Page 64

“And look where your love got you,” Shadow Maeris taunts Thalia. “Alone. Broken. Weak.”

“I’m not weak,” she sneers, water swirling around her clenched fists.

“Then prove it,” he challenges, raising his weapon.

She launches herself at him with a primal scream, water surging in her wake. Her attacks are reckless and unbalanced, driven by rage and heartbreak rather than skill. But there’s power in her pain—raw, terrible power.

Power I recognize. Power I understand. Power that reflects my own—my devotion, my desperation, and my undying love for the star touched princess who lights up my dark, frozen world.

Shadow Maeris blocks Thalia’s initial assault, but she doesn’t relent. Her magic lashes out in jagged, unpredictable patterns, more emotion than technique.

“You think I don’t know pain?” she demands, water slicing through the air between them. “You think I don’t know loss?”

Shadow Maeris falters, the first sign of uncertainty crossing his features.

Her next strike catches him off guard, water condensing into a blade so sharp it gleams in the volcanic light. It slices across his chest, darkness spilling from the wound.

“You are not my weakness,” she declares, advancing on him. “You’re my strength.”

Shadow Maeris attempts to counter, but Thalia’smagic surrounds him now, water encircling him like a living thing.

“I loved Maeris,” she says, her voice dropping to a deadly whisper. “I will always love Maeris. But you? You’re nothing but a shadow.” She raises her hand, water surging in response, and sends it crashing into him.

Like mine and Sapphire’s shadows before him, he shatters into dust.

Thalia remains standing, her chest heaving, tears streaming down her face. Slowly, she sinks to her knees, her shoulders shaking with silent sobs, her grief radiating through the chamber.

The ground beneath us shifts again, our platforms retracting toward the center of the chamber.

As we descend, I catch Sapphire’s eye across the space between us. Her gaze is steady, unwavering—a beacon in this hellish place. A beacon in mylife.No matter how deep the darkness claws at me, I always find her. I always will.

When our platforms lock together, I hurry to Sapphire’s side. I need her hand in mine like I need breath. Like I need blood. Like I need purpose. And finally, it finds hers, ice and water intertwining as our fingers lace together.

“You did it,” she murmurs, her free hand coming up to touch my cheek.

“We did it,” I correct her, pressing my forehead tohers. The contact steadies me. Grounds me. Burns through every part of me that wonders if my love for her is growing so much that it will consume me entirely, until I don’t know what else is left.

And yet, as her warmth floods through me, I’m reminded that I don’t care.

Let my love for her consume me. Let it rewrite me. Because with her, I’m finally the person I was always meant to be.

But the Pyros Vault doesn’t give us the generosity of a moment to recover. Instead, the ground rumbles, and the wall behind us splits down the middle, stone grinding against stone as it parts to reveal a cavern larger than the chamber we’re in now.

Rivers of lava snake across its floor, casting everything in a hellish red glow.

And there, suspended above a crumbling stone platform in the center of the cavern, floats a sphere of pure, condensed fire—pulsing like a heart, its light so bright it hurts to look at directly.

The Ember of Prometheus.

SAPPHIRE

“There it is,”I whisper, my voice barely audible over the bubbling magma. “The Ember.”

Riven stands beside me, frost forming and melting around him in rapid cycles, his silver eyes reflecting the Ember’s glow. “It’s beautiful,” he says softly, and then his gaze flickers to me. “But nowhere as close to as beautiful as you.”

“Careful, Winter Prince.” I arch an eyebrow, my lips curving into a small smile. “Keep sweet-talking me like that and I might forget we’re standing next to a deadly pit of magma.”

“Then allow me to remind you,” he says softly, leaning closer, his breath cool against my ear. “Deadly situations have always been my preferred form of romance.”