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Seeing my friend like this is crippling. And I feel like I’m drowning with him, but he needs me to be strong. He needs me to be his backbone when he’s ready to stand on his feet again. Just like he did for me.
The door creaks and I turn to find Queen Zoraida walking in, her eyes holding a watery sheen as she looks at her son. She briefly nods to me before standing beside Draven, placing her hand on his extended arm on the bed. But he doesn’t so much as flinch or look at her. He remains a statue.
“Son,” she voices softly. “This is not the end.”
In a flash, his muscles tense and a heavy cadence of power thickens the air. In the next heartbeat, he shoves himself out of his chair, looking down at his mother.
He lashes his arm out and points towards the door. “Get out!”
With a gaping jaw, my stomach tightens, locking the air inside my lungs. My eyes are not believing that he moved, and my ears are in shock to hear his voice again. Days of no reactions from him, and the first one is blazing red with everything that he’s locked inside of himself, tearing out in a wild rush.
He’s not himself, because he only has love for his mother and has never once raised his voice at her. Never has he been cruel towards her. This is the immense pain he’s lost in that’s lashing out. The feeling as if his chest has been pried open and his heart is cleaved in two.
“Drav—” she goes to speak but he cuts her off.
“No!” His chest is rising in harsh movements as he drops his hand in a shaking fist. “Why couldn’t the stars tell you the sacrifice would be her life?!” He roughly shakes his head with a deep snarl. “I would have kept her here. Safe. Even if I had to lock her away to do that, she eventually would have understood. But now…” His voice breaks as he shifts from anger to defeat, falling back into his chair. “She’s dead.” Dropping his head on Emma’s shoulder, he breathes in a shaky breath. “My mate is fucking dead.”
His head tips towards us, and the next words get lost as he chokes back a wave of tears prickling at his eyes. “And I can’t fucking breathe without her.”
His mother softly nods in what feels like understanding. She, too, knows the pain of losing a mate.
“We will help you learn how to breathe again.” Her voice is tender and clear. “When the time comes, we will still be here.”
She turns on her heel to leave, sniffing away the sadness welling in her eyes. Pausing beside me, she places her hand on my shoulder but keeps her head forward. “Time will heal.”
I can’t take my eyes off my best friend and my chest burns at seeing him so broken. When I lost my mate, there were no remains. She was simply gone. The last memory I have of her was her smiling before she went off to sea.
But Draven… He’s going to have a hard time picturing her smile when he now knows what it looks like to see the light leave her eyes. The pale skin that remains cold. The pain of losing a mate already feels like an open wound that will never heal. But to have their corpse right before you must be torture. Yet, I can’t make him let go, or give her a proper burial because if my mate was dead in my arms, I would do the same thing.
Slowly, I turn to look at the side of Queen Zoraida’s face. “I think you and I both know time won’t heal for him.” Looking back, I watch Draven brush more of Emma’s hair back behind her ear with quivering fingers. “My worry is that we will soon lose him, too.”
Her head snaps to me and I can feel waves of emotions rolling off her, but I can’t make them out. Her weak and trembling voice gives away her fear as she says, “Please keep an eye on him. Time will heal.”
My brows automatically furrow when she says that again. When I meet her deep ocean eyes, they gaze into mine like she’s trying to tell me something I don’t understand. Begging me to figure out the reason behind her words.
But all I can say is, “I will watch over him.”
She nods. With one final glance back at Draven, her chest deflates, and then she strides out of the room. Leaving me with a male who is shattered but can’t find any of the pieces to put himself whole again. The worst part is, I don’t think he wants to be put back together.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Emma
The last remaining bit of air leaves my lungs as everything becomes freezing and dark. But then, the world around me blurs and I feel like I’m floating. Drifting on a soundless current that’s pulling me farther away from those I love.
I know this is the end. Death has finally caught up to me, and the music has stopped playing. A hollowness fills my chest as if I left my heart behind. And in a way, I did. I left him. Leaving me with an insistent ache that spreads through my veins as my blood calls for his.
But I will endure this pain for eternity. I’d die a thousand deaths if it means saving him. A small glimmer of peace settles inside me, knowing I got to see those beautiful blue eyes one last time. Something I will cherish until the stars choose for us to meet again. I just hope he knows that he has my love until the end of time.
Coldness bites at my skin, and my body feels weightless as I continue to float towards a small opening that shimmers with light, looking like the end of a blackened tunnel. When I near it, the air mists around me in a gentle blanket of fractured rays, tingling against my skin before clearing away when my feet touch solid ground. With widening eyes, I scan my surroundings, unable to stop my mouth from falling open in awe.
Two suns fill the sky, warming my skin in a comforting heat. But this place… It looks so similar to Deyadrum. As if every court was combined into one: snowy peaked mountains in the distance; lush green hills that roll for miles; towering trees that sway to a gentle breeze; a waterfall rushing over a small cliff into an iridescent pond; and flowers in full bloom. Everything is more vibrant here, saturated with colors that seem impossible to the naked eye.
A freshness fills the air with a sweetness I can’t describe, but it makes me inhale deeply, wanting to soak myself in it. Oranges? Vanilla, maybe? I can’t pinpoint it, yet it’s such a calming scent.
It brings back memories of a time when I was a child, a time when I was once free. Back when I used to run through the morning dew, clinging to the field on a spring day in the Mortal Lands of Helestria.
This has to be the afterlife, yet I’m not sure where I’m supposed to go. Am I here in this place all alone? Is there an afterlife for each of us, or one that is shared? Because I don’t see another soul in sight.
