It was over.

The fighting was over.

Hybern had fallen.

You could feel it in the air. The violent crackle of clashing power fading into something softer, something almost gentle. The crushing weight that had been pressing against your ribs for months—years—lifted all at once, leaving you dizzy with the sudden absence of it.

For the first time in what felt like forever, you could breathe.

The battlefield was a ruin of churned earth and broken bodies, the scent of ash and iron thick in your lungs. Your hands trembled as the adrenaline began to ebb, your weapon slipping from your grasp. It struck the ground with a dull, distant clang.

And then you saw him.

Rhysand.

Your mate.

He was striding toward you through the settling dust, wings half-furled, dark hair matted with sweat and blood. His violet eyes locked onto yours, wide and searching, as if he had been afraid that you would not be standing when he found you.

Relief and exhaustion warred openly across his face.

“You—” he began, voice hoarse, cracked from shouting commands.

A shaky laugh tore from your throat before you could stop it.

“I thought I’d never see you again,” you admitted, the words breaking on a breath that trembled despite your effort to steady it. All the fear you had forced down during the battle rushed up at once.

He closed the distance between you in three long strides.

His hands found yours, warm and solid and real. His thumbs brushed over your knuckles as though he needed to reassure himself you were not a phantom conjured by hope.

“Never,” he said fiercely. “I promised, didn’t I?”

You had both made so many promises in the dark—whispered vows against each other’s skin, sworn in quiet rooms between battles. Promises to return. Promises to survive.

For a single, fragile heartbeat, the world narrowed to just the two of you.

The wind gentled.

The screams faded.

Everything felt safe.

And then the shadows shifted.

It was subtle—so subtle you might have dismissed it as exhaustion playing tricks on your senses. But you had survived too much to ignore instinct. A prickle skittered down your spine.

Not all of Hybern’s soldiers had fallen.

One remained.

Hidden in the wreckage. Cloaked in the chaos. Waiting.

The realisation struck a fraction of a second too late.

You felt it before you heard it—the sharp hiss of something slicing through the air behind you.

Ashwood.

The scent hit you at the same time the magic did, wrong and hollow and deadly.

Rhysand’s eyes widened, horror dawning so fast it stole the breath from his lungs.

“No!”

There was no time.

No time to turn.

No time to shield.

The arrow punched through your back and out your chest in a burst of cold fire. It was not the heat of flame but the biting, suffocating chill of something that did not belong in your body. Pain exploded outward, blinding and absolute. The world fractured into shards of white agony.

Your breath vanished.

Your knees buckled.

You hit the ground hard, fingers clawing uselessly at the shaft protruding from your chest, at the blood already slick and warm beneath your touch. Each heartbeat sent another wave of burning ice through you.

You couldn’t breathe.

Couldn’t think.

Sound came as though from underwater—distant and distorted.

“{{user}}!”

Rhysand’s voice ripped through the haze, raw and breaking, stripped of every ounce of composure. He was at your side in an instant, dropping to his knees in the dirt, his hands hovering helplessly over you as if he didn’t dare touch for fear of making it worse.

His power lashed outward in a violent, lethal surge. Somewhere beyond your blurring vision, a body hit the ground. The last soldier. The last threat.

Too late.

Your sight dimmed at the edges, darkness creeping inward like ink spilled across parchment. But you could still see him.

His beautiful, terrible face contorted with a terror you had never seen there before.

“Stay with me,” he begged, voice trembling as his hands finally pressed against the wound, as if he could hold your soul inside by sheer will. “Stay with me. Please.”