Pain rips open my heart. Not from injury, but my mating bond. I clutch at the gem in my chest.
“Estela!”
I curse every god as I reach for the light.
Waves of sound and some other dimension wash around me. I push against it, even as it rams me backward. Every muscle screams at me as I move.
The white light stays, but the resistance fades. I only make it a short distance on my hands and knees before I slump over, feeling the light pulse around me, wondering if this is what it is like to be in the eye of a storm.
After another moment of rest, I look up and see the collapsed floor with two bodies impaled, connected together with a spear, leaning against each other for support. I would recognize the deep brown curls and small body in the rubble of the end of the world. The form behind her is easy to deduce.
Estela and Mikal.
The wail that rips past my lips is agony entombed in sound.
I hold my chest, and tears burn down my cheeks as a burst of adrenaline has me spinning toward my wife. I kneel in front of her and cup her cheek.
Her eyes flutter open, and her irises go in and out of focus.
“Mi amor?1. You have… all my stories,” she chokes out as a bit of blood drips down from the corner of her lip.
I shake my head, touching the spear through her chest.She winces.
“Teo, bury… the three of us together,” she pants.
“No, no, no,” I cry, abandoning the weapon in her chest for her face. “I made you a promise. You would never be taken again.”
She smiles, showing blood-soaked teeth. “I did everything I could to… make amends. Forgive me.”
She lets out a breath of pure life and then stills.
“You are gods-touched, Estela,” I command. “You will not die.”
In her chest, her Fuegorra flickers. It beats in time with my own.
I look up to the sky and scream the name of my goddess.
“Grutabela!” I call with every inch of conviction. I call with the fear of a man who has lost everything and refuses to do it again.
“Endu promised me that my wife would live—thatwewould live on. I let you take my mother, my father, my people,my home. I do not accept this!”
My belly and chest shake as a tear falls down my cheek.
The air around me shifts, and a woman emerges from the lingering light. She looks like Estela, save her shorter stature and fuller lips.
The Light Weaver.
She looks down on me, weary.
“Twice, I have intervened for my children. Once after Mikal was born, and then when Estela was kept captive. I… should not do it thrice.”
I look up at the woman. “Should not?”
She frowns. “They will be safe in the afterlife. Estela has done what she was meant to do. Rholker is dead, his father is dead, and her people are free.”
I sit there, helpless, next to the grotesque scene. “She and Mikal should be safe with me.”
The woman studies me. “You have others to care for.”
