“I don’t want to li–”
“I don’t give a fuck if you want to, Princess—youneedto. Dravara needs you to! Your parents didn’t sacrifice their own lives for you to just give up when the Stars challenged you,” he bites.
My parents?
I want to ask him, but I can’t. Words evade me. Consciousness slowly losing its grip on me once again.
“No healer can fix you—your Lightborne magic is more powerful than any practitioner of the healing arts. Conjure your magic, Princess. Heal yourself!” he demands. Correk is losing his patience with me, his desperation palpable.
I can’t bring myself to do it for him.
Or Dravara.
Or even myself.
Hope has long since burnt to ash, nothing but dust.
Correk tries again. “Your mother gave up everything for you, Elyssara. She believed you were the last hope!”
My mother’s voice swims through my mind like rich honey.Live, Little Star. You are our only hope.
And the words awaken something within me.
The will to live claws its way up from the graveyard of my soul like a revenant soldier—a monster that refuses to die.
Because my mother? She deserves better. She refused to yield for me. She stood strong in the face of certain death. She resisted, even when it was hopeless.
And I will do the same.
I wheeze another rattling breath, but this time, I clench my fists in defiance.
I close my eyes, remembering Kael’s lesson atop Skaedor’s Crest. I find the place within me where my magic lives—my chest. With the last shred of my life force, I coax it out from its cage, and unspool it through my body. To the wounds cleaved through my skin, the brand between my shoulders, the swollen sockets of my eyes, my split lip, cracked ribs. My magic is eager—a caged beast held captive for too long. It travels through my bloodstream, seeking out all of me that is not whole.
If only it could mend the wounds that can’t be seen.
My magic arrives at the wounds, but instead of having to hold it back as I did with my palm atop the crest, I can barely push it far enough to reach the gaping rips in my skin.
I’m too weak.
Please,I beg.Let me honor my parents. Heal me.
As if sentient, my magic draws on the last vestiges of life inside me—the will within that refuses to die—and pushes, with one final surge to my injuries.
Hot Starlight erupts in a golden plume around me, and I cry out in agony as it lances my torn flesh.
White-hot and burning, my magic heals as if destruction is not all it knows.
The slits I’ve been peering through widen, expanding my vision as the swelling recedes.
The wounds that hang open knit back together—scarred but closed up.
The brand tingles at my back, and I beg the lost gods that it’s gone.
I trace my fingers along my arms in awe, jagged flesh has stitched into risen scars.
I did it.
I fucking did it.
