And yet… I already knew.
“She said she cannot leave this place,” I said softly.
Gabriel turned to me, frantic now, eyes pleading. “But why? She—she can leave. She’s a goddess. She—” His voice cracked again, hoarse and raw. “She has to.”
I swallowed. “Because she isn’t boundtoit,” I said. “Sheisit.”
Gabriel’s breath caught.
“This grove. The mist. The others locked her from the world—but she made herself into something more. Something enduring.”
Eryndis stepped back, her hands falling from Gabriel’s face.
“I remade myself into something they could not erase. I am the grove. Its roots, its wards, its breath.”
She stepped closer, gaze breaking open with sorrow. “This place is woven from what remains of me. It is sanctuary only because I am sanctuary. If I leave… it crumbles. The magic fractures. The Veil tears.”
Her hand ghosted to Gabriel’s cheek again, soft as breath. “And all the souls who found refuge here—all those you swore to protect—would be left with nothing but ash.”
Gabriel fell to his knees. His voice cracked, raw. “Then I’ll stay,” Gabriel said fiercely, lifting his head. “If you cannot leave, I’ll stay with you. Here. We can live here, all of us.”
Her veil trembled. Her hands faltered where they touched him, and grief shadowed her gaze. “Gabriel… you do not understand what it means to bind yourself here.”
“I do,” he said. “I’ve carried that weight since the day you were taken from me. I would carry it ten lifetimes more if it meant being beside you.”
Silence fell heavy. The grove seemed to hold its breath. Eryndis stood there, barefoot in the grass, her veil stirring with sorrow and something unspoken.
Understanding dawned slowly on Gabriel’s face. Not relief. Not hope. Acceptance—the kind that bruises.
We turned back toward the village at last. Gabriel walked beside me, but something in his gait had changed, bent beneath love and loss made one.
I didn’t speak. My thoughts had already gone ahead, back to the girl curled beneath my blanket, still reaching for me in her sleep. Still trusting I hadn’t strayed too far.
Aurelia—the one who carried the gods’ marks. The one the prophecies spoke of. She might save us from the rot pressing in on every side. Or bring it crashing down with her. The blade poised to cut the world in two. The one I wasn’t supposed to love. The one I feared I would destroy.
50
Aurelia
I woketo an ache I didn’t yet recognize.
Not pain—at least, not only. It was too wide for that. Too full. Like I’d been opened and sewn back with something not quite mine. My body felt foreign, humming too loudly beneath my skin.
The sheets tangled at my hips. The hearth had burned to a smear of embers. The place where Malachi had been—warm hours ago—was cold now.
A faint stain marked the linen near me where Malachi had been, rust-dark against white. Blood. I brushed my fingers over it without much thought while I lay on my back and counted the beams above until my heartbeat steadied.
And I could feel everything: dew ticking off a branch outside, ash settling in the grate, a bird’s anxious flutter under the eaves. I pressed my palm to the inside of my thigh, half-expecting a mark. Nothing. No bruise. No bite. And yet the echo of his mouth lived there, a pull under the skin where his fangs had been.
Bite me, I’d whispered.
I should have been afraid of what that meant. But fear sat far away, drowned beneath something louder.
A soft knock. I wrapped a blanket around myself and padded to the door.
Lysara stood there in deep crimson travel leathers, braid high and neat. She always brought the room to ground. “Good morning,” she said, stepping in. “I hope you slept well.”
“I think I did.”