But I can move my hand.
I reach for him.
My fingers find his wrist.The pulse there—strong, steady, alive in a way I’m no longer certain I can match. The beat of his heart transfers through skin and bone into my dimming awareness.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
I don’t reach for rescue. I know what this poison does. I’ve heard the stories, passed down through generations of witches who understood the gods would eventually find ways to destroy them. Once the toxin enters an Anchor’s blood, the magic dies. And when the magic dies, so does the witch.
There is no saving me.
But I can touch him. Can feel his skin against mine in these last moments. Can know that I’m not dying alone in a frozen canyon with no one to notice my ending, no one to remember that I existed, no one to?—
He’s here.
The relief that floods through me has no logic to it. Dying is still dying. The poison is still killing me. The creature might return at any moment to finish what it started.
But the terror that has lurked beneath my pragmatic acceptance—the primal fear of facing oblivion alone, of ending without witness, of disappearing into the dark with no hand to hold—releases its grip.
I’m not alone.
He’s here.
“No.”Kaster’s voice is raw. Shattered. “No. You don’t get to do this.”
His hands move to the wound on my shoulder. Press against it as if pressure could stop the poison that’s already spread through every inch of me, every vein and artery, every cell that my bloodline magic used to inhabit.
“Soreia. Look at me.”
I try. My eyes won’t focus. The world has gone gray and soft, all hard edges dissolving into gentle darkness that promises peace, promises an end to the pain and the cold and the constant pressure of survival.
“I need you to stay.” The words come out harsh. Demanding. Exactly like him—commands instead of requests, orders instead of pleas. “Do you understand? I need?—”
His voice breaks again.
He doesn’t finish the sentence.
He doesn’t have to.
The Anchor makesone last attempt.
I feel it surge—a desperate, dying push against the poison that’s destroying it. The anchor power that has been my burden and my purpose, my gift and my curse, claws for survival with everything it has left.
For a moment—one brilliant, agonizing moment—it succeeds.
The world snaps into focus. Kaster’s face above mine, streaked with blood and soot and an expression stripped of every mask he’s worn. His eyes are wild. Uncontrolled.
The fear I’d glimpsed in the ravine is fully unleashed now. No composure left. No denial.
“There is one way.” His voice strips everything else away. “A mating bond. My fire into your blood—it burns out the poison. Saves you.” His grip tightens. “But it’s permanent. You’d be bound to me. It can’t be undone.”
I look at him. The fear in his face. What it costs him to ask.
“Do it.” Each word is drawn from the last reserve I have.
“Soreia—”
“I know what it means.” My fingers find his wrist. His pulse against mine, steady where mine is not. “I’m choosing it.”
