The Queen of the Dawn (Shadows and Crowns #5)

by S.M. Gaither

she found him already looking at her, gaze full of wonder, as though he had just woken up beside her for the very first time.

“But just so you know, I wouldn’t have changed a thing that happened tonight. Whatever comes next, I’m still happy. And thankful.”

if this is to be our ending, then believe me when I say I will be waiting for you in whatever comes next—whether in this lifetime or another. I will find you again. I swear it.”

“Nowhere I could go,” she whispered.

“Nowhere you could go,” he agreed.

His soulmate. His queen. His wife. His wife.

“You may be carrying that sword on your own,” said Nessa, before Casia could protest, “but we’re going to make it to the other side of this together.”

“Because we don’t end in darkness, right?” He smiled back. “No. We don’t.” “If this is the end, then we will go out with the sun rising around us; it will be the brightest light this world has ever known.”

Her stubbornness reminded him of Casia. No wonder they got along so well at the start.

Casia took a step back from the window. Elander knew what she was going to say before she said it. Knew that the time had come to face their ending, whatever it might be. He still wasn’t ready—would likely never be ready—to let her rise to meet that ending.

Her friends all descended upon them as they walked out of the watchtower too, as though they had developed an ability to sense when she was trying to face her battles alone.

“Everyone knows their assignments, so let’s pretend it is just another mission, and we’ll see you two on the other side.”

The world reduced to the two of them and their thundering heartbeats. All they had been, all they had made it through, all they had vowed.

Whatever power had been given to him as her guardian in whatever lifetime, he would lay it all down right here on this battlefield if it meant they lived to see another day.

He wouldn’t stay separated from her this time, even if it meant jumping through the fire.

“If you both somehow survive this, do me a favor.” He stopped searching the wreckage and fully met Varen’s gaze. “Take care of her, won’t you? And find a way to convince her not to blame herself, whatever that takes.”

And sword or no sword, she could still carry their light.

“One last sacrifice, and the gods lose this round. So you haven’t failed, really—in fact, I couldn’t have done this without you.”

“Strike hard and strike fast,” he whispered, eyes on the sword. “I don’t want to linger.”

It could have broken completely apart and swallowed them whole in that moment, and she would not have cared.

Varen’s sacrifice would not be in vain.

She had not been finished then, and she was not finished now. She took her broken sword from Laurent and started to walk.

She had no fear in that moment—she was the terror, the storm, and she continued to summon more and more lightning into her command.

she was beckoning. Daring him to answer,

He would come to her this time, not the other way around. And they would finish this. It didn’t take long for him to answer her call.

But someone waited in the dark ocean, beyond her spinning vision— they were calling her name, just as before. She was not alone.

They were gathering, hurrying to help her even now. Following her to the very end, broken and beaten down but still fighting.

And she would have sworn that the tighter they squeezed, the more power she felt radiating from the broken piece of sword that she herself held—as if they were protecting her as much as she was protecting them.

She could almost imagine them as the Vitali themselves, standing around her like the stone sentinels she’d encountered in Dawnskeep.

Goddess and queen combined and charged forward, plunging Shadowslayer’s broken blade into the very heart of the darkness looming over her,

The brightest light the world had ever known.

The dawn was breaking in the world she’d left behind.

As long as she could keep fighting, it would not reach that world or all the people she loved. She thought only of those people as she bowed her head and focused. A love strong enough to put it back together.

She exhaled—the weary but peaceful last breath of a life lived to its purpose.

“Where is the queen?” The question was nearly his undoing. There is nowhere you could go that I can’t find you.

And all he could think about in that moment was how he wished he’d been taken with her.

The Heart resting against that symbol still did not beat. But his search was not over. He had sworn he would find her again, regardless of what separated them. And no matter how long it took him, that was what he was going to do.

My court has granted you the last of what they can give to this mortal world—enough to help you rule with power and light.” “So don’t say I never gave you anything,” came a familiar, candid voice. Cas turned and saw the Goddess of Storms striding toward them, followed by her sister.

“She left her blessing for me to pass to you, along with some of her magic.”

“We’ll still be with you in a way, even if you can no longer visit us.”

“We’ll take different paths now,” the goddess whispered before pulling away, “but that doesn’t change the roads we’ve already walked together, does it?”

She knew it was a road back to the mortal realm. Back to her empire. Her friends. Her husband. To everything after.

she pulled a solid shape from the chaos—two shapes, this time. Two crowns.

She would start at the same place she had started so many other seemingly impossible tasks—with her friends beside her. Her friends, and her king.

she knew he had been carrying it, searching for her since the moment she’d disappeared, and that he would have kept on searching until his last breath.

“I was off collecting a belated wedding gift from the Goddess of the Sun,” she told him.

“That palace could take awhile,” she told Elander. “We should hurry and get started.”

She was living each of her days now, rather than simply surviving them—and so were her friends.

she’d been reading them one at a time. Rationing them, both for the sake of her heart and because she didn’t like the idea of finishing.

There were still dozens of tasks they needed to do to prepare for the coming days, but Elander didn’t mention any of them. And as long as he held her like this, she felt as if those tasks were further off, less imposing somehow.