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Snow drifts between the violet stems that claim every surface. They’ve conquered the courtyard stones, climbed the training ground walls, spread across the paths in thick purple carpets that whisper under my boots alongside the frost. Thousands of them. Millions, maybe. Like someone scattered an army of her namesake and watched them bloom through everything I see.
I stop. Snow falls harder now, fat flakes that blur the edges of the world.
My hand reaches out. Catches nothing but cold and the memory of silver hair darkening with melt. She leaned back that night, snow dusting her lashes while I kissed her against stone like I had any fucking right to touch her. But I did it anyway, selfish bastard that I am, and now that stone lies buried under flowers that carry her name.
The violets keep coming. I love them and hate them in equal measure. Beautiful reminders of what I can’t have.
Seven months of this. Seven months since I slipped an emerald ring onto her finger while she swayed with exhaustion and battle-torn grief, and she was still the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Beautiful and mine for exactly twelve hours before I walked away. In the reflection of that green stone, I caught a glimpse of red eyes and corruption already threading through my face like a disease.
Even then, I was this thing. This monster.
A golden thread still burns somewhere behind my ribs, thin as wire, barely there but refusing to snap. It wedged itself in ice the moment I channeled earth magic and knew there was no going back. But it’s unspooling. Every day a little more slips through my fingers while I pretend I can’t feel her getting further away.
The violets don’t care that I’m the thing we fought against now. They bloom anyway, purple and perfect and everything she was before I destroyed us both.
My hand drops toward the ground. Not because I want it to. Because the hunger in my bones has gotten too strong to fight anymore.
Black veins snake up my entire arm, pulsing under skin that’s no longer mine. They burn. Throb. Scream for earth magic, and the soil beneath these violets calls back with everything I need to make the pain stop.
I clench my fist. Stop my palm three inches above purple petals.
Fuck. Fuck, no.
The air around me starts to die. Frost turns grey and crumbles. Snow becomes ash that coats my throat. But I hold my hand there, suspended, every muscle locked against the pull that wants to tear me apart.
The violets stay bright and perfect and hers.
My arm screams. Seven months of this war, and I’m losing. The need claws through my chest, begging me to just take what’s right there. Just once. Just enough to breathe again.
But these are pieces of Violet, and I’d rather fucking die than steal her twice.
“Xaden.”
Every cell in my body comes alive. That’s her voice. The one I’ve fought to remember for months. The one that faded no matter how hard I clawed to keep it.
I’d started to forget. Endless days of replaying the same moment over and over until the sound went hollow in my head. Until I couldn’t tell if I was remembering her voice or just the echo of remembering it.
But this tears everything open. Every word she ever said to me floods through my skull at once.
“Xaden, look at me.”
My head jerks up.
She stands ten feet away in flight leathers, silver hair streaming to the small of her back now. Her eyes lean blue in this strange light, the way they turn when she’s thinking too hard about something. Still impossibly short. Still mine.
But different. The muscles in her arms have definition that wasn’t there before. Her joints hold steady instead of that careful way she moved when the pain flared. Seven months without me, and she’s grown stronger.
The emerald ring catches light on her left hand.
This can’t be fucking real. My dreams don’t work like this. She comes as flowers that I’m afraid to touch, as memories that fade before I can hold them. Never like this. Never whole and breathing and wearing the ring I put on her finger.
My Violet. My love. My wife.
The one I damned my soul to keep breathing. And I’d make the same choice tomorrow if it meant she stayed alive.
My foot moves forward before I can stop it. One step toward her, then another, because seven months of missing her just shattered something in my chest and I’ve forgotten why I need to stay away.
She mastered it. Her dream-walking signet. Broke through whatever walls the corruption built around my sleeping mind and tracked me down like the fucking brilliant, stubborn woman I married.
But I halt when the corruption burns through my veins, reminding me what I am now. What these hands do to everything they touch.
Even here, I can’t reach for her.
“You need to leave. Now.”
She takes a step forward. Another. Moving through the snow and violets toward me.
“Is that any way to talk to your wife?”
“I’m not the same man you married. I could fucking kill you just by touching you, even here.”
But gods, I want to touch her. I want it so badly my hands shake with the effort of staying still. Seven months, and she’s right there, and I can’t move another inch without risking her life.
Perfect pale skin, perfect eyes, perfect everything. And here I am, ugly and corrupted and so fucking unworthy of breathing the same air.
“You’re still you, Xaden. The corruption doesn’t change that.” She takes another step, then another. Three feet between us now. Close enough to see her eyes shifting from blue to green. “Your veins may be different, your eyes may have changed, but you’re still the man I love. The man who kissed me right here, under this same snow. The man who chose me over his own soul. Who saved Sgaeyl. The man I chose to marry. And I would choose you a thousand times over, corruption and all.”
Move. Step back. Get away from her.
But I can’t. Because the corruption devoured everything. Every emotion, every feeling, every flicker of humanity until nothing remained but a walking void. I shouldn’t feel anything at all.
Except I feel this. Her. The way my chest explodes at the sound of her voice. The way something dead blazes back to life when she looks at me.
I shouldn’t love her anymore.
But I do. Gods, I fucking do.
