But my knees shake, legs giving out. I don’t sink down in the gold though, because the black, liquid roots seem to catch me, keeping me afloat.
Panic comes over his face, and that’s when I know there’s no hope.
He can’t get to me.
There’s pure torture in his eyes, and my entire soul just cracks.
My bottom lip wobbles. My love for him drains from me as much as my power, collecting around me, wishing it could reach him.
But it can’t.
I can’t.
He came for me, but he can’t get to me.
Hot tears score lines down my shaking cheeks. But I try to pull them up. Try to give him a smile. “Find me in another life.”
“No!” The anguish thrown from his throat feels like it tumbles right at my feet.
I blink, head cradled against the bars, and I watch as he suddenly brings up both hands. And then I feel the hair rise on the back of my neck.
In the next instant, magic comes slamming out so forcefully that it steals the breath from my chest and holds it in its fist.
Raw magic blasts from his body and pours into the barrier.
As soon as it makes contact, the entire dome starts to vibrate. Several of the monarchs clutch their heads, cringing back, while the prince passes out, body going still.
Slade’s power dominates the air.
He directs it all to the double-layered shield in front of me, pouring all of his energy into the spot around my enclosure. My skin is covered in chills, my ears ringing, even the rotted gold around me acts erratically. Unnatural wind gusts from the spot where he’s trying to breach through the barrier, and I’m stuck in the storm of its charged ferocity.
His body quakes, veins shrinking and expanding in an eerie pulse. I can see his jaw muscles working, see the fierce determination in his eyes as spikes burst from his arms, even as I grow weaker and weaker.
“Just hold on!”
I’m trying, I want to say, but I can’t get the words out.
“Hold—”
His words get ripped from his throat at the same time that a rip suddenly rends through the air.
I watch as the fabric right in front of me tears open, like someone grabbed it and ripped it in two. A rush of sweet-smelling wind blows back my hair as I blink at the twelve foot rip. It’s torn through the poles, split right down to the ground, making some of my gold start to drain into it.
The gaping slash is clotted with roiling clouds of black and white that churn in its starry, electrified depths. It looks bottomless, ethereal, and as soon as I smell the air, the beast inside of me sings.
Because it carries the breeze of home.
It feels like I release a breath that’s been locked in my chest for twenty years. With that long breath, my skin warms, my gold glows.
I was my parents’ little sun. And with the world torn open, with the fragment of home just inside that rip, I actually feel like one. Like if I could just fall into that cracked-open sky, I could shine forever.
And yet, when I look away from the rip right in front of me, past its mirrored and mottled air, I see the look on Slade’s exhausted face.
I see horrified realization in his dark eyes.
The shine, the warmth, the glow, it all dulls. It all chokes out like a fist at my throat.
“Auren…”
The moment he says my name, I understand.
He swallows hard, head shaking. “I was trying to rip through the barrier to get to you, but…”
But he tore a rip into Annwyn instead.
“Auren. You need to go into it.”
My eyes go wide, liquid gold churning in waves around my shoulders. If the runes forcing me to drain out my energy don’t kill me, I’ll drown in my gold instead.
“Auren.”
I glance from the rip to him, and I’m so terrified, but I know it’s the only way, because he’s tried everything else, and it’s home. Annwyn is home, and—
But then I realize.
Then I truly see.
“The rip…you can’t get to the rip.”
His lips are pressed into a thin line, his eyes full of speechless agony.
“You have to come with me,” I say, panicked, terrified, despairing.
He shakes his head, and my foundation shakes with it. “I can’t. You have to go into it, baby. You have to. I can’t get to you, and you can’t stay there. You’re fading.”
My head shakes, tears pooling from my eyes. “I can’t. I can’t. Not without you,” I beg. Fight. Wail.
“Look at me,” he demands, even as his chest heaves. “You have to go in. You’re strong. So keep your rage to fuel your courage and save yourself again.”