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“I love you, my darling.” I stroke her hair gently while counting her breaths. Once as golden as the rays of the sun, the strands are now silver like the mating band that lays delicately on her too-thin finger.
One thousand years with my mate and too soon has time come to claim its next victim.
I once said to her, all of those years ago, when I stood on that balcony with her, “Everything I love has always had a tendency to be taken from me.”
And now, though her body may be withering away like ash after a fire that once burned so wildly, our love for each other remains in a constant flame.
Whether it’s in this life or the next, I will make sure that I find her. And when those days come, my heart, my soul, and the stars will know.
I will always know.
Our bargain that we made after that fateful war remains. With her existence on the precipice and faltering, so is mine. Many thought us fools. Namely, Amren, who was one of them, is most likely scowling from wherever the Mother took her.
Our granddaughter, Selene, the heir to the throne of the Night Court, succeeded her father, our son Nyx’s crown, my crown, a few hundred years ago. She weeps silently by my side, with her head on my aching shoulder.
“Do not fear, my moon. One day, we will reunite among the stars .” I say into her mind.
“I do not fear for my own heart, di. I fear for fathers. ” She weeps her ballad of despair into my own.
Indeed, across from us, on the other side of my mate, Nyx holds her hand. His eyes, which are a mixture of my darling Feyre’s and my own, have tears falling onto her skin like stars that fall from the sky. He looks up at me, the orbs that are more beautiful than the finest lapis lazuli are filled with anguish.
Feyre’s lids are closed and it pains me to know that in this lifetime, I’ll never again get to see her gray-blue eyes that could be sharper than an Illyrian blade, yet softer than the blue of the Hydrangeas that peek from their blooms on a mid-spring day, depending on her mood.
A mate is never the same after the bond is severed from death. If I wasn’t resurrected, I knew she would be strong enough to live on, to endure. But me? Being the most powerful High Lord in history didn’t grant me the strength to live without her. I told her as much that if I couldn’t save her from Amarantha’s wrath, I would be willing to go, too.
A whimper pulls me from my thoughts, and I look as her lips twitch downward. The frown that is now on her face taunts me. Her smile was the loveliest. Her gift from Helion, the one that made her glow when in pure bliss, paled in comparison with how bright her smile was and how it could outshine the summer sun.
Her consciousness has been ebbing these past few days and I wonder if she is either dreaming or in pain. I fear that even the barest of tugs will cease her heart from beating from the toll it will take. But ever since she came into my life, common sense is overruled by the need to exist where she does.
“Father…” Nyx weeps once more as death starts to raise its greedy hand to take what it thinks it’s owed.
The fissures of my own heart are no longer diminutive but are so vast, that the pain may be what swallows me whole, not the tether to my mate's life.
Selene drapes her wings over her father and me as if it could shield all of us from the ticking of the hideous clock.
“I love you, my moon,” I say into my granddaughter's mind and she sobs, her wings faltering at the movement.
“I love you, my Son.” I weep into his. He takes my hand and strokes it with the pad of his thumb. My other hand is clutching to the soft tendrils of starlight that is Feyre’s hair. Hair that I had spent years, millennia running my hands through while I worshiped her, loved her, held her, protected her.
My hand moves from her hair and takes hers. The hand of the mate to the other that loved me cherished me, and never once feared that my darkness, my hideous existence would ever tarnish hers. The whorls and swirls of blue-black ink are now fading right in front of my eyes.
“Feyre, Darling,” I whisper in her mind as if it’s a secret between mates.
“I’m so tired.” A kiss of a breath comes out between us. The sound of her voice is a mere shade of what it once was. Like it is taking all of her remaining power to even speak.
“I love you.” My mind wraps around hers, hoping to comfort her this way. What was once a glistening and brilliant fortress of black adamant is now a crumbling fort of stone and ruin.
It’s the most devastating sight I have ever beheld.
“The walls wouldn’t stay up. I tried so hard..” She sobs.
“You were magnificent. You always will be.”
“Please stay in here with me.” A soft plea curls around my mind and I feel the cold tears of despair slide from my eyes like rain trickling down the window during a spring shower.
“Di?” Selene asks from my side.
“Her shield is in ruin…” I whisper harshly into the cocoon crafted of wings and despair.
“Rhys..I love them and I am so honored to call them mine.”
With the tears of a soft spring day, a thunderstorm of anguish booms through me, splintering the very foundation I have held myself in as I fall to my knees to her side.
“She loves you both.” I choke out with my head buried at her side. Her silvery strands catch my tears, like droplets on a web.
“Rhys, please find me in the next life so we can spend that one together, too.”
“I will. Always, Feyre darling.”
“I love-”
And then I know nothing else other than our minds holding on until we are both swirling dust of black adamant.
Selene didn’t know how long she had been weeping. Hours, perhaps. But she knew the moment her grandmother's human heart had stopped beating. She knew the moment her grandfather's heart broke and nearly demolished half of the mountain their home was nestled upon.
She heard the stories of him in his younger years. How truly powerful and dark his power was. Selene was aware of how utterly, devastatingly in love he was with the first high lady of this court. But to see the combination of the two working in tandem as their bargain came to fruition was a sight to be seen. It too, would go down in the tales that were to be told even when her existence was just a tangle of dust amongst the cosmos.
A flare of night-kissed light, like that of a supernova, came from her grandparents. Her father and she were holding tight to one another as they watched the disappearance in a flash. And she hoped that they found each other.
Nyx was watching the night sky, the stars burned brighter as all other lights were extinguished in Velaris in honor of his mother and father. Selene was crying softly on his shoulder, “Do you think they found each other?” She sighed out between shaky breaths.
He watched as two shooting stars cross the sky from different directions, meeting in the middle.
“Yes, my moon. I believe they did.”