CHAPTER 60

SLADE

The world has gone gray.

I have gone numb.

And Auren has gone still .

My hands stroke her face, though she no longer feels my touch. My lips press against her eyes, though she no longer cries. My arms cradle her body against mine, though she no longer trembles with cold.

I bury my face against her neck, my tears soaking against her pulse that no longer thrums. Inhaling her scent that's now tinged with the sharp pull of blood. Wrap my fingers around her ribbons that no longer twist.

But I hold her.

Gently. Desperately. Wretchedly.

I thought I knew what it meant to be torn apart when my two sides separated. But no.

No.

This is what it feels like.

To have your soul ripped in half.

My p?yur bond has been cut. Like scissors to thread, both pieces left to float in a colorless sea. Drifting further and further away from one another, every wave and gentle lap separating us even more.

I don't know how long I kneel upon the ground with her. I hear nothing but the silence of her body, see nothing but her motionless form.

My mother speaks no more, but I didn't expect her to. That one word seems to be the only thing she's ever able to tell me. The first time, it was my divined promise.

This time, it's my fatal devastation.

She's clutching the wound at her stomach, but then her hand moves to my back. My mother's touch is the only thing that makes me aware of anything else other than Auren. Her tense fingers alert me a second before Wick and a group of Vulmin appear in the courtyard.

"Auren?" Wick calls out. The heavy silence that follows turns his tone urgent. " Auren !"

He runs, halting beside her, knees hitting the ground. "No…"

Other Vulmin gather behind him, and I hear their punctuated shock and grief that seems to drive holes through my tattered remains.

I don't turn to look. Don't speak. All my attention stays on her.

My focus will always be her.

"We saw the dragon fall… We brought a healer," Wick says thickly, and one of the Vulmin comes rushing forward.

My mother flinches, but the person gently murmurs something and then puts her hand on the wound. Red shadows drift in, like the magic is sifting through the ghost of the blood my mother has lost.

When the healer pulls away, my mother's face is not quite so pale. Her hands no longer shaky. The two of us share a look, green eyes colliding, knotted together from this horrific scene.

Inside, I'm still denying it all. Still pleading no .

But the sky is draped with gray clouds, Auren's aura has gone out like a flame, and I'm left with this gaping rip down my entire being, because she's gone .

Gone, and taken all of the light with her.

There's nothing but darkness left.

My dragon lies dead behind me. Its black heart stabbed through with a sword and no longer beating. Decaying corpses pollute the courtyard. My father's disintegrated body still oozes.

And suddenly, I don't want Auren anywhere near this. The dead bodies of the soldiers—my evil, festering father—they don't deserve to be in the same space as her. In this same atmosphere.

I have to take her away from this place. Far away. So I pick her up and I turn from Glassworth Palace, and then, I start to walk.

I don't know where I'm going. I don't care. I'm just following this incessant need to carry Auren away. As if putting distance between her and the place where she was killed will somehow make the claws of death recede from her, to force her from its clutches.

Or maybe I just want to take her from the land that has so utterly betrayed her. The land that let her be stolen away and then let her blood soak the soil when she returned.

I leave behind the death at the palace's courtyard. Trail down the long slope from the plateau. Avoid the river. Bypass the road that forks off toward Lydia.

My gaze stays straight ahead while I keep Auren's body cradled in my arms. Her head is tucked against my shoulder, ribbons gathered at her lap, some of the lengths fallen down to stream below.

People follow.

First, it's just my mother, plus Wick and the other Vulmin from the courtyard. But as we pass Lydia, more join us from the city. They see me carrying Auren, and the whispers and gasps and sobs pull them onto the road. They join in the march, like communing in a parade of a public death rite.

Everyone falls into the fray, walking behind me, keeping a respectful distance. Their quiet crying and steady footsteps are the chorus of a somber song.

My gaze shifts down to Auren's face. I could almost believe she's only sleeping, if I weren't so in tune with her. But I am, so I feel her absence through every thought, every blink, every breath.

When my heart nearly burst with poison and killed me, I thought that was the end. I thought that was the worst thing that could ever happen.

I was wrong.

This— this is the worst. For the breeze to still flow and for steps to still tread, and for the world to just keep on going after she's ended.

For me to still live, while she's dead in my arms.

I don't want it. I don't want this life if I can't share it with her.

Thick, horrific emotion clobbers my heart as I look back up at the road. I know I'm in shock, know that numbness hasn't released me from its grip, and I don't want it to. Because I know what follows will be something I can't bear.

The reality that I exist in a world where she does not.

I clutch her tighter against me, long after the sun sets and night clutches us in its grip, and still, I walk.

