I swallowed through my shaking throat. Daigen tucked a strand of hair behind my ear and whispered, “This is when the trust part comes in—this is whatallmy planning led to. I saw what you had hidden away the first time I entered your mind. All you have to do now is tell Midnight your truth.”
He patted me on the shoulder as keys jingled. What was I supposed to tell Midnight the truth about?
The door creaked open and Daigen gently pushed me forward. My heart pounded in my ears as I stepped into the room.
I instantly hit a wall of saturated rage in the air. My skin shivered.
It was too late for Riyan to act, so I let out a slow breath and lifted my enchantment over him. I opened my eyes, but I could barely see the dark figure with a chest of shining steel and a halo of gold around his brow.
“Come to wound me again?” he said, the bitter sting of heartbreak staining his words.
I gripped my hands and shook my head. “I…I have a gift, Your Excellency.”
The thick silence was deafening. I swallowed and leaned into the strength of my power. “I slayed Ganora and her giants are gone. Her power is mine. Fraleigh’s power is mine.”
Alastar growled with hunger in the back of my mind. I set my jaw and kept my chin up. “Release her from her servitude and take me. You will control the most powerful sorceress the world has ever seen. You can keep your crown. You can finally quiet the Barons…”
Derrick pushed off the wall and I took another breath.
“…and you can have all of me,” I said. “I am eternally yours, Derrick.”
He moved closer. The tiny song of the unbreakable bargain in my blood overcame every instinct of self-preservation that screamed in my muscles.
The memory of Daigen’s voice pulled on my mind. “Tell Midnight your truth.”
I held my breath. Beneath the rainbow of flames around my heart, the little ember pulsed four times again. Four times for four words.
And I had the truth at last.
I had slammed brick after brick over that ember over the years, trying to snuff it out so its power could not affect me, yet it never grew cold. With a brush of lips under a waxing moon, the ember grew, destroying my stone defenses, letting me laugh, and cry, and love like I never would have let myself before.
Because of that little ember, I hadlifeagain.
I closed my eyes, letting that ember sing with the truth I had denied myself over and over. The truth was too big, too frightening, to say aloud, so I pretended to turn my tongue into a quill and my words into ink.
Just a message to Midnight, like I had done hundreds of times.
With my last breath of freedom, I finally let the truth of those four words out. “I love you, Derrick.”
A heartbeat of suffocating silence passed. I opened my eyes and the darkened figure of Alastar Derrick Pervale Hyton did not move.
Not that I expected him to. Nothing could change my bargain. Loving him could not stop the collar, but it still freed me in a way.
I loved Riyan with every fiber of my soul, but love did not just come in one color. It did not abide by the laws of time, or sense, or reality.
Riyan was my eternity of red, but Derrick was my blue. He was the yarn of a winter shawl, the sparkle of starlit tears, and the ever-changing sky.
I had loved him and yet I had earned his hatred. He never asked to be bound in the strife of the mortal and the deathless. Though his hands were not bloodless, he still did not deserve the cruelty of our circumstances.
If I could not change anything…I at least wanted him to be happy.
“This is how our stars align, Midnight,” I said. “This is how we shine forever. It was always supposed to be us, right?”
My chest was warm and my breath was calm. If Daigen just wanted me to free the truth to finally have peace in my last moments of freedom, then I was grateful I had trusted him one last time.
Derrick trembled though his face stayed hard. He was fighting something, whether it was the pain in his body or the urge to exact revenge against me. His eyes were hollow and dark. Blood lined his lips.
Derrick’s eyes swept to look behind me and his low voice cut through the air like a knife. “Come forward, Fraleigh.”
