Unless…
Slowly, she turns her head toward me, as if I’d spoken the thought aloud. Her gaze finds mine, then she rises and walks towards me. With every place her foot touches, the ground blossoms anew. Grass greening, tiny flowers unfurling, life blooming in her wake.
Gods, I am trembling. My bottom lip caught between my teeth, my breath trapped in my chest.
Her face, the face my heart could sketch in the dark, is alight with warmth and knowing. She inhales and when her lips curve, it almost undoes me.
“Husband,” she says.
The word strikes through me like lightning, and I fall. My knees hit the earth before I even realize it. My arms wrap around her waist, pulling her close, clinging as if I could anchor her here by sheer will, and when her hands slip into my hair, fingers threading gently through the dark strands, I break completely.
The words tumble from my mouth like a sacred oath.
“My queen.”
Chapter 43
Amara
Iwake to a world that breathes with me.
The first thing I feel iseverything.
The wind is no longer wind, it is breath, shared between leaf and sky, between beast and soil. I feel it flow through me, a gentle inhale that fills my lungs and roots itself deep into the marrow of the earth. The pulse of the land thrums beneath my skin, soft and unending. The heartbeat of the trees. The slow hum of stone. Even the smallest creature, a worm turning in the dark, sings its note into the symphony of life, and I hear it all.
No.I amit all.
The air is alive with threads of gold and green, shimmering like silk. I can see them, the tiny fibres that bind everything together, the luminous veins of existence itself. They weave through every blade of grass, every feather, every drop of dew, connecting all living things in a tapestry so intricate it takes my breath. When I blink, I see the magic beneath the world’s skin. Raw, beautiful, endless.
Every root remembers the sun. Every stone remembers the rain.
And I rememberthem.
I am no longer what I was. Not princess, not priestess, not even Awakened. I am something more. The boundary between myself and the living world is gone.
Those who do not belong here scatter from the clearing, slipping into the trees.
In the tall grass, Mirael lifts her gaze to me, tears caught behind her lashes. She has her hands on Zyphoro, the healing rune around her neck glowing faintly, her magic working, but mine works faster.
I kneel beside them and brush my thumb across Zyphoro’s brow. Sweat beads warm against my skin. The moment I touch her, emerald light blooms, soft at first, then surging.My magic pours into her, mending what’s broken, sealing what has been torn. Bones knit. Organs repair. Breath returns steady and sure.
Zyphoro exhales, color flooding her cheeks again. She pushes herself onto her elbows, wonder flickering across her face.
“Amara,” she breathes. “Thank the gods you are alive.”
“Not the gods,” I say quietly, rising to my feet as the wind stirs around us. “The earth.”
Mirael reaches for me, and our hands lock. “Welcome back, sister,” she says softly.
My gaze wanders over her scars, and she turns away slightly. I draw her chin back.
“Mirael,” I breathe. “Where are the others? Lira? Saren?”
Her silence falls heavy, and the cold rushes in, icy and cruel, as the truth seeps into my bones.
Mirael blinks rapidly, trying to hold back the tears.
“Shh,” I whisper, brushing her cheek. My veins flare with light, green threads pulsing beneath my skin. The glow spills from my palms and into her, washing over her scars like sunlight melting frost.
