Page 90 of She Who Holds My Wrath

“Aran.” Maelkar’s voice is low, his shadow magic flickering restlessly from his skin. “Come on.”

I can’t move at first. My legs feel locked in place, useless beneath me, my hand trembling around Velentha’s letter so violently, the parchment crackles in my grip. Her handwriting is burned into me, every curve of every letter carved into my memory like a wound I know will never close.

When I woke and found her gone, the bed still warm from where she’d been lying beside me, I knew. I knew before my mind would understand it. Panic had ripped through me so hard, I could barely breathe. I’d dressed with shaking hands, barely fastening half my clothes properly before I ran through corridor after corridor, calling her name into empty stone halls that gave nothing back.

Then I felt it. That strange magnetic pull in the air. Magic so powerful it made the walls hum, made the floor tremble beneath my feet. It dragged at something inside me, some instinctive tread pulling me towards the training room. And the second I crossed that threshold and saw him standing there, whole, breathing, alive… I knew exactly what she had done.

She left me. She lied to me. And she sacrificed herself alone to bring him back.

The truth crushes the air from my lungs all over again. I swallow hard, but it does nothing to ease the suffocating pressure in my chest.

“She left me,” I whisper, my own voice sounding broken to my ears, thin and hollow and nothing like my own.

Maelkar’s gaze flicks to mine, something softening in his expression. It’s not pity, it’s not even sympathy. It’s recognition. Pain recognising pain.

“Come on, let’s get you somewhere quiet,” he repeats, gentler this time.

Velentha. Talia. Marta. Theodus. The names pile inside me like stones. One grief stacked on top of another until I can barely carry the weight of them. Everyone keeps dying, slipping through my fingers no matter how tightly I try to hold on, and I’m so goddamn tired of surviving it.

I force my legs to move, everybody else leaving as the door closes behind us with a soft click, leaving Daisy and Korithax alone. A queen and her resurrected king. A miracle bought with a life. Her life.

We turn down a side corridor, stepping into a smaller chamber lit by soft, flickering flames. I drop onto one of the stone benches, Velentha’s letter still clenched in my fist, the parchment wrinkled where my fingers shake. Unfolding the letter, I read the words over and over again until I can no longer see them through the blur from my tears.

Aran,

Guide them. Live for them. Live for me. And when your time comes to pass, know I await you on the other side, aeshira. I shall watch you from afar, guiding you where I can. Just know, no amount of time would have ever been enough with you. You are my everything, but they need you more than I. Live for me, Aran. I await you in the next life.

Yours, V.

A sound tears from my chest. A soft, broken gasp that barely escapes my throat. She should’ve woken me up. She should’ve let me go with her. We promised. She promised.

My hand presses hard against my chest, nails biting through the fabric of my shirt as though I can physically hold myself together, as though I can stop the grief from splitting me open if I just press hard enough. My heartbeat hammers wildly beneath my palm, painful and frantic, each breath a fight against the crushing ache lodged in my ribs.

“You look like someone’s cracked your chest cavity open.” Maelkar’s voice pulls me back.

I look up to see him leaning against the archway, arms crossed, shadows writhing around his boots. His expression is unreadable, but his voice has lost its usual bite.

“Probably feel like it, too,” he mutters.

A bitter laugh rises in me, but it dies before it can become a sound. I stare back down at Velentha’s letter, her final words trembling in my hand.

“She left me,” I whisper again, the words breaking apart. “She promised we would go together.

Maelkar is silent for a moment, then pushes off the wall and steps further into the room. “She knew you’d never let her do it alone,” he says quietly.

My jaw clenches so hard it aches. “Then she should have woken me. She should have let me choose.”

“And if she had?” His tone stays calm, steady, and infuriatingly gentle. “Would you have let her go?”

“No.” The answer tears out of me instantly. “Never.”

“Exactly.”

I look at him, fury and grief warring so violently my chest feels like it’s on fire. “She had no right to make that choice for me.”

Maelkar’s eyes soften, and somehow, that makes the hurt worse. “No,” he says softly. “But love makes people cruel in strange ways. She thought that she was sparing you,” he adds. “Whether that was right or wrong… that’s a different matter.”

My fingers tighten around the parchment until it crumples in my fist. “I would have gone with her.”