Page 78 of Shadowkissed

“No.” His gaze meets mine. Fierce. “I step back because Ican’t interfere.Not now. The choices ahead must be yours.”

“You mean the council won’t let you.”

“I meanfatewon’t.”

I shake my head, laughing bitterly. “So you’d rather let the world end than help me fight?”

He doesn’t blink.

“It’s not in my hands, Liora.”

“Do youwantme to fail?”

His voice drops. “No.”

“Do you want the world toburn?”

“It’snot about what I want.”

My chest tightens. “I need you. Ineedyou with us.”

He steps close, gently cups the side of my face like he used to when I was younger, when I cried over power I couldn’t control and runes I couldn’t read.

“I’ve taught you everything I could,” he whispers. “And it has always—always—been in your hands.”

Tears sting my eyes.

“I don’t know if I’m strong enough.”

“Yes,” he says. “You do.”

I walk out of the sanctuary and into the night, heart fractured but clearer than it’s been in days.

He won’t walk this path with me. But he believes I can walk it. And maybe that’s enough.

I just hope I believe it, too.

38

LIORA

As I’m walking through the woods to make my way back to the loft, everything suddenly feels off and quiet. The kind of quiet that isn’t peace—it’s the pause between a scream and the blood.

I’m not even halfway back when I feel it. Something in mefractures.It’s not magic. Not just instinct.

It’s Thorne.

Pain lashes down the tether that still ties me to him, mentor to student, father-figure to something close to a daughter. It pulses once—twice—and then nothing.

Just cold. Hollow. Dead.

“No—” I turn on a dime, wind ripping at my hair as I run, faster than I’ve ever moved before.

My magic senses it before my eyes do. Fire and smoke. The pulse of somethingwrongbleeding through the trees like rot.

Seraphiel.

When I reach the grove,my knees nearly buckle.

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