Chapter 158
Chapter 158
Nathaniel
The sky was red.
Not the red of sunset, not the soft smear of a closing day–but the violent, pulsing red of something being born too fast. Something being torn open.
We were too late.
The edge of the canyon seethed with smoke and swirling wind. Magic howled through the gorge like a beast unchained. The leyline pulsed so hard beneath my boots I felt it rattle up my spine, shaking the bones of my teeth.
Iran.
I didn’t wait for Ethan’s call or Bastain’s warning. I didn’t wait for logic or caution or fate. I just moved. Down the rocky slope, past the smoldering trees, over the blackened edge of the gorge where stone crumbled with every breath. The canyon walls were streaked in flame–light, and the sky above split with veins of violet lightning.
She was somewhere in the middle of that storm.
Jiselle.
And I felt her. Every heartbeat. Every scream locked behind her silence. Every pulse of flame she couldn’t control.
The bond didn’t guide me this time.
Love did.
I saw her silhouette as I reached the base of the ridge–her body outlined in flame, hair whipped by the storm. The rune on her back blazed like a sun carved into skin. Her arms were spread. Her legs braced.
She wasn’t fighting anymore.
She was surrendering.
No.
No, no, no.
“JISELLE!” I roared.
Not with the bond. Not with magic.
Just my voice.
My heart.
My soul.
She didn’t turn.
The flame coiled tighter around her like it wanted to crown her and consume her in the same breath. The stone beneath her cracked in rings, like the Gate below was reaching, hungering.
I sprinted across the basin, weaving through fire that didn’t touch me. Didn’t need to. Because I wasn’t the target.
She was.
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And she was giving in.
Her head tipped back.
Her lips moved, but no sound came out.
The air twisted. The wind screamed.
And then I reached her.
I didn’t ask.
I didn’t hesitate.
I grabbed her.
My arms locked around her waist and yanked her back, forcing her against my chest, holding her so tight I felt her ribs shake.
She gasped.
The flame sputtered.
But it didn’t die.
“Jiselle,” I said against her temple. “Look at me.”
She didn’t move.
Her eyes glowed white.
Her hands were limp.
“Jiselle,” I said again. “Come back.”
Nothing.
Just the roar of a storm that had no source, no end.
I turned her in my arms, cupping her face, even as the heat licked at my skin, scalding but not enough to stop me. Her eyes were endless. Empty. But I knew–knew–she was in there.
“You told me you weren’t ready,” I whispered. “That you were scared. So let me carry it. Let me hold the weight with you. You don’t have to do this
alone.”
Still no response.
The bond wasn’t humming. It wasn’t even present.
Whatever was happening–it was beyond that now.
So I did the only thing left.
I kissed her.
Hard.
Fierce.
Desperate.
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Chapter 158
And I poured every ounce of myself into it. Every hope, every scream I’d swallowed since the moment she was born to burn. Every part of me the loved her in silence, in battle, in the places between.
Her lips trembled.
Not from fear. Not from cold. From something deeper–an unraveling, an echo of pain and memory trying to reassemble itself through a single breathi
Her breath stuttered next, jagged and raw, like her lungs had forgotten how to function without the flame inside them dictating every rise and fall. And in that tiny moment, I felt it–through the bond, through her skin pressed to mine, through something older and quieter that didn’t need words to scream.
The break.
The shudder that wasn’t collapse, but release.
The gasp that said she was fighting her way back from somewhere farther than death.
She inhaled.
Sharp. Unsteady. Real.
And then–she blinked.
The white glow behind her eyes faded, just barely, but it was enough. Enough for the girl I loved to break through the god the Gate was trying to forge.
And I saw her.
The real her.
The girl who’d survived Trials and pain and prophecy.
The one who still held too much fire in too small a body and didn’t know how to carry it without breaking.
Her eyes were glassy, unfocused, lips parted as if they didn’t quite know how to shape sound again.
“Nate,” she croaked.
And gods, that sound wrecked me.
I nodded, jaw clenched, eyes burning. “Yeah. I’m here.”
