Misty
I land on my feet in a sea of mist. Silver fog snakes around my ankles, around my glimmering armor made of pure light.
For a moment, I think I’m… lost within the aether–in the misty, shadowed undercurrent that separates our realm from the Goddess’s kingdom.
But wet grass squishes beneath my boots as I stumble forward, breathless, damn near in pieces. Rain pelts the top of my head as I grope for anything to grab onto before I careen toward the ground.
I yelp as my body lands with a thud.
Thunder booms, followed by its rolling echo as it bounces toward me. The rain fizzles to a gentle whisper as the mist begins to part.
A great stone wall comes into view, and then two voices carry toward me, lifted in alarm.
I sit up with great effort, kneeling as I gasp for breath that won’t fill my lungs. I slowly lift my head and see two women–one young and… stunning, with long, blonde hair and ocean blue eyes that seem to glow as she holds my gaze, her lips parted in surprise.
The second woman is older–beautiful and obviously royal. She wears a crimson cloak with a hood covering most of her rich, dark brown hair, but her eyes–the color of sparkling, polished jade, focus on my face in alarm.
A child hugs her leg, burying his face in her cloak, but he peeks at me with eyes that match hers, but his hair…it’s just as blonde as the young woman reaching for him. His mother, obviously.
And his grandmother, in her red cloak.
“Help me,” I croak, my voice cracking and trembling. Blood slips down my face. “I need help. Where am I? My mate–” My voice shudders out as a sob lifts up my throat, breaking the words into pieces. “Where am I?”
They stare at me. The older woman steps forward, extending a hand. Her mouth moves, but I don’t understand what she’s saying. Her words make no sense. She’s speaking a language that’s not even remotely familiar.
“I went through the Gate. Where am I now? Please, my mate–he’s dying, and I need to get back–I need to close the Gate, and I’m–where am I?”
She shakes her head, her brow furrowing as the young blonde woman lifts her son into her arms and argues with her. The blonde woman hands the child to the woman in the red cloak, turning to face me.
My head pounds. Blood drips down my forehead, into my eyes, dripping down my jaw. I didn’t realize how injured I was. I didn’t know. I’d been so focused on–on getting to Cole.
“Please! Please, tell me where I am? We need help–my people–we’re at war and I–”
The blonde woman steps forward, baring her teeth at me and they’re…all wrong. Her canine teeth are elongated in a way that…she has fangs.
Any blood left in my body races to my head to try to process this. She’s not–she’s not a shifter. She’s not a witch. She’s something else entirely.
I hold my hands out in surrender. “Help me–I’m not here to hurt you!”
She keeps her teeth barred, her hands extended like she’s preparing to defend herself, but she edges closer, the murderous look in her eyes softening as she closes the distance between us. “P-Please, I need to get back. Where is the Gate? Where am I? Please–”
She tilts her head, kneels in front of me, and reaches out to brush my blood soaked hair away from my face. I instinctively lean into her touch, and she’s…cold. Cold as ice.
“Faye,” the other woman says, followed by a string of words in their strange language.
Faye looks back at the woman, another string of unfamiliar words leaving her lips, but she says, “Emory,” and that sounds like a name.
Faye and Emory. It sounds odd on my tongue when I repeat it in a pleading note that has her eyes softening further. It’s their names, based on the look on her face when she hears me say it.
“M-Misty,” I stammer, pounding my chest as if to keep my own heart beating. “My name is Misty. I’m the p-princess of Crescent Falls and we’re under attack–I’m hurt–My mate–” I suck in a breath as her fingers work through my hair, pulling it back to reveal a gash running from my temple all the way to the back of my head. I have no idea how I got it. My powers are exhausted.
She exhales, her cheeks flushed as she turns and fires off a string of words to–to Emory. Hurried words. Words laced with desperation.
Then a whizzing sound cuts through the air. Something lands with a crunch nearby. I turn toward the noise.
