Page 69 of The Surrender

Horror curdles my blood. Merikh surrounds me, holds me. I don’t even protest when he rakes his claws into the sides of my body—cutting my skin.

Three seconds.

All the air rips free of my lungs.

Two seconds.

My heart forgets to beat.

One second.

Kyan’s body breaks upon the rocks. My soul shatters at the same time, rattled to the core. Whole body lurching, I get free from Merikh’s grip. Or he lets me go. I can’t tell. I don’t care.

I run to my fallen angel, closing the distance between us in tattered seconds.

Blood gushes from his mouth. His limbs look like twisted and gnarled tree branches. And his wings...

“Kyan, Shadow,” I whisper, hovering my trembling fingers above his chest. His blue eyes, blue as the indigo skies beyond the Veil he hasn’t seen in centuries, deepen across mine for one second before they turn vacant while he coughs up more blood. “Nonononono, Kyan, no!”

Panic spirals through me. “Crush your heart. He c-can’t. I’m-I’m your heart. Your heart’s here...” I grab his mangled hand and press it to my belly, praying he can sense our unborn child’s energy.

“It doesn’t matter,” Merikh says darkly behind me. “Not our hearts you need to free, little dove. They’ve broken far too many times for that, especially his.”

“He broke your pride. He can’t kill your soul!” I protest, thoughts scrambling as I dart my eyes to the lake. “Merikh, h-help me get him to the—”

“It’s too late, Quintessa,” Mayce says as he and Drago come closer. “His soul is dying.”

I shake my head wildly, not understanding. “Broken pride. Dying soul. Broken wings.” Kill his soul.

The awareness tears through me like a tempest, shivering my flesh, whirling the blood in my veins, vibrating through my muscles, shuddering my bones, and convulsing my very heart.

I don’t think.

With all the strength I can muster, I roll Kyan’s heavy, muscled body onto its side, straining, and shrieking until my hands drive down upon his bloodied wing stumps. I dig them into his skin, his flesh, but I can’t—

“I can’t get at the roots! The roots, please...”

I struggle, my hands shaking as I search for a shard of ice or a sharp rock. Something. Anything. Thunder roars in my ears.

He’s growing cold!

Drago’s claws come down, slicing through skin, flesh, and muscle until he arrives at the roots. I take a deep breath and plunge my fingers on each side of the wings. Straight to the bone.

Core and light. Womb and death. Fire and earth and blood and…air. Breath and bones. Breath! For some reason, I remember the words of the Hag from what feels like a lifetime ago.

I dig deeper. The scars riddling my skin thrum to life—iridescent and scintillating until they shine as bright as Kyan’s sunrise. Core and light.

Womb...and death, oh gods! My womb. His death.

Whatever thin shreds of life remain in him are shaking loose, unraveling, disappearing like a vapor I can’t catch. They wisp beyond my touch, my vym.

At the same time, my hands close around two firm objects tangled within Kyan’s wing roots. One is fire and smoke smoldering my palm. Kyan. One is ice and shadows, cold as the winter land around me. Shadow.

Gooseflesh breaks out all over my skin, spreading tingles into the barest hairs prickling my skin.

Nothing is like last time. I unearth the two broken pieces of Kyan’s soul. They gleam like two orbs in my palms, their energy radiating into my scars. Not just my ink because they accept my scars, pulsing through every drop of ink, sinking beyond the beauty. The two pieces of Kyan’s soul love my scars—not just how I reclaimed them and tried to forget the broken parts of who I was.

Kyan’s broken soul surrenders to mine.

---