the veil.
Where Ineededher.
Where I could apologize for the hurt I’d caused.
Chaos reigned all around me. The screams of the dying and ruined were a haunting symphony, wailing in tribute to the power of Tritan’s last true priestess. A master of the art, whose death meant the loss of wisdom I couldn’t begin to fathom.
Flickering with a poisonous green, flames consumed the podium that was meant to be our final stand. Sluggish, but hot enough to crisp the cheeks of any daring or foolish enough to get too close.
I felt nothing.
Nothing but the dusting of frost, burned by the bone-chilling cold of the quiet place she’d gone… where I meant to follow…
“Mila, stop.”
But I couldn’t!
Not now, not as I watched her lips turn blue. Her chest so still. And her skin… it was… crumbling. Flaking, to be carried off on a sinister wind. Damagehecould fix, surely. The same way I’d seen him do before, using stolen priestess magic to heal himself. All I had to do was stop the flames from seeping through the cracks…
A warm, calloused palm caressed my cheek a moment before lips moved against my ear. “You have to let her go.”
It was cruel to ask for such a thing when I hadn’t given everything I could in the attempt to save her.
“There’s nothing more you can do.”
