The decision crossed her face, seconds before she did it. Violet smacked her palm against my forehead. I staggered back a step as the world tilted but she stayed connected. A tingling went down my spine and a heaviness settled in my skull. I shrank under the weight as images flashed before my eyes, too fast for me to concentrate on and make sense of. But as quickly as it came on, the sensation disappeared.
“Remember for me.” Her mouth quirked in a grin. “Time for us both to go, kiddo.”
And then she released me. Turning from me, she let out a savage scream as light burst from her chest—not the warm golden light I was used to, but something fierce and white, hot and final. Lightning split the sky as thunder crashed like the world was breaking apart, and the earth itself shuddered beneath our feet. Stone walls cracked and crumbled, the very mountain rebelling against the darkness that had infested it.
“Vi!” I heard someone scream. Kaia fought her way toward her. Her hair was fully dark, no silver in it, but still tightly braided back. Her fighting style was rougher, lacking the finesse I had grown used to, but it was no less deadly as she cut a path toward her best friend.
Violet flung out an arm, stopping her advance with pure force of will. “No one else dies!” she screamed at the sky. Another flash of lightning, crash of thunder, and the earth itself rippled with the intensity of her cry. “What are you waiting for? Go, kiddo, go!” Her face contorted in agony as the power consumed her from within, but her voice never wavered as she faced the forces of darkness. “My name is Violet Andrever,” she cried. “I will not break!”
The pure light radiating from her grew brighter, more intense, joined by the lightning from the sky. Everywhere her light touched, dark warriors were obliterated. She cleared the way for my parents as they continued their scramble. Running hand in hand toward their destiny. Toward their choice to die so I could live.
They looked back once. Our eyes met across the battlefield—one final look, full of love, pride, and desperate hope.
“I love you.” I had no idea if it would work, but I flung it at them anyway.
I felt their answering responses, but before I could move, a blade flashed toward me. I turned toward it but somehow Kaia was there, blocking the sword from cleaving me in two, leaving a bloody gash running down her forehead. I hesitated for a moment but heard Violet’s voice in my head, screaming for me to go, to live.
I took one last look, burning it into my memory forever more. This was what I was fighting for. This was what could happenagain if I failed. Focusing inward, I searched frantically for that faint pinprick of golden light. For my anchor to home, to my own time. For a terrifying moment, I couldn’t find it. Had it abandoned me? Was I trapped here to die with them?
Then, like the sun breaking free from behind a cloud, I heard his voice, deep in my soul.“Come back to me. Follow the bond home.”And softer, quietly, with desperation,“I can’t lose you.”
The golden thread flared in response to his call, warm and strong and oh so familiar. I grabbed it like a lifeline andtugged. Folding myself into the ether, I trusted it to carry me across fifty years of time.
To bring me home.
To bring me back to him.
Chapter
Thirty-Three
Never underestimate the strength of the bonds that bind us. They can be our salvation or our downfall.
—From the journal of Violet Andrever
The return was mercifully swift. I pulled and pulled on that pinprick of golden light, following it through the chaos of time. The light grew larger and brighter within me, until it had expanded back to its usual warm presence.
I reappeared in the ruined temple and doubled over, gasping. Not from nausea this time, but from the stark difference between the apocalyptic darkness of the past and the flickering warmth of the present. From the chaos of battle to blessed silence. The adrenaline that had carried me through the battle still coursed in my veins, making my hands shake as I tried to catch my breath.
I had barely enough time to register the desperate relief that crashed through my chest before I was grabbed and clutched tightly in a warm embrace. My heart recognized the beat of his immediately. I leaned into his familiar, solid presence, his strong arms wrapped around me, tightly, too tightly, as if he was trying to convince himself I was real.
I wrapped my arms around his waist and hugged him back justas fiercely. He let loose a ragged sigh against my hair, and some of the desperate edge left his embrace, though his arms never loosened.
I thought I felt a whisper of a kiss on the top of my head, so gentle it might have been my imagination.
“I thought I’d lost you,” Griff whispered against my hair, his voice rougher than I had heard before. His hand cradled the back of my head like I might disappear again at any moment.
I pulled back and looked up at him, seeing the raw panic in those hazel eyes. “You’ll never lose me,” I said, and meant it with every fiber of my being. I would not lose him like my parents had lost each other. Not like Violet had lost everyone she loved.
Not if I had anything to say about it.
Something shifted in his expression at my words—relief, desire, and something deeper that made my breath catch. It was like a dam broke as the golden warmth rose and crashed over us. He leaned down to me, or I leaned up into him, I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that his mouth was crushed against mine, an unstoppable force, giving me a powerful, greedy kiss and it was everything I had ever wanted.
Finally.
There was no other word for it—he devoured me. This wasn’t the gentle kiss of new lovers coming together for the first time. This was desperation and relief and months of pent-upneed. My lips parted and he dove in, our tongues tangling as his mouth slanted over mine with ever-deepening angles. He kissed me like I was air and he’d been drowning. Like I was the answer to every prayer he’d never dared speak. Like I was the very reason he was alive.
I kissed him back just as desperately. Everything I had witnessed, everything I had done—the death, the darkness, the sacrifice—faded away as I melted into him until nothing existed except this moment. This man. The all-consuming sensation of his lips on mine, the dance of his tongue. His arms locked tightly around me, eliminating any space between us. I didn’t need to breathe anyway. He was stealing all my breath and giving me life in return.
