He chuckled. “You’re glowing again.”
“Your fault.”
“If words can make you glow so brightly, I wonder what would happen if I dropped to my knees and put my tongue between your—hey.” He scowled as Whisper headbutted Lucien’s hip, cutting him off. “Cock blocking me now?”
Whisper scowled, sending a picture of a fire into our minds again.
Disentangling myself from Lucien’s searing embrace, I scratched the panther. “You’re right. We’ll say a proper goodbye to Dillon, and then...” I trailed off because I had absolutely no idea what came next.
“And then, we’ll go home,” Lucien finished for me.
Home.
I didn’t need to ask where that was.
My home was with Lucien and Whisper, and it didn’t matter where we were.
Aching contentment filled me that Iwashome.
That we’d somehow found each other again.
Somehow survived.
With a simple thought, Lucien set Dillon’s bones on fire, purging them and freeing him.
As smoke coiled into the sky, I bowed my head and sank into the whispers of death.
I heard their histories and felt their possibilities and power rose like a wave.
We were no longer prisoners of the Requiem gene.
No longer dying.
We were the first to survive—or at least come back—which meant we might be the first immortals to ever exist.
And if that was the case, then...this was just the beginning.
Chapter Forty-Nine
WE STOOD IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DRAGON courtyard and...I didn’t know what to feel. Ashfall Cliff had turned into a ruin—eaten away by time and left to fall into rubble. The stone Whispering Dragon was the only thing still intact—its scales softened and faded, a few of its whiskers broken from wind and storms.
The pavilions, carved corridors, koi ponds, and blossom gardens had all decayed into unrecognisable heaps. Dead leaves swirled in the breeze. Roofs collapsed inward. And tree roots broke through the marble tiles.
“You alright?” Rook asked gently, slipping her hand into mine just like she had the day we’d first returned home and I’d been so close to burning up. She’d sheltered me from all the staff who’d welcomed me home like a prince. She’d tried to help me as I reached the first burnout, and I’d run when she’d passed out under her own Requiem pain.
All of that seemed so, so long ago, yet somehow also felt like just yesterday.
Squeezing her fingers, I cleared my throat and nodded. “I’m fine. I mean...I had my suspicions after we walked our way through Iceland. But...seeing it like this is a bit of a shock.”
We’d travelled here the old-fashioned way—until we hadn’t.
Three things had happened, which only proved we were no longer human.
One, we never got hungry or thirsty or tired. Our energy levelsstayed the same, cycling around our two hearts in a perfect never-ending loop.
Two, we dabbled with the powers we’d been given. Rook had the ability to see what used to exist and hear the histories of all that had come before us. Yet I had the ability to conjure the potential of things that existed in the future.
And three, we no longer had to abide by this world’s rules.
