34. Chapter 34 #3
Apparently, summoning an ancient deity from the skies is no easy feat, even with the Sentinel Key at my disposal.
I felt exhausted to my core, bone-tired, the husk of the woman that I once was.
But I also felt like the weight of the world had been lifted from my shoulders.
I wouldn’t have to marry some ancient dragon king anymore.
“It’s going to be okay, Raven,” Augustine said into my ear as he carried me to a cave nestled on the outskirts of the world where no one could find us.
It was an oasis tucked behind a waterfall, a house he carved with his own hands.
He even decorated it with fur-skinned rugs, a blazing hearth, and a pallet strewn with soft blankets.
I flopped down onto the bed and exhaled a sigh, exhaustion slinking into my eyes. “What do we do now?” I asked, blinking up at the glass-paned ceiling with a perfect view of the waterfall on the opposite side.
“We live happily ever after,” he replied.
I sat up and looked at him. “Is it really so easy?”
He knelt down on the ground beside the bed, meeting me eye-to-eye. I leaned forward on my elbow and nuzzled my nose against his. Then, I tugged on his shirt collar and pulled him onto the bed beside me, desperate to feel closer to him.
“Yes,” he said, wrapping his arms around my waist and nuzzling his nose against mine. “The war is over. The dragons are gone. The wraiths have been banished to Hell. And my siblings are cursed. No one can ever hurt you again, I promise.” He cupped my face into his strong hands.
“I love you,” I told him with every fiber of my being. “It’s always been you.”
As more memories soar through me, I’m gifted a vision of him bringing me flowers after the death of my mother.
An image of him bringing me breakfast in bed and wiping away my tears after my father was killed.
How he’d scooped me into his arms every time that I’d ever needed him, come sunshine or rain, carrying me to his oasis behind the waterfall—the very one he’d built just for me.
It was always him.
Until it wasn’t.
It’d been raining the morning I’d returned to the Skaldrathian castle to gather up my things.
I had no intention of ever coming back. I wanted nothing to do with being the queen of a wasteland, nor did I want to think about my people being banished.
The wraiths, damned to Hell. The dragons, banished to Purgatory.
I had betrayed them all.
Augustine had been there with me, helping me pack.
He leaned against the balcony railing and gazed up at the stars.
He cracked a joke and made me laugh, if only to take the biting edge off the cold.
He even tried to convince me that I wasn’t a traitor to my own kind, even though deep down, I knew that I was to the bone.
“I only wanted to end the war,” I said, burying my face into his chest. “I just wanted freedom. But not like this.”
I waited for his arms to come around me like they always did.
But instead, a pair of icy hands grabbed me by the throat.
I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t speak. I felt like I was suffocating to death.
The world darkened around me, and my bones started to ache from the brittle cold.
My heart threatened to stop working as the ice-riddled hands clutched my throat tighter.
A vision in white. A sharp-pronged crown belonging to the Goddess of Love, who came to display her outrage over the curse that I summoned.
She ripped the Sentinel Key straight off my neck, then she voiced her intentions of wielding it for herself in order to reverse the curse’s effects.
But the Sentinel Key cannot be stolen. It must be gifted. Which meant that I was the only person in existence who could wield it. Outraged over this news, the Goddess of Love shattered the key with her undiluted fury. Then she drove a stake straight through my heart before Augustine could stop her.
I’m not sure what happened next, as my vision started tunneling due to me bleeding to death.
But I get a sense that the Mother of Chaos appeared on the balcony then, outraged by what her daughter had done.
The two of them battled it out, and somehow…
the Goddess of Love won. Perhaps the Mother of Chaos had been weakened by the key’s disarray, making it easier for her daughter to turn her to stone, effectively locking my memories and magic inside of her until my return.
The scene trickles away like the silver blood gushing out of me… until all that’s left is Augustine picking up the pieces of the shattered key and dumping them all into a lake of never-ending sleep.
A token of his unshakable grief.
And then came a prophecy: “A raven shall arrive on the backs of wolves, bearing the silver blood of the wraiths. In dreams, the Mother of Chaos she will unveil, commencing a war between gods, demons, and dragons. A mother’s heart warmed in a fire, a father’s soul damned to the pyre.
A gifted key, two thrones, and a lover’s ire.
To bring about the end of the gods, or the end of the world. ”
I am the Raven Queen, reincarnated. The daughter of the Great Mother Sun and the King of Hell. The Skaldrathian throne is my birthright.
The Mother of Chaos was simply housing my past memories until my return.
I am the one destined to destroy the gods.