“Don’t do magic…out of…anger,” he breathed, stroking his finger across my bottom lip. “I wanted so many more kisses,” he said faintly.
All the rage fled my system in that moment, deflating like a balloon, and I was simply left with emptiness. Filled now with only heartbreak and despair.
No.
What had I done?
Smoke filled the space and Ayden coughed as the final handful of students and staff fled the room.
“Ariyon.” I placed my hands over each side of the axe, gripping his chest, and then wept. I cried so hard my throat burned and it felt like I wanted to just let myself burn up with this building.
‘You have to get out of here,’Yanric warned, pecking at Eden’s hair to move her.
She leapt up into a standing position, shaking herself. “We need to go,” she coughed.
I’d spent every moment with Ariyon avoiding the connection between us and then when we both finally confronted our feelings, I got one kiss. One dance. And now it was all gone.
It wasn’t enough, I wanted more, I wanted a lifetime with him. It wasn’t fair.
A sharp tingle started to grow underneath my palms and Ayden gasped, which immediately turned to coughing.
“Healer marks!” Eden said between her own rasps.
Heat pressed in on my back and I pulled myself up off of Ariyon’s chest to see two silver wheels spinning on the tops of both of my hands.
What the Nightling was that?
My heart raced in my chest. They looked familiar, they looked exactly like the marks Ariyon had. I glanced down at his hands and nearly fainted with shock. His marks were gone. I had no idea what this meant—was I a healer? Was I borrowing his power? How was this possible?
“Fallon. Save him,” Ayden whimpered.
I looked up into those steel-grey eyes and then down at Ariyon’s closed ones and nodded once.
Yanric pecked at Eden’s hair again, frantic to get her to leave.
“Drag him out or we all die here!” Eden said and then she ran out the front door coughing.
Ayden pulled himself out from under Ariyon and began to drag him backward. I scrambled to follow him, shocked that the smoke wasn’t bothering me. I had a fleeting thought that it was because I was healing myself with Ariyon’s power, but I didn’t care about any of that right now. I needed to save Ariyon. These healer marks showed up for a reason. I grabbed Ariyon’s ankles and helped Ayden get him to the foyer where there was much less smoke. When we got him there Ayden collapsed on the tile coughing, his brother again in his lap.
I stared at my hands and the new marks on the tops and then at Ariyon’s chest, barely moving, blood pouring out where the axe was embedded.
“You know what to do,” I told my hands, my magic, his magic. “Whatever it takes. I don’t care.Pleasesave him.”
Pulling for my power, that wild feeling that sizzled in the deepest recesses of my soul, I grasped both sides of Ariyon’s chest like I had seen him do with my father and then I was sucked into an entirely different place. No more smoke, no more tile foyer, no more Ayden. I was still gripping Ariyon’s chest but now he lay on the grasses of what I feared was the Realm of Eternity.
Oh fae.
Did I just portal? No. No. No.
A throat cleared behind me and I spun, stepping away from Ariyon to come face-to-face with…
The Grim.
The Fae of Death stood over seven feet tall. He wore a white cloak with the hood pulled up and over his face. I had been told as a child that he was lanky and thin, whereas he was actually meaty and muscular. He gripped the sickle of his weapon tightly with thick, knobby fingers and pointed at me.
“Youaren’t supposed to be here, Nightling,” he growled.
How did he…never mind.
