The Deepest Night

Chapter 27

Always she astounds me. Lora-of-the-moon, changing her fate yet again.

I can’t believe I never realized she’d do it. I’d thought I’d tested her depths, known her true heart. There can be no sound reason I never anticipated this future, except, perhaps, that I didn’t want to.

Her life for his.

And now all will be different. The path she was meant to forge ahead alone has been bent.

I am a furnace with the force of my desire, a fire so hot I melt my own limitations.

I need to reach them. I need to change the coming day.

But they’re so entwined now. Because of her sacrifice, they’re bonded in a way I never was with her, absorbed in each other’s songs. Mine becomes harder and harder to distinguish.

I watch from my impossible distance, knowing the sun will exhaust me before I see these next few hours through; that I’ll vanish from the sky before I know how it concludes. I spin a spell and sing the only song I need this dragon whelp to remember, the only command Armand must obey: don’t leave her.