“We’ll meet again soon, revenant.”
“Hopefully not too soon.” Then again, the longer I live, the more people die.
Fuck.
Chapter 81
“No,” I whisper. I refuse to believe him as he tells me the deal he made with Maethrel. “You’ve known this whole time?” My voice breaks as my tears begin to fall.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “There was no other way.”
“There’s always another way!” I scream so loud the whole village might’ve heard me.
“We all cared about this cause above everything else, Elysande.” My heart is slowly breaking at every word that spills from his mouth. “At one point I thought… I thought we could just give up and run away together.”
“I would’ve,” I say weakly.
He shakes his head. “You’d never forgive yourself. If you had the power to save so many people, save Everrynd, and you gave it all up for me… I couldn’t let you do that.”
“You didn’t even give me a choice.” My voice is cracking and desperate.
“I couldn’t.” He holds onto my hands tighter. “Maethrel said if I told any of you, our entire path would change, and we’d fail. He said you’d give up if you knew. But I’m still sorry… I’m sorry I let you fall for me. It was the most selfish thing I could’ve possibly done. I tried to fight it, I did. Even though Maethrel assured me that it was an inevitability. I still fought it, because I knew where that would leave you in the end. But the truth is, I was already falling for you before that. I was screwed. I’m sorry,” he finishes with a whisper.
“Don’t you dare apologize,” I say. “I would choose you again and again and again. In every life. I do not hold it against you. Thank you for loving me. But this isn’t the end. There must be a way.”
“Elysande.” His voice and eyes are so gentle now, it crushes my heart into a million pieces. Not even pieces. Dust. My chest is empty where my beating heart used to sit. “I started this to save my people. And so many others. But I fell so deeply, madly, eternally in love with you that I would have run away with you in a heartbeat if you asked me to. I would have done anything you asked me to. But I couldn’t put that choice in your hands. So I suffered in silence, enjoying every minute with you I could. Every laugh, every cry, every flip of your hair, every whiff of that intoxicating seaside scent, every taste of you, every moan of pleasure. I spent countless nights lying in bed beside you until my eyes refused to stay open, just looking at your peaceful, sleeping face. When we were apart, every single fucking day that I couldn’t get back to you tore me apart from the inside out. I knew what those days meant…” His face fills with anguish. “Less time in this life with you. The physical torture I endured was nothing compared to the knowledge that my limited days with you were being taken from me one at a time.”
I whimper as tears stream down my face, and he reaches out to brush them away with his thumbs. “There has to be a way.” I won’t say goodbye like he’s trying to. I refuse to accept this.
“My soul is already trying to leave my body. There’s nothing we can do to save me. And I won’t end up like one of Maethrel’s—”
“Fuck Maethrel,” I seethe, surprising myself with the venomous response that filled me with rage.
A ghost of a smile touches his lips as he continues to watch me tenderly.
“Does it hurt?”
“Every second,” he says, shoving a knife through my empty chest cavity. He’s been in pain this whole time, his soul trying to rip free from his physical form like it knows it’s not meant to be there. I reach out and touch his chest gently, feeling the scar that took him from me.
“How could I not know?” I say weakly through the tears, shaking my head.
“Shh.” He grabs me, pulling me into him, and I try to inhale his entire essence through my choked sobs, but I can barely breathe, and it makes me sob even harder.
“Who… did… it?” I ask, unable to hide the promise of vengeance in my tone. I’ll hunt them down. I’ll scour every corner of this world until I see them bleed.
“It doesn’t matter.”
I pull back. “Tell. Me.”
He twists his lip into a corner, then releases a heavy breath. “Adrian.”
“He’s dead.” I say. But I mean it with every fragment of my being. I won’t spend my last moments with Daegan letting him consume another piece ofmy thoughts, though. That’s for another time. Instead, I wrap my arms around his torso and breathe him in.
We stay like this for a while before I’m ripped out of the moment, realizing Maetrel might still be nearby.
I pull back in desperation, glancing around. “Maethrel!” I scream. “He can fix this. He has to fucking fix this.”
Kezra is watching from a distance. She’s sitting on a rocky ledge, and I could be completely delirious, but I think I see a tear stream down her cheek.
