His magic left him.

His demonic limbs detached and shriveled up like worms on a hot stone.

Raem Seran, King of the Abyss, once her father, slammed down against the floor, a mere man again . . . glowing with starlight, fading, burning, dwindling away . . . until he was gone.

Issari fell to her knees. The starlight still thrummed through her; she glowed, a figure of light, burning up.

"Issari, let it go!" Tanin was shouting. She could barely see him through the silvery veil. "Release the starlight!"

But she could not; she had taken on too much. She trembled, smiled, wept. She was one with the stars.

"Issari!" He reached into the light, grabbed her, and shook her. "Issari, enough!" He grabbed her hand and forced it shut, sealing the shard behind her fingers.

She gasped.

The beam of starlight pulled into her, sucked up. She felt it driving into her chest, coiling inside her. The glow faded. She fell into his arms, feeling so light, and the world spun.

"Is he dead?" she whispered. She looked to where Raem had stood and saw only charred bones.

"It's over," Tanin said, tears on his cheeks. He lifted her in his arms. "It's over, Issari. Now let's get you out of here."

The starlight glowed inside her head, overflowing, hiding everything behind silver haze. She saw nothing more.

LAIRA

 
LAIRA

She rode on Jeid's back, holding her sister in her arms.

"I'm with you, Issari," she whispered. "You'll be all right. It's over." Laira smiled through her tears. "We won."

The copper dragon flew beneath them, rising through the tunnels of the Abyss, heading back toward the good world above. King Raem had fallen. Their father—the man who had tortured Issari and Laira, who had driven Sena to take his own life, who had become a demon worse than any imaginary monster he had fought—had burned away, leaving but a memory for their nightmares.

"It's over," Laira whispered again, holding Issari close as the dragon glided beneath her.

She did not just mean the battle in the Abyss. She did not just mean the war against the demons and their hosts. She did not just mean Requiem's struggle to rise from scattered refugees into a kingdom. The great pain of their life had ended. Laira's longer struggle—from exile, to slavery in the Goldtusk tribe, to war and fear, to losing her magic in the shattered hall of Requiem—was over. Issari's own war—against a cruel father, against the nephilim in the south, against the deeper pain in her eyes of which her lips would not speak—too had ended.

"Our family is healed," she whispered. "Do you hear me, Issari?"