Last Stand (The Black Mage #4)(114)

His garnet eyes were on the tree line ahead. “The Borea Isles.”

“Our second ship departs in two days.” I sucked in an unsteady breath. “Somewhere east.”

This was it, a chance for us to amend the wrongs of our past. A chance to find out the people we could be, past the magic and pride that had cost us so much.

“Our… new start.”

I turned.

He was smiling. It wasn’t a big smile. It barely raised the corners of his mouth, but it was still real.

It had been so long since I saw something other than pain. For a moment I forgot to breathe.

Then my hand found his and I squeezed.

“Our new start,” I whispered.

Outside, I was shaking.

But inside, I was soaring. And despite everything, in that moment, I knew we would finally be okay.

The boy and the girl could still have their happily ever after.

It wasn’t too late.





Epilogue





Eight Years Later




Darren



He stood silently in place, his limbs locked with his breath caught in his lungs. Blood pulsed underneath his skin, thundering violently as fear drilled deep inside his chest. Darren heard the murmur of voices just beyond the door.

His eyes clenched shut. It was an involuntary reaction, even eight years after the event.

Almost a decade had passed, but their screams still plagued his dreams. He still felt the bite of those shackles on his wrists and the terrible jolt as the guards let him fall. His neck should have snapped. It was only fool’s luck that it hadn’t.

For just a moment, he was numb, paralyzed with indecision and regret. Was this a mistake? He’d spent so much time away that he’d almost, but not quite, forgotten that broken boy on the ship, the one who’d been willing to forsake everyone and everything—even her—to make the pain stop.

And now he was here, and it was a fresh blade to his throat. His strength was ebbing away, hope fraying under the cut of a serrated edge.

Everything was wrong.

Darren didn’t belong here. The walls were too constricting. Even after all these years, he still felt that faint ache in his palm. It was a call to magic that would never return. Especially here, in this place. Magic and his fists had kept the darkness at bay as a child, but what happened when the shadows remained?

What happened when the monster you were running from was yourself?

No. He clenched his fists. He would enter that room, no matter the cost.

Darren had broken once, shattered to bits of rubble, and that should’ve been the end. But it wasn’t. She’d urged him to fight. It’d taken that final moment—when the choice was solely his and the knife was pressing down on his wrists—to finally understand.

Amends.

It was her plea and a promise that had brought him back from the brink: amends. He hadn’t just owed amends to the world, he’d owed it to her, and it was there at that moment he’d finally laid down his blade.

When a second ship had deposited Darren and Ryiah in Kuador, that vow never left…



Kuador was an island overflowing with trees. Miles and miles of green canopy spread as far as the eye could see. The sun was sweltering as the Borean ship docked.

Darren and Ryiah disembarked and set forth into a damp jungle teeming with creatures that slipped in and out of the brush like the sea’s tide. There were great cats that hunted like wolves, snakes as long as a man, and flowers and plants without a name.

A week later, they discovered a small village following a beaten trail. The people didn’t speak the same tongue, but they were kind. Darren and Ryiah traded labor for shelter until they were able to fend for themselves.

On quiet nights, Darren sat among the tribe, watching the elders tend to maladies that came and went. No one ever suffered long. Aches and pains, even illnesses, were gone in a matter of days.

The people didn’t have magic, but they didn’t need it. From what Darren had gathered, the eastern gods embedded it in their land. The jungle reaped more bounty for the people than any market back home.

Darren took to recording those plants and the ways they were used. At first it was nothing more than a distraction, a way to ease the restless roving of his mind. But months later, a band of the men departed with half of the village stores and returned bearing Borean wares.

Darren and Ryiah finally discovered the Kuadian term for “ship,” and they came up with a plan: he’d send his work back to her parents in Jerar.

Having spent a lifetime around the healers in his father’s infirmary, Darren had almost forgotten not everyone could afford magic. Darren wasn’t a healer, but to imagine that a lowborn might suffer less from his account…

Amends.

That was the first night bloodied faces and a village square didn’t haunt his dreams. It was also the first night Darren took Ryiah into his arms, the first night he allowed himself to feel something other than broken. He was able to give his wife the parts he locked away and lose himself in something other than grief.

Afterward, it’d only been a matter of communication. He and Ryiah spent weeks conferring with the village council, learning all there was to know of Kuador. From what the elders indicated, certain plants were native to different territories and there were twelve villages bordering the island’s rim to specialize in certain treatments and salves.