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“Why didn’t they?” She swatted the tears from her cheeks. “Why didn’t they kill you too?”

“They tried.”

She huffed a laugh. “Oh, and you could fight them off for yourself but not for your wife and children?”

I shouldn’t have, but involuntarily, I looked at the bodies behind her, attire telling me they were Angels. Like the Angels who’d killed Véa, Vanna, and Mirobhail.

“Fuck you,” she spat. “I-I—They ambushed me while I was cooking. There are barriers here. I had no reason to suspect…”

I didn’t need to say, “Neither did I,” for her to see the fault in her logic.

She shook her head furiously, spun around, and started away. Where to, I didn’t know. But once she was cresting the edge of the burning house, I said, “I hope they do.”

“What?”

“I hope they kill me.” My voice cracked. “I can’t live without her, and I don’t know how to kill myself, so I hope they do.”

Silence for a few heartbeats. Her eyes glassed over again. She tightened her quivering lips to a line. “If you figure it out, show me how before you do it.”

* * *

Once Brynn was out of sight, I lowered myself to the soil, and I stared at my burning home. I cried. I cried until my body ran dry and there was no water left to leave my eyes. I cried until I had burned off all my energy, and I collapsed to the wildflowers in a grief and pain induced slumber.

I didn’t care that I lay in an open field, a clear target. If I didn’t have Véa, if I didn’t have my children, I didn’t want to live.

The dream wasn’t vivid enough for me to remember all its details. I remembered one part with clarity, however.

Véa was in my arms, blood dripping from her lips, splotched across her face. Reaching up, cupping my cheek, she said into my thoughts,Don’t you remember what Taeral told me?

I hadn’t, and I said so.

He tried to take my soul once. But it rejected him. I could only go into the abyss or return to my body. No one can siphon my soul from my body, mi lim, not even Taeral. The boys aren’t nearly as strong as him.

I woke to the dark blue sky, clutching my chest.

Yes, I did remember that now.

A necromancer could not absorb Véa’s soul, but she wasn’t in the abyss, so where the fuck was she?

* * *

It took me a moment to collect myself.

Perhaps that’s not the best phrasing. I lay there and cried; I was far from collecting myself.

The only thing that got me on two feet was a howl.

Heart hammering, I staggered vertical, and I ran. I could’ve lapsed but I ran because for a moment, I had hope, and I wanted to hold onto it for as long as I possibly could.

When I made it to the barn door, I burst into tears of joy. At least someone I loved and who loved me was still alive.

Two someones.

One with a coat of solid white, wagging her tail so hard her whole ass shook, slamming the wall of her stable. Ayla.

Another of brown and white and black, pouncing his front paws like a bunny, making an, “A-woo-woo,” sound at me. Vinion.

My pterolycus.