I didn’t realize I was crying until her head dropped against my chest, her whole weight slumping into me like her soul had remembered gravity.
But the fire didn’t stop.
It surged again–not out of fury, not to consume.
To greet her.
Like it recognized her now not as its prisoner, but as its match.
Around us, flames danced higher, curling and twining like threads spun from breath and magic. The air grew denser, hotter–but we didn’t pull art.
She trembled in my arms.
“You stopped me,” she whispered, voice almost lost beneath the rising wind.
“No.” I pressed our foreheads together. “You came back.”
Her shoulders shook. One sob. Then another.
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Her hands fisted in my shirt like it was the only thing anchoring her to this world.
“I didn’t mean-” she choked.
“I know,” I said, before she could break open more.
“I was just–”
“I know.”
And I did.
I knew what it was to drown in power you never asked for. To carry something ancient inside you that might not let you go.
Then–like a strike of lightning cracking through bone–the bond snapped back into place.
Not gently. Not quietly.
It whipped through me like a scream. Jiselle’s scream. The sound she hadn’t made when Kael begged her to choose him. The sound she’d buried while holding back flame and fate.
Her memories rushed in like a tide.
Kael’s voice. The Gate’s whisper. Serina’s warnings. The blood. The cost. The fire.
I nearly staggered from the weight of it, like her pain had poured through the tether and buried itself inside my ribs.
But I didn’t let go.
I couldn’t.
Because the Gate wasn’t finished with her.
The ground beneath us trembled, not like stone giving way–but like something breathing through it.
The canyon walls roared with wind, flame licking every surface, light pouring from cracks that hadn’t been there moments ago.
A rhythm pounded beneath my boots.
Jiselle screamed.
But not in pain.
This wasn’t a cry of surrender.
It was a battle cry.
“No!” she shouted, and I felt her soul rise.
“I am not yours!”
The fire recoiled. For the first time, it hesitated.
Wavered.
Twisted.
“You don’t get to choose me,” she snarled, her voice thunder in the bones of the world. “I choose!”
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The rune on her back–still burning against my hands—began to change, I watched as its lines split, curved, rewrote themselves across her skin like prophecy bleeding into truth.
Like a story changing in real time.
Still, the Gate pulsed.
Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
Three heartbeats now.
One hers.
One Kael’s.
One… something else.
The stars dimmed overhead. The air thickened with ash and power.
The leyline sang beneath us, a wild, ancient song that had no words–just need. Just demand.
I felt the change before I saw it. Like the world had stopped rotating and everything in it was holding its breath.
She turned to me again.
And in her eyes, I saw it.
Terror.
Faith.
Resolve.
“I don’t think I can stop it,” she whispered.
Her voice was a fracture lined with fire.
And even though every instinct in me screamed to protect her, to pull her away from this place and bury her in a world untouched by gods and gates–l
didn’t.
touched her cheek, fingers soft even as the heat blistered the air around us.
“I don’t want you to,” I said.
She blinked. Disbelieving. “What?”
I leaned in until our lips hovered again.
“Then I’ll burn with you.”
She gasped–and this time it wasn’t from fear It was something softer. Something that had no place here, in this storm of endings and beginnings.
Love.
Real, Fierce. Consuming.
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Chapter 158
And the second the vow left my mouth-
The canyon lit up like the sun had detonated inside it.
Light poured in every direction. Not gold. Not white. Not red.
Violet.
Holy.
Impossible.
The air folded around us like a fist of wind. The fire screamed.
World tilted–and then reassembled.
Time lost meaning.
Gravity lost hold.
And we were in it.
Wrapped in one another.
Wrapped in fate.
And as the light peeled away the old world, trying to shape something new in its place, I knew one thing:
We were burning.
But we were not breaking.
Because this wasn’t destruction.
It was transformation.
And we had chosen it.
Together.
AD
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Sara Lili is a daring romance writer who turns icy landscapes into scenes of fiery passion. She loves crafting hot love stories while embracing the chill of Iceland’s breathtaking cold.
