No.
I dropped to my knees, the impact jarring my bones.I scrambled to her side, my hands shaking violently.I reached for her, as if I could pull her back from the brink.The world fell away—nothing existed beyond my breaking heart.
Her eyes, once filled with love and laughter and a thousand stories told by firelight, were vacant.Empty.The rich green than had matched my own was now dull and fixed—staring at nothing.
Gone.
A keening cry ripped through me, the sound so broken it barely felt like my own.My hands hovered over her.Would touching her make this real?Would it cement this nightmare into something I couldn’t wake up from?
“Ummi,” I whispered, my voice splintering like glass.“Please wake up.I’m home now.”
I traced over the features I had memorised as a child.
The laugh lines around her mouth that deepened every time I made her smile.The crease between her brows that appeared when she worried about me.The slight bump on her nose from where she’d broken it as a girl, falling from the same tree Theo and I used to climb.
Her skin was already cooling, stealing the warmth I remembered from childhood—when I’d press my fevered forehead against her cool palm and she’d hum until I fell asleep.
I was supposed to save her.I was supposed to have had more time.
Tears blurred my vision, each drop carrying pieces of me as they fell onto her face.My body trembled as I clutched onto her with weak and useless arms.
I pressed my forehead against hers, breathing in her faint scent.My shoulders shook with silent, shattered sobs that tore my soul in half.
“I came back to you,” I choked.“I came back, Ummi.I’m here now.I’m home.Please don’t leave me.Please.”
Theo and Tavrik dropped to their knees beside me, their grief tangible in the air.Their hands on my shoulders felt distant, disconnected from my body.They tried to pull me away—tried to loosen my grip on the cooling corpse that had once been the centre of my world.
But I wouldn’t let go.I couldn’t let go.
Theo’s arms locked around me like iron bands, then he wrenched me from her body.
“NO!NO, LET ME GO!”
I thrashed wildly, pounding my fists against his chest.Tearing at his arms, his face, anything I could reach, with my nails.
“She’s not gone!She’s not—she can’t be—”
His own body shook as tears streamed down his face.She had been like his mother too.The woman who kissed his scraped knees and scolded us for staying out past dark.Who always set out an extra place at dinner because she knew he’d be there.Who loved him like her own son when his parents couldn’t anymore.
“I’m so sorry, Elira,” his voice cracked.“I’m so sorry.”
Everything inside me caved in—folded under the pressure of a grief so vast it left nothing but ruin.I crumpled against him, my entire body going limp as if every bone had turned to dust.
I lifted my head slowly, a monumental effort.Through the blur of tears, Zaheera stood poised like a serpent, basking in the ruin she had created.
Her lips stretched into a slow, cruel smile and her ember eyes gleamed with wicked delight.
She had won.
Zaheera tapped her nails against her arm in a maddening rhythm.
She wanted me to break.To let the grief consume me until there was nothing left.
I wasn’t going to.
I was going to kill her.
I jumped up, body coiled like a spring ready to snap.My hands trembled at my sides, nails biting into my palms until warm blood trickled between my fingers.The stone burned hotter than ever before, as if feeding on my rage.
