Page 102 of Veradel
Eyes misting again, she chucks it over her shoulder but doesn’t bother to watch as it gets swallowed in the flames and smoke behind her. She simply rises to her tiptoes.
And we fit our lips together as the Wall comes down.
By the time Lucan and I finally break apart, soft flakes of snow begin to float down from the heavens all around us, landing on Lucan’s hair and frosting everything around us—the terrace, the statues, and the last remnants of the Wall.
Lucan and I stare down at what remains, charred ash, embers, and the last of the stubborn flames a hundred feet below us.
Soon, our pack emerges from the top of the staircase to join us, forming a line along the edge of what used to be Xantera. To my left, Vivian smiles before tossing a vampire heart over the edge of the balcony. It soars through the air, dropping like a stone into the heat below.
When it hits the ground, a plume of black and white ash puffs into the air and the heart sizzles, letting out a shriek that eventually dies in the wind.
Everyone collectively shudders.
Merrick goes next, followed by Soren, Ashe, and the others, each shriveled gray heart plummeting to its finality.
How fitting, that the remains of the Wall are what destroys the Guardians once and for all.
After the last wail of a dying heart fades away, I turn to Lucan and inspect his neck wounds with a gentle fingertip, blinking away the snowflakes clinging to my eyelashes.
“Amazing,” I marvel, running my touch over Lucan’s scar tissue, already shiny and pink in the spots his body healed over.
“Good thing Taika stopped the bleeding fast enough to allow me to even start to heal,” he replies with a disgusted scrunch of his nose. “Otherwise…”
Lucan wedges his boot under Arad’s lifeless body and flips him over with a swift kick. Then hauling the vampire up by his clothes, he heaves him through the spikes, the very ones I stepped through before I jumped. It’s like my nightmare from so long ago, but in reverse order: Arad falling, and me standing tall, never to fall again.
When the rest of the Third Guardian disappears, I actually smile. Soren slings an arm around Lucan’s shoulder as everyone gathers around us in a circle.
“We did it,” he says, hushed, in awe.
Vivian snuggles under Merrick’s free arm, and the rest of the pack follows suit. Lucan loops his free hand around my waist, tugging me in close and planting a kiss on top of my head. Then we stand there in a huddle, limbs intertwined, staring out at the destruction of what doesn’t imprison me anymore.
Until Vivian breaks the silence with a sarcastic grin and laughs between her own tears, “Soren, are youcrying?”
Soren sniffles and runs the back of his hand across his cheeks and nose. “Damn right, I am.”
We all do. The tears stream silently down our faces, plopping at our feet, where the pieces of my mother still lay like a wreath around me. The snow is coming down even harder now, covering each part of her in a soft, sparkling layer of white, until finally, I bend to pick up her stone hand again.
Lucan stoops to help me. Together, we retrieve every single fractured part of her, the two of us cradling her remains against our chests. Pain lashes against my heart again at the finality of it, but the stone feels almost warm against me. As if part of her will always remain right with that Monster in my heart.
“Come on,” Lucan says gently, gesturing behind him. “Let’s get her out of this place.”
With the pack following us, we retrace our steps down through the terraces and back to the throne room, tracking snowy footprints through the hall.
A somber sight greets us when we step through the enormous double doors, now hanging off their hinges.
Blood spatters cover the floor and even some parts of the walls. Rubble, broken glass, discarded weapons, and bodies litter the ground. Hushed voices echo from all four corners, where those who survived are tending to the wounded on one side and respectfully draping sheets over the ones who sacrificed far greater on the other. At the far end, Kyra is still cradling Gabriel’s body, her eyes puffy, but when she looks up and meets my gaze from across the room, her eyes trail over what I’m holding.
Her lips tremble, and she nods at me. Not an apology, exactly, but as close to one as she can get before she presses her forehead back to Gabriel’s again.
Turning away, I find a spot near the other bodies, where Lucan and I lay out my mother’s pieces, putting them together slowly.
Each piece is a memory—some happy, some sad, some full of regret. Memories echo in me with peals of laughter, but there were also moments of ridiculous tears and heart-wrenching sobs.
And all of that I bottle up to carry forward, to keep her memory alive in all the good times and the bad times, each just as precious, just as important. I can’t go back and say sorry, but she knew. She knew how much I loved her through the happiness and the pain.
Finally, she’s whole and looks like she’s simply sleeping, like the others. But none of them are. They’re not dreaming or stuck in nightmares. They can’t wake up. And as I sit there, staring at the rows of them, I’m struck by how unfair that is.
Every single one of us only gets one chance at this experience called life, and for some, it’s ripped away in a heartbeat. For others, it’s stretched out, tainted, abused by those who don’t care about how sacred and beautiful it should be. And we can’t undo it. We can’t give the people we love a second chance. We can’t give them one more smile, one more hug, or one more goodbye.
