But...I wasn’t strong enough.
I stumbled and coughed up blood, fighting with the enormity of trying to force the galaxy to bow to me.
And I paid for it with my own disintegration.
My arms began to dissolve.
My hair turned into crystals.
The human shell I’d inhabited for a mere twenty-two years unmade itself, just like Lucien’s had.
I only had seconds.
A single moment to make a choice.
I reached with my heart. I clung with my soul. And Ifelthim.
Felt his heat, his aura, his spirit.
And I did the only thing I could.
I reversed the meagre moments of his death. The only moments that truly mattered.
With every ounce of love and desperation, I reached across the veil and yanked him home. Ash reversed into flesh. Embers became bone. The empty space where his heart should’ve been began to beat again, weak and struggling, but real.
I lasted long enough to witness his chest rise with breath.
To feel himliving—
And then dropped to my knees in the snow and collapsed.
Chapter Two
I WOKE WITH A VIOLENT COUGH.
Air scraped down my throat like broken glass. My entire body convulsed as if my bones were being forcibly rebuilt, my skin stretched too tight over newly formed sinew, and organs rearranged as if they’d been tossed out and replaced.
Every breath was agony...
I tried to move but a bolt of electricity ripped down my back as if my spinal cord wasn’t properly attached to whatever nerve endings existed.
I groaned as everything flashed hot then cold then heavy. So,soheavy.
Opening my eyes took a herculean effort. Trying to focus took far too much energy. My sight flickered and fritzed, behaving as if it wasn’t just my spine that’d forgotten its purpose, but my pupils too.
What the hell is going on?
Gritting my teeth, I forced myself to focus and—
White.
Dense, swirling white as the fiercest blizzard howled around me. I quaked as icy cold cut into me with venomous teeth, stealing what meagre strength I had and making me shudder. My bare skin burned from the cold. My fingers and toes ached with frostbite.
I couldn’t understand.
Why was I naked in a storm? How did I get here?
I fought to sit up. My heavy, sluggish limbs reluctantly obeyed but my mind stayed sticky with confusion. The lingering exhaustion felt as if I was either dying or coming back from the dead—
