by Everly Frost
I take another step away from him, feeling like the foundations are cracking beneath my feet, but not knowing why.
“Ask yourself, Aura,” he says, demanding that I answer him. “Every impossible, unique, unusual thing about yourself. Ask every question that you don’t have an answer for—”
“Why am I alone?” My question sounds harsh in the deepening dark around us.
Pain flashes across Nathaniel’s face, but the questions suddenly pour out of me before he can answer me.
“Why am I the only Twilight fae? Why do I have power over light, but I can only sleep in darkness? How can I stop breathing and remain alive? How could I heal your wound this morning when fae magic couldn’t touch you?” I press my fingers to my lips, remembering the dust that coated my body after I stopped breathing at the burn site—the same dust that I coughed up this morning. “Why do I turn to ash and dust when I begin to die?”
Holding up my hands before my face, I study the shape of my skin, desperate to find answers in them. Flickers of starlight grow around my hand. My power is returning with the rising moon, the well inside me filling again.
Despite the power gathering in my hands, Nathaniel strides toward me, unafraid and determined. He has never been fearful of me. Even when I unleashed my power on the first day we met, he leaped toward me, stepping right into the heart of my starlight to try to stop me from screaming the declaration that invoked the Law of Champions.
He halts three paces away from me, the exact space that a combatant would stop, his shoulders drawn back, his head slightly tilted as he looks me up and down from the top of my white hair to the tips of my borrowed boots.
“Who controls light but sleeps in darkness?” He repeats my question back to me as his dark eyes flash across me. “You do.”
He prowls to my right, a movement that suddenly feels dangerous to me, as if he’s about to challenge me in ways I don’t want him to.
“Who turns to dust and ash when she loses hope?” He turns and prowls in the other direction, keeping me in his sights. “That would also be you.”
He stops in front of me. “Who was determined to fight through agony to reach my side?” His voice becomes low, gentle again. “Who kept me alive and breathed life into me? Who took me home despite the fact that she would be made to suffer for it?”
His dark eyes are clear, his voice compelling me to listen. “You, Aura. Always you.”
He dares to close the gap between us. He always dares to challenge me, no matter how many defenses I raise.
“I know you’re terrified of the truths that lie in your past,” he says. “I’m here if you need to scream. I’m here if you need to cry. I can take it. All of it. But you have to face it.”
He reaches slowly for the weapon harness I’m wearing. My heart pounds inside my chest, but I don’t try to stop him when he undoes my harness and lays it on the ground. He removes the sling from around my neck, deftly untying the knot as I shiver. Undoing the clasps at the left shoulder of my suit, he gently draws it down far enough to reveal the space above my heart. The golden mark of his name becomes visible, a bright spot at the edge of my vision.
With suddenly swift movements, he reaches to his own chest, peels the stone from it, and holds it out to me. “It’s yours to take.”
The sliver of rock glitters against his palm. It’s so small but utterly terrifying because of the immense power I sense in it. A power that I’m sure will either destroy or heal me.
I asked him why I was alone, but I realize that I’m not. In the final hours of my life, I won’t be alone because Nathaniel will be with me.
My fingertips close over the stone, touching it for the first time.
Power shoots through my hand all of the way up my arm to my shoulder, a shot of energy reaching my heart and hitting it like a hammer.
I gasp and Nathaniel jolts, knocked away from me.
Starlight streaks through my veins, running up my shaking arm as I raise the stone, ready to position it below my scar just like he did.
Power flickers around the rock, shots of starlight so sharp that they bite my skin, suddenly burning me. I nearly drop the stone, but the power inside it strikes out toward my torso, streaks of starlight connecting the rock to the location of my heart.
Panic floods me.
I try to pull the rock away from myself, but it continues on its path, flying out of my hand toward my heart. Burning starlight cuts through my skin, a cut so deep and painful that I scream.
“Aura!” Nathaniel shouts as he reaches for me, but another blast of light knocks him back again.
Each stab of light from the stone tears at my skin beneath my scar, forming a new crescent—a fresh cut the precise size and shape of the stone’s edge.
The rock finally adheres to my chest, plastered against me like a brand for a split second before it turns on its side and disappears inside the cut it made.
Shock seizes me, and I drop to my knees, sensing the rock burrowing deep inside my chest. I claw at my skin, trying to stop it. The storm inside me pushes and pulls, breaking me apart and healing me at the same time.
I scream as starlight explodes inside my chest, radiating in crashing waves, the force throwing me outward and upward, just like the moment when I invoked the Law of Champions.
The force slams into Nathaniel, picking him up and hurling him across the room.
Screams tear from my throat as I stretch toward him with both of my hands, my right arm free and mobile for the first time in hours, my body pulsing with power as we fly away from each other.
Bright, white light fills the space around us. The walls vibrate and the pages of the books flip violently open, the images inside them suddenly flying upward.
The golden dragon rages across the air between Nathaniel and me. From the dark magic book, a herd of firehorses rises and races after the dragon, galloping through a swarm of silver humblebees that pours from the pages of the fae magic book.
