Fate is always a blessing and a curse. It takes as much as it gives.
The arrow lodges through my chest, nicking my heart, which is already beating too fast.
Elorie’s mouth is still open as she processes what happened. Her fingers reach for me. And even if I’m imagining things, I swear I see the thread that ties her heart to mine. I hear her cry echoing in a chasm that’s becoming far too wide.
Her fingers stretch, glowing with starlight. And then her eyes turn pure white, and she doesn’t just grab the stars, she becomes one.
Chapter 54
Elorie
The first timeI called upon my magic, it was an overwhelming source of light pummeling through me. Opening my heart to it now, I realize it’s finer. Fickle. It is stardust. Flecked between everything from the ground up to the night sky.
It is all around.
It is the arrow that flies through the air.
It is the air itself.
Like aether, but different. It is not the essence of all things. It is the creation from nothing. As Lady Reah said, to make anything, you must unmake something else.
Resurrecting Wilder wasn’t me pulling him back from death. I unmade his fate and recrafted it. Clasping my magic around the arrow, I don’t focus on the wood or the metal or the tether holding it all together. I tangle my fingers in the threads, and I pull them apart. I break them into the aether they once were. To dust that dances with my mate’s magic as he collapses to a knee on the ground.
The arrow is nothing more than sparks of something thatonce existed and no longer does as it blows away. As it ceases to exist while Wilder’s skin stitches back together.
He looks up at me. His golden eyes shine—the most beautiful male I’ve ever seen.
“That’s three lives I owe you now.” He smirks.
“Then stop trying to die for me.”
“Never.” Wilder lifts, grabbing my chin.
His lips find mine while the battle rages, and he sends out a shockwave of death that takes out the next wave of the oncoming army. He’s a weapon carved on the battlefield. Honed for destruction. Wielding the magic of Davorian, the god of endings. And he continues to sacrifice himself for me. Like he would a hundred times over.
“More than that,”he whispers.
Wilder tugs me close as a shockwave rattles the ground at our feet. The stone begins to quake.
At the edge of the courtyard, a vine shoots up through the ground. Then another. They twist and bend, weaving around each other. Leaves spit from their branches. Lush and large and dewy as the vines from the vision King Malachi showed us. Quickly, an Arch creates itself out of nowhere and is grander than I ever could have imagined.
Looking to the ground, I realize it grew in the spot Wilder dropped that single seed. The seed of an Arch.
“Impossible.” Gasps come from all around as the Arch begins to churn.
The fresh breeze that creeps through the courtyard isn’t that of honeysuckle. It’s woodsy and sweet. Pine and rain. From another place.
Vaelier.
Three figures step out of the Arch as if they were on the other side, waiting. Wilder has been planning this all along. Backup, he called it. I thought it was impossible to wake an Arch when mosthave died, but with the surge of magic, it must have found the strength to open. The question is, how strong is the tie on the other end?
An army swarms out behind the three figures, and the soldiers immediately start holding a line against the Crown Guard while the three Fae in front aim for Wilder.
“I thought you were dead.” A female with orange-red curls throws herself at Wilder. Her freckles are brightened by her pink cheeks, but it’s her purple eyes I can’t stop staring at. They stand out from her pale skin.
“Your brother knew I was alive.” He angles his head to the red-haired warrior at her right.
The guard from the palace. The one who has been bringing me food and keeping an eye on me. This week, he’s been the only one allowed to breach the barrier around my room.
