The words escaped my mouth before I consciously realized I was speaking. Everyone turned toward me instantly.He's not dead. He's been burning for millions of years.
I blinked hard and shook myself. Thyros was in front of me before I could breathe, one hand framing my face, his amber eyes a shade deeper from concern. “Naeris.”
“I’m okay,” I assured him quickly, though my pulse had begun racing. “I think…” I exhaled shakily. “I think I just had a little Ashera push.” I tried to laugh it off, but it came out more like a cough.
The revelation hit all of us. I could see it reflected on their faces. Except Thyros, who was more concerned with me than anything I said. His thumb brushed my cheek once more before he reluctantly eased back, though he remained close enough that our knees touched.
“Anyway,” I muttered weakly, waving a hand. “Let’s circle back to the horrifying cosmic implications of eternal suffering later.”
To my relief, Ella snorted. It relieved some of the tension. Only for a moment, but it helped.
Zapharos cleared his throat. “From what Ashera witnessed, all the males died in the assault.”
My chest tightened.
“She fled back to Terra Nova believing Caelor—and the others—were gone forever.” Zapharos paused. “But time moved differently there.” Understanding began to dawn slowly across the room. “The Arkhevari women had already spent generations on Terra Nova,” Dravok said quietly.
“They built cities,” Zapharos continued. “Entire civilizations. They waited for us.”
Emotion roughened his voice unexpectedly. “They believed we would return.”
The ache in the room became almost unbearable.
“But the females…” Nadine whispered.
“They became mortal,” Zapharos said softly.
No one moved.
No one breathed.
“The farther Terra Nova traveled from Nox Eternum and the Celestial Portal, the weaker the connection became. The women lost immortality.”
Ella looked stricken. “And they died?”
Zapharos nodded once. “By the time Ashera reached them, all of the original Aelyth were already gone.”
A terrible sadness washed through me.
“Their children didn’t know her,” he continued quietly. “And Ashera could not bring herself to tell them the truth.”
That their mates were dead.
That they would never come home.
That the universe had broken beyond repair.
I felt tears sting my eyes before Zapharos even spoke again.
“In her grief,” he said softly, “Ashera shattered herself.”
The room fell completely silent. He looked directly at me. Then at Nadine. Then Ella. And suddenly the enormity of it settled over all of us at once. All of us were Ashera's fragments. With the only difference that my ancestor had been taken by the Sythari, ensuring a pure bloodline—the irony of it was not lost on me—while Nadine and Ella's ancestors mixed and mingled with the early humans.
Still, all three of us were pieces of a grieving immortal female who had loved so deeply she refused to let herself vanish completely. Ella pressed trembling fingers to her lips. Nadine stared down at her hands again as though seeing them for thefirst time. Beside me, Thyros looked at me with an expression so raw it nearly shattered me all over again.
The realization hit the room like a large meteor crashing on a planet. Emotions ripple like tsunamis. Shock rippled through us in violent waves. Confusion crashed against understanding like opposing tides. Grief rose heavy and crushing, like violent tornadoes. While beneath it something brighter struggled upward, hope so sudden and overwhelming it was almost painful.
Through the bond that connected all six of us, emotions surged wildly. Ella’s heartbreak swept through the room like a tidal wave, warm and aching and impossibly compassionate.