A golden arrow sticks out of the grass, connected to a single, minuscule, golden thread.
Aviva.
My heart leaps, working again, as I jump toward the arrow. It trembles, tugging free of the ground like someone on the other end is pulling the thread. I grab the arrow just as it erupts from soil, and then I’m… hurtling back, through the mist, the women disappearing and replaced by that same, empty, nothingness.
Quiet. It’s so incredibly quiet here. Just darkness. No stars to light my way. No sound. No voices.
But noise erupts. Screams and shouts of pain and frustration. The smell of smoke and death.
I feel it–hear it before the darkness fades.
And then I’m back, sucked into battle, into Eastonia, and rolling across the ground away from the Gate.
“MISTYYY!” Aviva roars my name over the sound of war, her voice a keening cry–a warning. “CLOSE IT! CLOSE IT NOWWW!”
I roll onto my back and blindly send the last of my powers racing toward the swirling, endless nightmare of aether in front of me, screaming as it yanks my powers from me, absorbing them.
Green power seeps through the ground around me, throbbing and thrumming like it has its own heartbeat. Richard cursed the world just to watch it burn. The Gate was his escape. His escape to a place where a simple, lowly, broken man like him could play god.
Not on my watch.
My scream can be heard in the heavens.
My powers–this moment–historians millennia from now…they’ll write about it. They’ll say how a little girl from Crescent Falls died beside her mate, exhausting her powers to the last drop so that everyone who came after that horrible, devastating war, would remember his name. Their names.
Misty and Cole.
Aviva and Ryan.
Sarah and Sydney.
Kenna and Evander.
Ella and Ryatt.
Isaac and Maddy.
Brie. Blake. Aris. Liam. Maeve.
And finally, Isla and Maddox–the ones who started it all.
My light burns a bright, unending blue–like dawn has come, chasing away the night. It flows gently despite the force of it leaving my body. It curls and drifts into the gate, turning the whirling aether a pale silver.
The Gate shrinks piece by piece, fractal by fractal, as my heart slows, and my vision blurs.
I don’t see it close. I squeeze my eyes shut against the pain of exhausting my powers. My body turns to pure ice as the Gate closes and shatters over me like glass.
The ground rolls–thundering and shaking like the sand beneath me is being pulled apart.
I’m blown backward by a sonic wave that steals the air from my lungs. My eardrums burst. My bones nearly snap.
It’s over.
A hand grips mine, squeezing tight. At first, I think it’s Aviva clutching me, but when I turn my head, Cole’s there, beside me, holding on by a thread.
I look into his eyes as he pulls me close with the last of his strength until my body’s flush with his. We lie there in the middle of the battlefield, the desert wet with blood. The sounds of the last battles wane, replaced by a crushing, deafening silence…
And then the soft chirping of birds, and waves crashing against the nearby shore.
“Look at us,” I whisper, holding his gaze. “We’re dying. I hate that for us.”
His lips part, but he’s quiet, letting go of a breath as the corner of his mouth ticks into the softest, smallest of smiles.
“I love you,” he whispers, squeezing my hand. His last words.
“I know,” I breathe, smiling painfully. “I love you, too.”
My healing powers simmer, shoving past the ice in my veins, beginning to slowly knit me together against my will. I want to go with him. I want to slip into death holding his hand but… it’s not just me in this broken body.
“If it’s a boy,” I say, my voice fractured as the taste of blood fades from my tongue, “I’ll name him Adrian. He’ll be just like you. Kind and wonderful and brave.”
Cole’s eyes shine as the first inklings of morning fade the stars overhead. I don’t dare blink. I look at him–my mate. The love of my life. Our baby’s father.
I’m losing him. Every second that passes… it’s all I have left with him.
“We’ll–we’ll live in a little cottage somewhere. He’ll run around all day, in the woods, picking flowers and chasing birds, just like you did.”
