Page 155 of Kingdom of Chaos
I snap my gaze to Kade, who stands a bit off to the side. I don’t know him well, but after everything that’s happened, I trust him. I trust his word, and I at least need to know that when I’m gone, someone will look out for Talon.
“You’ll make sure he’s okay?” I plead with the Order leader.
His dark eyes soften, and he gives a firm nod. “You don’t need to worry. He’s one of us now.”
With that, my tears only fall harder.
“Thank you. For what you’ve done for us, for this world,” Kade says, even as Becks all but drags me toward the portal behind us. “For your sacrifice. It won’t be forgotten.”
I glance behind me and see we’re mere feet from the portal. Two more steps and I’ll be separated from Talon forever.
“Wait! Wait!” I scream, right before Becks forces me through.
He pauses, and I lock eyes with Talon, pouring everything I feel for him and everything I am into the next words.
“I love you,” I say, knowing it’s the last and truest thing I will ever say to him.
A smile splits his face as a single tear runs down his cheek.
“I know,” he says. “I always have.”
And then Becks pulls me through the portal.
Forty-Five
TALON / SIX MONTHS LATER
I’d liketo say the hollow ache in my chest gets a little better every day, but that would be a lie, and I don’t lie to myself anymore, just everyone else. I must be getting good at it, because I no longer have to endure the concerned glances from Kade or Ares like I did in the first few months after she left. After Locklyn and the others returned to their world, my world—and I was left here.
My strength may have returned the moment she disappeared through that portal, but she took a part of me, a part of my soul, with her, a piece I’ll never get back, leaving behind an emptiness I’m only now learning how to hide.
If there was ever any question about whether or not someone could live with half a soul, I now know they can. Because that’s what I do every day.
But even if I can’t be with her, knowing she’s out there, somewhere, alive and well, living out her life . . . that’s enough. Or at least, it will have to be, because that’s all I’ll ever get.
Do I have regrets? No . . . and yes.
I knew the risks before we ever stepped foot in the human world. Locklyn and my situation with Shadow Striker wasunprecedented. Nothing like it had ever happened before, at least not in the Society’s history. But based on what we knew about the dagger, Imogen and I suspected there was a very real possibility that if I went to the human world with Locklyn, what Shadow Striker had started the moment she bonded with the dagger would eventually be completed.
Every time I shared my magic with her, I knew I was gambling with my life. And I’d do it all over again, because for her, I’d risk everything without a second thought.
So no, I don’t regret going with her to this different world, even though now I’m trapped in it. I don’t regret sharing my magic and teaching her how to use it, because she needed that power to protect herself. I don’t regret a single moment we spent together.
What I do regret is that we didn’t have more time.
I’m a greedy bastard, because with her I wanted it all.
Every moment. Every touch. Every experience.
I wanted a lifetime.
But that will never be, so now I have to learn to live the rest of my life with only the memories we made, because for me, she’s it. There will never be another. There isn’t room inside my icy heart for anyone else.
Even a world away, she fills it completely, consuming every part of me.
Even though the thought of her in another’s arms feels like a hot iron searing through my chest, I hope she loves again. I want that for her. She loved before me, deeply, so I’m hopeful there’s room in her heart for someone else, because I don’t want her to live like I am.
A shell. A half life, because the other half is missing.
