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I have a faint moment of wondering why it’s still here, if it has a mission of its own, and how I play into that mission.

Because you’re the last of us. And it’s time to end.The voice lingers at the edge of my thoughts, almost drowned out by my sobs and my racing heart, but I hear it. I hear it like a silver thread through the darkness that my future has become.

My fingers clutch Myron’s hand as if I can keep him with me by sheer force of will. Instead of saving himself, he saved me with the last of his strength, and I failed him.

I’m the last bride. The final one. And I failed to break the curse Myron has given up on breaking. He sacrificed himself for me because he knew that, if I couldn’t break the curse, his death would set me free.

It didn’t help him,I tell the water, wondering if the ethereal sound is the immortalized wailing brides or that of the gods of Neredyn who won’t set Myron and his people free.In the end, I couldn’t save him.

It’s all I can think. That I wasn’t enough. Even when I was willing to die for him, I wasn’t enough.

Feathers spread over Myron’s face, his neck, his chest. His mouth and nose turn into a beak, taking away the last of his human features, and those eyes, all-black and depthless, become unseeing.

I don’t shy away from his monster form even when he will no longer be offended or hurt if I do. I’m not repulsed by what I see because what I see is his heart—the glorious, kind, and valiant heart that I’ve known for a while I’d do anything to protect. Because, deep down, I’ve known for a while that what I feel for this male will ruin me if I ever lose him.

“I love you.” My words pour over his Crow face as I place a shaking palm to his cheek and kiss his feathery forehead. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.”

Around me, the lake crashes to the floor like a string holding up a curtain has been cut. Cool wet liquid splashes my face, washing around my legs where I kneel beside the king who’ll take my heart to his grave. And I taste the salt of the past brides’ tears in the water, taste their pain and their suffering, their hope and their comfort as slowly, slowly my tears mingle with theirs.

Beneath my palm, Myron’s heart does a final thud.

Then there’s only silence.

Forty-Two

“Ayna.”

A pair of hands is tugging on my arm, pulling me away from Myron’s still, cold body as I cry and cry, my tears soaking his feathers.

“We need to leave, Ayna.”

The voice is familiar, but I don’t have the strength to think of the name attached to it while I fight with all I have left against the hands trying to tear me away from my husband.

“Give her a moment,” another voice speaks, and the pressure vanishes from my arm, allowing me to slump back over Myron’s body.

He can’t be dead. He can’t. Not after everything we’ve been through. Hecan’t.

My chest is so tight I can’t breathe, but what does breathing matter now?

“Ayna, look at me.” This time, I recognize the first voice and the small hand reaching for my cheek as I shake my head.

Clio.

How she’s kneeling on Myron’s other side when she was just battling Fire Fairies in the entrance hall, I cannot begin to understand. It hurts too much just thinking about what happened up here on the residential level.

Myron is dead.I don’t know whom I’m sending this thought to. Perhaps the lake, which no longer seems to respond to my words or my magic, as if it’s fulfilled its task. Instead, it seems to collect closer and closer to Myron’s dead body like a mirror carrying him when he no longer can. Perhaps I’m thinking it to myself, forcing myself to acknowledge what my heart refuses to.

It’s like a stab to the gut either way.

“Ayna.” Royad kneels beside me, his arm wrapping around my shoulders as he gently pulls me to his chest.

I don’t want to leave Myron. I don’t want to, but Royad is too strong, and his fingers curl around my neck, gently bringing my head to his shoulder.

“He’s dead,” I sob into his feathers, withering like a delicate petal in the unforgiving cold of winter. “He’s dead.”And it’s my fault.

I feel Royad shake his head. “It’s nobody’s fault but the traitor’s.”

“Ephegos—”