Page 46 of The Last War We Ever Fought

“No, you’re not. Happens to the best of us. We change.” He lifted a weak hand to her face. “You changed. You changed so much, my little thief. If you didn’t look like my every dream, my biggest wish, my utmost desire, I wouldn’t have recognised you in this lifetime. I knew something was different. I knew this would be my last the moment I recognised you. You cheated the Gods this time.” His thumb swiped over her eye. “You buried your soul so deep, that they all had thought you had died.”

She cried, her chest heaving with painful sobs. “It can’t be. Why can’t I remember? I want to remember. Please!” she begged. “Please, I want to remember!”

“I begged that you wouldn’t. I begged them so you wouldn’t bear this pain that I bore. Time took your memories. But I have them all.”

“You’re a God,” she cried. “You’re a God, you can’t die! Please, Elijah.”

“You were like the sky to me, my Rowan.” He touched a blood-stained palm to my cheek, so tenderly. “Ever so blue, ever so exquisite, ever so far away from me.”

Life disappeared from his violet eyes as he drew them shut, his hand slipping away from her face and his body surrendering.

Rowan held her shivering breath.

And then she screamed, begging someone and anyone for help. But no one heard her as she laid in a graveyard of her own people. The night was silent. The most silent it had ever been. The only beating heart remaining for far and long miles was the one in her chest. Every other one had already gone to sleep forever, too weak to have survived the poison that Rowan had laced their food and their water with.

It had to stop.

One way or another.

She couldn't remember how many times she had calculated the least cruellest way possible. But she knew, this had been the one way that had come up with every equation she solved.

“It should have been your heart beating,” she cried, laying down with him. Taking his cold hand, she put it to her chest. “This is yours, so maybe it still is.”

The ground beneath them cracked and she hugged Elijah’s body to hers, closing her eyes and waiting for the moment she would join him. The earth and sky alike rumbled, trees and rock shook and violently quivered as a quake took over the land. One she’d never witnessed before.

It might have lasted hours or days, Rowan couldn’t remember.

But the moment the earth had fallen silent, she buried the owner of her heart. It had taken a long while for her to leave his side. And as the poppies had grown over his grave, she’d given in on her grief and cried for days to no end until her soul had consumed itself entirely, and she felt numb.

On the thirtieth day after, his sword had shown itself at her feet when she had woken.

Dawnbringer had turned a pale shade of silver, almost white. The red rubies at the hilt gleaming in contrast.

With it on her back, she’d ridden towards Gobresh, only to find the river that used to separate their land was now a sea instead. She couldn’t see where the space of water ended. And no matter how far along the old riverbank she had ridden, how many days she’d searched back and forth, she couldn’t find any land connecting to Gobresh.

Tisiania had parted in two. That had been the only explanation she could come up with.

She’d left his grave again. She swore it would be the last time. When she would return, she would join him.

Her hood drawn over her face and Dawnbringer on her back, she’d curled through the streets of Mugril. Her homeland that she’d not seen in years. A gloom had fallen over her people as they went about their business.

For a while, Rowan had stood in front of the royal palace. Reading the order that had been posted on its gates. A new queen had taken over after the previous had died, poisoned in her own bed, her letter between her fingers and the truth becoming her gravestone. A new court had been formed after they, too, had died the moment they’d touched her letter laced with the haleberry powder. The Mugril had mourned their lost soldiers and they’d taken oath to repent for the sins committed in their names and had sworn to never cross the waters separating the two kingdoms.

Peace had won.

At a cost.

A terrible, terrible cost.

With tears in her eyes, Rowan had read the order until her feet had bled holding her upright. And then she’d returned back to him.

Word had it that she’d laid between the poppies, and the flowers had taken pity on her and sung her a lullaby of death until the God had come to take her to the afterlife, too. They say the dark God had been cruel to her. For the millions of innocent lives she’d sent to his world, he’d gifted Rowan her lover’s immortality, a life of eternal repentance. He’d denied her greatest wish. Liberation.

Instead, when she’d risen again, she’d found herself in another lifetime.

And many more endless ones.

Alone.