“I will do what’s right for the fae,” I say.
Evander gives me a thoughtful look, because my answer was ambiguous. “What do you believe is right for us, Aura?”
“Nathaniel is your only chance for peace,” I say, meeting Evander’s eyes.
I sense Nathaniel approach behind us, but if he heard me, he doesn’t show it. Unlike me, he doesn’t stop at the edge of the Lake, proceeding straight out onto it, an immense figure, his halberd swinging gently at his side and his pelt kicking against the back of his boots.
He paces directly out to the center of the Lake before he stops and scrutinizes its surface, his expression taking on an intensity that makes me wary. He moved with purpose, as if he has a plan, but I’m not sure what he could intend to do.
He catches my eye. His lips tug upward in a dangerous half-smile. The determined look on his face makes my heart stop flickering.
What is he about to—?
With a roar, he rises up, his halberd gripped in both fists before he crashes down onto one knee, driving the staff onto the surface of the lake.
Light magic blasts across the frozen water in every direction, knocking Evander and me off our feet and driving us back against the marble steps. Our armor protects us from the bone-crunching impact, but it’s not the danger to myself that I’m worried about.
I scramble forward in time to see a giant crack form in the ice, spreading out in both directions from Nathaniel’s position. The earsplitting shriek of breaking ice merges with the reverberating hum of light magic, causing vibrations of power to shoot through me.
In the center of the lake, the ice opens up beneath Nathaniel’s feet.
He plummets from view so quietly that it stops the light within my chest.
I can’t see him. I need to see him.
“Nathaniel!” My body and soul wrench me toward him.
I run, slipping on the frozen surface, skidding, forcing my legs to move. My cold breath rasps in and out of my chest, grating against my throat. I slide the last five feet, hitting the edge of the ice and leaning over it, barely keeping my grip.
A shallow flood of water rushes around the bottom of the frozen chasm, spinning like it always did, while the walls of the valley rise up, jagged on both sides, at least thirty feet deep.
Nathaniel stands in the middle of the chasm. I search for signs of injury, but his shoulders are drawn back, his head and torso upright. His weapon is lodged in the ice wall on his right-hand side at the bottom of a long cut that descends all the way down, as if he plunged the blade into the ice to slow his fall and land safely.
He looks up at me.
His hand rises.
My diamond heart glitters inside his fist.
All sound dies in my throat. Even from this height, his dark gaze can burn right through me.
Without hesitation, he removes the daggers from the front of his harness, bends to the water at his feet, and drives the blades one after the other into the bottom of the lake. They form a circle right where I imagine my heart used to rest.
Then he unbuckles his harness underneath his pelt and repositions the straps so that they wrap around the diamond before he secures the rock to his chest. Wrenching his halberd from the ice wall behind him, he takes a moment to consider the ice on the side on which I lie before he turns the weapon around. He taps the dagger side of the halberd against the ice wall. Using the spike, he carves out a shallow hole before he creates another one on the right, spaced apart and higher than the first.
He draws back his arm before plunging the dagger side of the halberd as high up as he can. Then he begins to climb, painstakingly carving out new footholds, plunging his weapon into the ice, and returning to the surface, one step at a time.
Finally, he is within reaching distance.
I grab his hands, helping him pull himself onto the surface, his body painfully close to mine as we lie on the surface, the pressure of his arms around me excruciatingly wanted.
I roll away from him before I don’t have the will to separate from him.
While I rise lightly to my feet to stand a few paces away, he recovers more slowly, his chest rising and falling with exertion. His boots are covered in a fine layer of frost—the water that splashed around his feet must have frozen over on the way up.
He takes two steps toward me before he drops to a knee and unbuckles his harness so that my heart drops into his hand.
He holds the diamond up to me.
“You deserve to have the choice,” he says, holding my heart in his open palm.
I told him that my heart is broken, that I never suspected that the diamond belonged to me, that it never called to me.
I wasn’t afraid of it before, but I am now.
Beneath the surface of the glittering rock, starlight flickers, beating in time with the power inside my chest. It dances within the diamond as if it’s completely free, an essence that was taken away from me.
My hands form into fists before the urge to take the heart becomes too strong.
“If I take it back, will I become a Lucidia again?” I ask. “Will I lose the form of a woman?”
Nathaniel is quiet. “I don’t know, Aura.”
“I can’t take that chance,” I say.
“Life is full of chances.”
“But not like this. Not one that could change me so much.”
The corner of his mouth rises, the darkness in his eyes increasing. “Every choice changes us.”
Pain strikes through my chest at the truth in his statement. Nathaniel made a choice to come to Bright to find me. I made a choice to challenge him, not knowing it would bind our fates.
Long ago… Imatra made a choice to pull me from the sky and Nathaniel’s father made a choice to try to save me.
Every choice has led to now—to Nathaniel holding my broken heart in his hands, offering me the chance to be whole again, whatever whole will be.
He rises to his feet, his hand lowering, but not to his side. He reaches for my fist, his big palm closing over mine, the contact between us making me shiver.
His hand is cold, too cold, from the ice he climbed.
On impulse, I pull his palm to my chest, trying to warm him.
At the same time, the rock presses to my heart.
Silence fills the air around us, a deep silence like waiting for a waterdrop to hit the bottom of a well.
I expected to feel sadness, fear… maybe hope. I thought my heart would burn and my emotions would rocket out of control, but… the diamond remains hard, jagged, and foreign where it presses against my armor.
Confusion is the only emotion flooding through me.
I raise my eyes to Nathaniel.
His forehead is creased, his head tilted, as if he expected more too. When I took the shard from him, it had burned its way inside me, unstoppable, an explosive force that connected with me instantly. But this time…
“It doesn’t know me,” I say.
A tear trickles down my cheek and now sadness wells inside me. “You kept the piece of my heart alive by holding it close to you. You taught my heart your humanity, your emotions, and your will to survive. In return, my heart gave you some of my light and kept you safe. This diamond is nothing more than stone with old magic trapped inside it. It doesn’t know what a heart really is.”
Nathaniel allows me to nurse his hand against my chest a moment longer than he should. He finally pulls away, clearing his throat as he leaves the diamond in my fist.
“You should keep it with you, where it’s safe,” he says.