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Feron’s pale purple eyes were swirling storms of pity.
Killian cleared his throat. “Riven’s magic has always reacted to your presence, Keera. You can’t see him without causing a spike in his pain.”
All the blood drained out of me. “Me being close to him will hurt him?” The words scraped against my throat like shattered glass refusing to come out.
Killian’s arm dropped and his mouth hung open though no words came.
My lip trembled. “I cannot say goodbye?”
Killian’s eyes were misted but he straightened his back and shook his head.
My chest cracked in half. Rivers of tears ran down my cheeks and my head spun until I couldn’t see the ground underneath my feet. I knew if I closed my eyes my knees would give way and my body would collapse on the ground, but I didn’t so much as blink.
Crumbling into my despair would do nothing for Riven. Even though my throat burned and my mind mapped the exact path Ineeded to take to the kitchens for a casket of wine, I didn’t move. Riven had been my strength for too long for me to waver now. He had stood by me through the darkness and kept his burl lit even when he had no reason to hope.
I couldn’t let myself succumb. I had to hold onto the light for both of us even when the tiniest spark seemed too hard to grasp.
I wiped my eyes and faced both of them with a strength I didn’t know I had. “Make sure someone is always with him from the moment we leave.” I turned around and headed out the door. “If Riven dies, he shouldn’t die alone.”
CHAPTERTHIRTY-EIGHT
IDIDN’T NEED THE MAPin my pocket to take me where I needed to go. I ran out of Sil’abar without care for all the eyes I attracted and didn’t stop until I reached the garden. I pulled the vial from my bag that I kept for portal travel and placed a berry in the small pool between the two Elder birch that twisted together.
I didn’t take the trail into Myrelinth, but instead marched north to the small pond that had just reopened its portal. I didn’t know where to place mywinvraso I threw it into the water without care. The pool swirled with auric ribbons, and I stepped into it but remained perfectly dry.
When I surfaced, I stepped out of the lake at the Order. The same place I had learned to swim as a child. The familiar scent of brine and salt pierced through my chest and made my red eyes sting even more than they already did.
The guard tower was empty and there were no lanterns lit along the grounds of the keep. I wrapped my cloak around my body to shield me from the evening gusts and marched toward the north side of the island.
The part I never went to.
The spot where she was buried.
My Brenna.
No one would know that her grave was a grave at all. But even with the overgrowth of grass, I could feel her presence in the earth. Her bones called out like they belonged to me. In every way that mattered they did. Brenna had no family to remember her, no mourners to kneel at her grave and water the wildflowers with their tears.
I collapsed to my knees beside the small roll in the hill along the cliffside and screamed. My gusts whirled around me, lashing out in every direction just like my pain, carrying my shrieks out to sea.
I pounded my fist into the ground and sobbed. “I can’t do this,” I yelled to the sky. To my ancestors. To my mother. To whoever was listening. “Not again.”
I had already been forced to plunge my blade through one lover’s heart and now I had to do it once more. Even though Riven would be miles away from me, even though his chest would not bleed as Brenna’s had, whether it was the next seal or the last, when my bloodstone dagger sank into the ground his life would end just the same.
And I would be the one to take it.
The walls that I had packed my grief behind crumbled and buried me. I bent over my knees until my forehead scraped the earth as I begged the sea herself to end this. When she didn’t answer by pulling me into her depths, I yanked the red dagger free from my belt and threw it on Brenna’s grave.
“I don’t want this anymore,” I screamed. The image of my mother’s face in the garden fluttered across my mind but my painshredded it to pieces. She never had to live with the guilt of the Light Fae’s sacrifice. She never had to carry the weight of it for decades because she was gone in a matter of days.
But I had to carry it all. The weight of my decisions, the weight of hers, and the weight of the ones I would be forced to make. My heart was shattered and I knew there was no way to put the pieces back together. There was no way to heal from this once it was done.
I would finish my job. I would break the seals, but then I would plunge that dagger through the pile of pieces that was my heart. That blade had taken so much from me; it was only fitting that it should be the end of me too.
The dagger that took the Blade and both her lovers.
A warm breeze flittered across my cheek like a soft caress. I choked on a laugh, picturing Brenna wiping away my tears. “A promise is a promise,” I whispered, an echo of the vow we had made to each other.
Someone approached behind me. The scent of parchment and fire smoke wafted through the air and I knew I was safe. My body hardened, waiting for Killian’s touch, but it wasn’t his hand that fell on my back.
