140

140
Brinley’s POV

Kieran was the first to fall to his knees and hug her.

Maeve’s limp form was cradled against his chest, his shadows were gone like they had never existed.. Rowen stood beside us, silent, his face carved with something worse than pain, it was something like disbelief.
I dropped down beside Kieran, reaching out to touch her wrist. Her skin was cold. Too cold.

Lucien’s shadow fell over us. He lowered himself slowly, almost like his knees couldn’t bear the weight anymore, until he knelt beside all of us. His face looked older than it had yesterday, lined, pale, wet with grief.

“Nythera is gone,” he whispered. His voice was the voice of a father, not our headmaster, not our alpha. “I don’t know how to tell her when she wakes. If she wakes.” He glanced at Maeve’s too-still body. “We need to bring her back to the school, get her looked at.”

He paused, his breath catching in his throat. “Whatever she said to the Moon Goddess… she saved us. All of us. We would have lost thousands tonight. Students, soldiers, allies. Instead...” His eyes flicked across the battlefield. “Instead every soul that stood here still breathes. Sore, wounded, but alive.”

Relief should have rushed through me. It didn’t. My chest ached too much.

Rowen’s hand landed heavy on my shoulder. He was trembling. “Then why does it feel like we all still lost?”

No one answered me..

We carried Maeve together. Kieran wouldn’t let her go, wouldn’t even let the healers touch her until we were back inside the Academy walls. Her body looked too small in his arms. Too breakable.

She was laid in her old dormitory bed, the same place I had met her last year.. the place where we’d spent sleepless nights trying to figure her out, love her, hold her. Now the room smelled of blood and smoke and something… empty.

Lucien stood at the foot of the bed, hands clasped behind his back, knuckles white. “When the wards broke, I prayed,” he admitted. His voice was low, almost ashamed. “I prayed to Selene. She gave me all of you. At a cost..”

Kieran’s eyes didn’t leave Maeve’s face. “She shouldn’t have had to pay it.”

No one disagreed with him. Maeve made the biggest sacrifice for all of us..

We talked quietly as the night bled into morning. About what we saw when we fell.

“I saw darkness,” Kieran said flatly. “Like drowning. Nothing but the sound of her name.”

Rowen’s jaw tightened. “Same. Just blackness. Like a never ending void.”

I closed my eyes. “I saw a field. Wide and endless. I thought maybe it was where she’d be waiting.”

Rowen swallowed hard. “Maybe it still is.”

None of us said anything more we all just huddled together for comfort.

It had been three days

Maeve slept for three whole days.

The healers came and went. They said her vitals were stable. They said she was resting. But resting didn’t look like this. Resting didn’t look like her chest barely rising, her lips pale, her body so much smaller than I remembered.

She looked... Frailer. Like she was stripped down to nothing.

We stayed as long as we could, until exhaustion forced us outside to help the others. The courtyard was rubble, the walls scorched. Together with wolves, mages, and witches, we cleared the debris. It felt wrong to move on like that, sweeping away the evidence of war while she lay unconscious upstairs.

Every time I stopped, Raiyna snarled in my chest. She’s alive. Do not mourn her yet.

So I worked. Until my hands bled.

On the morning of the fourth day, I was sitting beside her bed when she stirred.

Kieran jolted awake from where he’d been slumped in the chair, Rowen stepping through the door with a tray of untouched food. All of us froze as Maeve’s eyelids fluttered
.
Her lashes lifted slowly, revealing green eyes. Emerald, but dim. Duller than they should have been.

“Maeve,” Kieran breathed, his hand catching hers. Relief broke over his face so violently it almost shattered me.

She blinked at him. Then at me. Then at Rowen. Her lips parted.

“What… happened?”

Her voice was so soft. So small. Nothing like the voice of the girl who had spoken to us months ago.

Kieran laughed, tears spilling, pressing his forehead to her hand. “You’re awake. That’s all that matters.”

Rowen’s voice cracked. “We thought you were gone.”

I leaned closer, brushing hair from her damp forehead. “You saved us. You saved everyone.”

For a moment, she smiled. Then she shifted, sitting up slightly. And her hand went to her throat.

Confusion darkened her eyes.

“My mark…”

I froze.

There was nothing there. The skin was bare. Smooth. Untouched.

Kieran’s head snapped up, panic slicing across his face. He yanked at his own collar, his own mark from her. Faded. Empty.
The bond throbbed weakly between the three of us, it wasn’t whole anymore. It wasn’t right.

“She isn’t marked anymore,” Rowen whispered, horror in his voice.

Maeve’s eyes brimmed with tears. She shook her head, curling into herself. “No… no, that’s not possible. I felt you. I felt you all...”

Brinley, I told myself. Be strong for her. Be strong.

I swallowed hard and reached inward—into the part of myself that had always hummed with magic, with visions, with the threads of prophecy.

There was nothing.

No spark. No light.

“I think my seer abilities are gone,” I whispered, voice hollow.

Raiyna stirred uneasily. She still has her wolf. I can feel her. But she’s… different.

Kieran’s hands trembled as he clutched Maeve tighter. “It doesn’t matter. Power or not, bond or not—we’ll find a way. We’ll fix this. I swear to you, Maeve.”

Maeve only shook her head, She was so much thinner. She was Skittish like every movement towards her was a threat.

Laying infornt of us was not the girl who had once laughed with us under the stars. Not the Golden Wolf who had burned the battlefield with fire and shadow.

Someone else.

Someone new.

And I had no idea if we could reach her or bring the women we all had fallen for back..