Page 34

N ikolai’s mouth was parted as blood poured forth, coating the corners of his chapped lips and his chin. His hand lifted, burying itself into my hair as I bent over him. I leaned closer, my ear at his mouth.

“Diana.” My name was merely a whisper on his lips before he went utterly still.

His body fell fully to the forest floor. His inky black eyes were trained on the sky above him, unblinking. His arm fell from my hair to his side where it remained, unmoving.

His fingers didn’t itch towards his weapon.

His chest didn’t expand with troubled breaths.

Nikolai was dead.

I slid the dagger free, allowing the magic to mend what I had irreparably damaged. I dropped the blade in the dirt beside him, burying my fists in his tunic.

His skin had grown pale and chalky .

My gaze traced the lines of his face. His right brow that was slightly creased with a scar down the middle. His strong jaw, lined with stubble. The freckle on his left cheek. His parted lips, coated in blood.

A heavy moment passed, and nothing happened.

“Nikolai.” My voice was a plea. A prayer.

My fisted hands shook him, his head rolling to the side.

“Nikolai, wake up.”

I could sense the others at my back, watching over us. I pressed against him once more, shaking him roughly.

“I won’t lose you. I won’t let you die. Now wake up, you stubborn bastard .”

My gaze flickered momentarily to the scene behind me. Noctani and Shades alike were strewn about the forest floor.

Dead.

Tess was awake now, clutching her head in her hands. Zion stood over me with Annelise and Amiyah, their eyes expectant.

I tore the tunic at Nik’s chest, the fabric easily parting beneath my dirt and blood caked fingers. I pushed it aside to see the wound over his chest, exactly as it had been mere moments ago, cut straight through one of his swirling tattoos.

It wasn’t healing.

“No, no, no.” I shook my head back and forth violently, a scream bubbling to my lips.

I couldn’t lose them both.

I wouldn’t.

“Alastir didn’t make any promises.” It was Zion’s voice, soft in my ear as he placed a gentle hand on my shoulder .

I flinched, shrinking away from his touch. I pressed my ear to Nikolai’s chest to listen for his pulse. For any sounds of breathing.

There was nothing.

“ God dammit !” I roared, punching my closed fists against his chest. “No! I will not lose you!”

When he didn’t wake, I placed my fingertips against his chest, my magic surging towards them as I let my eyes fall shut.

“Diana—” Annelise’s voice held a warning note.

I shook my head back and forth, brushing them off. Blocking them out.

I almost lost Nik once before and had managed to save him. I would do it again, if need be. Even if he did come back as Noctani.

I didn’t care.

My magic pulsed beneath my fingertips, thunder clapping loudly overhead as the sky darkened rapidly. I was pulling on too much magic, too quickly. But I didn’t care.

Lightning lashed out so close the others jumped back, but I kept my focus on Nikolai.

Concentrated on the sensation of my power burning beneath my fingertips where they were buried against his skin.

Lightning struck again, and Zion jumped back as a bush next to him sparked with fire, cinders lodging themselves in his clothing.

He patted the cinders against him until they doused, reaching his hand out to douse the brush fire with his own magic.

“Diana, rein your magic in.” His voice was a command, but I barely heard him .

I lifted my gaze and his silhouette moved into my line of sight ahead of me.

“Diana—” His hand was held out towards me, as if he was going to physically stop me himself.

I bared my teeth at him, my eyes snapping to meet his wary gaze. He took a step back, his hand reaching for his chest as a soft gasp escaped his lips when he saw my eyes.

“How dare you command your queen.”

The words didn’t sound as if they were my own. They were glacial. Chilling.

“Your eyes—” He moved quickly, but to where I didn’t see. All I knew was I couldn’t see him anymore, thus I focused my magic back on Nikolai. A fresh surge of power jolted through him so sharply, his back arched off the forest floor to meet my fingers.

His eyes remained black. Open. Unmoving.

Swallowed in darkness.