As they chase each other full circle around the statues, I wait for a creature of the fourth magic—the old magic—to rise from the pages of that book, but only my starlight streaks across its surface. Within moments, the other creatures vanish back into the pages from which they came.
As soon as they disappear, everything stops moving, even the pages, suspended in place.
Nathaniel comes to a jarring stop, his head thrown back, his arms splayed at his sides, his bare chest glistening in my light. His lips part as his head lowers. I can’t deny the pull in his gaze as his mouth suddenly curls up into a smile that heats me all of the way to my core.
“Aura Lucidia.” He says my name as if it is new to him.
I’m not sure what he sees that makes him cast me such a dangerous smile, but when I press my hands to my now-healed chest, my skin glows.
I catch sight of my luminescent hair, glittering white strands filled with light as they float around my shoulders.
The only other times my body glowed like this was when Nathaniel touched me, when he made me glow.
Across the distance, Nathaniel looks at me the same way he did when he turned me toward the mirror in Bright and showed me who I could be. He saw the potential of my power even before I did.
Now I have no doubt that I’m glowing all over. Without seeing myself, I picture my eyes filled with emerald splashes, the dull forest green color of my pupils gone, my cheeks flushed, my lips red and full.
Only an hour ago, my energy was exhausted. Now my power feels like a limitless ocean of starlight.
A shiver of light rushes through my body all of the way from the top of my head to my toes as I meet Nathaniel’s eyes.
“My power,” I whisper. “You gave me back my power.”
Chapter 14
I float to the floor, my feet coming to rest on the stone surface. I’m conscious of the magic around me—old magic protecting the books and the room—a hundred times more aware than I was before.
Magic shimmers and ripples through the air al
l around us, but Nathaniel’s presence is the strongest—always the strongest—overwhelming my senses with his strength.
But now… the power that ripples through his chest, his arms, every part of him, draws my attention. Starlight—impossible starlight—glows through every fiber of his torso, threads that extend beyond his chest and up his neck.
Light flickers at his temples, pulsing in time to his heartbeat as it travels down his chest, stomach, and thighs, visible as a soft glow beneath his long pants.
It isn’t a reflection of my power or even the wash of my starlight rippling across the room.
It’s part of him.
He returns to the floor as my power releases him. His gaze burns me, his dark eyes glinting as he crosses the distance between us.
“Aura.” He sweeps me into his arms, the intensity in his eyes deepening as his hands stroke up my back, tangling in my hair.
My arm no longer hurts. Nothing hurts, not even my heart. I don’t know why I was so afraid of the stone, not when it has opened my eyes to everything around me.
“Nathaniel.” Tilting back my head, I press my forefinger to his lips before I trace the glimmers that travel through his skin across his jaw and neck.
He remains silent, allowing me to follow the path of my power through his body. All of the tiny paths, infinite pulses, a thousand sparks of starlight—
My power.
“Do you see this?” I ask, leaning close and looking up into his eyes.
“I see your hand glowing where you touch me. Just like usual,” he says, his voice a husky whisper and his lips parting as his breathing increases.
He must not be able to see the power rippling through his body. I couldn’t before, either. But now I can.
While I trace the contours of his chest with my fingertips, he follows the shape of my face with his eyes, his expression becoming wary.
“What do you see that I can’t?” he asks.
I sway forward and plant a kiss above the location of his heart, right across his scar, sensing him hold his breath.
“I can see my power.” Power that he should never have taken into himself. Would never have assimilated into his human body, except that his father handed Nathaniel the stone when he was ten years old and he’s carried it with him ever since.
His lips part in surprise, breathing his question in a soft exhalation. “What do you mean?”
“You carried this piece of my power next to your heart. You took my power into your body—into your heart. I couldn’t see it before,” I say, tracing his chest. “When you touched me, I must have been connecting with my own power inside you. That’s why I glowed.”
When I draw away from him, the glow in my hand diminishes, but it doesn’t disappear like it did before.
He pulls my hand back to his chest, placing it over his heart. “If that’s true, then it was your power that protected me from Cyrian’s dark magic all of these years,” he says. “When everyone else was in danger, you kept me safe.”
I allow myself to smile. “My power kept your heart… bright. It kept you alive when your heart failed this morning.”
He shakes his head as if he doesn’t believe it. “It’s impossible. I’m human.”
Still pressing my palm to his chest, I nudge a kiss against his jaw. “Look at me, Nathaniel. Look at what this tiny piece of my power has done to me now that I have it back. What would it have done to you for fifteen years?”
“Look at you?” he asks, his voice suddenly rough, the desire in his eyes intensifying. “Dark stars, Aura. I can’t look away from you.”
I meet the heat in his gaze.
I have a thousand questions, the most worrying being how my power was separated from my body—the horrifying memory of Imatra’s blade ramming into my chest—but I push all of my questions away because I need this moment.
For the first time in my remembered life, I feel whole and alive. Powerful.
A smile grows on my face as I reach up to press a kiss to his lips, drawing in the scent of his skin as I explore the shape of his mouth.
With a groan, he lifts me up against him, his strength allowing him to propel me back to the wide window ledge. The magic protecting the window presses against my back, shivers of power rippling through the opening.
