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Treading slowly toward the giant stag and the white-haired girl who still glowed, I held out my hand toward the beast. He sniffed me with the same cheeky head tilt of Natim and licked me with a large sand-coarse tongue.
His touch fed me the truth.
This was Natim.
Healed.
Alive.
And forever changed.
A creature that wasn’t birthed by usual methods but granted existence by the wielder of life herself.
Dropping my hand, I shook my head in wonder, trying to ignore the small thread of fear looping around my heart.
Runa spun to face me, her hair catching the last of her golden light as her skin returned to mortal earthen.
I couldn’t catch my breath.
My knees begged to buckle and kneel.
I tripped into her, grabbed her, and pulled her into me.
I kissed her.
Hard.
She moaned as our tongues danced.
She clung to me as I cupped her chin and kissed her deeper.
I worried for her.
Worried what this meant.
Worried about the future and so many unfolding things.
I grabbed her in a fierce embrace and buried my face into her butterfly-dusted hair.
If I ever lost her...
If we were torn apart again and made to forget—
Fuck.
The pain was unimaginable.
A physical agony. A howling despair that crushed my lungs and made my heart blacken with terror.
She hugged me back.
She nuzzled close.
But there was a restraint in her embrace that wasn’t there before.
A wariness that made my pain all the harsher.
Pulling away, I choked on my heartache as our eyes met.
Sadness pooled in hers.
She slowly shook her head and stepped out of my arms.
I was left shaking and empty as I whispered, “Runa...what have you done?”
Chapter Fifty-Three
. Runa .
A FULL WEEK.
Seven awful days since Darro had revealed the extent of his power to the Nhil, slaughtered sixteen bison and their patriarch, stole my heart and body against a tree, and Solin showed me the horrors that awaited me if I chose love over obligation.
The vision of bones and burning haunted me every time I closed my eyes.
I lost my appetite.
I couldn’t sleep.
I was deeply afraid of who I was and the quaking power that’d sprung awake when I’d somehow transformed Natim from a normal growing stag into a beast that rivalled the largest bison.
I’d only meant to save him from the snake bite.
I’d sunk into the hot, vast, infinite power within me with one purpose.
To heal.
To cure.
To protect.
I hadn’t intended to morph him into something unnatural. I didn’t mean to awaken the gift inside me.
But now...
Now, that power was very much aware of what it was, what I was, and it taunted me relentlessly to play. To learn just how powerful I truly was. To test my limitations and turn my back on the medicine woman and Spirit Master’s lessons to become truly me.
A girl who wasn’t just a girl.
A girl who could become Armageddon.
Darro’s question constantly echoed: “What have you done?”
And just like when he’d asked it, a moment before Solin, Hyath, Aktor, Tiptu, and Tral poured into the lupic, I still had no reply.
The Nhil who had become my family all gawked at Natim. Way had stood and watched me, and when they all left, leading Natim out of the cramped lupic, I’d turned to Darro and shrugged.
That was all I could give him after everything we’d shared.
A shrug.
Because I couldn’t answer his heart-wrenching question.
I didn’t know what I’d done.
It’d been pure instinct and sheer desperation.
I couldn’t tell him what the vision had shown. I couldn’t confess that somehow, someway, I would become him. I would turn my back on such wonderful gifts of creation and slaughter the very stag I’d just saved.
I’d let the evening sweep me away as every clan member came to touch my hands, seeking some sign of the power within me. Pallen had studied me closely. Elderly Nhil hobbled close, asking in hopeful whispers for me to heal their stiff knees and cloudy sight.
Darro had followed me for a while, staying by my side even when Aktor glowered at him, but by the end of the night, after trying for a third time to get me to leave with him into the grasslands and finding only a curt shake of my head, he’d sighed, summoned Zetas, and left me to the very people I would slaughter if I chose him.
My eyes had remained dry as I watched him go, but my heart had sobbed oceans.
One day had turned into two, then three, then four.
Darro’s question kept racing through my head, and my power kept scratching at my veins. After all this time of being lost, I wanted to step into who I was so, so badly.
I wanted to run to Darro and share this wonderous awakening.
But the vision of a burning, blazing world kept drenching me in ice.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw a thousand pyres, and my ears rang with the haunting screams of every life I’d stolen.
