My beautiful Cirri had been right. We were the same. I had been angry with her for seeing clearly only because… I was ashamed.

Penitent, but far too late. Remorseful, but that would not bring back the dead.

But with her death, all shame had died. All emotion withered into dust. There was nothing but emptiness, and the knowledge that I would end this day a dead man, my bright fire avenged.

Muscles screaming, I forced my ragged wings up, knocking wriggling wargs aside. They beat hard, once, twice, and I carried Hakkon into the air.

They were weak, soon to fail, but I could destroy him. I could make this last effort.

“We were the same.”

I gripped Hakkon’s throat even as claws sank into my belly, white-hot fire tearing through me.

“But I tried to atone for what I’d done.”

His breath wheezed through constricted lungs, spilling hot cadaverous air.

Each wingbeat was agony, their shredded lengths struggling to carry us upwards. Into the clean air of the sky, away from the mad horde of wargs below.

The tower fell away; the doors were broken open, and rabid wargs spilled through, parting from the greater mass like droplets from a stream. The legions were nearly overrun, the knights slowly falling under their sheer abundance as Wyn’s blood sigils blazed crimson and began to die out, their power spent.

Whoever won today, I would ensure Hakkon would not be there to celebrate it. That was all I had left.

The warg in my grip let out a high, ululating snarl, thrashing against me, his feet striking out at my legs and opening deep furrows. Blood dripped onto the field below, painting the wargs, sending them into a frenzy.

It took everything I had, every last drop of willpower, to keep my claws buried in him. We would go down together.

But even as my muscles strained, digging deep into his throat and chest, shaking with effort as I prepared to rip him apart, there was a flash of color.

High in the tower, in the narrow slit of the window… a red as bright as blood, gleaming like a flame.

A red the same shade as the tangle of hair wrapped around my wrist, now torn and drifting away.

No.

I didn’t realize I’d spoken until Hakkon started laughing, the sound thick with bubbling blood.

The wargs were invading the tower, clawing and tearing at each other to be first, and Cirri… there at the window, she held out hands full of blood, her face as pale as the dead.

She still lived, and I had wasted my wings on this last chance.

Hakkon snarled, still laughing, and gouged his claws deep into my back, ripping away at my wings. “We die, my enemy, but the pack will live on.”

I thought I made a sound. Maybe I shouted her name. The world pressed in on my eardrums, a dying heartbeat that drowned out everything else, and the only word I knew was her name.

We fell.

My wings fluttered, bones snapping, collapsing in with the force of wind. I felt the snap of the joints, the rip of flesh as Hakkon tore at them, destroying the both of us, and felt nothing at all.

The earth rushed at us, and I squeezed Hakkon’s throat tight, driving him down.

We landed in the midst of the wargs, and I felt the life flee his body, the pulverized crush of ribs collapsing under my weight, his heart and lungs pulping like rotten fruits beneath my hands.

His eyes went blank, mouth still stretched to the ears in a mad, wide smile, teeth red with blood. His last breath rushed out in a soft gasp.

I stretched my shattered wings, leaving him for the carrion he was, and rushed for the tower, for the flame in the window—and instead they drooped, slumping off my back, nothing more than dead appendages.

“No,” I snarled, clawing wargs blindly, dragging myself through the sea of bodies. “No, Cirri!”

A warg latched onto a wing, ripping it free. I ignored it, gaining precious ground to the tower.

And there she was, in the window once more; but she was too visible, she was—

Falling.

Everything stopped, time slowing to an agonized bubble, and all I could see was Cirri as she fell.

Faster than wings could fly, faster than I could move…

And above the screams, the howls, the maddened laughter and sobs and groans, I heard the bone-shattering thump as she hit the ground.

It echoed, a sound like a bell tolling, ringing through my head.

I did not remember what I did to the wargs. They were there, and then they were not; my hands were hot and slick, nothing in my ears but the echo of that thump and the steady heartbeat that was slowing, dying by the second; I pulled free of bodies, stepping onto a carpet of thorns.

They plunged into my flesh, a sharper, brighter pain than any warg had inflicted, and there she was.

She sprawled atop the corpse of a warg, her chest stuttering as she sucked in desperate breaths; eyes wide and sparkling with tears as she stared skywards.

“Cirri, no,” I breathed, but she couldn’t understand this speech.

I knelt beside her, wanting to touch and terrified to cause her still more agony in these last moments. Her hands… I knew what the hammer had done now. He had ruined them.

Her eyes slid to me, and impossibly, a smile stretched across her bloody lips. Her mouth moved, shaping words, and I stared at them intently to read what she said.

Her mouth did not move as someone else’s would; it seemed unfamiliar and awkward to her.

And I couldn’t read them. Her last words… were impenetrable to me.

“Gods, no,” I whispered. “You cannot leave this world yet.”

Her tears were spilling over, dripping off her cheeks; they landed in bright pools on the petals and thorns of the ruined golems. Her lips shaped more words, but blood bubbled up, dripping from the corner of her mouth.

Her body was broken, held together only by stillness… soon that blood would fill her lungs and she would drown.

I would not allow her last moments to be unheard. Not while she still had breath in her lungs.

“You cannot die.” The words snarled out of me, incomprehensible to her. “You made your vows to me, and I do not give you permission to die. There is no world in which you do not exist. I won’t allow it.”

I didn’t realize that my eyes were wet until I sank my teeth into my wrist, a fresh rill of blood spilling over her broken body, and there was no shame in letting those tears run free.

“Drink.” I held my bleeding wrist to her mouth, letting the blackened drops spatter across her lips. “I love you, Cirrien, and you are going nowhere without me. You are mine. I gave you my body and my soul, and now I give you my blood. It’s yours. It’s always been yours.”

But her eyes were unfocusing, and her chest struggled to rise with the next breath.

Agony was crawling over my back, my shoulders; I ignored it, squeezing blood into her open mouth, forcing the darkness down her throat.

She was mine, and none could have her. I would bleed my last before I allowed her to pass on without me.

The darkness was all-consuming, hazing everything I saw, as the wound began to seal. Her lips were smeared with gore, but as I touched her, her chest rose once more.

Another breath, the gift of life, as another sharp stab of pain tore through my neck.

Gods. She somehow still lived, clinging to a single thread of life.

I exhaled, dragging a hand across my face and wiping the tears away. I needed to bring her away from the battlefield…

Her chest arched, shattered hands loosely flopping, and without thinking, I reached for her, cradling her in my arms.

But even as I held her close, I understood it was not Cirri that had moved. She was still in my grasp, still breathing, her eyes closed and cheeks glazed with tears, her heartbeat thready but wonderfully alive.

It was the warg under her.

He jerked, head tilting towards me, and under the milky haze of death I saw the bright jade color of his eyes; even with those distorted bones and terrible features, I saw Miro in the thing he’d become.