Page 72 of Flight of Fate

“No.” Myron’s response cuts like a knife, but I don’t care. Anything to ensure he’ll get out of this alive.

At least, this gets Ephegos’s attention. “Interesting.” Tilting his head, he turns toward me, blade not moving an inch from Myron’s throat.

“Please let him go. I beg you.”

“Don’t,” Kaira hisses, and I get the faint idea that she’s already picked up on what I’m still putting together. “There is no way you can win if you make a bargain with a tyrant.”

“A bargain,” Ephegos muses as if he’s having the idea only now when we all know this is what it will come down toeventually. I don’t have leverage through weapons or magic. I don’t have a secret army waiting to step in. All I have is myself and the hope that I can outsmart Ephegos in a bargain.

“It’s all right, Ayna,” Myron murmurs, his ocean eyes boring into mine, and I need to fight the tears rising behind my eyes. “It’s all right. I knew I’d asked the gods for too much the day I begged them to return you to your human form. Eternity with you was a gift I never deserved.”

“Stop it.” I don’t intend to bite at him like that, but if I allow for any emotion to shimmer through, I won’t be able to do this. I won’t be able to give him up so he can live.

With a heavy breath, I direct my gaze at Ephegos. “He doesn’t need to die for me to be yours, Ephegos.” Inside my chest, my heart cracks, a fissure that won’t be sealed if I can convince Ephegos I mean it. So I shut down all thoughts of what could have been, all hopes of a future with Myron and this court I’ve been fighting and bleeding to build and protect, and speak those words that will damn me. “I’ll be yours if you let him live. I swear not to try to return to his Crow Court if you let Kaira go as well. Alive. The bargain is valid as long as you promise to never lay a finger on either of them again.”

Myron’s eyes fill with horror, but I ignore the surge of guilt as I bargain away our future. A future we won’t have if I don’t buy us a way out of this situation. Kaira’s silent sobs tell me she’s realized it too, that if I don’t succeed, I’ll be the only one to walk off this battlefield, and I’ll belong to Ephegos anyway. So as long as I buy them freedom, they can still fight to make a future for themselves.

“Please,” Myron murmurs, tone dead, and I know he’s not pleading with Ephegos whose expression has turned unreadable as he calculates the benefits and disadvantages of my offer. Myron is speaking to me, appealing to my heart that’s already shattering at the mere thought of what I’m signing up for.

But it’s worth it. If I can buy them freedom, it will be worth it.

“I love you, Ayna,” Myron murmurs.

Ephegos cuts a dark glance at the Crow King in the dirt and waves a hand for the Flame holding me down to release me.

“Deal.”

And the ancient magic of bargains snaps into place, binding an iron sash around my heart that will never be the same knowing everything I love is out there, waiting for me. Yet I’ll never return to it.

Forty-Three

Myron

Deal.

I can’t unhear Ephegos’s voice. That one single word that sealed all our fates.

The cold of the soil beneath me seeps into my bones, and part of me remembers to get to my feet and run after Ayna. Ayna, who Ephegos hauled up by her braid and dragged along as she screamed while I flailed in the mud, battling the force of the Flames holding me down until all I could do was watch her disappear. Then someone knocked me out with a blow to the back of my head. The rest is a haze of pain and a blur of motion as the Flames disappeared from the clearing like they never existed.

I’m too weak to straighten and bolt after them. If I’m honest, I wouldn’t even know what direction to start looking. Ephegos marched west, but he might have done that to confuse us, and I don’t dare follow my sense of smell for fear I might actually find Ayna and set off a chain of events that will lead to the magic of bargains punishing her in the worst possible ways.

“Myron,” Kaira hisses from a few feet away, and something sparks inside my chest. A flicker of hope that the part-Flamemight still be able to reach into my mate’s mind, even from a little distance. “You all right?”

I straighten to my knees with a groan, cursing all the gods as I wipe the blood from my forehead where it is seeping through my hair from the injury at the back of my head. Whoever knocked me out must have used the pommel of their sword or a thick rock.

“No.” Bracing my hands on my knees, I glance over at where she’s rolling into a sitting position. “You?”

“No.”

The wind racing through the evergreens surrounding the clearing is the only sound for a long moment as we both catch our breaths. With each inhale, my heart fractures a bit more as I realize this is real. The words Ayna spoke, Ephegos accepting them—all of it is real.

I’ll be yours if you let him live. I swear not to try to return to his Crow Court if you let Kaira go as well. Alive. The bargain is valid as long as you promise to never lay a finger on either of them again.

I should be grateful to be alive, to get a chance to return to Aceleau and help Recienne win this war, but all I feel is a bleakness weighing down every last one of my heartbeats.

“She’s gone.” I don’t know if it’s Kaira or me speaking the words, but the pain lashing through my veins is mine.

“We’ll get her back.” That’s definitely Kaira’s voice because I know better than to hope a fae bargain can be broken. Herinor has been fighting his deal with Ephegos for months without much success. But when it comes to the core of his promises, he hasn’t made any progress. “As soon as our magic returns.”

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