My training suit already sits off my shoulder, giving Nathaniel access to the bare skin above my heart. His lips travel the distance between my neck and shoulder, his hands firm around my waist, before I draw his mouth back to mine.
The dark outside is heavy now, the sky clear, and the moon full. The glow from my body fills the space around us, providing a soft light for us to see. My hands follow the contours of Nathaniel’s face and shoulders, explore the shape of his back and stomach, tug at his pants.
My hair lifts and falls with the movement of my shirt as I pull it up over my head and drop it to the floor. I used to loathe my hair, the old white strands, but now it falls softly across my shoulders and breasts, each strand glowing and bright.
Nathaniel’s gaze passes to my lips. “You. Are. Mesmerizing.”
My finger traces a single pulse of starlight across his cheek to his jaw—one of thousands—and my hand glows brighter than before, responding to the touch between us, reacting to the starlight shimmering beneath the surface of his skin.
His mouth claims mine and desire heats me, striking through me to my center. He draws back before the waves overcome me. Shivers of pleasure make my skin tingle as he lifts me up off the ledge without breaking the contact with my mouth, to kiss me while he removes the rest of my clothing, his own joining mine on the floor.
He lifts me upward again, fitting our bodies together.
Power and pleasure rush through me at the first thrust, a heady combination so strong that it’s almost too much. I respond without inhibition as he takes two steps to position me up against the wall. Arching my back against the solid surface, I hook my legs around his hips, using gravity to draw him as far inside me as possible.
He braces, one hand against the wall, the other gripping my hip as the connection between us deepens. Starlight ripples across my chest, glowing brighter as my breathing increases. My body is on fire, hot as flame, cold as ice. Overwhelmed with sensations that threaten to tear me apart.
This could be the last time.
The cruel thought cuts through my desire, striking hard at the pleasure driving through me. I gasp, push the thought away, but it repeats on me.
This will be the last time.
I grip Nathaniel’s shoulders, my breathing ragged, my heart shredding into smaller pieces as he draws out the moment.
It can’t be the last time. I won’t let it be—
Cold starlight floods my chest, my power filling me with an empty certainty, an undeniable truth.
This is the last time.
I want to scream. Rant. Rage.
Nathaniel’s hand finds my cheek. His eyes meet mine. His own breathing is out of control, even though he’s holding back. “Stay with me, Aura.”
But I can’t. Not forever.
I tell myself I can take this moment. I can have this happiness. Even with all of the pain that will come after, with all of the heartbreak that comes with lying to myself, convincing myself for these next moments that this won’t end. That this feeling can last forever.
I gasp again, trying to speak, wanting to scream, only a harsh whisper rasping against his mouth as I kiss him. “This is the last time.”
“No.” His eyes meet mine, shocked, then full of rage.
“It has to be.”
“No!” His fist thumps the wall beside my shoulder, streaks of light shooting up through the cracks he makes.
I’m not afraid of his rage. Pushing aside my emotions, I brace my flat palms against the wall and press against the cracks he made so I can pull my hips up and away from his before crashing against him again. Pleasure shoots through me with the movement, relief for a brief moment before my need grows worse.
He shak
es his head at me, his fist forming against the wall beside my shoulder, as if he can grip this moment and never let it go, draw it out as long as he can.
I don’t stop, my body rising and pushing against his, controlling the thrusts, inhaling every ragged breath he takes, accepting all of the pain in my heart. I tell myself it’s nothing compared to the pain I felt when I thought he’d died. Sweat drips down my torso, my arms tensing with every lift and fall, but my senses spiral before I crash wildly around him.
I take him with me into the crash. His fist hits the wall, propelling us away from it, making us seem weightless as the waves flow through us. Me to him. Him to me.
His arms wrap around me as we stop in the middle of the room, my legs wrapped around his hips.
He grips me. Hard.
His voice is an order. A command. His eyes refuse to let me go. “Stay with me.”
Outside, the moon is full, a large outline hanging above the horizon. The empty space outside this room calls to me. The vast nothing will soon be my resting place.
I try to breathe, but instead, I tip my head back and scream.
My cry hums and vibrates through the room, making the pedestals tremble, the cracks in the wall grow. The magic across the window ripples with starlight, sharp and biting, as my power prickles my skin. It strikes Nathaniel, but he roars out the pain I’m causing him and refuses to let me go.
I close my eyes. The dark abyss I sensed inside the stone opens up, but now it’s inside of me, a part of me, and I can’t escape it.
This is why I was afraid of it.
Because the cold dark is now part of my body. Inescapable.
Opening my eyes, I grip Nathaniel’s shoulders. “You gave me your word. You promised you would fight me with all of your strength.”
His gaze doesn’t falter. Neither does his grip. “I will fight you, Aura. With everything I have. But I will not strike you down.”
Rage and fear burn through me, the coldest oblivion growing inside my chest as the stone’s power—my power—expands. “You will.”
He shakes his head. “No.”
I push against his hold, trying to pry myself away from him, to break the connections between us, both physical and emotional.