CHAPTER 46

Gone

Sefia appeared just as the shadow soldiers were evaporating.

“No!” The word fell from her lips before she even registered what she was seeing. “No, no, no—”

Archer’s body going limp, arms and legs buckling under him, wounds visible on his chest where the Amulet had been.

She caught him, gathering him up in her arms. “No, no, no, no.”

His head, his hands falling back again as she tried to cradle him to her chest, tried to hold him, tried to bring him back with the force of her denial.

“No, no, no—”

Until, at last, words failed her.

Until her grief bubbled up from her like a spring, hot and endless, spilling from her chin and onto Archer’s upturned face.

Her tears struck his cheeks, each one a letter, a word, a plea.

I love you.

I need you.

Come back.

The unanswered language of grief.

She kissed his forehead, his brows, his lips, desperately hoping that some of the stories were true, that her love would bring him back to her.

It didn’t.

“Sefia,” Frey whispered, touching Sefia’s shoulder. “He’s gone.”

All around her, the candidates were surrendering to the bloodletters. Tanin was dead, shot through the chest, her gray eyes sightless.

But Archer was dead too.

On the water, there were a few last bursts of cannon fire, but those petered out quickly, like the last drops of a sudden rainfall.

He’s gone. Faintly, the words trickled down to Sefia. Gone . . . gone . . . gone . . .

“The Amulet,” she said suddenly, casting about for the metal disc. The Resurrection Amulet would bring him back to her. She’d take a shadow of him. She’d take anything.

Anything.

But Aljan knelt beside her, shaking his head. In his hands, he held the shattered pieces of the Amulet.

Gone.

Sefia hugged Archer’s body tighter. “Come back,” she whispered. “Don’t leave me. Don’t be dead. Come back. Come back. Please, Archer, come back.”

But he didn’t.

The war had been won.

His last campaign was over.

And, just as foretold, Archer had died alone.