Page 44 of Whisker me Away
The raw pain in his voice made tears spring to her eyes. She tried to sit up, but Kieran's gentle pressure kept her lying down.
"Don't," he said softly. "You're still recovering. Your magic is barely flickering right now."
That explained the wrongness she felt. Her power, usually as natural as breathing, felt thin and fragile, like spun glass that might shatter at any moment. Whatever the Thornweaver had done to her during the failed ritual had left her magical core damaged.
"Where are we?" She looked around, recognizing the familiar walls of her bedroom but noticing details that seemed off. The windows were covered with heavy curtains, and multiple protective charms hung from the ceiling.
"Your cottage. I brought you home after..." Kieran's voice trailed off, and something in his expression made her stomach clench with dread.
"After what?"
Instead of answering, he moved to the window and pulled back one of the curtains. Late afternoon light streamed in, but it illuminated a landscape that made Freya's heart stop.
Where her grandmother's garden had once bloomed, only blackened earth remained. The heritage roses were goneentirely, not even twisted remains marking where they'd grown. Beyond the cottage, the trees that had sheltered Hollow Oak for centuries stood like skeletal sentinels, their leaves fallen and their branches reaching toward the sky like desperate fingers.
"Oh god," she breathed. "What did I do?"
"The corruption exploded outward when your magic failed." Kieran's voice was carefully neutral, but she could see the tension in his shoulders. "It spread faster than anything we'd seen before, consuming everything in about a six-block radius from your cottage."
"People?" The word scraped her throat raw.
"Safe. Mostly." He returned to her bedside, sitting heavily in a chair that looked like it hadn't been vacated in days. "We evacuated everyone in the affected area within hours. But Freya, half the town is gone. The people who couldn't relocate to the outer farms have moved to neighboring communities."
Freya stared out the window at the devastation, guilt settling over her like a suffocating blanket. This was her fault. Her impatience, her arrogance in thinking she could handle ancient magic alone, had destroyed everything her family had protected for generations.
"Moonmirror Lake?" she asked, though she dreaded the answer.
"Contaminated. The water's turned black, and nothing will grow near the shoreline." Kieran's hand tightened around hers. "But people are alive, Freya. Everyone we care about is alive."
"For now." She closed her eyes, unable to look at the destruction any longer. "How long before the corruption spreads beyond Hollow Oak? How long before it reaches other communities?"
"We don't know. The spread seems to have slowed since you woke up, but..." He didn't finish the sentence, but they both knew what he wasn't saying. Her failed ritual had madeeverything worse, and now they were running out of time to fix it.
"I should have waited," she whispered. "Should have trusted that we could figure out the mate bond requirements together. Instead, I was so scared of the 'willing sacrifice' that I tried to cheat the ritual."
"Why?" Kieran's voice held no judgment, only genuine curiosity. "What made you think you could handle it alone?"
Freya forced herself to meet his eyes, seeing her own pain reflected in their amber-gold depths. "Because I was terrified the willing sacrifice meant losing you. The texts were so vague, and all I could think was that fate had finally given me someone worth loving, only to demand I watch him die to save everyone else."
Kieran stared at her in wonder mixed with pain.
"So you decided to sacrifice yourself instead."
"It seemed logical at the time." Her laugh was bitter and self-recriminating. "The Bloom women have always been protectors. If someone had to die to renew the binding, better me than..."
"Better you than the person who loves you more than his own life?" Kieran's voice carried an edge of anger now. "Better you than your mate, who'd rather face any danger at your side than live safely without you?"
The intensity in his voice made fresh tears spill down her cheeks. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Kieran. I thought I was protecting you, but all I did was make everything worse."
"You scared the hell out of me." He moved from the chair to sit on the bed beside her, his weight making the mattress dip. "Three days of not knowing if you'd ever wake up, three days of watching our town fall apart while you lay here like sleeping beauty. I nearly lost my mind."
"But you didn't leave." She reached up to trace the exhaustion etched around his eyes. "You stayed."
"Where else would I be?" His hand covered hers, pressing her palm against his cheek. "You're my mate, Freya. My everything. I wasn't leaving your side until you opened your eyes and told me you were okay."
The simple devotion in his words broke something inside her chest. Here was a man who'd spent days watching over her after she'd nearly destroyed their home through her own stupidity, and he was acting like staying was the only choice that made sense.
"I don't deserve you," she whispered.
