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I was dead.
Strangely, even with death mere breaths away, a sense of detachment washed over me. I had done it; I’d killed Domren. Had exacted my revenge on behalf of so many. Sebian’s sister. His family. Ravenna. Not a bad death by any means.
Something speckled by face, warm and wet, seasoning my lips. Metal. Blood? Was I bleeding out already?
I blinked the viscous blur from my vision. No, the soldier who’d grabbed me was bleeding, blood dripping from that gushing socket where a reddened blade had replaced his eye. The sword must have entered through the side of his neck and torn through his aorta, gushes of blood pouring from his mouth in slowing intervals.
My knees buckled.
“Shh…” a voice hushed, a strong arm wrapping around my middle and keeping me upright. “It’s just me,anoaley. You’re safe now. We’re here.”
I sank into Malyr’s chest and looked up at his face, black renegade wisps sticking to the blood that painted his face here and there. “You came…”
“Of course we came. I’m never letting you go.” With a kick, he dislodged the twitching corpse from his sword. “By the throne!”
“Saw it!” Beside us, Sebian pulled back a shadowy arrow, sending it through the skull of a soldier who’d drawn his bow beside the throne. Just as quickly, he hoisted his bow and let two black daggers form in his hands, which he sliced through the attacking soldiers. “Footsteps behind you!”
Malyr spun us around, holding me tightly against him with one arm while cleaving through the head of a soldier with the other. “Can you still shift on your own?”
I shook my head, my muscles suddenly like lead. “No.”
“I’ll help you,” he said. “But first, we have to get rid of these soldiers. Return my gift, little dove. Pour it all into me.”
“I’ve never done that before.”
“I’d wager you’ve done a great many things today that you have never done before,” he said with a tense chuckle. “You can do this, too.”
He was right. I’d come this far.
I could do this. I had to!
Closing my eyes, I placed my hand onto his black cuirass and focused on the gift at my core—the one that wasn’t mine, shadows pacing the closed borders of my void. I tapped into them, luring them from my chest, down my arm, into my hand, and through my fingertips from there.
Malyr tensed, a pained groan rumbling in his chest as shadows ever-so cruel returned a burden that… He pushed me away. “Take her!”
I stumbled sideways as Malyr gripped his sword with both hands, fighting off two soldiers at once.
“I got you, sweetheart.” Sebian pulled me against him, throwing a dagger at a soldier who stormed out of a corridor, conjuring a new one before the old embedded itself in the enemy’s throat. “We’re going to get you out of here, I promise. We just need to cut back some of these bastards before we can dare a shift.”
Malyr and Sebian worked in tandem, deflected and countering the soldiers storming toward us. All the while, they kept me shielded, their backs to me, their bodies my fortress in a sea of chaos and death.
“Three o’clock!” Malyr shouted.
Even before Sebian spun around, I sent a blast of shadows toward the soldier, sending him to slam with his spine against the throne before he folded and moved no more.
“That’s my girl,” Sebian praised, throwing another shadowy dagger that took a soldier in the eye, dropping him instantly. “We can’t keep this up. There’s a fucking nest of them somewhere in there. We have to get back to the others.”
“Get your bow and keep them at a distance!” Malyr shouted, then turned to face me, his hands settling on my arms. “My gift, little dove. Give it to me.”
I reached to Malyr’s chest once more, my fingers trembling at the sensation of his gift abandoned my core. How empty I was without it, without him.
Something shifted, a movement to my right caught my eye. I turned my head, meeting Domren’s cold, deadened eyes as he thrust one of his daggers.
My heart stuttered to a standstill while time lazily crept behind, my gaze searching Malyr’s. Our eyes locked, and in that single moment, I saw so many things that hadn’t happened yet…
A crown sitting on his head. Tears in his eyes upon the birth of our first child. A handful of white strands weaving through his black hair—like a lifetime of shared memories not yet lived that unraveled before my mind’s eye. I wanted them so badly!
Malyr stared at me.
