Misty
Everything else is a blur. Aviva’s screamed words. Ella’s rushed explanations. Grandma taking me by the shoulders and leading me away, tucking me in a sitting room somewhere in the depths of the castle. I barely feel her arm on my shoulder. I barely register sitting down in a chair, holding the bloody pages in my lap and watching the firelight dance over the untidy scrawl I know so well.
I sit there for what could be hours. Eventually, I’m joined by Sarah and Kenna… and then Aviva.
Still, I haven’t read the letter. I’ve read my name, addressed at the top of the first page, over and over again. This is his final goodbye, and I’m not ready to accept that.
“What are we supposed to do?” Kenna grinds out. “The reports coming out of Tarsian are–”
“I don’t fucking care what they are!” Sarah’s voice pitches with fury. “The father of my sons is fighting for his fucking life right now, Kenna.”
“My mate, too!” Kenna shouts. “But we’ve been told to stay, to be prepared to defend Moonrise!”
“I don’t give a shit about Moonrise!”
“Well, if they fail in Tarsian, Crescent Falls is going to fall, so I hope you at least give a shit about that!”
Aviva stands in silence by the window with her golden bow, her eyes heavy with grief, watching the skyline as if she can see the battle taking place hundreds of miles south of here.
Kenna and Sarah’s argument bounces through the room. Sarah wants to leave–now. She wants to go to Sydney and wants Kenna to come with her, both of them using their powers to try to stop this threat.
Kenna’s argument is sound, however, which makes me feel absolutely hopeless. “If my father is struggling to advance the armies into Serpentia, our powers won’t make a difference.” She gets in Sarah’s face, nose to nose. “If my father has to drop his wards here, and in the Roguelands, to use that reserve of powers… Sarah, you have to know–”
“I can’t stand here and accept that we’re losing this war before it’s even begun,” Sarah rages, her eyes going glassy and bright with tears. “We need to go–”
“If we go, and fail, there’s no one left to protect the rest of the Allied Kingdoms. Your sons will not only lose their parents but the kingdom they were meant to rule!”
“Do you not care about Evander at all?” Sarah snaps.
I close my eyes, waiting for Kenna’s scary shadow powers to erupt, but a calm stillness settles through the room… and Kenna bursts into tears.
I glance at them just as Sarah wraps Kenna in her arms and embraces her tightly.
My hands tremble as I turn and look at Aviva, who’s still silently watching the inky black horizon. Even the stars are hiding from this war.
Then, I look down at the letter, reading the first pages.
“I can still feel you. I should have known you’d fight my rejection.”
My lips twitch into a smile I can’t stop, even as tears blur my vision.
“There wasn’t any debate about my need to write this. I don’t care about giving you closure, because that’s not something either of us can hope for. What happened to us is horrifically unfair. The moment I saw you, Misty, was both the best, and worst, moment of my life.”
“Asshole,” I whisper under my breath.
“I wish I could go back to that moment when I passed you in the street. I wish I could have told you then, held you, just for a second more.”
Tears slip free, sliding down my cheeks.
“I miss your voice in my head. I miss the way you used to watch me read, or write my notes. Your presence filled the silence in my life. You took up space, kept me whole, and when I had chances to just be with you, I felt like I had something to fight for, even if I didn’t get to keep you in the end.”
I feel Kenna and Sarah gathering around me. Kenna kneels near the fire, wiping her tears on the back of her hand, but Sarah perches on the armrest, resting her arm over my shoulder.
“If you’re reading this, I’m in the thick of it. The battles in the desert have begun. I’ve followed Richard and his forces to Serpentia. That’s where he’s keeping the book–where he plans on opening the Gate. He’s going to escape through it, we believe, after using the book to unleash hell on Eastonia and beyond. His desire for power knows no bounds, and my only consolation is that you’re safe and with your family.”
My chest rattles as I try to fill my lungs with air. I flip the page, noticing the writing growing more frantic as his words turn from the war, to what’s in his heart.
“I told you I loved you, and I meant it with every fiber of my being. That will never change, and nothing has ever been more true. You were the future I wanted. You’re the future I want, even if I’m not in it.”
I grip the pages as my body thrums with despair.
“Being mates was out of our control. It wasn’t something we got to decide–it never is. But I tell myself that I willed you into existence. That this feeling in my chest–this overwhelming love–was of my design. That I knit the threads of fate that bind us together, not the Goddess. That I choose you, every day, every second, and will continue to do so until I take my dying breath because I love you, and I always will, mate bond be damned.”
