Page 109 of The Blood Rites

Kael’s fingers are turning blue. The shadows around his arms are flickering. “Please,” he says, desperate. “Let her go. Choose me.”

His voice breaks.

“I can’t,” I say. “I saw the way she clung to the edge. She wants to live.”

Lyssandra’s gaze flicks between us. There is something like pity in her eyes. She gives the tiniest shake of her head.

“You’re wrong,” she says. There is no give in it. “This is my choice.”

Her other hand, dangling free, moves in a gesture I’ve never seen. A quick, sharp movement of the fingers across her chest before touching them to her lips. It feels like goodbye.

For the first time since meeting her, I feel her Mana—cool, clear, the sensation of splashing water on a summer’s day. Water gathers around my wrist, slick and alive, making it easier—so much easier—to let go.

I try to tighten my grip, but it’s useless. The water is everywhere, between our hands, chilling my bones. The pain recedes, replaced by a cold that numbs all sensation.

I look her in the eyes, willing her to stop this. To stay. “You matter,” I whisper.

She smiles and lets herself slip free.

The water seems to stretch between us, connecting us like a rope. For a second I think it might pull taut.

But it doesn’t.

Her eyes flash wide, as if she understands something I don’t.

Then she falls without a scream. Just a flicker of white and blue, vanishing into the clouds.

Kael pulls me up, hauling me onto solid ground. I collapse onto him, our limbs tangling in a heap of exhaustion and spent Mana.

We don’t speak.

A spiralling flow of golden-red light shoots into the air from beneath the clouds and races towards the Mother Shard.

The death counter burns seven.

I think I hear her prayer echoing from below.

I’m staring into Kael’s eyes, breathing his air, when the world flickers. The island, the sky, Kael—everything dissolves in blinding light.

When I open my eyes again, I’m back in the Embrace, lying on the floor of my room.

My hands are slick and wet, though my wounds and burns are already fading. Water pools in my palm, and I can’t tell if it’s a gift from Lyssandra or my own tears.

I stare at it, willing myself to stop crying.

I can’t.

I don’t think I ever will.

Fifteen

I must have slipped into sleep.

The darkness stutters behind my eyes, fragments of memory from the Heartlands churning through me. My body is weightless, then heavy. My skin tightens and peels with phantom burns, and the salt left behind by tears and sweat. I can feel Lyssandra’s fingers in my palm, then the slip, the drop, the way the water severed my desperate grip.

The shock of her absence is ice-cold and cruel.

When I come to, I am still on the floor of my room, the golden cracks beneath me faintly pulsing. My arms, folded under my chest, have gone numb. My cheek is pressed to the cold floor. The discomfort feels more deserved than the safety of the bed.