Relief pierced me, bright and perfect.
“Maman.”
The last of Kakkari’s power left me like a whisper, leaving me empty and ravaged, scraped clean from the inside with nothing left to give.
“Vienne,nik,” Davik growled.
I felt my mother’s hand touch my face just before the world went dark.
Chapter Fifty
“You need to wake now, Vienne,” Devina told me, her voice soft. “You have been asleep for a very long time. They are waiting for you.”
I felt her touch in my hair though I could not see her.
“Heis waiting for you.”
“What about you?” I struggled to ask her.
“Once you wake, my brother will be whole. You are tied to him now. Always,” Devina told me. “He will always see me. You will always feel me. But I am no longer trapped in this place. I feel untethered. Unchained. I feel the veil closing. Soon, it will be harder to return to this place. And I long to see what happens next.”
I felt a stirring. Something beginning to awaken in my mind.
“Go, Vienne,” came Devina’s whisper, her hand in my hair. “They are waiting for you.”
Chapter Fifty-One
When I opened my eyes, I sawMaman.
“Mon coeur,” she whispered when she saw me awake. I had only seen my mother cry after my father died, but now, her eyes filled with tears. “I—I feared that…oh, Vienne.”
She was sitting on the plush floor of Davik’svoliki, her legs curled underneath her, her hand stroking through my hair. We were alone in thevoliki, the fire crackling.
“Maman,” I said, my voice cracking. My throat was dry, my body aching.
She simply stared at me, crying, her hands stroking through my hair. I studied her face, memorizing the changes in her features. Her nose was crooked now—as if it had been broken. Her forehead was creased with worry lines, lines she had always fretted over as she’d aged, though my father had always kissed her fears away. Her hair was long, trailing to her lower back, streaked with grey and white.
It looked as if she’d aged ten years under the Dead Mountain. I wondered if I looked much older to her too.
“Viola?” I whispered. “Maxen, Eli? Are they all right?”
“Yes,” she told me, pressing kisses to my cheeks, her voice soft. Her tears dripped onto my face. “They are here. In…in the horde.”
There was hesitation in her voice. An unspoken question.
“Where is he?” I asked, trying to push up from the bed, thoughMamanpushed me back down.
“He will be here soon, I am sure. He has scarcely left your side,” she murmured.
I blew out a long breath.
“You have been asleep for a week, Vienne,”Mamanwhispered. “Your…your horde king has brought in every healer that he could find across Dakkar. But none knew why you did not wake.”
But I knew why.
I felt it.
The loss of something that was not there anymore, like a deep, cratered ache.
