28. Lore

Iheld her limp and bleeding body in my arms as I felt pain like no other in all my centuries tear through me. Sobs wracked my body as I yelled for her to come back. To stay with me as I prayed, pleaded, and cursed all in one breath, the woman in my arms who saw the world no longer.

For the woman who had defied me, stood up to me at my worst, who had taken a curse that was not hers and tried to break it; to a woman who had once planned to kill me but instead had fallen in love with me, a monster.

”I love you,” I cried, clutching her to my chest. Tears sprang from my eyes for the first time in so long. I had long believed myself incapable of crying, but now the tears came freely. I held her for what felt like an eternity as time stood still, as the goddess stood over me and screamed her displeasure. Because all around us, the castle was waking up from a long slumber, and people who had not moved in almost a millennia stumbled around, dazed and confused. I cared for none of it.

Only the pale-haired woman who was in my arms. I would take the curse back if it meant having her back. I”d never told her what the curse needed to break because I feared she”d do precisely what she had done: sacrifice herself for me, for my people. Because as much as she had tried to hide it, she was a good person. Now she was dead because of me. A part of me broke then. My soul splintered into two as I stared down at her, memorizing the details of her face.

I held her, rocking her, pleading to anyone who would listen to save her. I cursed myself to save her. I deserved it. ”Allora, goddess of the sun. I call upon you. Take my life for hers,” I pleaded as the night began to turn into day, and I clutched the body of the only woman I”d ever loved. The woman destined to love me, to be my mate, my one true love, Isabella.

I barely registered the coming of a warmth that burned like the sun until I felt her presence.

”Be gone. Your time is done,” a soft voice said behind me.

”This—this was not supposed to happen!” Nyx screeched in her rage before I felt the coolness of the moon slowly dissipate as it no longer shone in the sky. Only then did I dare to look up from the face I wanted to burn into my memory.

Only then did I beg my goddess, who had not answered my prayers all these centuries. The goddess of my people who had forsaken me to my fate. ”Please,” I begged. Just then, I noticed the crowd gathering. The crowd of people I”d looked on in horror every day for centuries, frozen in place. Enchanted to all eyes but my own. Those who unknowingly suffered the curse crowded around us. I wanted to snap and snarl at them. Because my heart was gone, dead and growing colder, and pain was festering inside me. ”Take me instead. Give her life back and take mine.”

Allora shook her head. Then she paused as if listening for something. She tilted her head and watched the woman in my arms, a tenderness spreading across her features. ”You should put Isabella down and step away.”

I clutched her tighter, shaking my head.

”Then you will burn,” Allora warned, her voice turning grave.

I felt it. The warmth emanating from Bella began to grow hotter. I turned to Allora, horrified at the thought of her burning Bella”s body. She merely watched in curiosity. Something else crossed her face: the look of pride and a tenderness that I”d seen on Alysha”s face when she looked at Billy or my mother when Lara and I were children.

The unconditional love of a mother to a child. That”s when I saw it. The similarities. She had the same shade of moonlit hair as hers and Allora”s twin sister Nyx. The same delicate features and dainty chin. Her lips, plump and shaped like a bow, were stretched in the same half-grin as Bella”s when amused. Her frame and body were the same petite shape. Allora”s eyes shone like the sun”s reflection; meeting her gaze was like feeling its warmth on my face. Yet, if you stared too long, it would burn and blind you.

Bella”s eyes were always like storm clouds on a rainy day, ready to flash with thunder and lightning at any moment. There was no denying the similarities. Though Nyx and Allora were twins, the only shared trait they had in appearance was the same moonlit hair. Touched by moonlight and the fierceness of the sun”s rays.

My thoughts escaped me as I felt the heat from Bella”s body turn into a painful blaze. I nearly dropped her but fought through the pain. I couldn”t let her go. I wouldn”t let her go. I”d burn with her.

Then, as if I no longer had control over my body, my hands slowly placed her on the ground, and my feet shuffled back to the side of the sun goddess, Allora.

”You”ll thank me later,” she said with a bemused smile.

”You, you are—” I said to her as I watched Bella with that familiar pain eating me away.

”I am,” she cut me off before I could admit the words bouncing in my head. Bella was her kin. ”Now, be patient, Lore. I made a mistake leaving her with her father. The kingdom of the sun isn”t a good place for a mortal child and a mother that can only be there half the day isn”t enough.”

Allora watched Bella calmly, and I watched alongside her. Even at that moment, I wanted to go to her, grab her, and take her into my arms, meeting her in death”s cold embrace. Now the heat from her body could be felt from where I stood, and I let the compulsion go and waited, hoping for a miracle.

Fire erupted, and panic sat in. I fought against the sun goddess”s magic as I railed and pushed to be released, to go to her, and to meet her fate in the same way, together forever.

”Stop it,” Allora muttered. ”Stop with these morbid poetic thoughts you have bouncing in your head and wait.”

Allora”s voice held a command, a power that spoke to me, to my dragon. That”s when I felt him, felt his emotions, heard his thoughts, and sensed him there for the first time in almost a millennia. We were one once again. My dragon told me to trust, to be calm, and to be patient. So I took a deep breath, and I listened.

Even when I watched the body of my beloved, my heart, catch on fire and burn until she was nothing but ashes. Even when the smoke cleared and the day continued, I knelt on the cold ground, refusing to look or talk to anyone, waiting for a promise that never came.

At first, nothing happened, but then Bella”s skin began to glow from within, as though embers were smoldered under her flesh. The light intensified until her entire body was wreathed in blazing fire. I shielded my eyes against the scorching heat.

A memory of a story my mother once read to me about the phoenix came to mind. She had called them the children of the sun goddess. Of allure and from sacrifice and death, they would rise from the ashes, anew and powerful.

When I could see again, ashes were all that remained. My heart shattered anew as doubt crept in. Then—movement. A small red-gold bird emerged from the cinders, feathers burning with living flame. The phoenix stretched its wings and trilled triumphantly before shapeshifting into Bella, reborn. Transformed into the body of the woman I loved and thought I had lost forever, Isabella stood before me, naked and whole. My world was right once again.

I let out a breath, a sob, and all the anguish that had consumed me as I clutched her to my chest.

”I love you.” I kissed her. ”I love you,” I repeated over and over, not believing she was here, whole and alive.

”When I said pounce on it, I didn”t mean in front of the whole kingdom!” Alysha rushed forward with a cloak, wrapping it around Bella as the kingdom gawked at us. ”This is not the best way for the kingdom to see their queen, now is it?”

”Queen?” Bella asked, dazed before her eyes snapped to Allora”s. ”I…” she began before her voice warbled. ”I heard you.”

”Of course you did, my child. You never left this world. You were merely waiting for your new beginning.” Allora stepped forward and took Bella”s hands.

”Why, why would you leave me here with him? With them?” she asked the goddess, her mother, the question only an abandoned child could ask the parents who didn”t want her.

”Because where I go, you cannot follow, and I could not imagine a world for you without the warmth of the sun. Every time you tilted your face to the warmth of my rays, I was there.” A bright golden tear trailed down her mother”s face. ”But I must go because holding this body for too long is taxing, and it took a great deal of energy to help guide you to your phoenix and rise from death”s ashes.”

Bella nodded, her disappointment clear in her expression. Before she released the goddess”s hands, she wrapped her arms around Allora, and I heard her whisper, ”Thank you, Mother.”

As one, Bella and I turned to the newly un-cursed kingdom of dragons.