Ronan looks up at the sky. It isn’t red like our dreams. It’s cloudy and grey but beginning to lighten. In the distance to the east, the sun is beginning to rise. “I think we wait.”
The ground shakes beneath us.
Ronan’s face goes pale, suddenly remembering something. “The visions we had…Sylvie, we don’t have to—”
“I want to.” In our visions, we made love on the altar under the burning sky. If that’s what we’re here to do, so be it.
I can think of worse sacrifices to make.
“Oh, thank the gods,” he says, reaching for my waist. “I need you so badly I can barely stand it.”
I pull him to me by the collar of his tunic. “I’ve missed you. All of you.”
“Fuck,”he whispers. He strokes a strand of my hair from my cheek. “You cut your hair.”
“So did you. Do you hate it?”
He chuckles, twisting his fingers in one of my waves. “Gods, no. You are so, so beautiful.”
“Kiss me,” I beg.
And godsdamn, he does.
He kisses me hard under the brightening sky, picking me up and holding me against him, parting my lips with his tongue and claiming my mouth, claiming my body as his. The ground shakes violently beneath us as I return his kiss, my lips clinging to his in desperation, my body refusing to let anything tear us apart again.
To my left, the ground cracks and splits open, the altar of white stone rising from the earth. The torch rises on its pillar behind it, the sickle still lying in its groove.
I break from the kiss to look up at the sky turning red with the sunrise. “I think it’s time.”
“Good,” murmurs Ronan in my ear. “I couldn’t have waited much longer.”
Ronan carries me to the altar and sets me down. Before I pick up the sickle, I read the prophecy one last time where it’s engraved on the altar:
When light is dark and dark is light,
When sunless day claims starless night,
When Vahlo’s child joins Vayla’s blood,
The world shall end in fire and flood.
“Are you ready?” I ask Ronan.
He nods at me, his eyes on the torch. When I pick up the sickle, both relics flare with delight.
“Alright. Here we go.” I prick my finger with the sickle and let the blood drop onto the altar. It lies there on the surface, and for a moment, I’m reminded of all the blood that spilled last night. My mother’s blood, Ronan’s. The blood of those we lost before.
Maybe this will make it all worth it.
Ronan holds out his hand, and I prick his finger. When his blood joins with mine, nothing happens for a moment. Nothing we can see, at least.
But then the blood sinks into the altar, and it spreads, staining the white stone a deep red.
The torch flashes and burns red behind it as lightning streaks across the sky.
“Ronan,” I say as the red of sunrise spreads. His eyes lock with mine, and he’s on me, pulling me to him, tearing at my clothes.
It’s a culmination of everything, the desire that brings us together. It’s our lust for each other, our love, our bond, and the force beyond us that ties us together all at once. It’s a surrender to fate, the ultimate expression of our connection, the last step in uniting us as one.
