His name rips from my throat before I even reach him. I stumble over broken stone and ash, my legs barely holding beneath me.
He lies still in the center of the ruin, the shadows around him gone quiet, the air hollow in his absence. I fall to my knees beside his body, gather him into my arms, the weight of him both familiar and unbearable. His head lolls against my shoulder, his hair matted with soot and blood. His skin is cold and when I press my palm to his chest, there’s nothing. No heartbeat. No spark. No golden thread.
The bond that once hummed between us, that constant pulse of life and magic, is gone. Torn.
Zyphoro folds in on herself, knees tight to her chest, arms cinched around her ribs as though she’s afraid she’ll split apart. She rocks, breath hitching, sobs tearing out of her in ragged bursts. Daed’s moonstone gleams in her fist, gripped so fiercely her knuckles bleed.
My fingers trace his face, his jaw, his mouth. I press my forehead to his.
“I love you,” I whisper, again and again, like a prayer, like a curse. “And I will not live without you.”
My tears fall through the cracks in the stone, vanishing into the dark beneath us. The earth stirs. A low hum begins in my bones.
Zyphoro sniffs, then gulps, then slowly rises to her feet, one trembling hand pressed to her heart. “Amara…”
The light comes first as a flicker, a single pulse of green beneath my skin. Then another. Then it spreads, winding across my arms, my throat, my face, until the air around me shimmers. The glow thickens, radiant and wild, spinning in a slow spiral around Daed’s body.
“Amara, stop!” Zyphoro calls, shielding her eyes. She remembers the fire. “You’ll burn yourself alive!”
But the power is beyond stopping. My grief is beyond stopping.
It builds, pulsing, swelling, until the entire temple trembles with it. The light engulfs us both, wrapping Daed in its embrace. I scream, my voice breaking with pain and power as the ground splits beneath us and a beam of green light erupts skyward, spearing through the heavy clouds above.
The brilliance blinds even the gods. Demons still crawling through the ruins crumble to ash, their bodies disintegrating in the wake of that holy fire.
And I feel it. A tearing, a ripping through bone and blood, something ancient and wild clawing its way out from beneath my skin. Heat sears down my spine, bright and unbearable, and then wings burst from my back. They tear into existence in a spray of emerald and gold light, feathers unfurling like shards of dawn.
The pain is exquisite. Pure. Endless. It is agony that remakes. Fire that cleanses. My body trembles, reshaping around power I did not know I carried. The world narrows to the raw, brutal beauty of it, to the sound of muscle splitting and magic stitching me into something new.
And through the torment, a terror and wonder fill me. I am not what I was. I can never be what I was.
When it finally ends, when the light fades and the world grows still again, I collapse. Exhausted. My hands tremble where they cradle him. Daed, motionless in my arms.
His face is pale beneath the soot, his lips are parted, but no breath escapes them. The golden threads that once connected us, that sang through my soul, remain dark.
“No…” The word breaks from me like glass. “No, please.”
I press trembling fingers to his throat. Nothing.
To his chest. Still nothing.
I curl over him, the sob tearing through me so hard it steals my breath. My wings unfurl, curling around us both like a cocoon. Blossoms spill from them in a cascade of emerald and white, drifting over his body, over the stones, over my hands shaking against his heart.
The petals gather in his hair, on his shoulders, on the curve of his jaw. A thousand tiny goodbyes.
“I tried,” I whisper into the hollow of his throat. “I tried to bring you back.”
I press my lips to his skin.
Something shifts.
So faint I almost miss it.
A tremor beneath my palm.
I freeze, breath held, heart hammering, and then another. Stronger this time. A flutter. A heartbeat.
My head snaps up, tears still spilling freely down my cheeks.
