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Last light. Firelight bleeding red through closed eyelids.

I tried to open my weighted eyes.

When I finally managed it, the world swam. Blurred edges. Colors bleeding together. A bedroom materialized slowly—unfamiliar shadows and shapes resolving into furniture, walls, the dying fire painting everything copper and gold.

They’d moved me while I was unconscious.

How long had I been out?

I turned my head slowly, fighting nausea, and scanned the room. It was empty. Just me and the dying fire and the crushing quiet.

No August.

It didn’t work.

My stomach twisted.

The weaving had fallen apart when the void collapsed. It had torn from my hands, threads scattering back into darkness. I’d burned through everything—my magic, my strength, nearly my life—trying to hold it together.

And it hadn’t been enough.

August was still empty. Still sitting downstairs in that chair with vacant eyes and the pendant glowing cold at his chest. Still Elias’s weapon. By now there would be nothing left of the man I loved. He was gone.

I’d failed.

The crying came up through me without asking. I pressed my face into the pillow. My ribs hurt from the shape of the sounds I was making. I'd tried everything. Given everything. And it still wasn't enough.

All that magic, all that pain, for nothing.

The door opened.

Footsteps approached. Careful.

I didn’t look up. I couldn’t face whoever had come to check on me. Couldn’t bear the pity in their eyes when they confirmed what I already knew.

“Why are you crying?”

The voice stopped my heart.

CHAPTER 19

AUGUST

She turned her head slowly, as though the movement itself required courage—as though she could not quite trust what she had heard.

When her eyes found mine, they were red from crying. Devastated. Disbelieving, almost reverent, as though I were something fragile that might vanish if she blinked too hard.

“August?”

Hope and doubt braided through her voice, too tightly to separate.

I crossed the room in three strides and sank to my knees beside the bed.

“Lily, what’s wrong? Are you in pain? Should I fetch Mira?”

My hand rose to her face before I could think better of it. My thumb brushed away tears that were still falling.

Her skin was warm. So warm. After months of cold—the pendant’s cold, the void’s cold, the grey nothing that had pressed against me from every direction—the simple heat of her stopped me.