Chapter 171 Hundred and seventy four
Chapter 171 Hundred and seventy four
“Where is she?” Ryder’s voice croaked into the cold morning air before he even understood he was awake. The sound didn’t feel like it came from his throat. It felt torn out of him, dragged up from some depth he hadn’t visited in years.
He opened his eyes slowly, cautiously, as if the world might collapse the second he looked at it. Above him stretched a pale sky washed in the colors of first light , soft gold bleeding into silver, and silver fading into the faintest blue. For a moment he simply blinked, confused, trying to gather himself. The last thing he remembered was the unbearable pull of the shadow realm, Sienna’s name struggling to stay on his tongue as everything inside him cracked apart.
Now… dew coated his hair. Grass cushioned his back. Warmth touched his skin, unfamiliar and startling. He sat up sharply, breath catching. The warmth didn’t disappear. It stayed. Steady. Gentle. Real.
His chest rose and fell with a rhythm that felt newly born.
He touched his heart with trembling fingers. No fracture of the curse. No tearing sensation. No shadow burning behind his ribs. His heartbeat was whole , strong, unbroken, impossibly alive.
“Sienna,” he whispered again, softer this time, as if saying her name too loudly might scatter what little he understood.
Silence stretched, unsettling. The bond that had always existed like a second pulse beneath his own was gone. Not severed. Not muted. Gone.
He pushed himself to his feet, breath leaving him in uneven bursts. The field around him shimmered with morning light. Dew glistened on every blade of grass. Far away, rolling hills curved gently into a horizon that seemed too calm for the way his own world trembled.
“This isn’t right,” he muttered, forcing his legs to move, pacing in desperate circles. “Sienna? Sienna!” His voice rose, cutting through the quiet. “Answer me!”
Only the wind responded, brushing past him with a softness that made his jaw tighten. It almost felt like her touch , the memory of it rather than the real thing. He closed his eyes for a second and let his breath shake out.
“I’m not doing this,” he murmured, as if arguing with himself. “I’m not waking up to peace alone. I’m not.”
He moved through the field, searching for anything , footprints, torn fabric, scorched ground from her power, even the faintest echo of her presence. Nothing. The world stretched on untouched, undisturbed by anything except him.
Panic crawled higher under his skin.
He dropped to his knees and pressed both palms to the earth. “Where are you?” His voice cracked on the last word. He felt foolish speaking to soil and grass, but he’d prayed to worse things when he had begged the curse to spare her.
The ground gave no answer.
But the wind did.
A soft breeze swept across his cheek, feather-light, warm, the exact way her fingers used to brush his face when she was too tired to speak. It carried a faint whisper, indistinct but intimate. He froze. Every muscle went rigid.
“Sienna?” He held his breath, waiting.
Another breeze. Soft. Slow. Careful.
This one carried his name.
It wasn’t sound. It wasn’t voice. It was memory manifesting in the air, wrapping around him like a ghost that refused to fade.
He lowered his head, gripping the grass in both fists as if the earth might anchor him. “Don’t do this,” he whispered. “Don’t come to me like a shadow. Come back.” His throat tightened painfully. “Come back.”
A petal drifted past him.
Ryder frowned. There were no flowers in this field. It was all grass, nothing more.
Another petal floated downward, turning lazily as it fell. Not pink. Not white. Not gold.
Silver.
He reached out, eyes wide, as yet another shimmering petal dropped into his palm. It looked like forged moonlight, delicate and impossibly bright. His breath held. He touched it,
And it dissolved into light.
His heart slammed against his ribs.
“Sienna,” he breathed, unable to control the trembling in his voice. “What have you done? What did you give up?”
More petals drifted around him, falling from a sky that held no tree, no blossom, no reason for them to exist. Each one shimmered like pieces of her power, pieces of her sacrifice. He stood slowly, staring upward as the petals multiplied, swirling in a quiet storm of silver.
He felt like he was standing in the center of her last heartbeat.
“Why did you leave me?” he asked the sky, the wind, the gods. “You promised, no, you didn’t promise. You just… stayed.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “And I thought that was enough.”
He closed his eyes, swallowing the ache burning deep in his chest. For the first time in years, the curse wasn’t killing him. For the first time in years, he wasn’t fading. He was alive in a way he barely remembered.
She had done that.
She had paid the price for his life.
He turned slowly, scanning every direction with a hollow stare. He kept expecting her to appear somewhere in the shimmering horizon, walking toward him with that determined little tilt of her chin, scolding him for giving up too easily.
She wasn’t there.
She wasn’t anywhere.
And yet,
A tiny shiver brushed the back of his neck. Not cold. Familiar.
He stood completely still, listening.
The wind shifted. The silver petals danced. Something moved through the field, soundless, weightless.
Then he heard it.
Not breath. Not voice. Not echo.
Her.
Clearer this time, painfully soft. A single word carried on the air he inhaled as if it belonged to him.
“Ryder…”
His eyes snapped open. The world blurred. His pulse thundered. He turned toward the sound, heart hammering, every part of him straining to catch it again.
“Sienna?” His voice shook. “Say it again. Please.”
The breeze touched him once more, gentler than anything mortal. The whisper brushed the edge of hearing, faint, distant, impossible,
“Find me…”
His breath shattered.
“Find me…”
He staggered forward as if pulled by invisible hands, as if the air itself tugged at his ribs.
“Find me…”
He pressed a hand against his chest, gripping the fabric of his shirt, feeling his heart race in wild, terrified hope.
“Where are you?” he whispered into the glowing field.
The wind didn’t answer with her name this time.
It answered with her voice ,
calling him from somewhere beyond the mortal world.