Page 105 of Fate and Flame
“Is he . . .” I couldn’t say the words. Wouldn’t.
“The glen will not bring the dead back to us. He is not dead, but he is not alive either. He teeters on the brink of somewhere in between. I cannot help him as you’ve asked. I’ve tried. He is so close, yet the magic cannot reach him.”
I nodded, that numbness beginning to spread through me again. I laid on the ground beside his warm body and trailed my fingers down his face. Placing my hand upon his chest, I begged and begged him to come back to me. I wept, and the forest pixies came out from hiding to form a circle around us.
“I can’t lose him. I can’t.”
“This is the moment you have to say goodbye to him.”
But I wouldn’t. Instead, I said goodbye to the moments we never had, to the future that was stolen from us. To the fae child that would have been his heir and looked like his father. I said goodbye to the memories.
“Thank you,” I whispered into his ear, tears trailing down my face as I pushed his hair behind his pointed ear. “Thank you for saving me and loving me.”
‘Thank you is just as good as goodbye,’ I had told him.
Several of the pixies floated through the air, weeping alongside me. Somewhere deep within me I felt my soul begin to tear. My spirit drowned with the realization that he was really gone. The last wisp of hope I’d held so desperately left me. Just as he would.
Take me with you.
I laid my head upon his chest, upon his heart. Though I knew he was gone, I still pulled him to me. Still tugged and lurched and heaved.
The ground began to rumble. The glen reacted, and Ofra moved to sit beside me.
“You’re doing it.” She placed her warm hand on my back. “Your soul is the anchor. He is pulling, fighting to come back.”
The flame.
The flame flickered, just dim enough to warm something within me, but then it grew until I could feel him. So very faintly, but he was there. Pulling as desperately as I was.
“Oh gods,” I said as his heart began to beat beneath me.
“You must move away now.” Ofra stood.
“I can’t leave him.”
“Let the magic do what it is meant to do. Come.”
As I lifted myself from him, willing to do anything to bring him back, I felt the magnetic pull—as if physically leaving his side strained everything—but I carried that tiny flame within me as I moved to the edge of the glen lit by starlight alone. I lifted my head to the sky and thanked the gods for answered prayers and hopeless dreams.
And then we waited.
Marry me.
I cried out and ran to him, throwing myself over him again, so fucking grateful for the arms that lifted from the ground and held me as I sobbed and sobbed into the chest that rose and fell.
“I love you,” I wailed.
I pulled myself up to stare into those beautiful emerald eyes that I thought I’d never see again. I ran my fingers through his jet-black hair. I kissed his cheek and his lips and the stubble along his sharp jawline.
He sat up and pulled me into his lap and held me as desperately as I was holding him.
“You were dead,” I murmured. “You left me.”
“I’m so sorry. It wasn’t supposed to happen that way. I was supposed to save you.”
“Kai saved us all,” I told him. “Because we’re a team. A family. And right now, I don’t think he’s okay either.”
We rose, moving toward our savior. “Thank you,” I told Ofra as Fen and I stood on the edge of the glen. I held my mother’s necklace out to her. “You’ve fulfilled more than your end of the bargain.”
