Page 55 of Song of Night

I can only hope she’s right. A sharp nod, and we flee down the obsidian steps. My wolves fly past as we do, flame and smoke and ash, joining Kieran in his fight. When we reach the floor of the temple, we run as fast as we can to the throne on the far side.

The throne remains empty, even as we slide to a stop in front of it.

“This is the place, I know it,” Zara growls, brow furrowed. “She has to be here.”

I look at the empty throne and back to Zara, my heart sinking. “Maybe she requires magic, and we’re all out.”

Zara shakes her head, jaw clenched, anger etched into her face. “No. It can’t end here. Not like this. Not when we came so close.”

Silence falls between us. The temple shakes as Kieran and the demon battle a few hundred yards away. My brother finally forgave me, and now he’s going to die for nothing…

I take both of Zara’s hands and look down at her. “If this is the end, I will not go out a coward. As a stubborn, prideful bastard who didn’t speak my heart.” My gaze drops, but I force myself to look up again, to meet Zara’s eyes. “I’m sorry I was angry. It was wrong of me to begrudge you for your past, especially given mine. I’ve treated you poorly, shoved you away because of things that seem so unimportant now, here, at the end.”

One hand reaches up into her hair, and I stroke her cheek with my thumb. “We may die today, but I will spend a thousand lifetimes proving to you that I’m worthy. I will find you in each one, and I will choose you. Over and over, I will choose you. My soul belongs to you, and my heart and my body and my blood. Everything I am is yours. Always.”

Zara reaches out and curls my tunic in her fist, pulling me against her. “I don’t regret any of the lies I told you in the beginning,” she says. “Because I told them to my enemy. But I regret the lie I told you after our first night together. You offered me a seat to rule at your side, and I told you I didn’t know what I wanted. The truth is that I want you always, too. I’ve wanted it since the moment I held that dagger to your throat.”

“Always. In this life and the rest of them.”

I press my lips to hers, wrapping my arms around her, holding her close one last time. Because there’s not long left in this life, and it’s going to be a very long while until I find her in the next. So I taste her, her lips and her tears and the magic that sings in her soul, and I vow to hold onto this moment until we meet again.

And as I do, magic flares between us, and the temple disappears.

Chapter Forty-Three

ZARA

I blink as the pulse of violet light fades, my heart pounding. We’re still in the temple. Or some version of it.

Instead of an obsidian floor, we stand on a field of stars. And instead of a throne made of stone, there is a throne made of something that looks like slices of the moon, fragments of it, fanned out around a glowing silver orb.

On the orb sits a goddess.

She has long black hair within which I can see stars and far-off universes. Her skin seems to change as I look at it, depending on the angle of the light: one moment it seems alabaster, the next moment it nearly matches her hair, the next it is a dusky sunset hue like the evening sky. The spot in the center of her forehead, which I’d previously thought was a small black stone, is actually a tiny spinning vortex. Stardust shimmers in the air around her.

My eyes fly to Asher’s and we step away from each other and bow low to the floor.

“Rise, children of Night,” she says. Her voice is deep and resonant, and yet somehow soft and musical all at once. “You’ve done well. Just one final step.”

“Yes, anything,” Asher says. “I’ve lived in torment since the day I summoned you. I did not know what would happen, I swear it.”

He bows his head, but the goddess just smiles.

“I could feel your anguish as time went on,” she says. “Your regret. What’s important is that you now return things to the way they are meant to be. Magic rebalanced, returned to the lands beyond your city.”

“Just tell us how,” I say. “What do we need to do to fix it?”

The goddess cocks her head to the side. “I think you already know. You have seen it.”

I shake my head in confusion. “But…” I trail off.

I do know.

The first image in my vision, before the obsidian stairs or the goddess. A set of strange glowing lines of wild magic.

I know, without knowing how I know, that they are the lines of wild magic running throughout the whole land, throughout Aureon. And when Asher accidentally summoned too much magic, he altered the pattern, trapping the goddess here and siphoning all the magic into Night.

I realize also what the winged demon wants. Instead of returning the balance, it wants to kill the goddess and devour all magic. It never intended for Vyrin to possess that magic, he was only ever a pawn, and a foolish one to think otherwise. Long had that darkness poisoned his mind, driven him mad lusting for something he would never have.

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