With the sun sunk below the horizon hours ago, I can’t stand it any longer.

This is enough. Enough with the wallowing in self-pity. Enough acting like a child.

I set off through the castle, straining my ears for the sounds of Cyrus and his whereabouts.

He’s not in any of the grand ballrooms. He is nowhere to be found in the lab. The armories are empty. Through each passageway and hall I look.

I’m really, really disturbed when I stumble upon something I’ve never seen before, tucked way down in the fifth level of the castle. It looks like a club. With private rooms and poles and everything.

I’m going to kill Cyrus for that. He better have some good answers.

But further through the castle I explore.

Each bedroom is empty. He isn’t in the kitchen.

For a minute, I start to get scared.

What if something happened to him? What if one of these Born or Royal who betrayed us has found Cyrus yet again and sought his demise once more?

Or what if he truly meant what he said? That he’s tired. What if he’s…what if he’s left?

My stomach feels like a sick, hard knot. Sweat breaks out onto my palms and I stand in a central hallway, turning little circles.

But suddenly, there, in the back of my brain, a dim light bulb flickers on.

There is one more place, somewhere I haven’t stepped foot in for over five hundred years. But it’s the last possible place.

There is one lone tunnel that branches off of another on the sixth floor. The doorway is hidden, a series of walls that blend together. You would only find the entrance if you knew it was there.

I slip between the walls, and set off through the pitch-black tunnel that burrows straight back, into the deep heart of the mountain.

The path goes on and on for what feels forever. But when light tickles the edges of my vision again, I slow my pace. My feet don’t make any sound, and as I see the opening at the end of the tunnel widen, my insides go cold and still.

Ice creeps through every one of my veins. I feel my limbs tighten, as if a black snake slithers around them, constricting. Dread drips into my brain, my eyes, my throat. My stomach.

I can hardly move as I step from the protection of the tunnel, and into the place that encompasses my worse nightmares.

It’s a cave. A cavern. The space opens up fairly wide, probably forty feet across, and sits in a fairly even circle. The floor has been leveled out smooth. But the walls jut up high above me. At least three hundred feet. They sail so high that the ceiling is nearly lost in the dark.

But there, at the crest of the cave, there is a small hole. About three feet in diameter. Moonlight spears into the cave, barely illuminating it.

Cyrus kneels in the center of the cave, staring at the walls. He’s utterly still, totally silent.

I want to be sick. I could vomit. There’s the sharp taste of metal in the back of my throat. I’m pretty sure all of my cells are slowly transforming into steel. But I take three more steps inside, fully illuminated by the light of the moon.

There are seven crypts that surround us. Gorgeous, intricate openings with arches and platforms along the cave walls.

Resting in each one of them, out in full, plain sight, is a skeleton.

Emotion pricks my eyes as I look around at each one of them.

My throat is so thick it’s painful.

I can’t breathe.

As if falling back through time, I let my eyes study them one by one.

The body of La’ei.

Edith.

Antoinette.

Shaku.

There rests the body of Helda.

Jafari.

And finally, there in the center, straight across from where I stand, where Cyrus kneels before, are the bones of Sevan.

Tears slip from my eyes as I stare at them.

What is this curse? What is this magic that rips me from body to body, with all my memories, from face to face? What kind of evil saw this as fair?

I feel my mind wanting to fracture as I stand here, seeing all of these skeletons. I remember every detail of living in every one of those bodies. I remember racing across the sand, I remember swimming in the ocean in the moonlight. I remember meals eaten and long journeys taken.

Every one of them lies there, devoid of skin, organ-less. Only stringy hair clings to La’ei and Edith’s skeletons. Even the burial clothes on the bodies of the first four have deteriorated with time.

I hug myself, subconsciously checking to make sure that I am alive. That I possess skin, and that my heart beats underneath it.

“Except for the times I have been traveling,” Cyrus suddenly speaks up, “I have visited this sepulcher every day since I laid the body of La’ei to rest.”

I can’t move.

I want to go to his side, to be strong and hold Cyrus in what is surely a deep well of painful memories. But I can’t. I’m frozen in place, frozen in this vortex of time.

