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Chapter 78

IRIS

The world was burning.

Golden ash drifted through the air, weightless against the night sky.

Bracing my hands against the dirt, I stared at the yawning hole in the earth.

Jars still tumbled from the shelves as I forced myself upright, barely registering the blood dripping from my knees. Stumbling forward, I caught the wall for balance. My foot struck something solid.

Smoke thickened in my throat.

A body lay sprawled beneath shards of broken glass, motionless.

I tried to ignore the gnawing in my chest. Tried to swallow the guttural scream clawing its way up my throat.

My mother…

Zinnia.

Not real. Not real. Not real.

Who was I without those memories? Without everything I had been?

Without her?

I tried to see a monster, but all I saw was my mother.

Turning away, I slung the charred remains of my bags over my shoulder. My body howled in protest as I climbed toward the opening, feet slipping, my one remaining boot slick with blood. Gore and grime wedged beneath my fingernails as I clawed my way free.

I faced my home one last time.

The Raven’s Grove Apothecary was ablaze.

Every shared meal, every whispered folktale, every sacred moment—nothing but smoke on the wind.

“Iris?” A panicked voice rang through the night. “Wildling?”

No.

Gideon.

Gideon had to be?—

But—

The ravaged mess inside my chest cracked wide open.

The world spun as I staggered away from his voice, toward the hollowed-out tree in the forest.

With every last spark of energy I had?—

I ran.

Sprinted in the opposite direction, pain searing through my body with an infernal blaze. I ran without air in my lungs or magic in my veins. If I could just reach the tree, she would find me.

Eyes on the sky.

My legs failed. My hands hit the dirt, nails scraping the earth.

Eyes on the sky.

I sucked in a ragged breath, cheek scraping against the ground, boots crunching over leaves behind me. My limbs refused to obey, dragging uselessly as I clawed forward, hand over hand.

Eyes on the sky.

I craned my neck, catching the first tendrils of dawn stretching across the horizon. The harmony of the waking forest hummed around me.

A nudge deep in my being forced my eyes open.

With a sputtering cough, I reached down. Past the barrier around my veins, past that core of essence, searching for what I suspected lay beneath. Desperately, I yanked on it, forcing one last whistle to scrape up my throat.

Eyes on the sky.

On the vast open space that would always connect us. Despite any distance. Despite any circumstance. We would find each other.

The reminder of a world beyond this place.

A world of possibility.

A world worth fighting for.

The light flickered out, one by one, as I turned onto my back. Purple and orange streaks melting into the mist.

I refused to die looking anywhere but the sky.

The last thing I heard before the world collapsed into darkness?—

The beating of wings.

And a two-tone whistle.