Page 100 of Evermore (The Never Sky #3)

Paesha

I couldn’t feel my heartbeat anymore. Couldn’t hear the voices beyond my grief. Couldn’t cry another tear. They’d all fallen. Just like he had.

The garden had died with him.

Roses that once bloomed in vibrant reds and pinks had withered to brittle husks.

The hedges, once meticulously trimmed, now stood skeletal and bare, their leaves crumbled to dust. The grass had browned and retreated, leaving patches of bare earth like open wounds in the ground.

Not a single living thing remained in this place where Archer had fallen.

Perhaps it was fitting. A physical manifestation of the grief that had hollowed me from the inside out.

I stood at the exact spot where I’d held him as he bled out, where I’d felt his last breath, where the Treeis bond had severed with a pain so acute I thought it might kill me too.

The flagstones had been scrubbed clean, but I could still see his blood when I closed my eyes.

Could still feel its warmth on my hands, no matter how many times I washed them.

My black mourning dress hung heavy on my shoulders, the same one I’d worn when they’d lowered his body into the ground three days ago. The weight of his crown still felt wrong on my head, a foreign, unwelcome presence conferred on me in a hasty ceremony after the funeral.

I bent down, my fingers tracing the outline of where he had lain. The stone was cold, unyielding and indifferent to the tragedy it’d witnessed.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

Thorne’s voice was gentle but firm as he approached from behind me.

He wore mourning clothes as well, though he had exchanged the formal attire from the funeral for something simpler today.

The shadows under his eyes spoke of sleepless nights that matched my own.

Of the way he’d paced outside my door, guilt ridden for not being here, and anxious that another god would come for me.

He’d been following the whispers of Ezra’s Unmade. Making sure there was no word of the Fates from anyone. He’d been protecting us all, and felt like he’d protected no one.

“Where else would I be?” I asked, not looking up, not taking my eyes from the spot where Archer had slipped away from us.

Thorne didn’t answer. Instead, he knelt beside me, his shoulder brushing mine in silent solidarity. The warmth of him was the only thing that felt real anymore, the only thing that anchored me to a world that had lost all its color, all its joy.

“I keep seeing it,” I whispered, voice raw from days of crying, from the eulogy I had somehow managed to deliver without collapsing.

“Over and over. The way he moved to protect her. The way he smiled at me even as he was dying.” I closed my eyes, but it only made the images sharper, more vivid.

“The way his eyes looked when there was nothing left in them.”

Thorne’s hand found mine, his fingers curling around my own with careful tenderness. “I know.”

And he did know. He had watched me shatter, had held me as I screamed myself hoarse against his chest, had wiped away tears that seemed endless.

Had stood beside me at the funeral as I placed a deck of cards in Archer’s cold hands, as I whispered goodbye to a man who had changed everything.

As I held Quill while she sobbed until she’d cried herself to sleep every night since.

“He wouldn’t want you to torture yourself like this.”

“How would you know what he’d want? He’s gone.” The words were cruel, designed to wound, to push him away because the comfort he offered made the pain too real. But Thorne didn’t flinch, didn’t pull away.

He simply tightened his grip on my hand. “Because I knew him. Because he loved you. Because he would have done anything to spare you pain. Long before that fucking bond. He was always yours.”

The truth of it hit me with physical force, stealing my breath. Archer had died protecting what he loved most. He had stepped between danger and Quill without hesitation, without a thought for his own safety. It was who he was, down to his bones.

My fingers dug into the cold stone, seeking purchase against the wave of grief threatening to pull me under. “The crown feels wrong. It should be his.”

At the funeral, they had placed the crown on the casket first, a final honor for the king who’d been hesitant to rule.

Then, with terrible finality, they had lifted it and placed it on my head instead.

The weight of it had nearly driven me to my knees.

Only Quill’s steady presence at my side had kept me upright.

“It should be his, but look what it cost him.”

His free hand came up to brush a strand of hair from my face, his touch feather-light. “That was Ezra’s doing. And Aeris’s. Not yours.”

The mention of their names sent a surge of white-hot rage through me, momentarily burning away the numbing grief.

My mother, who had plunged a knife into Archer’s heart without hesitation.

