Page 159 of A Dance of Lies

I choke for air.

I gaze at the balcony several stories up, see the way they shout for me.

“Vastianna,” someone says—not below but inside my mind. The voice is lovely and feminine, soft as a drop of rain. But I can’t talk to her yet. It takes all the strength, all the willpower I have left, to tilt my head just so.

I have to know if it worked.

Illian lies a few yards away, his body broken and bent at odd angles, his face pancaked into stone. Blood runs from him like thinned-out paint, soaking the nearby grass.

It offers me the modicum of peace I needed, even as I feel myself fade away.

I no longer try to hold on.

Letting go feels like a relief.

Breath leaves me.

Pain leaves me.

And I feel myself die.

Chapter Forty-One

My spirit slips free of this world like a snake shedding its skin.

I am weightless, eternal. I feel as if I could inhabit the stars.

Below, my body is a smear of gore on the ground. Wholly broken, the way I always thought I was, when in fact I was far from it. I know that now. Then my gaze fixes on the husk beside me, blood collecting beneath a mass of leather and velvet.

I wonder if he is like me, hovering above the scene like a wraith.

I wonder if I will see him again.

Everything that happens next is in slow motion, even as figures spill onto the courtyard, forming a radius around us both.

Even as Anton kneels before me, gathering my corpse into his arms.

I want to tell him that it’s all right. This was my choice.

A voice slides into my thoughts like water.

I know it instantly. I have heard her in my dreams, after all.

All my fears, my concerns, drop away when I turn.

Emilia is there, lovely and pure, a halo of golden curls framing her iridescent face. Oh, how I have missed her. How I long for her, even as she drifts before me.

She stretches out her hand to welcome me home.

Willingly,eagerly,I take it.

Chapter Forty-Two

Time feels infinite here.

Boundless. Shapeless.

I don’t know how much of it has passed.