Maldrak’s words hit her like a warhammer.
This isn’t the end. Magic can’t be destroyed, it just finds somewhere else to exist.
The words crawl through her veins like a parasite—insidious and undeniable.
“Death said I am the Endbringer. Perhaps this is what he meant. I would call forward my own end if it meant letting you live,” Kael breathes. “But our fates are woven together. My death is yours.” The words slip from his lips like an admission drudged up from the depths of him.
Not just bound in love, but in consequence.
Fuck.
Emotion snags in his throat, but he forces the words out.
“I will be your end.”
She recoils—not from him, but from the truth of it. Elyssara closes the gap between them, tilting her head back to look at him.
Belly to belly.
Heart to heart.
Mind to mind.
Starbound to Starbound.
“No. You are my Sky—constant, endless, unyielding. You will endure this until I can find you in the dark. Just as you did for me.” The first tear falls, then another, until they run freely down her cheeks.
A snaking, onyx vein pulses in Kael’s neck, lashing and fighting to burrow deeper.
Kael shakes his head.
“Our lives are bound, El. But we will not go to the same place in the After. There is no redemption for me. But you? You will know peace.”
Elyssara lifts her hand, placing it over the pulsing vein, cupping his neck with tenderness, as if she can stop fate with her bare hands.
And it…recedes.
“Youare my peace,” she promises, threading her hands through his hair.
He huffs a pained laugh. “That will end.”
“You found me in the dark, Kael. You reached me when I was unreachable. When you are lost within yourself, I will reach for you until I find you again,” she breathes, pressing her forehead to his, and dragging her hands through his stubble.
“There is no cure, my love. I’ve been in this library all day. I am destined to a fate of madness, violence, death. I beg you—lock me up in the vaults and let me go,” he pleads, but he leans into her, desperate, aching for her touch.
“Never,” she promises. “You should know better than to wield fate like a weapon, Kael. I will bring the fates to their fucking knees before I let them take you from me.”
Kael huffs an affectionate laugh into her forehead. “I know. I don’t think the fates know it yet, but they are most definitely under your instruction.”
Elyssara quirks a smile at Kael’s jest—a glimpse of her Starbound peeking through the clouds of this infestation.
But levity rarely lasts long under the heaviness of reality.
Her eyes find his—solemn, desperate, reaching. “Will you keep loving me?”
Kael’s brows furrow in an instant, and he shakes his head in disbelief.
“I will love you even when my bones have long since gone to dust, Elyssara. Even when this rot claims me, I will always—always—love you.” He pauses, soaking up the full depth of her touch. “From now until the Stars claim me.”
