Page 149 of His Darkest Desire

But this success was no more satisfying than his gravest failures.

He forced his hands open and stared at the blood on his palms. Some part of him had hoped her blood would’ve worked for him, that it would’ve transported him alongside Kinsley. That selfish, foolish part of Vex had hoped they’d remain together, despite every piece of evidence proving it could never have been so.

Muffled voices sounded around Vex, coming from right beside him, coming from across the universe. Kinsley was no longer alone. These were the voices of other humans—shocked, relieved, brimming with love. Her family.

His legs buckled, and Vex sunk to his knees, falling back to sit on his haunches.

Something hot and wet streamed down his cheeks and along his nose. The tears fell, splashing on his upturned hands, where they mingled with his blood.

Vex didn’t fight them. He watched them fall like rain, refracting the light of the runes and crystals. He watched them break upon his hands and the ground, each a tiny reflection of his heart.

Were he to spill enough tears to flood the glen, to flood the world, they’d not be enough to fill the emptiness at his core.

He did not know how long he knelt there—only that his tears persisted after the otherworldly voices faded.

“Magus?”

Soft blue light fell across the ground in front of Vex as the wisps flew to him.

“These ones sensed a surge in the ley lines,” said Flare.

“These ones did not think to find you here. What has happened?” Echo asked.

Shade flitted down. Their light dimmed as they studied the ground, Vex’s hands, and finally his face. “Magus…” The wisp extended a tendril, lightly touching Vex’s thumb. “Where is Kinsley?”

The answer emerged raw and ragged from Vex’s throat. “Gone.”

“Gone?” Echo joined Shade, looking small and dim.

But when Flare fell into place beside the others, the wisp’s ghostfire was bright and bristling. “What have you done?”

“What have I done?” Vex lifted his gaze to the wisps. His heart thumped deafeningly in the gaping void within his chest, and each breath clawed at his lungs and throat. “What was necessary.”

“Please, magus. Where is she?” Shade asked, voice gentle but quavering.

“She’s returned to her world. Her home.”

Flare swelled, ghostfire taking on withering intensity. “This is her world. This is her home.”

“This was her cage!” Vex dropped his hands and tore up fistfuls of moss and soil. “This is naught but the floor of a cell. This world was her prison, even more so than it is mine.”

“Such foolishness is unlike you,” said Shade, blazing alongside Flare.

“Is it foolishness to wish her happiness?” Vex threw the clumps down and clutched at his tunic. “Foolishness to pluck out my heart that she might live?”

“She was living,” Echo replied. “She was happy.”

“She was trapped. All her dreams, snatched away. All her loved ones bereft and beyond reach.” Shoving himself to his feet, Vex spread his arms and turned in place. “Here, my mate was a caged bird, damned by no folly of her own to wither for eternity. But out there…” His words caught in his throat, a jagged clump echoing the unfathomable ache in his chest.

But he forced them out anyway, embracing the agony they inflicted upon him. “Out there, she is free to soar.”

“How can she soar,” said Shade, voice low and oddly thick, “when you have broken her heart?”

“You may as well have clipped her wings,” added Flare.

Vex stared at the wisps, unblinking, grasped by a terrible stillness. The first movement inside him came in the form of something cold and heavy in his gut, expanding and sinking.

“These ones have not any time to waste,” said Echo softly.

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