I meet his eyes. He stares back at me with a wide expression, and I find myself wondering if this is what he looked like as a child.

Then I take my dagger and stab him in the heart.

His body goes stiff. I hear him take a rasping breath, as if he’s still—even now, at the end—shocked that I did it. He leans heavily against me, the blade digging deeper as he does. The pain that trembles through him hits me in a wave, and I feel my own legs in danger of buckling. It occurs to me he must have felt a hint of my agony, too, when the Skyhunters ripped my wings from my back. That was the grief he felt. As if a part of himself had died.

I feel that same grief now. I feel that steady heartbeat of his—an ever-present part of me for so long—shudder and turn erratic, beating frantically as if speeding up might keep it from bleeding out.

Then Constantine’s legs finally give way, and he falls. I collapse at the same time. As I fight to hold myself up on hands and knees, I meet his gaze for the last time.

He stares at me like a frightened child. Death, the thing he feared the most, has finally come to claim him. A thin trickle of blood runs down the side of his mouth, even as his lips still murmur something. I can’t hear what he’s trying to say, but through our link, I know.

My Infinite Destiny. Even in his dying state, his voice echoes through my mind.

Then the voice in my head fades. The beat of his heart fades. The link binding us snaps, and I find myself suddenly without his presence in me as his body goes limp. His eyes turn vacant.

Then Constantine, the young Premier of the Karensa Federation, is staring at nothing at all.

The strength that had magically held me up now ebbs to nothing. I’m aware of the agony coursing through me, the blood that’s still gushing from my back and staining everything red. I give in to it and fall to my side. The stone roof is cold and hard beneath my cheek. The world grays, turns muffled and tilted.

Somewhere in it, Red emerges. Had he won his own battle? He is bloody and wounded, he is limping, but he is moving toward me. I smile at his approach, every part of me yearning for him. He kneels down beside me, his hands running gingerly down my arms, but he’s too afraid to lift me. He knows the damage that has ravaged my back. Off in the distance, I can hear the chants of the people.

Red’s hands touch the sides of my face. I close my eyes for a moment, sighing, savoring the feel of those rough palms gentle against me. Maybe things will be all right now. I feel so tired.

Talin. Talin. He is speaking through our bond to me, maybe because it is all I can hear right now. When I look up at him, there are tears in his eyes, running down his face, dripping from his chin. He bows his head before me and I feel his breath warm and shaking against my face.