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FALLING

ELYRIA

He is kissing me.

His mouth is on my mouth, capturing me, pinning me here. It’s soft at first—testing, tender.

And then our lips are moving with urgency—need. A clash of anger and sadness and regret and want.

So much want.

I’ve been running from wanting—true wanting—for twenty-five years. And for years longer than that, I lived behind walls, built high and impenetrable. I carved doors for Evander, Kit. Windows for my family. But they were small and controlled, and I was always in charge of whether they stayed open or if they got locked up tight.

I should have known he would bring it all crashing down.

My lips part and his charred sandalwood scent is surrounding me and my hands are tangling in his hair, pulling him closer. He tastes like fire and power and light. He is warm and he feels safe.

His arm is wrapping around my waist and he ? —

A full-body shiver runs through me from my toes through the tips of my wings, because his fingers are there too, running loosely along the edge. His wingtouch is the first I’ve felt since before Evander went into the Arcane Crucible. I always thought it would horrify me, that the familiar feeling at the hands of another would throw me into a panic.

It’s nothing like that.

And even before, it was never like this.

It’s as if heat is flowing from his very fingertips, his fire lighting up my wings. Not scorching, not searing.

Illuminating.

He’s not a pyre. He’s a hearth.

He is home.

And he is mine.

“Elle,” he whispers, and I shiver again. Hearing my name on his tongue does something to me. I hate it. I love it. I crave it.

Gently—so gently—he pins my wing between his fingers, languidly stroking the edge with the pad of his thumb as his lips move to my ear, my throat. And that heat moves elsewhere.

Warmth pools in the center of my core, right below my belly button, and if I wasn’t so sure that Aurelia was watching our every movement, waiting on us to make this impossible choice, if I thought we were alone...I would take him to the floor right here and now. I would strip us both of this clothing that feels too tight, too constricting. I would pin him between my thighs, and I would make sure he understands what it truly means to live.

I would show him everything.

I press another tender kiss to his lips before peeling back to stare into the heat of his gaze. My eyes trace the ring of gold in his irises, the strong line of his jaw, the scar cutting through his upper lip—that memento of his heartbreaking past.

He smiles at me, the aurora painting a sunset on his beautiful golden skin.

I smile back.

And then he’s so still, I might’ve thought time had frozen.

Except for the way his eyes go wide.

Except for the smallest gasp escaping his mouth.

And he’s not still anymore.

He’s falling out of my line of sight, his arm slipping from my waist.

And I don’t understand.

Until I look down, where he’s collapsed to his knees.

And see his other hand fisted at his chest.

Wrapped around the jewel-hilted dagger I didn’t even notice him slip from my back.

The dagger he’s just used to pierce his own heart.

He might as well have thrust it right into mine.

I wish time had frozen.

I wish we’d had more of it too.

I sink to his level, pull him against my chest. He’s leaking a different kind of heat now and it’s too warm, too wet, too thick.

I want to cry and scream and yell and thrash and hit.

No tears come. Do they?

The line where his lips meet is dark with blood. A bead of it swells at the corner of his mouth and dribbles down the side, a single weeping tear.

His hand cups my face, his thumb wiping wetness from my cheek.

“Make it count, Elle,” he whispers.

His eyes close.

And Cedric Thorne dies with a smile on his lips.