Page 62 of Gua rdian of Blood and Shadow

“A life?” I breathed, horror twisting my stomach. I craned my neck, peering over my shoulder at Reiji.

The truth was written in his expression. He had known. Perhaps not the specifics, but he had suspected the price would be steep. His life, or mine.

“No,” I said, trying to pull my hands away. “We’ll find another way.”

His fingers tightened around mine and he pressed forward, pinning me against the altar, holding me in place. “There’s no other way,” he said softly, his lips brushing my ear. “The elemental texts were clear. Breaking the curse requires sacrifice.”

My heart pounded. He was going to sacrifice me. This was just another manipulation. Another illusion.

“Then we don’t break it,” I insisted, squirming in his hold. “We’ll find another way to—”

“No.” Reiji sliced his chin to the side and closed his eyes, like he was gathering the resolve to do something distasteful. Like kill me. “The Shadow King is already breaking through. We can’t stop him without united Houses, and the shifters will never truly unite with us while cursed.” His dark eyes held mine, steady and resolved. “This was always how it had to end.”

“Reiji, wait—”

“The curse weakens all of us,” he continued, opening his eyes to stare at Veris, straining against my commands. “It’s a bandage on a festering wound, useful once but now hindering true healing.” He looked at me, finally, but there was no apology in his stare. There was only boundless sadness. “I’ve made so many mistakes.” He bent his neck, claiming my lips before I could pull away. His kiss was fierce and harsh and painful, and when he pulled away, we were both breathing hard. “Let me do this one thing right.”

And then I understood. He wasn’t going to sacrifice me. He was going to sacrificehimself.

Before I could stop him, he released my hands and placed his palms directly on the central symbol of the altar—a sun, moon, and stars. “I, Reiji of the House of the Stars, descendant of the first children of Eos, offer myself as sacrifice.” His voice rang with authority, with conviction. “I surrender my essence freely to break the bonds laid upon the children of Helios.”

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“NO!”Ireachedforhis hands to drag them off the altar, but an invisible barrier prevented me from crossing the line of the central symbol. “Don’t do this!” Frantic, I spun within the circle of his arms.

But it was already too late.

The altar accepted his offering with brutal efficiency. Starlight erupted from his skin, not just surrounding him but pouring from him. His eyes locked with mine as his form began to dissolve into thousands of twinkling points of light, like a constellation coming undone.

“Tell Ren I’m sorry,” he said, his voice a whisper in my mind.

And then he was gone, his essence absorbed into the ritual.

I spun back to the altar, and watched it blaze with combined moonlight and starlight, with Reiji’s life force, the power building to a blinding crescendo that made the very foundations of the Sun Keep tremble.

I clutched my chest and fell to my knees, tears streaming down my face. Our bond—new and barely formed—snapped with an audible sound, the emptiness it left behind a hollow ache after such a brief connection, an echo of what might have been.

The many-voice spoke again, but now it seemed to come from within me as well, resonating in my very marrow.

“The sacrifice is accepted,” it intoned, using my lips and my tongue and my teeth to form the sounds. “The curse shall be broken.”

The words echoed through the chamber, through my mind, through my soul.

And in their wake came a silence so profound, it felt like the universe itself had paused to witness what would follow.

The many-voice spoke again, this time repeating the words directly inside my head, a secret whispered between ancient souls.

“The sacrifice is accepted. The curse shall be broken.”

Something inside me cracked open. Not pain, exactly, but the feeling of a wall inside my being splitting apart—a wall I’d never known existed until the moment it began to crumble. My vision went silver white as moonlight erupted from my skin, not streaming outward as it had before, but inward, illuminating something hidden in the deepest, darkest corners of my soul.

I was no longer in the ritual chamber.

I stood on the edge of a cliff, a cosmic precipice, stars scattered below me like a sea of spilled diamonds. My body felt both impossibly vast and achingly mortal, stretched between two realities. Before me hovered a woman—no, not a woman—a being of pure luminescence with features that mirrored my own, yet weren’t quite mine. Her bottomless eyes held the wisdom of eons, her skin translucent as moonlight across water.

She reached for me, her palm against mine, our fingers perfectly aligned. Where we touched, the boundaries between us blurred.

“I’ve waited so long,” she whispered, her voice the rustle of night winds and the silence between heartbeats. “You’ve carried me without knowing, from the moment of your creation.”

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