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“No!” I screamed as I fell to my knees beside her. Maerhal’s skin was still perfect and unmarked, just as I had left it but her mouth was coated in black soot. I yanked her to the side and pulled the sludge from her mouth with my bare hands, but I couldn’t feel a heartbeat. I pressed my ear to Maerhal’s chest and sobbed.

I grabbed her hand and called my magic forward. Barely a hint of warmth flowed through my arm, I was so exhausted, but the way it dammed where my skin met Maerhal’s pierced my heart like a blade of ice.

She was gone. I had never cleared her lungs of the smoke and Maerhal’s heart had been too stressed. I should have rushed her through the portal and not stopped until we reached Rheih in Aralinth.

“It’s my fault,” I whispered in a broken breath, slumping back onto the grass.

Killian kneeled at my side. “Keera, you couldn’t have known.” He placed the gentlest of hands on my shoulder.

“Elder birch tea.” I shook my head. “Rheih used it on me. I should’ve thought of it. I should’ve known. I never should have left her side.”

A thick tear dropped onto Maerhal’s cheek leaving a blackened river down her neck.

“Keera, no one would expect you to act as a healer after only a few short weeks training.” Killian’s voice was hoarse fighting his own sobs.

I shoved his hand off me and cradled Maerhal in my lap. “It doesn’t matter. I didn’t choose her. She was in that damned house for so long because I went to Riven first.I chose him.”

Killian froze, still as a rock. Only his eyes shifted to me, filled with the questions he wanted to ask but was too scared to voice.

I answered them anyway. Each word coated in the hatred I had for myself.

“Damien told me Riven and Maerhal had been left in those fires to burn. He made me choose which one to save and I went after Riven. I didn’t care that the only proof I had was that damn cloak, I made my choice. I left Maerhal for dead. And this was my punishment. To save her life only for her to die because of me.”

I slumped back on the grass, entirely undone. There was no part of me that wasn’t shattered. There was no part of me that hoped Nikolai and Syrra would come to understand, because of course they wouldn’t. They had opened their arms to the Blade and their own kin’s throat had been sliced because of it.

I may have shed my title, but Damien had made sure I was still a tool for the Crown. Killian didn’t say a word. He only sat there, perfectly still and perfectly silent, as the last bit of warmth left Maerhal’s body.

CHAPTERFORTY-SIX

IREFUSED TO CARRY MAERHAL HOMEon the back of a saddle. I carried her in my arms while Killian rode on the horse. Unmoving and silent. I didn’t feel the strain in my legs or the sores that grew on my feet.

I was hollow. The only thing that kept me anchored to the ground was the Elf in my arms who deserved to come home one last time. We stepped through the final portal only a short ride from the treed city, but it felt like a world away.

There the Elverin laughed and children played. There they believed that Maerhal had come back from death and had millennia left to live in freedom. That world had not yet been shattered and drained of all its color.

I was the rock that would fracture an entire world.

Killian did not speak. He did not eat. He only stared, wide-eyed, at whatever was in front of him, never truly seeing at all. He satlike a dusty, empty book with no care for the world around him. From the moment he’d laid eyes on Maerhal, Killian had turned into nothing but a shell.

His grief seemed severe for one who had known the Elf so briefly, but I had no will to try to coax more from him.

The horse walked beside me without the need of directions from its rider. The first sun had just begun to rise as the end of the Dark Wood came into view. The strands of red still hung from the trees of Myrelinth from Hildegard’s funeral and my stomach tightened into a knot when I realized there were now two more funerals to plan.

Lash and Maerhal.

My lip trembled as I tried to think of what to say to Nikolai. I knew that pain was cruel and sharp and I had nothing to blunt the blows.

I spotted Gerarda first. She was cloaked in a dark blue vest with her short hair pulled back in the same style as Syrra’s, who stood beside her. Vrail waited next to Nikolai, her leg bouncing wildly with impatience. I knew they had been waiting from the moment we stepped through that portal.

Feron had told them we were here. But he had no way of knowing the devastation we brought with us.

I searched for Riven, but no shadows swelled around my legs, no darkness welcomed me at all. Even though I longed for the comfort of his touch, I was glad Feron didn’t wake him. It would be cruel to make him face the pain of his magic only to be met with something even sharper.

Nikolai wasted no time running to me and pulling me into his arms. “When you didn’t make it through the portal, we thought the worst. I waited in Aralinth when the others came through but Feron said you were here.” His hand caressed his mother’s face and I realized he thought she was resting.

I had wiped away the soot so her skin was clean and her expression peaceful. But there was no way to hide the cold from Nikolai’s gentle hand.

His eyes widened as he turned to me. My lip trembled but I still had yet to find the words to tell him. He pulled back on his mother’s bottom lip and saw the faint black line along the inside of it. The relief that had built up in Nikolai leaked from him and drained the warmth from his face. His arms lifted, as gentle as a breeze, as he took his mother into his grasp.