Page 24 of The Trials of Ophelia

He blinked those familiar eyes, wound with pain his mother placed there, and gently touched the scar she’d left on my arm.

“We’re going to find her,” he swore.

“We are.”

“And promise me this, Ophelia.” Barrett paused, waiting for my nod. “It will be my blade that ends her.”

I swallowed the venom in that statement and searched his expression for a flicker of vulnerability.

There was none.

The former Engrossian Prince had been hardened in this war.

“I promise.” I wouldn’t hold him to it when the time came, but I’d offer the chance.

“And here”—he paused, tugging his sigil ring from his finger and holding it to me—“I think it’s best if you take this.”

I slid the Engrossian Angel emblem on my thumb, my second pulse riling in recognition and heat gathering in both my necklace and, oddly, Kakias’s scar.

Barrett moved down the line to continue his goodbyes and I exchanged a quick hug with Dax.

“Thank you,” he said.

“For what?”

His eyes landed on the man he loved. “He’ll never admit it, but he needed the acceptance you offered us. What she did to him—how empty she left him when she took his throne…his entire life’s purpose was gone in a blink, and I don’t think I could have healed him alone.”

Kakias had denied Barrett a lot throughout his lifetime. She’d imprisoned him in his own room when he rebelled, locked Dax away from him, and tried to force him as her puppet. She never gave him a voice of his own. No, she did not physically torture him as she did Malakai, but that treatment left wounds beneath the skin.

“You kept him standing, Dax.” I squeezed his arm. “You got him here. You’re his guiding light.”

Dax smirked, running a head over his shorn hair. “We’ll see you soon.”

Saying goodbye to the prince and his consort who had become irreplaceable pieces of my small circle in the past months had nerves twisting my gut. Placing a kiss to my cheek, Dax stepped aside.

Then, it was only Malakai.

“I’m proud of you,” I told him. Whether or not I was supposed to be, I was. In going to the camp, he wasn’t only fulfilling whatever self-appointed mission steeled his stare, but he was assuming responsibility he didn’t want. Representing my core guard when the rest of us hunted Angel emblems. That he was able to do so after everything he’d been through was nothing short of impressive.

“Thank you.” He ran a hand over the back of his neck. “I’m proud of you, too.”

A beat passed, gratitude for those years we spent as one nearly spilling out of me. Not regret or longing, but satisfaction at where we ended up and a damn fierce hope we’d still be standing here when this was all over. Green eyes against magenta, empty tattoos tying us together until the stars stopped shining.

I smiled at him as a bit of the tension between us dissolved. “Do you think we’ll always be saying goodbye to each other?”

Malakai blew out a breath. “If you asked me five years ago, I’d have said never. But now…We have our own paths to walk.”

His words calmed my soul as they once always had, starting with the part we shared. We’d always have those pieces of each other, and the natural friendship we’d started building back since our shared heartbreak was comforting after so much loss.

It meant even more that Tolek wasn’t bothered by it. He understood I’d always hold love for Malakai, just as he did.

So when I stepped forward and hugged the man I once thought was my forever, my North Star, I did so without hesitation. And he embraced me back without reluctance.

“Take care, Malakai,” I said.

“You, too.”

We watched the trio leave, then mounted our warrior horses. The four friends I’d left Palerman with and Vale, who wouldn’t meet my eye. Despair shrouded her, hair hanging limp around her shoulders and eyes glued to her hands.

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