His mouth ticks into a smile again, but his eyes are growing heavy. My heart breaks, but I keep talking. “And he’ll know who you were. What you did for us–for me. So I could live, and he could live. And he’ll love you. Every night, when I kiss his cheek as I tuck him into bed, he’ll feel you there…in every hug. In every silly little book–he’ll know you, Cole. I won’t let him ever forget you. I’ll never forget you.”
Tears slip down his bloody cheeks, but he doesn’t blink them away. He holds my gaze as the light starts to dim behind his eyes, death coming in a slow, gentle wave. Painless and warm.
“I’ll see you in his face.” A sob chokes the words. “And–and I’ll be reminded, constantly, of you. I know you wanted me to move on, to love again, but you are itfor me. My only mate. My love–the love of my heart, and I chose you, Cole. I’ll always choose you. My heart–it’s yours until the day I die and we–we can be together again. I love you–Goddess, I love you so much.”
Cole dies with his fingers knitted in mine.
I bite back sobs as I look at him, memorizing his face. I reach for him with my free hand, smoothing my fingertips over his cheek, his jaw. I roll, keeping my other hand locked in his, and press one last kiss to his lips, tears spilling down my cheeks.
My healing powers are weak from use. My tears roll off his skin–useless.
It’s done. It’s over. We’ve won but at such an egregious cost.
One day, I’ll accept that he’s gone. Not today, though. Not now. Honestly, maybe not ever.
I curl into him, my tears soaking the ground between us, pressing his other hand against my belly where our child rests.
I don’t know that miles away, Sarah and Sydney lie side by side. Sydney whispers into Sarah’s hair as he tries to heal her, forgoing his own terrible wounds. He can’t live without her. The boys–they need her. He needs her. But she’s slipping through his fingers.
Somewhere in the ebbing chaos, Evander fights his way to Kenna, screaming her name. They spot each other, running, desperate and wide eyed, surprised to see each other alive. They collide and fall to the ground in an embrace. They made it out.
Ryan lies beside Aviva, her hand still gripping her golden bow. Both are injured beyond repair. He slides his hand over her belly, whispering a silent prayer before telling her he loves her, loves them. Maybe this death is a blessing for them. They’re going together, as a family.
In Moonrise, Mom sits by the window, silently sobbing into her hand as her grandchildren sleep in a bed behind her. The last thread binding her to Dad snaps, and the pain she feels over his loss is enough to bring her to her knees. The sun rises on Moonrise, casting shadows over the faces of her grandchildren, of Ella’s grandchildren. What can she tell them? How can she possibly convey the bravery of their parents? Parents who might not be coming home?
Ella screams Ryatt’s name over, and over. She can’t find him. She can’t feel him anymore. She fights the urge to fall to her knees, screaming in pain and heartbreak.
I don’t know that in a clearing, nestled in a crop of tangled, tropical trees, Grandma Isla rises to her knees beside her mate, who is lying lifeless beside her. Grandpa Maddox was right–he’d die in a blaze of glory for his family–for the future of the lives he built. He died happily, looking into his mate’s eyes, and she let him go.
But Grandma had no intention of living without him. They promised this. Spoke of it in quiet, stolen moments. In darkened corners. When only the stars lit their way. We will go together. I will not let you go into death alone.
She raises her hand toward the sky, and from her fingers, a great, sweeping light ignites, reaching toward the heavens like a beacon, an offering, a sacrifice–her, for us.
Two white wolves look out over scorched earth, at a war, won. At her powers knitting the bodies of every fallen, desperate soul back together, destroying the curse.
Two white wolves look out at their family–the family they built–as their children and grandchildren open their eyes again, taking a breath, then another, then… another.
And as morning dawns, and the stars fade completely, a great white light is the last thing I see before I submit to the darkness thrumming through my body.
Two white wolves say goodbye, and join their ranks among the last of the fading stars.
Cole squeezes my hand.