The Shattered Wastes didn't kill you loudly.
It killed you the way rot worked its way through fruit—quiet, patient, inevitable.
Aurelia lay half on her side, cheek pressed to stone that was colder than snow. The wind dragged grit across her lips. She tasted metal and ash and something bitter under it, like crushed seeds.
Poison.
Of course it was poison.
It always ended as poison.
Her fingers twitched, trying to curl around the hilt of a dagger that wasn't there anymore. She'd dropped it an hour ago. Or a day. Time had stopped behaving when her blood turned to ice.
Somewhere inside her chest, something tightened.
Not fear.
Not pain.
Something worse than both.
A thread pulled. Then another. Then another—
Four.
Four invisible lines stretched away from her like she'd tied herself to the world and forgotten how to untie the knots. They were still there. Still living. Still screaming.
She didn't need to open her eyes to see them.
She could feel them.
Kaelen's rage was a hot iron buried in her ribs.
Sivaris's disgust was salt on a raw wound.
Theron's cold silence was a blade pressed to the throat of the bond itself.
Rhydian's… was fire trying to eat its own cage.
They were far, far away. Yet each pulse of their resistance shook her bones.
Aurelia exhaled and a thin ribbon of blood slid down her chin.
So even death wouldn't free them.
Fitting.
She tried to laugh and it turned into a cough. The world tipped, went gray at the edges.
Her mind reached, not toward the bonds, but toward one familiar presence behind her.
She felt him before she heard him.
Footsteps—controlled, careful, too soft for the broken land.
A shadow moving in a place where shadows shouldn't exist.
Aurelia's eyes fluttered open.
The sky above the Wastes was a sickly color, as if the world had forgotten what blue meant. Jagged rock walls rose like teeth. A dead tree clawed at nothing.
Then a figure dropped to one knee beside her.
Wolf eyes. Silver-gray, bright even in the gloom.
Lysander Ashenveil.
His face was cut and dirty, his mouth split, one sleeve dark with blood that wasn't all his. He looked like he'd fought the Wastes itself and lost—except he was still here.
He was always still here.
"Aurelia," he said, voice rough. He didn't use her title. Not now. Not when nobody could hear.
He never sounded afraid.
He sounded afraid now.
Aurelia stared at him. The angle of his jaw. The way his hair fell into his eyes. The familiar tension in his shoulders like a bow that never unstrung.
He'd followed.
Of course he'd followed.
He always did the thing she didn't ask for.
The thing she didn't deserve.
Aurelia tried to lift her hand. It rose an inch and fell back to stone.
Lysander caught it anyway, as if that inch mattered. His grip was warm. Steady.
His thumb brushed the inside of her wrist where her pulse was stuttering.
He didn't say I told you so.
He didn't say I warned you.
He didn't say any of the words he'd earned.
He just leaned closer, like if he listened hard enough he could hear life inside her and pull it back.
"Drink," he said.
He held a small flask to her mouth.
Aurelia turned her head away.
He stilled. "It's clean."
"It won't matter." Her voice came out thin. Not the voice that commanded armies. Not the voice that made men kneel. Just… a girl with blood on her lips.
Lysander's eyes flicked across her face like he was mapping the damage.
"You can survive this," he said, and there was fury under the calm. Fury at the land. Fury at the world. Fury at her for being her.
Aurelia watched him for a long moment.
He still believed in survival.
He still believed in her.
That was the cruelest part.
She swallowed. Her throat burned. "You shouldn't be here."
His jaw tightened. "I am where I'm assigned."
Even now.
Even at the end.
Aurelia's chest ached—not the poison, something else. Something old.
His hand was on hers. His fingers were callused. Scarred. Strong.
Hands that had done things for her she never let herself look at too closely.
Hands that had held her upright when she was small and shaking, hidden in a corridor while servants pretended she didn't exist.
Hands that had cut throats in silence.
Hands that had never, not once, reached for something that wasn't his to take.
Aurelia could say it.
Just once.
She could say the thing that had lived inside her like a secret animal, sharp and shy.
She could give him a name for what he'd been to her, beyond command and duty and shadow-work.
Aurelia looked at his face, the devastation he was trying to hide, and her tongue went heavy.
Because if she said it…
If she said it out loud…
It would become real.
It would become something the world could touch.
And everything the world touched, it ruined.
Aurelia's mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
Lysander's eyes searched hers, pleading without ever begging.
"Aurelia," he said again, softer. "Please."
Please.
He never said please.
Aurelia's fingers tightened in his, weak as a child.
She forced her voice into the shape of command. Not power—habit.
"Lysander."
He went perfectly still.
Yes. There it was. The old spell.
One word, and he was hers again.
Aurelia hated herself for how easy it was.
She swallowed blood and grit and the last of her pride.
"Leave."
His pupils flared. His hand clenched around hers as if he could deny her with grip alone.
"No."
Aurelia stared at him. Even now, he disobeyed her only when it mattered.
Her breath shook.
"Don't…" She coughed. "Don't waste your life on—"
On me.
On a thing the Empire never wanted alive.
On a girl who grew into a woman who grew into a monster.
On a queen who made love into leverage and called it strength.
Lysander shook his head once, sharp. "Stop talking."
Aurelia almost smiled.
He sounded like her.
He always had.
The bonds inside her pulled again—harder this time. Pain lanced through her ribs, hot, bright, sick.
Somewhere far away, one of them screamed through the link.
Not with a voice.
With a soul.
Aurelia's eyes widened. Her breath hitched. Her body tried to arch and failed.
Lysander felt it. He always felt everything before she said it.
"What is it?" he demanded.
Aurelia's lips trembled. She tasted iron.
"Nothing," she lied.
He stared at her like he knew the lie and didn't have time to fight it.
His hand slid from hers to her cheek, thumb wiping blood away with a tenderness so careful it hurt.
"Aurelia," he said, voice breaking in a way she'd never heard. "Tell me what to do."
Tell me what to do.
Sixteen years of obedience, and he asked her like she still had the right to direct his life.
Aurelia closed her eyes.
She could tell him to live.
She could tell him to stop being a shadow and become a person.
Her chest tightened again, not the poison this time. The other thing. The thing she refused to name.
If she spoke it, it would be a confession.
A surrender.
Aurelia had spent her whole life learning never to surrender.
So she did the only thing she'd ever been good at.
She kept it inside.
When she opened her eyes, she made her face smooth. Imperial. Untouchable.
"Go back," she whispered. "Protect the Empire."
His expression cracked. "The Empire can burn."
Aurelia's throat tightened.
Even now, he chose her over everything.
She couldn't give him what he wanted.
She couldn't even give him what he deserved.
Her vision blurred, the edges of the world dissolving.
Lysander's face was the last sharp thing she could see.
"Aurelia—"
She lifted her hand with the last of her strength and pressed two fingers to his lips.
It wasn't a command.
It was a refusal.
Don't make me say it.
Don't make me ruin it.
Lysander froze, eyes wide, breath caught.
Aurelia stared into those silver-gray eyes and let the truth stay unspoken, safe and untouched where nothing could corrupt it.
The Wastes wind howled.
Her bonds shuddered.
And Aurelia Draconis died.