When Auren came here, she had to remember who she was. But I've always known exactly who she is. Light and life. Love and warmth. A gleaming vibrancy that I never deserved but never would have given up. She is mine and I am hers, for all of eternity.

In every life.

But in this one, she has been taken from me.

And it's my fault.

If only I had been stronger when I was young. If only I had snuck into my father's bedchamber one night while he slept, and rotted him through. If only I'd been faster, more powerful today, been able to kill him before he could hurt her.

Instead, the person I hated the most…killed the one I love the most.

The severed pair bond keeps tearing me to shreds. Crevices spreading, gouging, deepening into the pits of my innermost self. All while the song of the grieving follows me.

I failed her.

My shame clings. Sticking to my breaths with hot blame and fusing with my every thought. A paired should never fail their bonded, and yet, I have. Fatally so. I tore the world open and made her come here alone and unprotected.

Every bad thing has happened because my rip brought her here in the first place.

Maybe that's why I realize I'm walking toward the bridge. I blame Annwyn as much as I blame myself. This land and I, we were supposed to be her home.

Instead, we became her end.

I walk us through the deadlands, realizing they were a terrible omen right from the start. And when the long night gives way to a weak, gray morning, I still don't stop.

None of the other fae do either. They continue with me in this quiet vigil, trailing behind like gathering shadows.

But one of those shadows finally comes up to me and places a hand at my shoulder. My storming silence and unfailing pace bursts open with the touch.

I snarl and whirl, feeling like a fae beast ready to rip apart anyone who dares come too close to Auren.

Wick instantly holds up his hands and takes a step back. "I just…where are you taking her?" he asks thickly, his eyes bloodshot.

"To the bridge," I growl, panting hard. "Back to Orea with me."

Wick's eyes falter. "But this is her home, Ravinger."

"And it fucking failed her, didn't it?" I shout back in his face.

Wick grimaces in the leaden dawn, and his eyes go watery. "Fae will want to be able to pay their respects. To honor her here," he says, his expression strained. " Please . I know she's your paired, but she's their Ly?ri," he tells me, gesturing to the throng of people who have stopped behind us. "She's my family."

"And yet, we all failed her too , didn't we?"

Grief tightens his face.

"Yes," he finally answers with a hard swallow. "We did. She was supposed to be our rising dawn, and we let darkness fall upon her."

And that darkness will never end.

Even now, the sun hides behind a swathe of wrinkled clouds, as if it doesn't dare show its face. As if it's draped itself in a veil of mourning.

"Please don't take her," Wick says again, his voice low and pleading. "Let her stay here, in the world she was born."

I glance away, teeth grinding.

I gnaw on grief and anger and emptiness, though I'm unable to swallow any of it down. Unable to digest it.

Indecision wars through me. I want to go down the bridge. To take her back to Fourth. Back to Digby. The Wrath. Keep her close for as long as I can.

I look back at the large group of fae that have followed. See flashes of their mournful eyes, their grieving faces all turned toward me. Toward her.

My jaw aches, throat closing. " I can't ."

My confession constricts. I wait for Wick to argue, maybe even beg, but he doesn't. Instead, silence spreads between us for several long moments until he breaks it with a quiet offering. "I can carry her for a while, if you need."

The first instinct I have is to clutch her tighter, to lash out with anger. But I stop myself, because I know his intention isn't to take her from me. It's a gesture. One that offers to help me carry this monumental loss.

But he can't. No one can.

Though I know they grieve, it will never be the same for them as it is for me.

Carrying her is the last gift I'll ever get. The last chance I'll ever have to feel her. I'm not ready to give that up.

How can I?

So I simply shake my head and turn, and I keep walking. Toward the bridge. Toward the end of Annwyn.

Toward the place where I know I will need to stop and make a choice.

But for now, I hold her.

The new day is held beneath a warped sky. No lavender light, no birdsong or fresh breeze. Just gray clouds above that match the gray ground below, as the silt of the deadlands' soil dusts me from knees to boots.

The fae still trail behind us, while my mother walks to my left and Wick to my right. He hasn't spoken again since he asked me to not take her.

And I don't know what's right. I don't know if the right answer is to lay her to rest here in her homeland or if it's better to take her back to Orea. But I'm still walking toward the bridge. Still refusing to make a decision.

Unable to.

Because if I choose and that decision lands here, then I have to stop walking that much sooner. I will have to set her body down and give her to the earth. And when I do that…

I will have to let her go.

I suddenly stop. The tread of my boots sinks into the ashen ground just as much as my stomach, while the sharp scrape of realization flays me open.

Because this is it.

After this, I will never hold her again. Never be able to look upon her.

I will never be able to feel the satiny lengths of her ribbons or brush away a lock of her hair. I will never hear her laugh or see the way her expression brightens with joy. I'll never hear her say my name or feel her heartbeat thrumming against my touch.

