Kane's fingers closed around Rina's still hand, her skin cold as winter stone. The flatline's shrill tone carved through the silence.
"She's gone." The words escaped him in a broken whisper.
His silver tails drooped, foxfire extinguishing as grief crushed down on his chest.
They'd been so close. The essence had worked—he'd seen the healing light flow through her veins and heard that impossible music.
All for nothing.
Isabelle's breath hitched, a sound so foreign from the composed ice spirit that
Kane's head snapped up. Moisture gathered at the corners of her pale blue eyes, threatening to spill.
"I miscalculated," she said, voice fracturing. "The integration ratio, the timing—I should have—"
"You did everything right." Cyrus's tone remained steady, but Kane caught the tightness around his eyes and the rigid set of his shoulders.
Dragon instincts demanded action, solutions, and conquest over death itself. But even dragons couldn't resurrect the dead.
