“Falon, you know the words. They’re ingrained in who you are, in the magic both your mother and I passed down to you. I know you can do this, I know you can remember our lessons and find exactly what you need to make it right,” my dad tells me, cupping my cheeks as his fervent eyes hold mine. “You’re stronger and better than the Sept whose magic flows in your veins. I know it’s not fair to put so much on you, but My Heart, if anyone could do this, it’s you.”
The strange pulling sensation that brought me here starts again in my chest. Panic flares inside of me.
“Dad!” I cry out, suddenly scared and not ready to be stolen away.
“I love you, Falon. I believe in you. You’ve been pure light and love even before your first breath.”
He wraps his arms around me, and I hold tightly to him as though somehow it will anchor me and I won’t be pulled away.
“I don’t want to go,” I plead with him, and I feel him kiss my tear-stained cheeks.
“I don’t want you to go either, My Heart, but we’re always with you. You’re never alone.”
I’m yanked from his strong hold, and I cry out and thrash against the force that’s tearing me away.
“I love you, dad, I’m sorry,” I scream at him, sobs ripping out of my chest as though I’m watching him die all over again.
“No, I’m sorry, Falon. All you have to do is remember, My Heart! Just remember!” he calls after me, and then just like that, I’m pulled out of Vedan and staring down at the cliff castle that served as my first home in this world.
I’m once again surrounded by the night and its teasing, unfamiliar stars. I race backward, but in the distance, I see looming purple mountains and a bright light that almost looks like a spotlight shooting up into the sky. It’s radiating out of the base of a mountain that almost resembles a fist. It’s surrounded by two, taller, triangle tipped peaks, and I don’t know what it means, only that the strange manifestation of light is burned into my mind as I’m flung back and slammed into a body that’s drowning in pain.
I’m so overwhelmed by the agony that I can’t even speak. I open my mouth to scream, but only a hoarse crackle exits my throat, and I realize I’ve already screamed my voice away. My skin burns like someone doused me in gasoline and took a match to my sodden existence.
“Falon, your magic’s awakening. It will be over soon. Are you sure you want me to break your mate bonds? I’m worried you can’t survive it,” Wekun tells me through the smoke of my melting soul.
My jaw is clenched so tightly that I feel like the bones are going to shatter any moment, but I manage to unhinge them somehow and grit out, “Do it.”
Wekun places his hands on my chest, and the searing sensation blazing through me morphs into something trying to cut out my soul and shred it into a million pieces. I feel Zeph, Ryn, and Treno, writhing in their own pain, clutching their chests, and gasping against the cutting of the threads that hold us together.
My awareness of Treno goes first. He just blinks out of existence for me as though he no longer walks this world. Panic slams through me, and I can’t help but feel terrified that in doing this, I might have killed him.
I claw at my chest as I feel Ryn’s threads start to shred. He screams as they do, and I can feel him reaching out to capture them, holding the threads to his chest like that will be enough to reattach them. In one torturous breath he’s there, and in the next, Ryn is gone.
I scream at the loss of him, my voice gravelly and filled with pain. I can taste the blood in my throat and the damage my cries are further doing to it. The absence of Ryn and Treno almost hurts worse than severing them did. I don’t understand the why of it, only that I know in this moment that I will never recover. I will never be the same after this loss.
Pigeon wraps my consciousness up with her warm feathered and furred body, and I can feel her suffering alongside me as, one thread at a time, we ruin and reject what fate’s decreed for us.
Zeph’s essence threads itself through my mind, and he takes a hold of me. I’m surprised by the strength I feel, and the questioning touch that caresses the threads between us.
“Don’t, Falon,” I hear him plead quietly in my mind before the pain and trauma of what’s happening takes over everything, and I feel myself start to shut down in defense against it.
I cling to consciousness, like I’m hanging off a cliff and I know if I let go, I’ll plunge to my death. The black abyss below me promises nothing but more loss and pain, and I know I can’t let myself fall. I call on every ounce of strength I have, and despite the disconnecting of threads that I felt before, power shoots through me and bleeds out, wrapping around Zeph, Ryn, and Treno and stamping ownership all over everything they are.
I feel their gryphons, their fear, their hurt, their anger...their claim. Treno’s connection to his other half feels like mine to Pigeon. Ryn feels more braided and interwoven with his beast, and Zeph’s lines are so blurred I can barely see where he and his other half end and begin. His gryphon is so tightly wrapped around him it’s as though without it, Zeph could no longer be anchored to the world.
Pigeon rears up inside of me, like she can’t help but peek at the pieces of them they would never show us. I feel her sadness and hurt, her desire
