Page 5 of A Petal in the Crown

Her shoulders fell at the desperation in his voice, and she met his eyes. Janelle nodded, and together, they raised the flowers to their lips, placing them on their tongues and swallowing them whole.

This time, the moonflowers worked instantly. The black sores faded from Janelle’s skin, not a single scar or blemish remaining, and Erik’s bruises and cuts healed over, his pounding headache easing.

Lea’s flames flickered around her as she turned her focus to Thomas. Thomas’s shoulders fell, his eyes darting to Emma before finally following Erik and Janelle’s lead. His throat bobbed as he swallowed, and Lea rocked back onto her heels.

Like the brisk snap of fingers, she turned off her tears, wiping them from her eyes and clearing her throat. Black fire wrapped around her body as she reached into her boot once again, pulling another potion from against her calf.

"What—" Janelle lunged forward, but Lea’s fire grew again, forcing Erik to once more hold it back as it surged toward them. Erik’s eyes flicked to the potion at Janelle’s feet. Different from the one Lea now held, the vial longer and slimmer, with a black stopper rather than cork.

"The fire will die once I’m gone. Just please." She met Thomas’s eyes. "Please, give me a few minutes. If Emma is connected to the other side, maybe the moonflowers can work. Maybe I can bring us both back. Just a few minutes, and if I’m still gone, you can save her," Lea said, pulling the stopper free. She brought the vial to her lips and closed her eyes, tilting her head back as she swallowed the potion in one gulp.

In less than three seconds, her limbs went limp, and she collapsed to the ground, her eyes rolling back into her head.

"I’m coming, Gray," she whispered—a sound Erik barely heard over the roaring in his ears—a smile flitting across Lea’s lips as she fell into her mate’s dead arms.

Chapter 3

Gray

As the black haze faded from his vision, Gray groaned. Not from pain.

No, the pain was gone.

But in its place was a heaviness, weighing down his limbs and his spirit. His body felt strange in a way he couldn’t identify—felt as if it didn’t belong to him at all. Pulling himself to sit, he looked around the cool, endless void—not cold or uncomfortable, but somehow, soothing. A balm for his shredded soul.

There was nothing around him but a gentle, glowing white as far as he could see, except for two foggy glimpses into what he assumed were other worlds. Was this the in-between?

To his right, so far away he could barely see it, he could make out a patch of raging black fire and soot-filled smoke.Lea.His heart squeezed painfully. Not with regret. He’d made the right choice. Gray knew that. But seeing the consequences of his choice, his mate’s grief, threatened to shatter him.

Gray forced himself to look to his left where a softly illuminated sky glowed with thousands of twinkling stars, hardly visible as the foreign constellations shifted and changed.

He wasn’t sure how much time had passed. Minutes? Hours? All he was certain of was that he was dead. With slow, tentative movements, he trailed a hand along his chest, the skin smooth and unblemished, his black fighting leathers clean of the blood and gore that had soaked them as he’d cut the mate mark from his skin. He could breathe deeply without the torturous burning that had accompanied his final breaths. But the searing agony of what he’d done to Lea would linger for eternity.

A sacrifice, Eudora had said.

Gray’s stomach twisted, and shame burned deep in his gut. He’d been a fool. How had he not considered that the sacrifice she’d demanded would be something like this? Something that would make his mate despise him. Something that would hurt her so deeply Gray wasn’t sure that forgiveness would ever be possible, even once she won the war and joined him beyond the veil, far into the future. He wasn’t sure there was any amount of time that would be enough to be granted forgiveness.

But what had been his other option? Bring her with him beyond the veil? End her tragically short life and doom every member of the rebellion to the same fate? Allow Alaric to continue to terrorize his kingdom unchecked, slaughtering the innocent and stealing their magic until there was no one left? It hadn’t been a choice at all.

He’d done what was necessary—what had been required of him—to save their people. And he was certain that, had their roles been reversed, Lea would have made the same decision without hesitation.

She was already the most powerful among them, even if she hadn’t yet fully mastered her powers. Without a doubt, Gray knew his mate was the key to ending the Lonely Deathandhis family’s wicked reign. Everything she needed to defeat Alaric was already inside her.

Pride bloomed in his heart, but it quickly mixed with a misery so intense it made his bones ache. Gray had known what he was doing as he lay there dying—had known with sudden, devastating clarity that it washis blood Eudora had seen in her vision saturating the ground to allow the moonflowers to grow.

He’d also known that Lea would never forgive him for breaking their bond. How much losing it would hurt her.

Gray looked to his right, longing to go back to her, to where Emma still held open the door between worlds. He could touch her one more time, caress her face, and let her know that he was sorry. But he’d already said those words, and who knew how much time they had left?

A life for a life. That had been the deal—the key to breaking his father’s curse and allowing the moonflowers to grow. All because of what Brennus had done hundreds of years ago. If he stayed, remained in the mortal realm rather than beyond the veil with whatever waited for him there, would the curse still be broken? Had he truly sacrificed his life if he could remain on earth and interact with Lea through Emma? If he could watch her?

No. He couldn’t risk it.

A life for a life. He’d made the sacrifice. Done what had been required of him. What if he returned to his mate only to be stuck in the mortal realm? If the spell only worked once he was gone,trulygone, then there was only one decision to make.

He forced himself to his feet and pushed away the voice begging him to stay—to return to her. With heavy, tired footsteps, he walked toward the night sky in the distance. With every step, a sense of calm washed through him, dimming the despair threatening to consume him whole. As the nightscape grew closer and came into focus, Gray realized it looked quite a bit like the portal he’d destroyed in Calir—a shimmering wall of water standing between him and a completely different world.

On the other side of the wall was a soaring field, the tall grass waving in the wind as the land rose up to meet a sky that held more stars than he’d seen in his entire life. It was peaceful, and as he took a closer look,he realized he knew exactly where it was. Just on the inside of the Torres mountains was this same hill, one he could access from the cavern. He’d stood there a hundred times, looking out over the village and watching for threats, searching for a glimpse of his mate as she went about her life, completely unaware that he even existed.

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