“You should hate me. I stole everything from you.” My hand reaches up without permission, hovering near her face where snow dusts her hair. “Your memory of our wedding night. Time you’ll never get back searching for a cure that doesn’t exist. Your chance at being happy with someone who isn’t a fucking monster.”
I start to drop my hand, but she catches it. Her fingers wrap around my wrist.
I jerk back violently, trying to rip free. “Violet, fuck—no! Let go! You can’t fucking touch me!”
“Xaden, look.” She gestures down to where her fingers wrap around my wrist.
The black veins retreat. I watch them fade from my skin, crawling back toward my elbow, then my shoulder, until they look like mine again.
The hunger stops.
For the first time in… fuck, I can’t even remember how long, I can breathe without that constant need tearing through my chest.
I stare at our joined hands and remember what it felt like to be human.
My free hand buries in her hair and I crush her mouth to mine, kissing her like I’ve forgotten how to do anything else. She tastes like life. Like everything good I thought the corruption had stolen from me forever.
She kisses me back, and for one perfect moment, I’m not a monster. I’m just a man who loves his wife.
I tear away, gasping against her forehead. “How? How did you—”
“This is my domain.” Her eyes burn as she looks up at me. “The dreams bend to my will. And this—” she presses closer, “—is my will.” Her voice turns desperate. “I don’t know how long it’ll last, Xaden. I’ve been working on this, but I don’t know—”
I silence her with another kiss.
If time is borrowed, I’m not wasting it on explanations.
I break away and my hands move, fingertips tracing her cheek, her jaw, the soft skin at her temple. I press there like I can somehow burn the feeling into memory, like I can take this with me when it ends.
Her hands find my face too, fingers tracing the hollows under my eyes, the sharp edge of my cheekbones. “Gods, Xaden, you look—”
“Like your husband.” I cup her face in my hands, and she leans into the touch like she needs it as much as I do. “Are you safe? Tell me you’re safe.”
I followed her in the shadows for two months after our wedding. Watched her rule Tyrrendor like the duchess she was always meant to be, navigate politics better than I ever could, then eat dinner alone in rooms that used to be ours. Until I couldn’t trust myself around her anymore.
“I’m safe. I’m safe, but Xaden—” Her words tumble out in a rush. “So much has happened. We’re close to a cure, I think we’re actually close, but I lost Rhiannon.” Tears streak down her cheeks. “She’s gone, and I—” Her voice shatters.
I catch the tears with my thumbs, and her skin burns hotter under my palms. Heat spreads from her cheeks to her temples, and tremors rack through her hands where they touch my face. She’s shaking, fighting to hold this connection, burning herself out to steal us more time.
But time is running out.
“I’m proud of you. For everything. For who you’ve become. You were always meant to be this woman, this leader, this fucking force of nature. Thank you for giving me this. I love you, Violet Riorson.”
If I had a soul left, this is where it would go when Malek finally claims me. This courtyard where we first kissed, surrounded by snow and violets, holding the woman who chose to love me.
I kiss her one last time, claiming her soft, wet lips. Everything I can’t say bleeds into this kiss.
Then I feel it. The pull. The hunger roaring back to life as her power wavers, and suddenly I’m draining her. Taking her life force, her energy, her fucking light. Her hands claw at my arms, trying to push me away, but I can’t stop.
No. No, wait—
I try to rip away from her, but the corruption has its claws in deep now. My hands won’t obey, won’t release her even as I watch the color drain from her face.
I’m killing her. I’m killing the only good thing left in this world.
The violets start dying. Purple petals turn black and crumble, spreading outward from where we stand in perfect ripples.
Let go. Let her go. Let her fucking go.
But the corruption screams against it. Every cell infected with venin wants to hold on, to drain her dry, to take this life and power and make it mine. The hunger tears through my chest, demanding more. And letting go feels like tearing myself in half.
The violets keep dying. The ripples spread wider.
I summon every scrap of humanity I have left and tear my hands away from her face, letting out a soundless scream.
It’s the hardest fucking thing I’ve ever done.
I shove her back hard, and she hits the ground among the dying violets.
Gods, what did I do? What the fuck did I just do?
She’s breathing. Pale as death but breathing. I nearly—I almost—
“Xaden.” She sits up, wiping blood from her mouth. “You stopped.”
I look down at my hands. Black veins crawl up to my elbows again, sickly and wrong. “I’m a fucking monster. I can’t even dream of you without trying to kill you.”
“You’re wrong. You fought it, Xaden. You. Fought. It. You chose me.”
The dream starts to fracture at the edges.
“I love you,” she says fiercely as I feel myself being pulled away. “All of you. Even this. And I’m not done fighting for you. For us. I’ll find you again.”
“Violet—”
My hand claws at nothing. Fucking nothing.
I’m awake, and she’s gone. The taste of her tears still burns on my tongue, but she’s not here. She’s never fucking here.
I could tear this place apart. Scream until my throat bleeds. Channel enough earth magic to bring the whole building down because losing her again rips me open.
Selfish piece of shit. Even after I nearly killed her. Even after I proved exactly what kind of monster I am. I still reached for her. Still wanted her to stay so I could drain every drop of life from her body.
But she promised. She said she’d find me again.
The golden thread burns in my chest, and I hate myself for hoping.
Because gods help me, when she comes back, I’ll be selfish enough to let her.