40. CHAPTER 40

CHAPTER 40

KALYLL

Drifting. My consciousness growing thin. I didn’t know how or when, but I’d lost track of Mythorne.

He was… scattered.

No, not exactly. Gone, he was gone. And my mate, she was safe.

We had done it, and now I could get back to her. We had done it.

Eager to hold Daniella in my arms, I attempted to gather myself and consolidate my shadowy form.

Nothing happened.

I reached out again.

For the first time, I realized I was the one who was scattered.

In the explosion—there had been an explosion, I now recalled—I’d been ripped into thousands of dandelion-fuzz particles. I felt each fragment disseminated all over the clearing. I writhed and twisted, trying to bring each scrap toward a common center, but they barely shifted. It was useless. I was too weak. The shadows that made up my body were fragile, insubstantial. They slipped through cracks in the ground and drifted away with the slightest stir.

I was trapped in my own darkness, unable to escape. Time slipped away and so did I. Death was closing in around me, and there was no way to fight it. No way at all.

Resignation filled me as I understood my time had come. The Envoy had promised that Daniella would be my queen, and she had been. In my heart, she was my wife. My everything.

I love you. Be well.

She would live, enjoy a full existence, free of the peril I had brought her way.

I could let go, relinquish myself to the void, knowing she would go forth, shining her light.

Surrendering, I dismissed the shadows to their homes at the base of night-darkened trees and gloomy holes between rocks.

It wasn’t a bad death.

A weak light, warm and gentle, shone nearby. It flickered, nearly sputtering out. Like the finest silk, it draped over the ground, the trees, the rocks. It was the only gleam of hope under the dark sky and absent moon.

Where was it coming from?

As soon as the question formed, I knew the answer.

Daniella.

It was her glow, the luminescence of her very soul. She was weak and battered, but she burned for me, her being calling mine.

Please, you have to come back. You can’t leave me.

—I… can’t.

Yes, you can.

—I’m too w-weak.

Dammit. I don’t care. You’re my mate and without you, what kind of life will I lead? You have to get your ass back here.

—But I’m… so far gone.

See my light? See me? All you have to do is follow.

And so I did.