My chest heaves as I force myself to breathe, the letter crackling between my trembling hands.
“I hope that one day you’ll forgive me for this. For breaking your heart, for severing the strings between us–but they were nothing in comparison to what I built. For what I feel–Misty, I need you to know that. I need you to know that you hang the stars in the very sky I’ll die beneath on that battlefield, and when that happens, your name will be the last word on my tongue. I love you. I loved you then, the moment I saw you, and it had nothing to do with fate. I loved you before I heard your voice in my head and felt your touch on my skin. I loved you, and I got to choose to. I loved you intentionally. Fervently. Wholly, and completely. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been able to choose on my own, and I will never regret the time we had. Not for a second. My only regret is that we didn’t have more.”
“Misty,” Sarah whispers, wiping my tears away with her thumbs.
“I can’t do this,” I sob, looking up at her through a barrage of tears. But there’s more.
“One day, when you’re gray and tired, I’ll find you. When you’ve lived a life of sunshine and ease, I’ll reach your side again, and I’ll guide you home. I promise. But you need to live, Misty. If you make me one promise–one vow you can keep–let it be that. Do it for me, and for what we could have been, had fate not intervened. Live, and love again, and I swear on the Goddess Herself…I will find you, and we will have our chance.”
A painful sob tears through my body. I curl around it, biting down on my lip to stop from screaming. Sarah kneels beside me, wrapping her arms around my back and crushing me to her chest. Kenna moves in on me slowly, her fingers raking through my hair as I cry into Sarah’s shoulder.
Aviva speaks from the window, however, her voice as firm and cold as ice. “Are we really going to let this happen?”
“Aviva,” Sarah whispers, shaking her head. “Not now.”
“Then when?”
I lift my head as Aviva stands on unsteady legs, her face washed with grief. “When everyone is dead? When our mates–the fathers of our children–are dead?”
Kenna gulps back whatever her reply to that might have been. Even Sarah stills, her eyes holding on Aviva.
But Aviva looks at me with so much conviction in her eyes, they glow. “Get up. Chin up, Misty. This isn’t over.”
“Of course, it’s over,” Kenna croaks. “It’s done. The Gate is open. We have hours–”
“Exactly,” Aviva hisses, her eyes leaving Kenna’s face to hold on mine. “Wars have been won in less time.”
“What are you suggesting?” Sarah turns but keeps an arm roped over my shoulder in solidarity. “Are you suggesting we go to battle? Die beside our men? Leave our children behind?”
“There won’t be anything left for our children if we don’t act, and you know it, Sarah.”
Sarah pales. Aviva’s right. Nowhere is safe. Even the furthest reaches of Celestoria will be affected. The curse will spread until it eats our kingdoms whole, leaving nothing but bones behind.
Silence hugs the room. Snow falls in steady puffs of white and silver beyond the frosted window–calm, and peaceful–a heavy contrast to the weight of the air in this room.
I look down at the letter, and the very last words Cole wrote in obvious haste. He’s in Serpentia. He has to be.
I know where he is… which means I can find him and stop this before it’s too late.
“You are the only thing that has ever made sense to me. You were the greatest gift, the only light in my world. When I die, I wonder if She’ll send me back to those quiet moments–because lying beside you in bed while you slept in my arms… that was heaven. What is heaven really, when I already had you?”
There’s only one thought in my mind. It’s irrational and brash. It’s furious, wild, and all-consuming.
“I’m not letting him do this without me,” I whisper. “I’m not letting him go alone.”
“Then we go.” Aviva swings her bow off her back, the gold catching the light of the fire. Her eyes sweep the room as Kenna rises, her shadows curling around her fingers.
“Then we go,” Kenna echoes, resigning herself to the fact we’re not going without her. “To Serpentia. To Evander.”
Sarah closes her eyes as she lays her head on my shoulder, but when her eyes open again, they’re that strange violet–all light. Violent, vengeful light. “To Sydney.”
“To Ryan,” Aviva echoes, and then her eyes are on mine. “To Cole.”
“To Cole,” I whisper, breathing his name back into existence.
I will kill anyone in my way.
That’s a promise.
But a shadow in the doorway catches all of our attention. I rise, turning with Sarah as my aunt Ella steps into the room, her eyes shining like sea glass.
For a moment, I think this is already over before it began, but Ella looks into our faces, holding our gaze as she sweeps the room. “We’ll need armor,” she says softly. “We’ll leave in ten minutes, girls. Be ready.”