33. Chapter 33 #3
“Shadow, wait…” Augustine says, striding across the bridge and reaching for my arm as I move to slice myself open again, this time for a completely different reason. Not to end myself, but to become bound by blood to the Goddess of Love. Forever hers.
“Tsk tsk, Brother. Let me enjoy this moment,” the queen says fondly, fanning her face and looking pleased.
“The last time we played with weapons, I was the one cutting her open, and she was lying in a puddle of her own blood on the floor. At least this time, the bleeding is mutual. Don’t you agree? ”
Wait. What is she talking about?
Augustine lunges for her throat.
The two titans begin wrestling, bashing into the wall behind us, and then putting more crater-like holes into the floor.
The echo of their angry heartbeats pounds through my feet as they tumble through one of those holes, where they beat each other to a pulp somewhere down below.
“Augustine!” I screech, peering over the edge in search of him.
I spot him splayed out on the edge of a little cliff, which must be at least a hundred feet down from me.
Oh dear. I fear I don’t have a ladder to get him out.
I’m going to need to track down a dragon…
“Augustine, it’s fine. Everything is fine! Come back and allow me to make this agreement. It’s my decision!” I shout.
Augustine ignores me and instead wraps his arms around his sister’s throat. She twists and screams under his grip, then lodges an elbow into his stomach, sending him hurtling closer to the cliff’s edge—which leads to an abysmal nothingness down below.
“Gods, you are both so infuriating!” I scream at them, feeling utterly hopeless from where I’m standing. But of course, they’re too busy kicking the living shit out of each other to hear me.
Sighing, I whisk up my Wraithcaller and storm toward the statue, determined to put an end to this once and for all. But just as the cataclysmic power of their bloodmagic sweeps through the air and the ground shakes from all of their incessant punching, someone calls out to me.
“Shadow, run!” I spot Bella and Maxine through a nebula of soot and ash, sitting on the back of a red dragon. Bronk.
“Shadow, come on!” Maxine waves her arms over her head. “Hurry up, get on!”
No. No. No. I can’t leave yet. At least, not until I know that Augustine is okay.
I set my sword down by the statue and return to the hole in the floor, searching desperately for him through the ash and soot.
“Bronk! I need you to help me get him out of there!” I shout with a cough as my heart damn near slips out of my chest and tumbles through the floor.
Because to my utter horror, I finally spot both of them down below, delivering blow after lethal blow like they’re fighting to the death. And the queen has a sword in her hand.
My outcry is muffled by a set of arms wrapping around me, shielding my eyes from what’s happening. “Shadow,” Bella says, holding me tightly. “We have to go, now.”
“I can’t,” I sob, pulling myself off her. “I can’t leave him like this.”
“The curse is almost up,” Bella says softly. “Soon they’ll all be gone, anyway.”
“What do you mean?” I ask. “There’s three days left.”
“No,” Bella corrects me. “You slept for days. The curse is destined to expire in minutes.”
The air around me thins
“You don’t understand.” I peer down at the queen, who’s now pinning Augustine beneath her foot and raising her sword above her head.
“I…” I trail off, wiping away the sweat-stained hair that’s plastered all over my forehead.
But just as I’m about to congregate my thoughts, the queen drives her sword straight through Augustine’s unsuspecting heart, delivering a fatal blow that causes the castle walls to rumble all around us.
The aftershock of a fallen god.
The only one with an actual… beating… heart.
“No!” I scream, fighting to break free of Bella’s arms. I choke back my own sobs as I lean over the crater’s edge further, just in time to spot Augustine’s fallen form, which is now pooling in golden blood.
Wide-eyed and horrified, I stare at the dark angel who deserved so much better than this godsforsaken world.
An imperfectly perfect creation who is twice the man that his siblings are.
I’m half-tempted to toss myself through that sinkhole and curl up beside him, because his death feels like the end for me too.
Why does this hurt so much?
“Because I love him,” I suddenly realize as Bella stills from beside me. “I’ve loved him this entire time. From the moment that we met, I’ve loved him. And deep down, I always knew.”
“We did too,” Maxine whispers, appearing at my other side.
I let myself fall into her arms, too teary-eyed to notice the queen pulling herself through the rubble with her blood-soaked sword. It’s only until she’s standing directly over us that I realize what I’ve done.
“What did you just say?” she asks, her voice sounding almost… human.
I peel myself away from Bella and Maxine and step toward her.
My eyes blaze with so much fury, so much silver-scalding heat, that I’m quite certain I could rip a hole straight through the universe and push her through it.
But first, I’d paint her body in every color of blood: red, gold, silver.
A conglomeration of ichor that will act as a celebratory stamp as I shove her straight through the supersonic black hole that I’m about to create with my bare… fucking… hands.
The prophecy must be good for something, right?
Perhaps I was not meant to bleed silver, but rather, the world was meant to bleed for me.
“What I said,” I say, swiping up my sword and swinging it through the air, “is that I’m going to rip out your fucking heart and eat it if you don’t get the fuck away from my friends.”
Something behind me cracks. I don’t have to spin around to know what’s happening. It’s written all over the queen’s face. Her skin turns a delightful shade of ghostly pale as her mouth falls agape.
“My daughter!” An ethereal voice whorls through the air, riding on the undertow of a universe-defying, supersonic boom. “My, you have been quite naughty as of late! What am I to do with you?”
I spin around to find two different colored eyes… one black, and one white, just like Solara had promised.
It’s the Mother of Chaos in her true form, and she’s…
Well, there are simply no words to describe her.
“Fuck you, Mother…” Armona says.