We’re going to die. Together.
Rowan’s fingers tremble as they glide over my hair. He swallows hard, pain tightening his face, and when he speaks, his voice is barely there.
“This isn’t the end,” he says, taking a shaky breath. “I’ll…I’ll find you again…in the next lifetime. Maybe then…”
“Shhh…”
My heart is breaking. I just found him. Just got a taste of what love could be and…
My breath stutters.Love. The thing I’ve been refusing to name. The truth I’ve been circling, terrified of what it could mean if I admitted it. But there’s no running from it now, not with our blood soaking into the earth, not with the bond tearing us apart from the inside.
I love him.
“I know…” he says, reading my mind again. For the last time. “I know… And my heart will forever be yours.”
Tears blind me. “In the next life then.”
“I’ll find you. I’ll always find you.”
The light beneath his skin surges, flickering out like a dying candle. The bond surges, white-hot, and I cling to him as the pain crescendos.
Brightness erupts from his chest, and like when the bond was formed, swallows us whole.
And then, nothing.
Chapter Eight
I blink against the searing white.
Not light. Not darkness. Just…nothing. Endless and soundless, stretching in every direction like the world has been erased and forgotten.
I don’t hurt.
The pain that was tearing me apart has vanished so completely it leaves me disoriented. I lift my hands, expecting blood, wounds, something, but there’s nothing. I can’t even feel the constant pulse of the bond.
“Lyra.”
I turn.
Rowan stands a few paces away, whole and unbroken, his wings still torn but the gold veins have been wiped from his skin. For a moment I can only stare at him, because the last time I saw him, he was dying. We both were.
“You’re here,” I breathe.
“So are you,” he says softly.
Understanding creeps in, slow and cold.
“We’re dead,” I whisper.
Rowan’s mouth curves. “Not exactly.”
The white around us begins to hum.
The air thickens, pressing against my skin, and before I can ask what’s happening, Rowan’s body lifts from the ground. He inhales sharply as white-gold light bursts from his chest, pouring out of him in violent streams.
“Rowan!” I cry, scrambling toward him, but I can’t reach him. He’s too high.
The light intensifies, threading through his arms, his spine, his wings. His broken feathers ignite, not in flame, but in brilliance, burning away piece by piece. They dissolve into sparks that rise and vanish into the white above us until his wings disappear entirely.