“Whatever future, Ever. As long as you’re fucking there with me. Remember.”His words, his plea, sink into my mind. He’s always promised this, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to oblige.
We saw this. The snow. The cold. The tops of the mountains overhead.
The pain is different from the vision, though.
Darkness creeps at the edges of my vision, and it’s my magic, the flow of energy and hum within me that battles it back, just a little. Just enough for me to do one more deed.
I don’t know exactly the right spot, but he told me their bodies were buried here. He’d want to be with them. He built all his hopes and ambitions on finishing what they started.
Now, he’ll be able to rest with them, knowing he was wrong. And he failed.
Them and me.
I reach for Fenix, and my magic rushes to oblige. Where in the past it’s been reluctant, our streams not wanting to mix, mine now dominates and controls, easily and without thought, it takes over Fenix. And it freezes him. It locks every single muscle in his body.
I remember the first time he did this, in the cell after he killed Micah, how terrified I was, and I push all of that right at him, forcing him to feel what I felt as I imprison him.
My magic swarms and rushes, as if it wants to fight, as if it wants to take on the world, but it does as I bid and strangles Fenix—every muscle in his body just as he did to me.
Until his heart stops beating.
Until I have nothing left in me and finally let go and sag against Ten.
And Fenix crumples to the ground, too.
“Ever? Ever, no. You need to hold on. To fight.”
My eyes slip closed, and I feel him move me onto my back. Onto the snow.
I need to look at him one last time. I want to stare at his beautiful eyes and have him be the last thing I see.
As I force them back open, there’s utter fear in his gaze, and I long to take that away, but as I reach for my magic again, it slips through my grasp like water through my hand, running away.
The blood soaks the snow around me. My hand moves to the dagger in my stomach, and I pull, yanking it free.
“Oh, Stars, no. Ever.” Ten’s hands press down as he kneels over me, his hands trying to slow the inevitable.
I know the vision he sees.
Because we’ve seen it before.
forty-five
. . .
Aten
This can’t be it. This can’t be.
“This isn’t fucking happening.”
I stoop over her, as her eyes stay closed, and focus on the little mist of air from her lips. She’s still breathing but barely. And I can’t do anything. I won’t leave her here. Not to die alone.
The Maker told me I’d have a choice. Well, I choose. This can’t be her fate. She told me the decision would shape Kirrasia. Her dying won’t create change, how can it? After everything she’s been through, all the lies and the secrets, she can’t just die in the snow, killed by her own brother?
No. I won’t accept this.
“Do you hear me, Aslendrix? I won’t accept this.”
