Page 154 of The Cost of Blood and Bonds

The world comes back in pieces. Sound returns first, strangled and faint. Then the blurred shapes slowly sharpen. I see Finn’s mouth moving, and Grier bent over, gasping.

I blink, trying to remember how to exist in my body.

There are bodies everywhere.

I look up.

She’s standing at the edge of the clearing, chest heaving, blades still in her hands, blood splattered across her face. Alive. Whole.

My chest unlocks all at once, breath tearing back into me so sharp it’s painful, like I’ve been holding it since the moment she disappeared into that fog.

Beside her stands another woman, with the same dark hair, same golden skin, same impossible eyes with rings of amber, violet, teal, and green.

The air punches out of me. The world reduces itself to their two faces. The edges of my vision blur, and I can’t tell if it’s been a heartbeat or an hour. There is a pull in my chest toward her. Fear slices through me and roots me in place. What if I’m wrong?

She steps forward, and the certainty arrives before thought does. There could be a hundred women with her face, and I would find her every time. It’s the way she steps forward, and I feel it in my chest before I see it with my eyes, the way her body orients toward mine like it doesn’t know how not to. Her eyes find mine, and the distance between us does what it always does, it becomes unbearable.

“Ella—” I say as I stand.

Her eyes are wet, and her hands are shaking.

“Ryewood.” Her voice cracks. “I can explain.”

I stare at her. At them.

“You’re a twin,” I breathe.

Ella, my Ella, nods, tears spilling down her cheeks. Rage moves through me so hot and all-consuming that I have to close my eyes and breathe through it. At my father, at the prophecy, at every piece of this realm that made hiding who she was the only option she had.

“This is Gem.” She hesitates, glancing at her sister. “Wren,” she corrects softly. “This is Wren.”

Gem.

The name lands differently now. It wasn’t a nickname. It was a different person entirely, and I feel it land in my chest like a key turning. My mind races so fast I can’t hold a single thought, nothing making sense and somehow everything making sense all at once, the moments that never quite added up, the times she felt like a different person entirely, and I told myself I was imagining it.

“Ryewood, if this changes things—” I see the fear creeping back in, the walls trying to rebuild themselves.

I don’t let her finish. I close the distance between us in two steps, cup her face in my hands, and kiss her hard and fiercely. I pour everything I have into it, every ounce of love, every promise I’ve ever made her, every future for us I refuse to let go of.

When will this woman learn she is never going to lose me? There is nothing that will change that, not her twin, not her secrets, not my father and everything he’s willing to do. She has never once understood how completely she has me. She could unravel every truth I’ve ever held, and I would still come back to her. I will always come back to her.

When I pull back, we’re both breathing hard. Her eyes are wet, searching mine.

“Nothing could ever change this, Ella.” I brush my thumb across her cheek, wiping away her tears. “I love you, and there is no truth you could hand me that would make me choose differently. I meant what I said under that willow tree.”

I press my forehead to hers. “I am fully and completely yours. Nothing will ever change that.”

Chapter 52

Ella

He knew. Even with Wren standing right next to me, he knew it was me. Like there’s no version of me he wouldn’t recognize.

“How did you know—” I start, but he cuts me off.

“I’ll always find you, little fox,” he says, cupping my face like it’s the simplest thing in the world. Like he doesn’t even need to explain it. Like it’s just the truth. “No matter what. No matter how many versions of you exist. I would know you anywhere.”

The relief crashes through me like a wave, and underneath it is love so overwhelming it fills every crack in me. Every defense, every careful boundary, every scrap of protection I’ve wrapped around myself is gone. I’m his and he’s mine.