So...if I no longer existed...he’d lose everything.
My death was the only mercy I could give.
Rook.
I’m so sorry...
Flames darted down my throat as if they’d been waiting for my final decision.
They poured.
They tore.
My heart stopped—
Chapter Sixty-Eight
I SLAMMED INTO HIM.
Flinging ice-covered arms around his flame-licking body, I clung to him just as his heart stopped.
I felt it.
Felt that final beat.
Whatever had happened to me on my journey here—whatever level of power I’d tapped into, now included the ability to sense death and decay.
And I wouldn’t allow it to have him.
“Open your eyes,” I hissed as ice surged out of me, bolting into him. The exquisite relief of being able to share the cold. To have someone capable of bringing me back from the brink.
I trembled as winter poured from my spine, my ribs, from the frozen marrow pushing me into a crypt.
His body jerked as another glacial flood sank through his fissured skin and into his burning bones.
But he didn’t open his eyes.
Tears froze on my cheeks as ice imploded like a galaxy inside me, drowning him, blanketing him, wrapping around his charred heart and—
His back arched with a strangled snarl.
I cried out as a gush of searing sunlight crashed into me, warm and ever so wonderful. I became the vessel he needed—his perfect opposite as we traded the elements trying to slaughter us.
Fire met frost.
Heat kissed cold and the crater where we knelt became a whirlpool of steam as our feeble human bodies struggled to tame non-human power.
His heart restarted, coughing like a furnace trying to spark.
His eyes flew open.
That scarlet ring glowed around his pitch-black pupils. For a second, it wasn’t just Lucien who stared back but whatever my parents had made him. Fire burned in him. Power raged in him. Hate ruled everything, but then he sagged and clutched me close with one arm.
The sky dimmed from blood-red to bruised violet. The scalding wind paused and the bond between us reforged.
A ricochet of soundless power ripped free. It rustled in the stars and frolicked in the trees before clashing back into our hearts and slamming a door closed behind it. The fragile thread that’d allowed us to hear snatches of thoughts and see glimpses of each other’s soul solidified into something timeless.
A glittering, unbreakable bridge full of sunlight and starlight, welding our spirits forever into one.
