The only way to get rid of the Well was to remake it. And Erasmus Sophronia had done exactly that. He’d transmuted it and bound it to his aura, putting the Well intohimself.
Little had he known his daughter would go on to inherit the ability from him, years after he’d used the Well one last time to create life—to createher.
The Well was a part of her. It was inside of her, as vital to her existence as her beating heart.
Rubble crunched beneath her boots as she stumbled to where Darien lay immobile in the wreckage. She gathered his head into her lap, cradling his face with her hands.
“Please work,” she whimpered, smoothing his hair back from his face.“Please.”She tried to remember what she had learned in school—how a person’s magic was entangled with their aura—and she wondered if her power worked the same way. As a human unable to perform magic, those were the lessons she’d always had to sit out on.
But she’d always observed. And she’d learned.
During the times when Loren had tried to help Darien with his Surges, perhaps there had been more going on. Perhaps the power of the Well that lay dormant inside her had been helping him, and that warmth she’d always swore she could feel against her chest was the conduit she unknowingly wore around her neck. She’d always felt lightheaded after attempting to help him, but she’d brushed it off as another of the many side effects that came with her medical condition.
There seemed to be a lot of things she’d brushed off over the years.
It was time she finally started believing in herself. Time she stopped allowing herself to drown in the ashes of her lack of faith.
She would be like a phoenix and rise.
In the dead silence, Loren spoke. “I am male and female, everything and nothing. I am heaven and earth, body and spirit. The rainbow, the blood of the soul, the fiery and burning water. I am the prima materia. I am the Arcanum Well.” A deep breath rocked through her. “I am…Liliana Sophronia.”
She concentrated on pouring her aura onto Darien,willingit out of her and into him—to heal him, to bring him back.
White flames appeared, like tired arms stretching from within her. They glowed brighter than the sun spreading its light over the city, brighter than the stars and the moon—brighter than anything her eyes had ever beheld. The conduit around her neck began floating as it channeled the energy of her aura, driving it from her body and into Darien’s.
The flame disappeared into his chest, directly above his heart, swallowed up like a sponge soaking up water.
Loren waited, holding her breath.
She began to count.One, two, three, four, five…
But nothing happened.
More tears, tinged with white light, slipped down her cheeks and dripped onto his neck and face. The light sank into his skin without a trace. “Don’t leave me,” she croaked. “Please.”
Gently, she gathered up Darien’s limp hand and pressed it against her filthy cheek. That hand was so heavy; so lifeless. Her eyelids slipped shut as she forced herself to breathe deeply.
This couldn’t be it. This couldn’t be the end.
This couldn’t be happening.
The shadows of seven birds flew overhead, darkening the inside of her burning eyelids as they flitted past.
More tears fell, slipping through the space between Darien’s palm and her skin.
All of it had been for nothing. A part of her had believed, from that very moment he’d saved her life on the Avenue of the Scarlet Star, that they’d met for a reason. That fate had forced them together, giving them exactly what neither of them were aware they needed.
But she was wrong. And Darien had left her—alone.
Loren began sobbing in silence, holding Darien’s hand to her cheek. Slouching in the sharp rubble, her body shook with every breath, the world around her quiet and cold.
There was a flutter against her cheek. A flutter of fingertips.
Was she imagining it?
“Lola,” came Darien’s voice. Rough, as if he’d just woken up from a deep sleep. “Why are you crying?”
Loren’s eyelids flew open. “Darien?” The word was a startled sob.
