He plummets into nothing, his hair whipping wildly. His parting smile cuts deep, a naked admission that doesn’t need words—a vow of love and devotion, of willing self-sacrifice.
He falls and falls and falls. Somehow, my soul shatters before his body does. Before he hits the earth with a sound that will haunt my dreams forever. Before the snap of his body breaking sears into my bones and shears me clean in two.
White hot agony fills my skull. I stare down at his broken form, and someone is screaming, only I can’t hear it, can only feel the burn pouring from my chest, the strain in my throat as I come unmoored from my body. The Shadow lies on the cold earth below, bent and ruined, my braid still clutched in his fist.
My mate, screams something inside me.My mate my mate my mate…
I scarcely know what happens next, who makes the decision to steer me toward the hourglass, to send me sprinting across the land bridge.
I only know that I exist for one purpose now. To unite Amriel’s two bodies before the Shadow takes his last breath. If I do, then maybe…
Maybe…
Air streams past my face, chilling the tears that smear my cheeks. The hourglass looms through hazy vision, its sand falling and falling, only a few handfuls left.
I have only seconds to save my mate.
I hurtle across the bridge, my feet barely touching ground. The drop on either side means nothing. The risk means nothing. In the hourglass, the last inch of sand swishes and swirls.
Instinct has me gripping my dagger by the blade. My arm pulls back, then snaps forward, my throw fueled by desperation.
The dagger sails end over end, a flash of silver. The last grains of sand slide free, a door slamming closed, right before my eyes.
But the dagger finds home, its hilt hitting the glass full force. The hourglass explodes outward in a shower of glittering fragments. Sand pours across the grass, a cascade of white, and a wave of light comes with it, spreading outward.
Magic. The curse breaking.
It crashes into me, through me. I stagger back and nearly fall, but catch myself before going over the edge. The wave keeps going, coursing across the land bridge, the cliff, the Wildwood below.
I don’t watch. I’m already up again, already moving, my gaze locked on the hulking figure lying face-down near the hourglass.
Amriel. He’s collapsed with an arm outstretched, his gyre resting in the grass just inches away. As if he was reaching for me. As if he fought his way free of his bonds and came for me.
A choked howl rips from my throat as I hurtle toward him. I can’t tell if he’s breathing. He looks too still, his face mashed against the ground, and I’m falling to my knees, watching my own hands paw at him with frantic movements.
Rolling him over takes effort, because he’s nothing but dead weight. He ends up on his back with his head propped on my lap, and I can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t do anything but sob as my fingers fly over his brow, his closed eyes. Violet patterns flickerover his cheeks as his skin goes indigo. Fangs sprout from his mouth, then retract again as his fae form reasserts itself.
Oh, goddess. My Shadow. My Amriel. One and the same again.
His eyes open.
A breath slams into my lungs, then deserts me again just as quickly. One look, and I know I haven’t fixed anything. Haven’t saved him at all, only broken the curse.
Because pain simmers in his eyes, a whole sea of it. “Princess,” he manages, but his voice is wrong—thick and wet and gooey, like something’s broken deep inside.
I curl over him, already broken, too, because I can’t lose him. Ican’t. I won’t survive, won’t?—
“Don’t cry.” A wheeze punches into him. He tries to reach for me, but his hand doesn’t make it, and I see why. See the horrifying angle, his arm bent where it shouldn’t be.
“No, no, no.” My hands dance over his body as if I can piece it back together. Words come out, but I don’t know what I’m saying, what Icansay other than to voice the despair chewing through me. “Why’d you do that? Why’d you let yourself fall?”
He smiles, a dimple digging into one cheek, even as he winces. “Couldn’t… Hurt you.”
“No.” A long, keening cry pours out of me, and I’m rocking him now, pressing his head to my chest, his hair spilling through my fingers.
“It’s…” He struggles for breath, something rattling in the base of his lungs. “All right. Princess. I told you death waited for me at. The end.”
Each word is a cruel dagger driven through my heart. Tears blot out my vision, dripping onto his face and into his hair. Someone is ripping me open, pulling my soul out through my chest and my back, dismembering me from two directions at once. “Amriel, no. You can’t die. I just met you. I just found you. I just?—”
