There’s nothing I can do to save them.
Chapter 54
Bree
The battlefield is quiet now—too quiet. The kind of silence that follows a scream.
I’m still on my knees. The earth is warm beneath my palms, veins of Ether pulsing faintly like a heartbeat on life support.
Around me, the world is ruined.
Smoke. Ash. Blood soaking into silver-veined ground.
And the people I love.
Rhett—holding me in the rain outside my apartment, promising I’d never go back to that place alone.
Theo—whispering“You don’t have to be whole to be worthy of being seen,”when I needed to hear it most.
Wes—calling me beautiful like it was the only truth that mattered, even when I couldn’t see it myself.
Jace—making me laugh in the garden when the weight of everything felt too heavy to carry.
Gray—saying“Love”like it was the simplest thing in the world, like I’d always deserved it.
Thane—kneeling in front of me, silver eyes holding mine, making me feel seen for the first time in my life.
Stellan—staying with me that night when sleep felt impossible, asking nothing, giving everything.
And Seth—bonding me in the Void when I was too broken to understand what it meant, staying when everyone else was gone.
Maybe this isn’t about winning.
Maybe it never was.
Maybe it’s about giving everything I have left to the people who remind me why it mattered at all.
My hands dig into the veins of Ether beneath me.
They pulse once—weakly—before answering.
The mist rises, silver and bright and endless. It burns through my skin, through my heart, through every scar I’ve ever carried.
And I push.
Everything.
All of it.
Through the haze, Riley meets my eyes and nods, doing the same—hands pressed to the earth, black-silver Ether spilling from her like a mirror to my own. Her magic threads into mine, shadow and light twisting together until I can’t tell where one ends and the other begins.
The Ether splits into rivers of light.
One by one, they find their marks—threads connecting to every bond, every scar, every promise we made.
Rhett’s chest rises first. Fire flares around him, not wild but controlled, deliberate.
Theo gasps, his eyes snapping open, silver light threading through his irises.