I won't feel the curve of her waist or be able to tuck her against my shoulder. Never see the way the sunlight glistens against her skin or how the moon dapples her burnished cheeks.

Thousands of nevers that will stack, one by one, and suffocate me.

The moment I let Auren go, I lose her forever.

Souls are eternal. It's why the finality of death feels so wrong. Why our hearts break and grief strikes. So while death may be common, it isn't right . It isn't natural .

Her soul is supposed to be with mine for all of eternity.

I swallow hard, eyes burning as I look down at her. My heart was rotted before, but now it lies split and ruptured. Just a gaping organ in a useless chest, the golden scale over it nothing but a torturous taunt.

One glance at the horizon, and I know when I climb this slope, the bridge will be in view, and I will have to decide. Here or there. Annwyn or Orea.

My knees hit the ground. It cripples me and holds me in place, right here on the dead soil.

"Slade?" Wick says carefully at my side. He doesn't come too close. Doesn't risk my severed pair bond lashing out at him.

"I can't," I say again, the same thick confession that I spoke hours ago.

My mother crouches down beside me. Slender hand stroking my hair. I look over at her with burning eyes and a scoured throat. "How can I?" I ask, though I know she won't talk back, even though I'm desperate for the answer.

How can I possibly let Auren go?

"What was the point?" I demand, my voice a furious sob. "What was the point of any of it, if I was just going to lose her?"

Her lips turn down. Her eyes fill up.

" What was the fucking point ?" I heave out.

My mother lifts her hands, placing one at my heart and one at Auren's. Over one that's split, and one that's still. She doesn't speak, but her eyes and touch say plenty.

This. This was the point.

To love her.

The tension in my shoulders finally rolls out, and I slump, my head hanging in heavy misery.

I can't let her go…

But it isn't about me.

It's about honoring Auren. It's about respecting what she'd want.

And despite what Annwyn has done, I saw it with my own eyes in Lydia. The way people looked at her with reverence and loyalty. The way she moved through the streets, with a surety of herself.

Annwyn is Auren's home, and I cannot take her from it.

When I look up again with eyes that drip, my mother nods and drops her hands. I get to my feet, clutching Auren with a trembling hold.

I swallow hard, though this lump in my throat will never leave.

"She'll stay here," I tell Wick quietly, the promise rasping out.

I see the relief as it drains out the stiffness of his posture. "Thank you."

The breath I heave in is hard-won, like hands grappling a rope to pull a ship through a storm. "But there are people who care about her in Orea too. People who need to see her. To say…" I have to force the last word out. "Goodbye."

Wick nods. "I—"

A loud noise abruptly tears through the air, making us startle.

"What was that?" Wick says.

We both take one look at each other and then race up the slope. When we reach the top, I'm able to look out toward Annwyn's edge. To where the deadlands drop off and the world ends in nothing but haze and void.

There, the small bridge is tucked in the fog.

But…the bridge is flooded with soldiers clad in red armor. More fae invading into Orea. Except, no, they're not invading, they're—

"They're running away from the bridge…" Wick says, and then his eyes widen. " Gore ." He suddenly whirls around to the group at the bottom of the slope. "Run!"

Our group doesn't hesitate to listen to his command. They instantly scatter, including my mother.

"Those aren't Stone Swords," Wick explains as we watch everyone's hurried steps kick up dust. Then our attention turns back to the soldiers. "We need to run."

"But why are they running?" I ask.

Wick doesn't get to answer.

That crack of noise we first heard is nothing compared to this. Sound splits, making us stagger, and I watch as the fog around the bridge seems to collide, aftershocks folding the air.

Then, in the next instant, the bridge erupts. With a flash of power and bright blue light, it blasts out of existence.

Gone. Just…fucking gone .

The way back to Orea, destroyed.

My legs nearly give out from the shock of it as I stare, and beside me, Wick gapes. But a moment later, the land right next to the bridge starts to collapse and give way. The land falling and sucking the fleeing soldiers down with it.

Fear stabs through my chest as Wick and I both realize what's happening at the same moment.

We turn and run.

The land crumbles, falling away in huge chunks, shaking the entire earth while it roars like thunder. "Go, go!" I shout at Wick, and his arms pump, sprinting harder and gaining speed.

Wick looks over his shoulder, sees me falling behind, and his brown eyes widen. " Faster !"

I can feel the earth quake. Hear it roaring down at me as it falls away. But I clutch Auren to me and run as fast as I fucking can.

But I'm not fast enough.

Wick makes it over the slope right as the dirt gives way beneath me.

I have a split second to look at Wick, and then Auren and I…

Fall.