“Diana, it’s happening again… your eyes.” It was Tess’s voice in my ear now, a soft plea. “Please, Diana. If you don’t stop, we will lose you, too. The magic has taken you. Your eyes… they swirl with amethyst and onyx. Please Diana, I beg of you.”

I pressed my eyes closed firmly, squeezing them tight.

This had happened when my magic had taken over me, turning me into a bloodthirsty and unfeeling savage. The last time my eyes swirled with magic, I had killed my own people. The very people who had pledged their lives to me as their rightful queen .

The magic held me tightly and all consuming, it didn’t want to let me go.

I shoved hard against it with all my strength, but it reared against me.

The only thing I could think to do was to sever myself from it temporarily.

It wouldn’t release me otherwise. I imagined a blade sliding between me and my power.

When the power finally disconnected, I flew onto my back from the release of energy, my breaths coming in fast, labored pants.

My head sank into the forest floor as the dawn sky rose above me, Kenna circling with her raven wings overhead. A tear slipped free and trailed down the side of my face as I stared up, unblinking.

I sucked in a heavy inhale as Tess leaned over me, her face flooding my vision. Relief was plain on her face.

“Thank the Mother,” she muttered, pulling me up and against her. “Diana, don’t do that to me again.”

She held me as tightly as the magic had only moments ago, and a sob escaped me as I buried my face in her shoulder.

He was gone.

Nikolai was truly gone.

Everything that had happened over the last few months tore out of me on a guttural scream. The last time my emotions had overtaken me, my magic had detonated. But I had severed that connection this time—there was no magic left in me.

All I felt now was a cavern where my heart should be.

I screamed until my throat was raw, my cries piercing the quiet forest air. I sobbed until there was nothing left, the tears dry and caked against my cheeks as I fell against Tess, utterly spent.

Tess held me as I cried for Nikolai. For my unbound magic. For my father Donika had murdered. For the innocents she had tortured and maimed. For the Stormshades who would never be free in Istmere because I had failed .

My auburn curls were stuck to my forehead, the back of my neck. I was covered in blood, dirt, and tears, limp in Tess’s grasp.

I had lost everything .

When I had cried all that I could, when my emotional well was empty and had nothing left to give, I quieted. Tess gently stroked my hair as I fell silent. A morose stillness fell across the forest as Zion lifted me from the ground and out of Tess’s arms.

He held me in his own, his apologies repeating into my ear as he stroked my back softly.

I was limp in his hold, my body utterly and completely exhausted.

He would need to carry me back to Prins.

I wasn’t sure if I could make it back on my own.

Or if I would even live now that Nikolai was dead.

Has his turning Noctani altered the bond somehow?

This was how it always was. First, I shattered. Then, I was numb.

“Diana… ” It was Annelise’s voice that broke the fragile silence, a note of hope in her tone. “Did he just… ”

I peered over Zion’s shoulder to see Annelise on her knees before Nik, his hand grasped firmly between hers.

His finger twitched .

“No… I had to have imagined… ” my voice trailed off as I pushed away from Zion. He placed me gently down, and I joined Annelise on the forest floor. “Did you—”

She shook her head. “I did nothing. I did not heal him. I only came to say my goodbyes. His hand moved in mine.”

My brow crinkled as I watched him, unblinking. I didn’t want to risk missing a single movement. My eyes were open long enough that I wasn’t sure if I had seen his eye twitch, or if it had been my own.

If I had simply imagined it.

“Did you see that?” It was Tess’s voice behind me.

I nodded, afraid to move my gaze from his face.

The forest was utterly still once more as we collectively held our breaths.

The dead bodies were still strewn around us, the trees still devoid of all wildlife.

There were no animals rustling in the brush.

Everything became completely and utterly still.

All at once Nik’s tattooed chest gulped in a breath, his chest rising off the dirt as his lungs filled with air, a gasp releasing from his blood caked mouth.

His eyes closed as his hand fisted in Annelise’s.

His chest rose again with another tentative inhale.

Then another.

Great heaving breaths racked his body until he settled, his breathing evening out and becoming rhythmic once more. When he opened his eyes to gaze upon the morning sky of Akra they were impossibly, glacially, blue.