I remember what the shadow siren said about Blaise’s heart. That her death would save Asha’s life. I thought she meant Blaise’s heart could grant immortality, but I suppose the siren could simply see into Blaise’s heart, the treachery she harbored there.
I have a feeling that if I killed Blaise for the shadow siren, Asha would still be alive.
I also have a feeling that if I ripped out Blaise’s heart and fed it to Asha, there would be two corpses instead of one.
“And you won’t betray her again,” I say. This time, it’s not a question.
“Never again,” says Blaise, and for some reason, I believe her.
The Old Magic guides me as I place the stone on Asha’s chest, her chest that guts me because it’s not rising and falling as it should.
“It might not work,” the Old Magic whispers again.
“Are you trying to talk me out of it?” I ask.
“No. Never.”
I take a shuddering breath, and for a moment, I wonder what is waiting for me on the other side of the sun. Certainly not as pleasant of a place as Asha currently is.
I think I might be afraid to die. But not as afraid as I am to live without her. To wander about this side of the sun without the anchor of her presence. To die one day and face the other side, knowing I could have saved her.
So with the Old Magic’s help, I close my eyes and let the stone leech away my immortality.
CHAPTER 116
ASHA
Warmth seeps through my limbs, a gentle whisper calling me back from the darkness.
It’s rather cozy here, in the darkness, but the voice pulls at my consciousness, enough for me to let go.
It’s okay, whispers the darkness. I’ll be here when you’re ready.
I remember that I’m not, in fact, ready. So I open my eyes instead.
Kiran looks down at me, his molten eyes warm with affection. My cheeks are wet, but not from my own tears.
“Thanks for coming back,” he says, his voice dry and cracking.
“I guess you’re welcome,” I respond, my voice not much better.
There’s something different, an emptiness in me I can’t quite place. I was dead, I’m sure of it, though the wound to my heart seems to have healed, the hilt of the dagger removed.
Did I leave my soul behind in death? Will it be waiting for me when one day I return for it?
There’s something different about Kiran too. Something I can’t quite place.
He presses a warm, wet kiss to my forehead, one that floods me with light.
“If I ask how I’m alive right now, will that jinx it?” I ask.
Kiran laughs, his beautiful smile lighting up his entire face, wrinkling the sides of his eyes, his forehead. Why do the wrinkles seem more pronounced than before?
“No, no jinxing,” he says, then he explains everything. The journey he and Fin took to meet their father. His father’s insistence that Kiran should try to make me immortal. I tense at that part, which is obvious to Kiran given that he’s holding me in his lap. He shakes his head, saying he wouldn’t have made me immortal, at least not without my permission, and to kindly let him finish. I do, to which he explains the leeching, how he thought that perhaps, with the help of a few friends, he might be able to leech his own magic into me.
“Kiran,” I say, horror striking me. “You can’t give me your immortality. You can’t—”
An immortal life, one without Kiran, flashes before my eyes. Seasons and years and decades without him, watching Dinah and my father and Kiran die, while I continued unending. I can’t seem to breathe, and for the first time, I recognize just what Kiran had been holding in for over a year.
“I didn’t make you immortal, Asha. I’m not sure that I could have. The way it was explained to me, that kind of magic loses some of its potency when it’s transferred, and that’s when the recipient is alive. The power it took to bring you back…” He lets out a shudder, but he smiles through it all the same. “You’re not immortal, I promise.”
Now it’s my tears wetting my cheek. “But you’re not either? You gave it to me?”
My heart pounds in my chest. So strange, after it was so mortally wounded.
“No. No, I don’t believe I am.”
I expect there to be sadness in his voice, a twinge of, if not regret, then at least loss.
Kiran’s voice holds no such thing.
Instead, his smile overtakes his face. “I guess we’re the same in that way.”
I won’t have to go on forever without you, is all his eyes say.
“I love you, Asha,” he says. “I don’t want immortality without you. I never did.”
“I love you, too,” I say, “which is why I’m slightly annoyed you ever considered taking your father’s advice.” I jab him in the chest, but it’s a fairly weak assault, given my arms still feel like jelly.
