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We’d cleared morethan half the distance back to the Night Court in record time. The long ridge that marked the border between the Wastes and home was within sight.
The chill started in my toes. Then it spread into my fingertips. Up my legs and arms. I looked to where Finn was, just ahead of us. His wings faltered, and I saw his shoulders tighten. No, it was still too far to the palace. Another hour. We’d never make it. He stopped, “She isn’t breathing!” he cried and sped to the ground.
Kade dropped after his brother, and I jumped from his grasp before his feet settled on the earth.
Finn set her down on a bed of leaves and I fell to my knees at her side, “Liana,” I said brushing the cold skin of her cheek, “Wake up.”
She was so still. So, so still. “Wake up!” I demanded, louder, catching my breath. The cold feeling spreading, coating my lungs.
I felt her heart stop.
The life went out of her like a soft summers breeze. And it was torture. Raw and unfiltered. The bond between us was cleaved in two with the swing of a mighty axe across my chest. My hands clawed at the earth, trying and failing to find some release from it. It wasfinal. And it left me shaking against a phantom chill, empty and alone.
The queen is dead.
My Liana—gone.
I couldn’t tell how long we sat there. It could have been an eternity. I couldn’t stop thinking it. The words repeated in my head without end…
I failed you.
I love you.
I will follow you.
I failed you.
I love you.
I will follow you into the dark.
When I wasable to draw breath, I stood. Tiernan paced between the trees. Finn wretched onto the damp earth. His armor coated in thick ice as though it could protect him from the horror at his knees.
Kade sat alone. Couldn’t stop looking at his hands as though they belonged to someone else. As if he wanted to cut them from his arms. “What have I done?” he whispered.
I cleared the block in my throat, “Take me back,” I said, my voice sounding foreign to my own ears.
“Take. Me. Back.” I said again when not a single one of my guards moved to follow my order.
Kade nodded from where he sat and clenched his hands into fists. His yellow eyes glowed, “We finish this. Tonight.”
“We owe her that much,” Finn added
Tiernan stopped his pacing, and gave a tight-lipped nod, his eyes burning with bloodlust.
Then it was done. They’d go back. And they’d kill the Mad King. And if he had awoken, I was sure I wasn’t the only one who understood they would never see another day. This once, I wouldn’t ask my men to stand down. They had just as much right as I did to avenge her.
Odd. If I looked at her the right way, I could almost pretend she was sleeping. As I’d watched her do for months before then. The moonlight caressing the soft and yet sharp planes of her face. Making her hair almost shimmer.
If I returned, I wouldn’t bring her back to the palace to be buried in a tomb under the earth. I’d bury her at the top of a mountain where she could look down over the earth and up to the stars.
A breeze lifted her hair and yet the surrounding air was still. Finn noticed it too. Where her hand rested at her side in the leaves, there was a warm reddish glow. It was the stone on her finger. The ring Morgana had told her never to take off.
We four leaned in, trying to figure out what it meant.
Her back arched violently. Her bones cracked. I kneeled beside her, not believing what I was seeing. It wasn’t possible. I watched her chest expand with air. Could’ve cried as the wound in her abdomen closed. The flesh knitting itself back together.
“The fifth stone,” it was Finn who said it, his voice an incredulous whisper, “It was a philosophers stone.”
