Page 194 of Severed Heir

I said quietly, “Ciaran didn’t give them to me. You did.”

He turned, just slightly. “Keep them.”

I slid my hand from his shoulder to the hilt of his blade, and it dropped between us with a dull thud. “Take them back.”

“I can’t,” he rasped.

“Please.” My voice trembled as I cupped his jaw, fingers brushing the stubble on his chin. “It’s the only way.”

He didn’t move.

So I did.

I pulled him toward me and kissed him—hard, desperate, like I was falling apart and he was the only thing keeping me together. A breath. A fire. A plea pressed against his mouth, begging him to take what was never truly mine.

His hands gripped my waist. Then he kissed me back.

Darkness surged around us, ribbons of ash and fractured shadow tearing from my chest and flooding into his. It wasn’t gentle. It was fire and mist and the sound of bones breaking. Like the earth itself had cracked open to witness something old being made whole again.

Then it stopped.

Archer pulled back, his breath still tangled with mine. In his open palm, the half-crescent relic pulsed with shadow light.

I looked down, and mine was gone.

A gasp caught in my throat. “We fight this war together,” I whispered.

Archer lifted his hand and pressed his palm to my cheek. “Together,” he said.

But then every muscle in Archer’s body locked. His gaze shifted past me, to the silver-tipped arrow aimed at my heart—and the bow it belonged to, gripped tightly in Rok’s hands.

“Now I don’t feel so guilty being the one to do this,” Rok said, stepping through the smoke.

All around us, Antonia, Kian, and a dozen guards twisted toward me in stunned silence.

“A life for a life,” Rok murmured. “Someone more important might need saving.”

And I understood. He wasn’t aiming to end me out of hatred, he was forcing the civilians of Demetria, those bound by oath and Night-blood, to rise up and die in my place.

“Rok,” I begged, stepping forward as my voice splintered. “These are your people. Your sister’s people. Don’t do this.”

But his expression didn’t falter. “They were never mine. Demetria will survive, but Archer needs to understand what it means to lose. Like I did. No excuses now that his power is back.”

He released the string.

A blur of motion split the field. Kian lunged into the arrow’s path, and a guttural scream ripped through the barren land. For one breathless moment, everything stood still. Then I saw the blood. It spilled from a chest that should never have been near that arrow.

Caius Sinclair.

Kian groaned, dragging himself upright. “Shit. Did I die?”

But he was untouched.

“Caius!” I cried, stumbling toward the fallen heir. “Caius!”

That was it. The final thread of Rok’s siphon snapped, and I tore free. Caius lay crumpled in the ash, his blood soaking into the soil, red against the gray. I dropped beside him, hands trembling as I tried to stop the flow.

“Why the hell would you take an arrow for me?” I choked, pressing my hands to his chest, trying to stop the blood that kept spilling through my fingers. His auburn hair clung to his forehead, damp with sweat, and his soft green-brown eyes burned with a fear he couldn’t mask.

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