“Who you used and betrayed,” she accused.
“Yes,” he said simply. Not arguing the fact.
“How could you do that to someone you claimed to love?”
He said nothing. Just stepped closer and spread his arms wide. “I thought the circles meant that our love would last forever. That, despite everything, we had endured. I was forced to marry another. She had magic and could never marry someone so lowly as me. She became the Domina and wore the white and everything—everything—fell apart. But still, somehow, these circles meant eternity together.”
“Well, congratulations! The circles still stand. The bond still stands. And Serafina still loves you.”
His eyes snapped to her. “What did you just say?”
“She still loves you.”
“You’ve spoken to her,” he said barely above a whisper.
“She has been guiding me, as I presume…you have been guiding Kael.”
He nodded once. “I did my best to tether him to his soul. To do for him what no one was able to do for me.” His eyes were distant. “To save a part of him so that he did not end up with my fate. Every day, I regret the decision that I made out of jealousy and greed and obsession. To hope that someone could fight against Malysa’s influence where I could not.”
“You were a vessel.” She understood. “Once she got her claws in you, the darkness spread like an illness.”
“A plague,” he corrected. “Until the only part of me that still existed belonged to Sera. My love for her that even Malysa could not destroy. And to hear that she still cares for me…after what I did, I don’t deserve that.”
“No, you don’t,” she agreed evenly.
He laughed once, a short bark. “You are so like her. I can see her in your face and the way you move and the way you speak so freely.”
“Well, she is my ancestor.”
“Yes, tell me how,” he asked eagerly.
“You don’t know?”
He held his hands out again. “You witness my prison. I have not left my Byern in two thousand years. Just passed from Dremylon to Dremylon. Never quite helping them to evade her.”
Cyrene couldn’t imagine. She couldn’t believe that he had been here this whole time. Trapped and unable to move on or do anything but stay tethered to the curse he had created so long ago. But she didn’t pity him. Perhaps it was a fitting fate for a weak man who had let the monster rule him so.
“You believed that you had killed her daughter, Anne.”
“Anne,” he whispered. “I never knew her name.”
“Serafina’s friend sacrificed her own child in Anne’s place. She deceived you to save her.”
“Good,” he breathed.
“And now what?” Cyrene asked. “I came down here to try to save Kael. Despite everything he had done under her influence. Things that he should be held accountable for. Many think that he should perish for his acts against humanity. And yet, here I am, trying to save him.”
“Because you love him,” Viktor said simply.
“I understand him,” she said. “We are not you and Sera all over again.”
“You could have been.”
She saw his answer for what it was. The truth that stung. They could have been. So easily. Serafina had fallen in love with a man in Eleysia. She’d had a baby and a new life. She could have had that life forever. But she had chosen to return to Byern and Viktor and the life of torment.
Cyrene had had that choice taken from her. It was a different path. One that diverged. She had never freely chosen Kael. Not the night when he’d attempted to take her honor…whether it was because he was a courtier, as she had suspected, or because he felt the bond so completely, as he’d claimed. And not when she had come back to him, bent and broken with her heart a mess as he tried to help her put it back together. Even as the darkness had eaten at them and she’d tried to find herself again, she had known the truth.
Kael was her mirror.
And her enemy.
And worthy of redemption.
If only for that fact and his love for Elea and Alessia. If for nothing other than that Cyrene hated for Malysa to win anything. What could Kael have become if he had never received that black book? What great things could he have done for their country? Could they have been friends? Fallen in love?
She’d never know.
Because of Malysa.
And Cyrene would do anything she could to put a stop to Malysa’s influence forever.
“I tried to help him fight,” Viktor said. “I taught him how to protect you from the Braj. To work within the confines of Malysa’s power. It’s up to you to save him. I did all that I can.”
“Can I save him? Is there enough of him left?” she pleaded, fearful that she already knew the answer.
“He’s like you, Cyrene. A survivor,” he told her. “Would you give up?”
She shook her head, and he smiled. It was all that she could do not to feel like she’d been punched in her gut by that look. He looked so like Edric then.
“I knew that you wouldn’t,” he said.
“I will try one more time. I don’t know how much more time he has.”
“Time works differently here,” he told her. “To him, it’s only been a minute.”
“He might not have many other minutes.”
“I believe in you.”
And something within Cyrene’s heart seemed to heal. The last two years she’d been broken, not just by what had happened in her own life, but also by what she knew of Serafina’s. Seeing Viktor here, so radiant with love for someone he knew that he didn’t deserve, it mended that last fragment. Proved that love would always win out. Even against Malysa.
So, she felt for that piece of herself. The open and loving and rash and fearless girl who wanted to discover the world and not conquer it. Who wanted to love the people and not rule them. Who had no desire to have enough magic to destroy it all or remake it in her image.
“Tell Serafina I love her,” Viktor said, his voice breaking.
“Tell her yourself,” she said.
Then she flung her arms wide and released the raw power of her own soul. The one that was so full of light that she couldn’t even feel her own blood magic any longer. She cast it down the bond. Through the part of her that connected her to Kael. Perhaps the last thing that had been holding him together all this time. To give him Viktor. And his guidance. And always—always—an ounce of her light.
Malysa’s darkness was a plague.
And it could be defeated.
Cyrene’s magic ignited not into flame, but pure sunlight. The summer solstice reigned supreme overhead, and she harnessed the sun as its own weapon. Used it to shine bright and blanket the world. Then she pinpointed that ray of light and threw it at Malysa’s darkness within Kael.
And, from her place along the tether, she watched the darkness burn.
Burn until it turned into nothing but smoke.
Then even that was eradicated by the force of her will.
Not a drop of darkness remained. And all that was left was pure sunlight.
She opened her eyes to look at Viktor one more time. He tipped his head toward the light with a smile on his face. And then he was gone. Returned to the love of his life at last.