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Cy grinned and kissed him again, then rested their brows together.

My heart swelled in relief. We’d witnessed their union, yet Kage was right to let them have this moment now.

Kage.

I spun around. Asger was holding Kage’s arm and helping him off the ground. I scrambled to my feet, chasing down the gap between us. He’d barely straightened before I collided with his body.

He grunted, then let out a rough breath that sounded more like a laugh of disbelief.

“You did it,” he breathed out. “You did it. I remember everything.”

“As do I.” I clung to his tunic.

Everything. The sacrifice, I’d been gasping, almost forcibly held upright, as though I’d already been dying. Determined expressions on every sacrifice surrounding the reaching branches and roots was there, real and palpable.

Ember was close to me in the memory; I could see her plainly. Stella, shoulders back, eyes forward made her vow. There was a fae woman, a petite vampire, a shifter from the wolves, a demon, and dracon princess.

Different words, different vows of blood. All of us called from royalty, and me for my blood of curse breakers.

I could feel the harsh cold slicing through my dress, the pain in my heart knowing I was abandoning Kage to a life apart. I spoke our vows, the ones we’d rehearsed for weeks.

The sacrifice was for him in every way.

Tears cut through the kohl on his face when I pulled back. No doubt the pain of his loneliness was crushing. We would speak of it later. Without waiting for his word, I tore at his tunic, lifting the top away.

A strangled sort of sob broke from my chest. Like a storm retreating, the dark, pulpy veins were slithering down his middle, abandoning his blood.

I kissed him and kissed him and kissed him.

“The new life is ours, Wildling,” he whispered when I let him breathe again. “It’s all ours.”

Laughter, tears, whoops—anguish—crashed with joy as Kappi and villagers and mages remembered their people, their lives long shadowed.

A vicious shriek shattered the bliss.

Blood ran cold when I looked to the edge of the palace. Balanced on the ledge of the wall, Destin—unshielded by his ruse as a prince—stood with dark madness alive in his deadened eyes. Slivers of red overtook the whites of his gaze, and his golden hair was matted and long, like the man from the shadows. Heartbroken and lost.

Destin lifted his outstretched hands, and it was then I noted the edges of the Greenwood.

Immorti by the hundreds gnashed their jaws, flailed theirrotted limbs. They looked at the field of warriors and mage folk with a frightful hunger.

Destin seethed his rage, gaze on me, on Kage, and let out a booming shout. “Destroy them.”

The Immorti army lunged from the trees.

CHAPTER 48

Kage

The first screamrang out over the field like an omen of wretched things to come. It was a woman, somewhere near the village border. Defenseless, innocent. I pivoted away from Adira, blade drawn, magic thrumming in my veins.

“Soturi!” I roared. “Rise up and defend your land!”

Chants and battle prayers shook the treetops.

“Asger.” I gripped my friend by the cuff of his jerkin. “You and Gwyn get the innocent to shelter, guard them up.”

Asger dipped his chin, shouting the command at Gwyn. She released a black arrow, the aim manipulated to strike true. The point split through the throat of a shrieking Immorti, pinning it to the trunk of a tree.