“Everything in me wishes to go and look for the body of the eighth,” he says, emotion ripping at his vocal cords. “But the logical part of me knows there isn’t a chance I would ever find Itsuko’s remains. And I cannot put into words the amount of grief that brings to my soul, knowing she—you, were alone at the end of that life.”

His words are the same as if he had ripped claws across the front of my chest, catching down through bone and all the way to my tender, fleshy heart.

I close my eyes, and clear as day, the memories of all the fear I felt floods through me. The days of anticipation, knowing how they were going to try to use me against Cyrus, they wash over me. And then the bitter realization that I could stop everything.

I remember the rough feel of the whaling spear. The splinter that immediately found its way into my right thumb. For just a fraction of a second, I considered not doing it. But I knew. I knew I would return someday. I knew I had to save my love.

I remember the white-hot cold that ripped through me as I plunged the sharp tip into my chest.

And then the darkness that welcomed me with comforting arms.

Cyrus turns, looking back at me. There’s so much pain in his eyes, and I can see the depths of it. I could trip into his eyes and fall for two thousand years before I found the bottom of his grief.

“The happiness in me at your return holds worlds in its weight, im yndmisht srtov,” he confesses. “But it also fills me with so much fear I feel as if I am drowning. Because the countdown is now initiated for when the end will arrive once more.”

I see his face fracture. One tiny crinkle in his face at a time. His eyes squint closed, his lips part.

I’m beside him in an invisible movement. I kneel before him, placing my hands on either side of his face. I press my lips to his forehead, pulling him into my chest.

Great sobs rip from Cyrus, uncontrolled and loud. His hands rise, gripping the back of my shirt in them, clinging to me like his life depends on it.

“I cannot bear it again, Sevan,” he sobs. He shakes his head slightly, clinging tighter. “I cannot survive losing you another time.”

I splay my hand across the back of his head, pressing his face deeper into my chest. Tears roll down my face as I break, splintered apart by the pain I feel for the man I love more than the world and time and the universe.

I want to whisper promises to him, reassurances.

But I can’t.

Not when we know for a fact that my death will happen again.

Not when it’s been proven over and over, eight irrefutable times.

“I will always return to you,” is all that I can actually promise him. “I will always fight my way back to you, Cyrus.”

We cling to one another, sobbing messes filled beyond the brim with pain and loss.

But at least we are here, together.

Some time later, I sit back, looking into Cyrus’ face. His skin is spotted with redness, his eyes puffy. Rivers of dried tears stain his cheeks.

But still, I look at him, and he’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

I slide a hand down his face, studying him.

“I meant what I said before, Sevan,” he says, still holding onto me like his life depends on it. “I don’t care about them anymore. I don’t care about the throne. All I care about is my time with you, and finding a way to fix this.”

His words harden the tender mood we’ve just created. But he moves on as he reaches up, brushing his thumb over my lips.

“But I understand that you need to see them through,” he says. He doesn’t look me in the eyes. He studies my face, every little detail. The corners of my eyes, the arch of my lips. “You are the All Mother. They love you, and I understand that you love them. And so I will stay. I will be at your side, but I will not occupy my time trying to save them from what they are too ignorant to understand. But I will stay at your side, Queen Sevan.”

I feel it then. As if he had physically taken the crown from his head and placed it upon my own.

The burden and weight of the kingdom will remain on my shoulders, even now that Cyrus has been brought back from the darkness.

But I made him a promise three days ago. That I would carry him.

I will keep that promise.

For however long he needs.

He has carried the burden on his own for centuries while I was dead.

Now it is my turn.

I nod, bringing my face close to his. “Thank you,” I manage, and I truly am grateful.

Because if he was truly determined to leave, to walk away from Roter Himmel, I don’t know if I would be strong enough to stay with the people, if I could be strong enough not to go with him.

I tilt his head toward mine, and press my lips to his.

Things are changing. So much will be different.

But not this.

Not my love for Cyrus.

Not his love for me.

That will never, ever change.