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“Yes, courtesy of the way you left me behind that day, gambling with my life for a chance at killing my fated mate.” Energy flickered along the side of my neck, a palpable sensation that quickened my pulse, a warning of those shadows that writhed around her fingertips. “Do not make me fight you.”
“Fight me?” she asked with a breathy chuckle, shifting her other hand behind her back. “Pretty Raven boy, fighting me won’t be enough. You will have tokillme. Because if you leave even a single breath in my lungs, I’ll use it to shout, telling all the world what you did in Valtaris.”
Shadows shifted at my core—scratching, scraping—her threat nothing but a drop of that endless source of darkness she was. “Don’t make me kill you, Lorn.”
Her lips curved into a smile that tensed all my muscles at once. “The moment you leave me forever, I’m already dead. Might as well take you with me and have you forever.”
She slammed her hand onto my chest, sending raw, blistering pain straight into my lungs. Her other hand shot forward from behind her back, the blast of shadows erupting from her palm and knocking me back several feet.
My spine hit something hard as pressure expanded inside my chest. Every breath became a tortured rasp, each gasp a desperate attempt to stave off the blood pooling inside my lungs. Darkness swallowed the edges of my vision.
Always darkness…
“No more!” I shouted and thrust my hands forward.
Shadows burst from both my palms for the first time in my life. They undulated around each other, two streams combining into a deadly projectile that sent Lorn tumbling backward over her nest, a web of black shadows clinging to her chest.
They penetrated her shift, her skin, her flesh, her bone, all while she struggled to her feet, her wide eyes fixed on my hands before they found mine. Then they snapped to the flight hole. Lorn shifted in a blast of plumes and shadows. Five ravens cawed and fluttered, dashing toward the cutout.
I struggled to my feet and moved my arms outward. A wall of shadows rippled around the entire room, growing tall and taller still, until they blocked the walls and the flight hole right along with it. They curved inward at the top, forcing the ravens back like a massive ocean wave.
It crashed down on the unkindness, leaving nothing behind but a trembling Lorn that swept up before my feet, and looked back at me from frightened eyes. “You bonded.”
“I did.” I grabbed her hair, yanked her to her feet, and positioned myself behind her. “I warned you!”
I sealed my hand over her mouth and nose, forcing my shadows deep into her lungs. My other arm wrapped tightly around her body, pulling her back against me, no matter how she bucked and writhed, her body so full of this fucking darkness she loved so much that she could no longer shift.
“I won’t let you hurt her,” I bit out, tears blurring my vision, my breaths nothing but hiccupping trembles as her tossing limbs lost their vigor. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry…” A guttural cry scratched my throat bloody as I collapsed to my knees, her legs listlessly sprawling out, her arms hanging motionlessly by her side. “I’m sorry for not getting you out…”
Lorn’s head tossed to the tremble of my body, her gaping mouth nothing but a blackened hole, her face gilded in a dark silver sheen. Not a smile on her lips, not a taunt from her tongue.
Dead.
Gone.
Cold swept over me, a sense of dread driving into my stomach that turned me more nauseous with every whimper, every sob, every wail. How long I cried over her body, I couldn’t say, but by the time I quietly carried her outside, the sun had fully emerged. It cast flickers of orange over the pyre I’d already prepared for her before the bonding. After ten years, one knew a person well. She would have never left me, would have never stopped being a threat to my bondmate.
But I’d tried.
Goddess help me, I’d tried.
“There’s nothing left of me worth saving,”Lorn’s words resonated in my head.“Just promise me you will burn me so my ashes will drift forever on the wind.”
“I gave you this promise,” I said and pressed the torch into the wood, the straw catching fire with a hiss. “You are truly free now. Fly, Lorn. Drift on the wind one final time.”
ChapterThirty-Two
Galantia
Present Day, Tidestone
The meadows surrounding Tidestone had transformed into a vast ocean of black tents overnight, the nearby trees bustling with massive flocks of ravens. Inside the walls, the air pulsed with life, and my heart right along with it. Sweet smoke curled up from scattered braziers, intertwining with the scents of roasted meat, warm bread, and the tangy undercurrent of drink that flowed all around us.
Thedrifwas magical. Arealfestival.
And I was part of it!
Sebian returned from a merchant with a sugar figure on a stick, the pathfinder wearing a fine green vest beneath his brown cloak, his hair pulled into a single, rather loose braid along his scalp by my not-so-skilled fingers. “Ever had one of these before?”
