Chapter 135
_Lisa’s POV_
+25 Points
Fenric roared at the sight. He hurled a spear of darkness at Kael that would have consumed a normal man. The blue shield snapped against it and held like a spiderweb. Morana’s lips moved. Her hands were bleeding from the strain.
“Now!” the souls thundered through Kael, and a living river of light shot from his chest toward
Fenric.
It was not a clean beam. It was a storm. It hit Fenric and he screamed. His shadow peeled like old paint. He tried to call his followers to him, but the light burned their bindings. One by one their shapes unravelled. The warlocks‘ magic cracked like thin ice.
I watched as the world shook. Fenric’s body began to smoke. His smile faltered into a snarl. His skin blackened like paper.
“Don’t look,” Sierra said. But I could not look away.
I was pulled, softly and sudden, from Katherine’s flesh. The black shell of that body crumbled and dusted into ash. A sound like a small bell broke from it. Morana’s chant faltered. She pushed the last syllables of the spell into the night like a prayer.
“Back!” she cried. “Lisa, back to your own frame!”
I felt myself lift like a leaf. I floated. The ash of Katherine curled away and vanished on the wind. I looked down and saw Kael glow one last white beat. The souls spoke in his throat. They said thank you. They said go. They said be free.
The world flared with light. I felt my body answering me. My lungs filled with air that was mine. I fell into my own chest with a sound that was a sob and a laugh at once.
I was home.
I looked up. Fenric lay on the ground where the light had ripped him. He was not a man anymore. He was a mound of dust with eyes like coals that dimmed. The warlocks and witches were the same. Their forms unstitched into ash and spilled away on the wind.
Silence poured over the clearing like a blanket.
Then, Kael sagged. The glow left him in a slow drain. Morana caught him. Her hands shook. I could not find the words.
He was still. His chest did not move.
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Chapter 135
+25 Points.
“No,” I said. I rushed to him and knelt down. My fingers pressed to his throat. It was cold. His skin was warm a second before. Now it was cool and quiet.
Rylan pushed forward and scooped me up like I might break. He wrapped me in arms that smelled of smoke and sweat and moonlight. He tried to hold me but his eyes were wet and his jaw was a hard line.
“It’s not your fault,” he said, though he did not look at me. He was talking to himself as much as to me. “It’s not your fault.”
I shook my head so hard my borrowed hair whipped against my face. “He gave himself,” I whispered. “He chose it. He took the price I said I would take. He did it for me. For us.”
Morana sat back on her heels. Her face had the look of someone who had been to the edge of a cliff and come back. “Kael paid his debt,” she said. Her voice was small. “Some debts must be paid with life. It is the law of the balance. He chose atonement. We cannot mock the
hand that heels the wound.”
Sierra pressed close to my mind. She howled a long and soft note that felt like mercy and rage and grief all at once.
I wept then. Big, terrible sobs. They shook me. Tears fell down my cheeks. Rylan’s arms tightened until I could not breathe and then loosened because he knew I needed the air.
Kael’s men stood with bowed heads. The warriors around us were silent and small. They acknowledged Kael’s sacrifice.
“Was it worth it?” I asked the night. My throat hurt. My voice was raw.
Morana’s face was neutral. “He chose to balance the scales,” she said. “It was his path. We cannot say whether it was right. Only that it ended the shadow.”
I crawled closer to Kael and reached for his hand. It was cool beneath my fingers. I felt his pulse stop like a pale bell. I leaned my forehead to his and I let my tears fall onto his cheek.
Rylan whispered in my ear. The words were small but fierce, “He saved us. He saved you.”
I shook my head. “He saved us by dying and I am responsible for all of this.”
Sierra snarled and then whined. She was grieving.
The moon watched us. The stars blinked like distant eyes that had seen too much.
Morana stood and brushed her hands together. “Now we bury them,” she said. “We burn what must be burned. We hold the living and mend what we can. The souls have their rest. The curse is undone.”
2/4
< Chapter 135
+25 Points
I closed my eyes. Kael’s fingers were slack against mine. Rylan folded his arms around me and did not say more.
I thought of the boy with gold curls and the baby with closed lips. I thought of the souls rising like small birds and going somewhere that was not pain. I felt them whisper thanks like feathers.
Grief was a new thing I had to wear. But pride sat with the grief like a fierce friend. For a second I felt steady. I had helped free them. I had come back and I had not let Fenric win.
Sierra nudged my mind soft. We are alive. We owe it to them.
I leaned my head on Kael’s chest as the men prepared the small fire. Rylan held me like I might break again and I realized I already had.
I whispered his name. He bent his head and kissed my hair gently.
“Thank you,” I said to the ones gone. “Thank you for giving us this chance.”
Kael’s body was still beneath my palms. The fate he had carried to the end had bought us dawn.
I cried for him and for the price that the world sometimes asks. I felt empty and full in the same breath.
I closed my eyes and listened as the men prepared a small pyre. The fire would be a poor answer to a life. It would not bring him back. But in the light of it, I could see the faces of
those who loved him and those who hated him, all human and raw.
The world had changed. Fenric was dust. The covenant of darkness had died with him. The lost souls were free. Kael was gone.
I let my tears fall and with them a promise that I would live….. for him, for the lost ones, for
the ones who still believed in me.
The night was tragic and strange. It held a quiet that felt like the first breath after a storm.
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