He came down hard on the wet stone near the cliff’s edge. His shoes skidded. His hands scrambled for purchase on the slick rock, finding nothing but water and air.
For a brief, crystalline instant, Marcus teetered on the precipice. His eyes met Emma’s across the distance, wide with fear.
Zach materialized beside him.
Emma didn't see him move—one moment he was behind her, the next he wasthere, next to Marcus, using the last dregs of his strength and momentum and sheer stubborn resolve.
One hand shot out. Planted itself against Marcus’s chest.Pushed.
Marcus went over the edge.
No scream. No final words. Only the silence of empty air, and the distant crash of the ocean claiming what the storm gave it.
The wind died.
Like someone had flipped a switch, the furious cyclonestopped. Emma staggered, left unsupported by the forces that had been holding her upright. Her ears rang in the absence of that terrible roaring.
Silence. Or close to it—rain, steady but not violent, and the ever-present thunder of waves below.
She looked down at her hands.
The Windstone's light faded before it fractured into pieces, then sand, then a powder as fine as silk against her skin.
She tried to hold on to it, cupping both hands together, desperate to save even fragments. But the wind—gentle now, almost apologetic—lifted the remains from her fingers andcarried them away. Sand and dust and ancient magic, dissolving into rain and mist and memory.
Gone.
Emma stared at her empty palms, not quite processing the loss.
The eye of the hurricane arrived. The darkness overhead broke apart, revealing lighter grays beneath, and the sun just behind. The wind dropped from a howl to a light blow. The rain stopped.
The island exhaled, releasing the tension that had held it in a vice grip. The air lightened, warmed, carrying the green scent of surviving vegetation and clean rain.
Something heavy hit the ground.
Emma’s head snapped up.
Zach collapsed, his legs giving out. He went down hard on his knees before pitching forward onto his hands. Blood dripped from his soaked shirt, spattering the wet stone in dark drops.
“Zach!”
She dropped beside him, reaching for his face, his shoulders, anywhere she could touch to convince herself he was real and solid and still breathing.
Her fingers found his jaw, tilted his head up.
Those gray-blue eyes clung to hers, unfocused and glazed with pain but stillpresent. Still aware. Stillhim.
“Stay with me.” The words came out desperate, commanding, pleading all at once. She cupped his face with both hands, the rain chilly on his skin, a tremor running through him. “Don’t you dare leave me now. Not after that. Do you hear me, Zach?Stay with me.”
His hand came up—slow, shaking—and covered hers. The grip was weak. Far too weak. “I’m here.” But he held on to her hand as he tipped over to lie on the wet ground and his eyes closed. His body went slack.
She panicked. “Zach!” She couldn’t lose him now. Not when she’d let someone in. Chosen to protect him, even if it meant her own life. Sheneededhim.
He was just worn out. Exhausted from his battle, from the poison. That’s all.
She rested her hand on his chest, over his heart. It beat too fast.
The storm faded into background noise. There was only this: Emma and Zach, lying on stone at the edge of the world.
