Page 149 of Revenant

A few cottages take shape around us in a circle, their edges soft as Elias struggles to immerse us in an illusion. A massive willow tree rests just off a dirt path, its branches trailing low enough to brush the ground. “I—I’m sorry I couldn’t take you there myself.”

“Don’t you dare apologize.” The silence stretches between us with all the things we’ve never said, all of the things we were going to do once they were free. Two butterflies drift past, wings the pale gold of an afternoon that we won’t have any more as they settle on one of the low hanging branches. “I thought we had more time.” A soft breeze brushes my skin, one I know isn’t real, and yet it smells like home.

“I’ve been on this earth longer than anyone…should be allowed to. I made peace that it was never going to end.” The cottages stutter, blurring like the picture is losing a signal. Elias’s eyes drift closed, then snap open like he’s fighting to stay conscious. “You made me want to live again, Alicent. And I’m so fucking grateful I got to spend the time I had with you. Even if it wasn’t for as long as I wanted, because a lifetime with you would’ve never been enough.”

I lean down, resting my forehead on top of his head, unable to stop the sob that retches from my core. The false breeze stalls, then starts again a beat too late. His chest stuttering on an inhale. “I love you. I’ve known for a while, but I thought we had more time. I wanted to show you the world, show you what love is supposed to be.” The two butterflies lift from the branch together, wings beating in tandem as if they could outrun what’s coming, if only for a moment. They don’t get far. Mid-flight, they simply cease, the illusion not having the strength to let them land. “I’m so sorry this was our ending.” He coughs, sputtering blood as the illusion he’s shared glitches out for a moment.

He loves me. There isn’t any part of me that thinks he’s telling me that because he’s dying. I know he does. He’s shown it in so many ways. But we were just getting started.

“I love you too.” But love doesn’t feel strong enough; it sounds surface level because what we have is something so much more.

His eyes flutter closed. “Elias, stay awake. Please don’t leave me. I can’t imagine going through life without you, don’t make me.”

I know it’s not up to him, but I can’t stop begging him to stay, hoping some higher power shows mercy. “Kiss me,” he asks, and I do without hesitation. Our lips collide, teeth clash with a force so strong I’m not sure how our love isn’t enough to stop this. He grabs my face with both hands, crushing me to him as if his will to stay with me is more powerful than the brutal magic coursing through his veins.

It’s slow, the way the illusion he created for us disappears. At first it’s just the fading of colors, the breeze shifting from light to stagnant. Then we’re no longer near the willow tree, and the basement of Veilcrest comes back into focus.

“Elias…”

“I…love…you.” And as the last word leaves him, the final pale blue flower disappears from view, and I know he’s truly gone.

45: Veil

Oh, she did beautifully. My clever, exhausted little descendant. Nine hundred years I’ve waited for this moment—since I made those boys into monsters and accidentally chained their pretty immortal bodies to this patch of cursed earth, slowly smothering the very power I sought to preserve.

In time, we all learn that patience is not a virtue—it is a blade honed in darkness.

Elias bleeds out on Alicent’s lap, and I let her sob into his ruined chest, stroke his hair and beg whatever god she imagines is listening—none of them are. I checked a long time ago. He’s merely the first to learn what becomes of hatred when it is allowed to age.

The blade did the work; I simply guided it to its mark.

The relic has been safe beyond my reach since its creation. Fortunately, the wolves lost control of their beloved pet when their Alpha betrayed them. It took another eighteen years before fate placed the proper bargaining chip in my hands—Alicent Calder—and Clara Eldritch proved far more willing to betray the Sisters of the Reliquary than I would have ever suspected. I was shocked to know she’d already done it by kidnapping a child from Morgrave coven.

Love has a remarkable talent for dulling good judgment.

Though, none of the wolves knew Alicent carried the mirror. Poor, witless creatures.

I chose not to correct their mistake. It suited my purposes perfectly.

“You’re a monster!” she screams, lifting her head. Her eyes are red-rimmed, full of tears, and there’s a sense of loathing in them that I almost admire. It’s the closest she’s come to actually looking like me.

“The word gets thrown around so carelessly. Child, I’m not the thing you should be afraid of. Be grateful your fate isn’t mine to decide—you’d already be in the After with your precious Elias.”

I don’t grieve for the girl I used to be. She was inefficient, bled herself dry trying to be loved, as though love had ever been worth that kind of expense. Alicent will learn that lesson soon enough.

“I will admit, you’ve proven yourself useful. Not only did you break my curse...” I step over Elias’s cooling body without slowing, as if he’s nothing more than misplaced furniture. “But you also returned my mirror.”

“Don’t touch it.” She lunges, but she’s wrung dry—I can see it, the way the magic’s gone out of her like a tide pulled too far from shore. I’ve been there. She gave everything to free them as I did to create them. It will take more time than she has left to stop what’s coming.

I retrieve the dagger from the floor and open my palm on the blade, letting the first drop fall.

The glass remembers me, and I feel it awaken, the entirety of the Calder bloodline pressing up against the surface like rats clawing the inside of a coffin lid.

“Agnoce sacrificium meum, cede nomini meo, da mihi quod est mei reclamare.”

The mirror cracks once down the center like settling ice. Then…it shatters. The pieces hang in the air suspended at eye level, turning slowly as the magic bleeds out of each one and finds me all before a single shard remembers it’s supposed to fall.

Every witch who fed herself into this mirror comes through at once. They crowd under my skin, screaming through one throat. By the time the last shard goes dull and clinks against the floor, there is nothing left of any of them.