Ezra, whose plans aligned with the Fates and set this all in motion.

The Fates, who’d manipulated us all like pieces on a game board.

“I know they wanted this. I know they put the crown on the mad queen’s head to watch me condemn the mortal world. You heard what Tuck said. About the bond. Severing it was likely always their plan.”

“I heard him say what happens to the survivor of a severed Treeis bond. But they never saw Quill wrapped up in that and you know it. She was never supposed to be part of it. Your soul won’t wither. I know because it’s half mine.”

I nodded, swallowing back the ache. “You know Quill asks for him? Every night before sleep. Every morning when she wakes. As if she’s forgotten momentarily, and then remembers all over again.

She’s old enough to understand, but far too young to accept it.

” I swallowed against the tightness in my throat. “I don’t know what to tell her.”

“Tell her the truth,” Thorne said. “That he loved her more than life. That he wouldn’t have changed his choice, even knowing the outcome.”

“Would that comfort you? If it were me in the ground instead of him?”

The pain that flashed across his face was answer enough.

“That’s what I thought,” I whispered.

I looked out across the dead garden, at the statue where Aeris had hidden, at the path where Archer had made his final stand. So much loss contained in this small space. So much that could never be recovered.

“My mother knew what would happen if she threatened Quill. Archer would protect her at any cost.”

“Yes. She knew exactly what she was doing.”

The power that had flooded me when I killed Aeris stirred beneath my skin, a reminder of what I had become. A goddess with even more power. Though now I could feel the wane of it. The silence when it drifted away for no reason. The plight of the gods.

“I want them to suffer. All of them. I want them to feel what we’re feeling. I want them to know who they’ve taken from us.”

Instead of cautioning me against vengeance, instead of urging restraint as I’d expected, Thorne simply nodded. “They will,” he promised, and there was something terrible in his voice, something that spoke of a wrath as deep and vast as my own.

Small footsteps approached from behind us, the quiet shuffle drawing my attention.

Quill stood at the edge of the dead garden, Boo clutched in her arms like a lifeline.

She wore black like the rest of us, her wild curls tamed into a severe braid that made her look older, harder.

The deck of cards Archer had left behind peeked from her pocket, a constant companion now.

“I made something,” she said, her voice small but steady. “For him.”

She approached slowly, her footsteps careful on the withered ground, as if afraid of disturbing the quiet solemnity of the place. When she reached us, she knelt, forming a small triangle of grief around the spot where he had fallen.

From her pocket, she withdrew a small, carved wooden figure. It was rough, clearly made by inexperienced hands, but unmistakably a heart. Within it, she’d pressed one of Archer’s coins, the metal gleaming dully in the afternoon light.

“Tuck helped me make it,” she said, placing it gently on the ground. “He said Archer carried his heart on his sleeve, so I thought…” She trailed off, her lower lip trembling.

I reached for her, pulling her against my side. “It’s perfect. He would love it.”

She nodded against my shoulder, her fingers still resting on the carving. “I miss him.”

“I know, Quilly. We miss him too.”

The three of us knelt there in silence, surrounded by death and decay, united by loss and the fierce, burning need to make it right somehow. To make it matter.

Behind us, I heard the soft clearing of a throat. Tuck stood at the garden’s edge. “The Gods are waiting. It’s time.”

I rose slowly, helping Quill to her feet, feeling Thorne do the same beside me. The small wooden heart remained on the ground, a solitary marker of life and love in this place of death.

“We’re coming,” I said, squaring my shoulders beneath the weight of the crown I never wanted.

As we walked away, I felt the power stirring within me, the dual forces of renewal and destruction. The stolen mortal power. The simplicity of the Huntress power. All of it. It was time to turn my attention to destruction.

To vengeance.

To making them all pay for what they had taken from us.

For Archer, who had deserved so much more than the brief life he had been given.

For Quill, who would grow up without his laughter, his guidance, his love.

For myself, left to navigate a world that made no sense without him in it.

For all of us, broken in ways that could never fully heal.

They would pay. And I would be the one to collect the debt.

I touched the crown, feeling it transform in my mind from a burden into a weapon. Acting monarch, they had called me.

I would act, indeed.

Starting right fucking now.