Page 89 of Shadowkissed

She closes the gap between us, rests her forehead against my chest. “And if you do?”

“Then I die fighting for you,” I murmur. “Same as I lived.”

I place my hand on her cheek and brush a loose stand away. She leans into my palm and almost smiles.

“I love you. Even in death.”

I kiss her hard and say against her lips, “I love you too.”

It happens just after the horizon fractures.

A low rumble shakes the foundation of the world. Birds scream into the sky and vanish. The Veil shivers and then itsplits.

A seam opens in the distance—black and red and bleeding shadow. The sky stretches wide like a mouth screaming in reverse, and Seraphiel steps through it like he owns the fucking stars.

His wings blaze behind him—six of them, spectral and flickering like dying galaxies. His armor drips molten magic. His eyes are gold. And they lock ontoher.

“Mine,” he says, and his voice hits like thunder pressed to bone.

Liora doesn’t flinch.

Sheglows.

Power unfurls from her like a second skin, her hair whipping around her face as light and shadow crackle off her fingertips. She steps forward, not back.

Not this time.

I move with her, blade in hand. Heart pounding like a war drum in my chest.

Liora doesn’t hesitate—her steps are sure, her magic already alive around her like a storm with its eyes locked on destruction. Her voice cuts through the air like thunder.

“Not yours,” she snarls. “Not ever.”

The groundcracksbeneath us, jagged lines splintering outward like veins of flame. The sky splits open, churning with violet clouds and black lightning. The Veil groans like it’s alive—like it’s screaming.

And thenall hell breaks loose.

The first wave of Seraphiel’s army descends like smoke given shape.

Wraiths bound in burning chains. Fallen fae twisted into monstrous forms. Shadowbeasts stitched together with nightmare and bone.

They hit the line of our defenses like a crashing tide.

Shifters shift mid-run, snarling, lunging with claws bared and teeth flashing. Witches chant as they fight, spells woven with blood and will, flinging fire and ice and ancient curses that slice through the enemy like wind through grass.

The rogue fae are almost invisible—vanishing, reappearing, sliding between planes and stabbing with glamoured blades dipped in poison so old it hums.

I tear through a snarling revenant with a swipe of my sword, pivot, duck under a whip of shadow, and drive my blade through the chest of a creature with eyes like cracked mirrors and a mouth that never stops whispering.

The field is chaos.

Blood and light and fire.

And above it all—standing just beyond the rift he tore open, untouched by the fighting, six wings spread wide and glowing like apocalypse—isSeraphiel.

Watching.

Smiling.

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