Chapter 44
The world was too quiet.
Not a peaceful hollow.
The clearing reeked of burned magic and blood, smoke still snaking from the cracked earth like ghostly fingers. The goddess was gone, but her presence clung to the air like frost on my skin, sharp and suffocating.
Kael lay in my lap, his golden skin turned ashen beneath streaks of blood and dirt. His chest rose and fell in shallow, uneven breaths, every exhale rattling in my ears like a death knell.
“Stay with me,” I whispered, pushing sweat-matted hair back from his brow.
His cracked lips curved faintly. “I’m… not going anywhere,” he rasped, his voice rough but threaded with that familiar stubbornness. Even now, broken and bleeding, he could still smirk at death.
I pressed my glowing hand against the gash along his ribs, cr
