She coughed. The sound rattled in her chest, wet and ragged. Breathing was so hard, her chest so heavy. She wanted to speak. She tried to speak.
“Don’t…stop?—”
It was all she could manage. More copper coated her tongue, dragging all the words she wanted to say back down her throat.
Hands sank into her hair. More tears hit her face. “I’ll never stop. But I needyou.Please. Don’t leave me alone. I know my love is a curse, but you were supposed to be the exception. The one who broke it.” His forehead met hers. Again, so warm.
“Everyone always leaves me. Don’t make me let you go, too.”
Mariah found those eyes again. That crystalline purple blue, as familiar to her as her own. If there was a part of her that wasn’t already shattered beyond repair, those eyes finished the job.
A smooth, smoky chuckle wrapped around her dimming world.
“How embarrassed those moon goddesses must be, putting all their magic into a mortal body.” She flicked her gaze away from the tanzanite, finding burning red. Kol smiled, brushing the lapels of his jacket. “It didn’t have to be like this, you know. But when you land a blow, it’s only fair that I return the favor. It’s not my fault that your attempt failed, and mine, well…” He chuckled, his eyes hardening with maddened wrath. “Thank you, by the way. For returning what you stole from me. It feels good to be whole again.”
Wheels rattling down a worn, dirt road. A carriage lurched to a stop.
“Ah!” The dark god clapped his hands, turning. “Just in time.” He glanced back over his shoulder. “I wanted to make sure you saw this before you left us.”
The carriage door opened. A man with deep red hair stepped out—Ydros.
He was followed by a middle-aged man. There was something familiar about him. A memory stirred in her mind, but everything was slower, like moving through a river of molasses.
Shedidknow the next person to step from the carriage, though.
Wild golden curls. Freckled cheeks stained with tears. Amber eyes that were now shadowed and heavy, her usual sunlight gone.
Ciana released a wild, wailing sob, sagging forward. An arm latched around her middle, a hand clamping around her mouth, hauling her back.
Mariah remembered.
The Blaise family. The ones who’d tormented Ciana—who’d filled her with invisible scars. Leon. Lucas.
Mariah wanted to cling to life. She wanted to fight to stay. Not just for Andrian, still cradling her to his chest. But for Ciana, for Sebastian, for her family, for all the people in this world who needed someone to fight for them?—
Yet she was drowning. Her head had slipped beneath the surface, lead weights tied to her ankles. No matter how much she clawed and scraped and fought, there was no hauling herself back from this.
The world grew darker, fuzzier. She searched desperately in the haze, finding that haunted tanzanite again.
In a moment of peace and clarity and revelation, she knew that she had failed. Ultimately, utterly, and completely.
Mariah held on to Andrian’s eyes for as long as she could. She knew he was talking, begging, pleading. The vibration of his speech rumbled through the empty husk of her body. She could feel the void approaching, the yawning chasm of space pulling her in.
She no longer had any strength to fight it.
A final, rattling breath. A weak, whispered exhale.
Then even the tanzanite flickered out, darkness swallowing her whole.
Chapter 95
Apiece of Sebastian died the moment Mariah’s bond snuffed out.
He’d known the magic stopped him from aging. His life was tied to his queen’s, but only in the way it froze the movement of time through him. He had read about it, studied it, but it wasn’t something he’d been aware of, no more than he was aware of the muscles beating his heart or drawing breath into his lungs.
It wasn’t until it was gone that he realized just how deep it ran.
A year, in the bigger picture of things, wasn’t a long time. It wasn’t a decade or a century that would have drained his body of life and turned him to dust. Still the months slammed down on him like a thousand bricks, time shoving through his body as if he were made of air. The Mark on his chestburned, the same as it had that day as a child when he’d woken up with it inked on his chest.
