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Kai lifted from where he’d been leaning against one of the ballroom’s many pillars as Saoirse, beautiful in an amethyst gown, swept into the room, carrying a music box in her hand. Kai remembered it from these memories. It had been a gift for her that played the aria they’d first danced to together. Saoirse wore a diadem—one that looked an awful lot likethediadem—on her head.
“You look stunning,” Aneurin said, and Kai didn’t pay attention to what came next because that’s when he spotted her.
“Isla!”
He ran to where she’d been on the floor, barely able to catch her breath, her face splotchy and tear-stained.
“What happened?” he asked, and she peered up at him like she was seeing a ghost. He held her face in his hands and flicked her tears away, but they just kept falling. “Breathe,” he told her as she’d once told him, holding back his own quivering. “It’s okay. We’ll find a way ou—”
“No, it’s not,” she cracked, her body trembling. “It’s not okay.” She turned and sucked in a breath, her eyes widening. “No, no, no.”
Kai turned, seeing that Saoirse had opened the music box and the aria had begun. She wrapped her arms around Aneurin, but though the image of them was loving, the air was tense.
Something was wrong.
“Warrior Heart.”
Now, Kai heard it. That woman’s voice, and when he looked beyond Saoirse and Aneurin, he saw her there. Something about her struck him as familiar.
“Let us out,” Isla whispered, grabbing onto Kai’s shirt and holding him tighter as Saoirse’s hand dropped behind her, back into the folds of her skirts. “Please. I see it, I understand.”
“See what?” Kai asked, his eyes not knowing where to land.
He hadn’t been prepared for Saoirse’s cry out or her mighty lunge to plunge a blade into Aneurin’s heart.
Hadn’t been prepared as he glimpsedthedagger clutched in her trembling hand, stopped not by Aneurin grabbing her wrist but by his power, Kai’s power, taking hold of his mate’s mind.
The world around them pulsed, the ground beneath them shook, and the stained-glass window cracked. Cracked, cracked,and cracked.
Aneurin looked between the blade and the woman the goddesses had blessed him with. “What is this? Saoirse?”
Isla held Kai tighter, and he wrapped his arms around her, fighting back against the void inside him that attempted to push her away.
“I have to do it,” Saoirse sobbed through gritted teeth, fighting against his hold on her and what seemed to be her own will for herself. That violin kept singing. “I’m the only one who can.”
“What?” Kai breathed, and he felt Isla shudder.
He met her gaze again. The look in her eyes as tears fell, as she mapped and memorized every plane of his face, shattered him.
Thunder and lightning rattled the skies, making the Pack Hall tremble so violently that Kai had to brace himself.
The diadem glimmered atop her head as Saoirse regained her strength. “You won't stop.It won't stop.” Her limbs shook as Aneurin’s body locked up as if she had pulled a leash on him, pulled at their bond, her link to his power. She seemed to hold him in place as the diadem glowed brighter, as the dagger burned, too. Kai could’ve sworn there were runes that pulsed on the blade, on the hilt.
Aneurin’s eyes were murderous, crimson and shadow, and his hands struggled to lift. He’d killher; Kai felt it within his own power. And Saoirse seemed to see that lethality, see that monster he’d become and would be forever, too.
Tears streaming down her face, she firmed her hold on the dagger and steeled herself. “You will destroy everything unless I…I…I’m sorry.”
With one more cry that rattled the realms, the Luna of Phobos plunged the dagger into her mate’s heart.
Everything stopped.
The world went quiet.
All still.
Saoirse and Aneurin dropped to their knees, the blade driven in to the hilt. The aria came to an end.
Aneurin swayed, eventually slumping onto the sobbing Saoirse’s shoulder. She laid him down on the marble floor, and then folded over him, his blood coating her as she cried over his chest, repeating that she was sorry and that she loved him.
