tired to scream but with enough tears left to fill an ocean. She was seconds away from passing out.
“I’m so sorry, Zeriel,” Sofia breathed. “So deeply sorry.”
I couldn’t speak. My voice had vanished a while back. Kailani knelt next to us and gently caressed Vesta’s pale, pearlescent face. They’d been close friends since the Stravian incident.
“Zeriel,” Kailani managed, grief dripping from her faded voice.
“I know,” I whispered. “I know. This was the most we could get out of this situation.”
Derek took Lucas’s lifeless body in his arms, and I heard him cry for the first time. He’d never let go like this before—at least not while I’d been around.
“You didn’t deserve this,” Derek said. “After all you’ve been through… You didn’t deserve this.”
Sofia was torn between Ben’s family and her father, Aiden, who couldn’t even speak anymore as he stared at Kailyn. She seemed so peaceful, with her eyes closed, as if she was just sleeping, bound to wake up at any moment. We all knew she wouldn’t, though. Death was so final.
“The worst part is that we can’t even avenge them,” Bijarki said, sitting close to Vita and running his fingers through her blonde hair. Blaze lay on his side, so his face would be inches from Caia’s as he gazed at her, quiet and darkened by grief. “Who do we go after? How do we kill them all?”
“We can’t,” Lawrence replied, as Grace’s head rested on his lap. “The Hermessi are too powerful, even back in their basic elemental state, too big for us to go after. At least it’s over now. They can’t do this ever again.”
“It’s not fair.” Vivienne sighed. I’d not even seen her and Xavier come through, yet here she was, kneeling next to her brothers—one of which was dead.
“It’s over,” Derek interjected. “That’s the end of it. It doesn’t matter anymore. Revenge won’t bring them back. It won’t bring any of them back. Not our friends, not our granddaughter… my brother… our son…”
His voice broke as another wave of tears threatened to dismantle him completely. Sofia was quick to reach him, wrapping her arms around him and holding tight, while Derek let go and cried his heart out.
But Vivienne was right. None of this was fair. And I needed to make some sense of it before I found the courage to finally let go and accept that this was how it would end for us, for me… for Vesta.
“Has anyone spoken to Taeral?” I asked.
Kailani nodded. “It’s why we all came here. He stopped the ritual.”
“I can see that. So he found Death?” I replied.
“Yeah, but we didn’t get too many details. Tae said he stopped the ritual for good, this time,” she explained. At least Lawrence’s words made more sense now. “We’ll have to wait for him to reach out to us again, or for him to come back here and tell us all about it.”
Vivienne sniffed, wiping her puffy eyes with trembling hands. “He said something to Nuriya. What was it exactly? I can’t remember right now.”
River had her arms out, trying to hold her family close as best as she could. She wasn’t crying anymore, but she wasn’t moving, either. My stomach clenched, as I noticed how pale she’d gotten over the course of a few minutes.
“He said he was going to fix this,” Kailani replied. “Though I’m not sure what he can do. The last thing we want is to owe anything to another cosmic entity.”
Marion sat next to Lucas, joined by Avril and Heron. I hadn’t noticed them, either. There were so many people in the sanctuary now that I couldn’t process the whole scene or recognize everyone—though I was certain I knew most of them. Pain blinded me in ways I’d never thought possible, tearing me out of my reality and keeping me isolated in my suffering.
“We asked the Hermessi for help, and this is what they gave us.” Marion sighed, shaking her head. She leaned down and kissed Lucas’s forehead. Avril fought back tears as she caressed her father’s cheek. “As much as I hate to say this, I’d rather they all stayed dead than all of us ending up on the wrong end of Death.”
The statement felt like a claw hammer rammed into my stomach, but its truth could not be ignored. As much as I wanted it all to go back to normal, as desperate as I was to see my Vesta alive and breathing again, I had to admit, I didn’t want it