His shields were up—solid walls he’d erected during battle. I brushed a hand along one, but it remained. Rhys smiled down at me, kissed me once. “Remind me to never get on Nesta’s bad side.”
That he could even joke—no, it was a form of enduring. For both of us. Because the alternative to laughter … Varian’s devastated face, watching us silently, was the alternative. And with this thing before us, this final task …
So I managed a laugh.
And I was still smiling, just a bit, when I again laid my hand on the broken shards of the Cauldron.
It was a hole. Airless. No life could exist here. No light.
It was … it was what had existed at the beginning. Before all things had exploded from it.
It did not belong here. Maybe one day, when the earth had grown old and died, when the stars had vanished, too … maybe then, we would return to this place.
Not today. Not now.
I was both form and nothing.
And behind me … Rhys’s power was a tether. An unending lightning strike that surged from me into this … place. To be shaped as I willed it.
Made and un-Made.
From a distant corner of my memory, my human mind … I remembered a mural I had seen at the Spring Court. Tucked away in a dusty, unused library. It told the story of Prythian.
It told the story of a Cauldron. This Cauldron.
And when it was held by female hands … All life flowed from it.
I reached mine out, Rhys’s power rippling through me.
United. Joined as one. Ask and answer.
I was not afraid. Not with him there.
I cupped my hands as if the cracked thirds of the Cauldron could fit into them. The entire universe into the palm of my hand.
I began to speak that last spell Amren had found us. Speak and think and feel it. Word and breath and blood.
Rhys’s power flowed through me, out of me. The Cauldron appeared.
Light danced along the fissures where the broken thirds had come together. There—there I would need to forge. To weld. To bind.
I put a hand against the side of the Cauldron. Raw, brutal power cascaded out of me.
I leaned back into him, unafraid of that power, of the male who held me.
It flowed and flowed, a burst dam of night.
The cracks fizzled and blurred.
That void began to slither back in.
More. We needed more.
He gave it to me. Rhys handed over everything.
I was a bearer, a vessel, a link.
I love you, he whispered into my mind.
I only leaned back into him, savoring his warmth, even in this non-place.
Power shuddered through him. Wrapped around the Cauldron. I recited the spell over and over and over.
The first crack healed.
Then the second.
I felt him tremble behind me, heard his wet rasp of breath. I tried to turn—
I love you, he said again.
The third and final crack began to heal over.
His power began to sputter. But it kept flowing out.
I threw mine into it, sparks and snow and light and water. Together, we threw everything in. We gave every last drop.
Until that Cauldron was whole. Until the thing it contained … it was in there. Locked away.
Until I could feel the sun again warming my face. And saw that Cauldron squatting before me—beneath my hand.
I eased my fingers from the icy iron rim. Gazed down into the inky depths.
No cracks. Whole.
I loosed a shuddering breath. We had done it. We had done—
I turned.
It took me a moment to grasp it. What I saw.
Rhys was sprawled on the rocky ground, wings draped behind him.
He looked like he was sleeping.
But as I breathed in—
It wasn’t there.
That thing that rose and fell with each breath. That echoed each heartbeat.
The mating bond.
It wasn’t there. It was gone.
Because his own chest … it was not moving.
And Rhys was dead.
CHAPTER
77
I had only silence in my head. Only silence, as I began screaming.
Screaming and screaming and screaming.
The emptiness in my chest, my soul at the lack of that bond, that life—
I was shaking him, screaming his name and shaking him, and my body stopped being my body and just became this thing that held me and this lack of him, and I could not stop screaming and screaming—
Then Mor was there. And Azriel, swaying on his feet, an arm hooked around Cassian—just as bloody and barely standing thanks to the blue, webbed Siphon-patches all over him. Over them both.
They were saying things, but all I could hear was that last I love you, which had not been a declaration but a good-bye.
And he had known. He had known he had nothing left, and stopping it would take everything. It would cost him everything. He’d kept his shields up so I wouldn’t see, because I wouldn’t have said yes, I would have rather the world ended than this, this thing he had done and this emptiness where he was, where we were—
Someone was trying to haul me away from him, and I let out a sound that might have been a snarl or another scream, and they let go.
I couldn’t live with this, couldn’t endure this, couldn’t breathe—
There were hands—unknown hands on his throat. Touching him—
I lunged for them, but someone held me back. “He’s seeing if there’s anything to be done,” Mor said, voice raw.
He—him. Thesan. High Lord of the Dawn. And of healing. I lunged again, to beg him, to plead—
But he shook his head. At Mor. At the others.
Tarquin was there. Helion. Panting and battered. “He …,” Helion rasped, then shook his head, closing his eyes. “Of course he did,” he said, more to himself than anyone.
“Please,” I said, and wasn’t sure who I was speaking to. My fingers scraped against Rhys’s armor, trying to get to the heart beneath.
The Cauldron—maybe the Cauldron—
I did not know those spells. How to put him in and make sure he came back out—
Hands wrapped around my own. They were blood-splattered and cut up, but gentle. I tried to pull away, but they held firm as Tarquin knelt beside me and said, “I’m sorry.”