Page 126 of Courting War
Theolovedhim.
The kind of love that she would burn the world to the ground to save.
He was everything she needed and everything she wanted. He had saved her and proved that love didn’t always betray. He proved that love was sacrifice.
Kellyn healed her soul by refusing to run and shy away from her darkness. He met it with kindness and light.
He was loyal and steadfast, and he made her better.
Theo couldn’t undo his love and kind effects on her soul. They would live forever inside her, rewriting her heart, mind, and actions. She’d never be the same.
But it wasn’t only his love.
It was Cecile and Emmett, and her sisters. They taught her about love and sacrifice and kindness and friendship. They spoke into her darkest parts and forced her to be better, forced her to mend fences and undo her apathy. They breathed life into her dead soul. All of them. The community.
One person couldn’t be her happiness. One person couldn’t save her. Only she could save herself.
Theo’s eyes tracked down to the body in her lap. His eyes were still open and empty, a purple glow reflecting on them. She ran her fingertips over his brow, across his scars, until she reached his eyelids and gently and lovingly closed them, a sob wracking through her body. She didn’t want to live without him. The idea tasted like poison eating away at her insides.
Tears rolled down her face. Thick and silver and divine.
Theo screamed, her body convulsing with the pain, and the marble all around her—square by square inch— turned black and flaked to ash, incinerated by Theo’s magic, leaving the room desolate. It looked like a bomb went off and tore through all of civilization.
Her destruction rattled the ballroom, and humans screamed, the terror licking the air, sprites popping up everywhere to consume it.
A conspiracy of ravens flocked down and landed on the dead floor and nine massive black panthers—Theo’sfamiliars—appeared beside them. War’s pain was unbearable, and her magic answered the call of her emotions. She felt sorrow everywhere, from her aching bones to her taut muscles, to her suffocating heart.
Despite the divine form, her constant two-step heart rate didn’t return. Instead, it thundered like a storm that birthed tornados.
“Please.” Theo clutched Kellyn’s face and whispered, “Please, come back.” Her voice was cavernous, deep, and cracked. “Please.”
Her breaths were ice, jagged and slow.
Everything hurt.
She was a dying star. Rupturing from the inside out. It felt like her rib cage had caved in on itself and exploded in a burst of flames and shrapnel.
Shelovedhim.
And love was utter agony because losing it was far more devastating than any battle scar.
Love was devastation. A dance with decay. Love was the worst of all punishments, and the end of one’s soul. Love began with hope. A hope that would eventually shatter into endless chaos. It was the deepest form of pain.
Love was ruination.
It was hers.
Theo once thought love was the biggest mistake she’d made in her 10,000 years, but she was wrong.
Love was also her salvation.
It was the greatest and hardest thing she’d ever done and would ever do. And to live past loss was the bravest.
“Thee, my love, your rot is spreading through the palace, and soon you’ll infect the city.” Havyn pressed three gentle fingers to Theo’s shoulder and knelt beside her, her voice as soft as a spring breeze and acting as if she truly cared.
Theo’s attention snapped up and out of her tunnel vision, and she saw how the decay, ash, and desolation spread from her fingertips, the gods sheltering as many mortalsas possible.
“Oh,” she said in a voice lower than sound and pulled back her power—contained it.
