Page 137 of The Beast King's Bride

“Talen,” Jassin says, “please…”

I close my eyes, wet slipping from them. Tears. I’m leaking tears. Can’t remember ever crying before. They drip off my face, fall on hers.

“And you will cry for her when it’s done.”

I will kill the Empress, no matter what it takes. That’s why I came back. The pain turns sharp, the sorrow shifts into fury. I’ll find her and rip her throat out. I’ll…

Under my fingers, movement. Under her soft skin, a vein beating. When I trail my hand to her mouth, there’s a shift of air.

“She’s breathing,” I mutter. “She’s alive.”

“Alive?” The human man scrambles closer, eyes wide and red-rimmed. “Are you sure?”

“What? But…” Jassin comes to kneel on her other side, Auria and Zylphia joining him. “But we saw her. She plunged the sword right into her heart.”

“The wound,” I whisper. “The wound is on the left side, but…”

Jassin meets my eyes, his own wide. “Even if she is half-Fae as you said, why would her heart be—”

“In the right place? On the right side?” I caress her lips. “I gave her my sigil ring. And she came back.”

“The bond,” Jassin breathes.

“The bond. I didn’t think it could happen on its own, but the Fae blood in her must have responded to it, and when she crossed back… it turned her into full Fae, reversing the position of her heart. Making her one of us.” I lift my hand to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, tracing the delicate shell of it. The delicate point of it.

“That means…”

“I must stop the bleeding.” Placing my hand on top of her wound, I pull on any wisp of magic left in me, any drop of life force, and shove it into her, to knit the wound, to fix what was severed, to heal her and make her whole.

“But the curse—” Auria starts.

“The curse is no more. She beat the Empress at her own game. And she…” It’s not much, my power. It’s a wonder that there’s any life in me left, but what I have, all I have I give to her to bring her back to me. “She is…”

“Sire?” Auria has torn off a strip of her dress and is waiting for me to lift my hand so she can wrap it around Ash. “What’s wrong?”

Ash’s chest rises and falls under my hand, rises and falls, her breathing steadier, stronger. I smile even as a weight is crushing me. I cannot take enough air. I’m struggling to breathe.

The curse has lifted. The kingdom is saved. And she’s here. She’s alive.

All that fear, that crushing despair, that endless race against time, the struggle to keep going, to keep fighting… is over. I can let go of that tether now, though it leaves me floundering, sinking.

I find her hand, thread my fingers with her, holding on. It will be all right. She won’t let me sink, she promised.

It’s going to be all right.

“Sire,” someone says. “What’s wrong? Talen.”

Her fingers are tightening around mine. The bond between us draws us closer as I fall, hands easing me to the floor beside her.

Ash.

The worried voices above me fade as I take in the scent of her, as I gaze on her sweet face, as her eyes flutter open and she smiles at me.

And then I’m floating into darkness once more but this time it is warm and soft and I find her there, waiting to join my dreams.

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