Chapter Six
Reign
How could Aelia banish me from her side like I was some disobedient child, not the male who would burn down kingdoms to protect her? Dragged off by my traitorous brother and best friend, no less…
Noxus, get a hold of yourself, Reign. This isn’t you.
My breath came in ragged bursts, chest heaving as I pressed trembling hands to the wall of our chamber.
The one in which I’d held her in my arms all night until Helroth stole her away in the pre-dawn hours.
My nostrils flared at the memory of the fury I’d felt when I’d awoken to find her gone, the scent of scorched air and shadow clinging to my skin, thick and oppressive.
Nox coiled around me like a predator off its leash, too fast, too wild.
It slashed across the room in jagged lines, extinguishing the torches with one swipe and plunging the chamber into darkness.
My shadows weren’t obeying anymore. They pulsed with my manic heartbeat, alive and volatile, reacting to every thought I couldn’t control.
Zar churned beneath the surface of my skin, slick and burning, spreading through my veins like oil set aflame. I clenched my fists, trying to shove it down and lock it away, but it was no use.
A vase exploded across the room. The iron footboard of the bed groaned and then crumpled in on itself.
“Enough,” I growled to the room, to myself, to the gods.
But it wasn’t.
The two energies snarled at each other inside me, vying for dominance.
Nox was ice and fury, sharp and unrelenting.
Zar was molten chaos, seeping through my marrow like burning ink.
Both belonged to me now—hers and mine, her light and my dark, warring beneath my skin like rival gods with no throne to share. But why?
Why now all of a sudden?
I dropped to my knees on all fours, sweat pouring from my brow as the symbol of the cuorem seared across my chest. Aelia. I reached for the bond, desperate for her calm, her light, anything to anchor me.
I’m coming. Her response was immediate. Just as immediate as the calm that began to set in at the sound of her voice in my mind.
My Aelia. My rock. My flame. The only thing that kept me from burning alive. I needed to be inside her so that I could no longer tell where she ended and I began.
A low growl tore from my throat as another pulse of power ripped through me, cracking the stone floor beneath my palms. Noxus…
If I didn’t get control of this soon, I would become the very monster I’d sworn to protect her from. If I couldn’t handle my own abilities, what hope did I have of overpowering the vow I’d sworn to my father?
The door whipped open and slammed against the wall, the sharp crash cracking through the chamber like a warning. Aelia stood in the doorway, her eyes as wild as the mad thrashing of my pulse.
“Are you all right?” She slid to the floor beside me, warm hands cradling my face.
“I’m not sure, princess,” I rasped out, breath ragged from strain. The admission was embarrassing. I should have been the one comforting her. Instead, here she was worried for me after everything she’d suffered at Helroth’s hands.
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s this damned zar… It’s been infecting the nox, driving me out of control.
It’s been going on for months, but it only seems to be worsening.
I’d hoped once we completed the bond it would stabilize, but—” It had only gotten more volatile.
Or perhaps it was the overwhelming jealousy and possessiveness triggered by the cuorem that had my abilities growing more unstable.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Gods, Aelia, I’d only just gotten you back, and you were struggling with your lost memories, not to mention your own powers. My needs seemed trivial in comparison.”
“No, Reign. That’s not how this works. We are cuoré now, you are my other half. If either one of us is broken, then neither one of us is truly whole.”
The heart-felt sentiment meant everything to me, but more than that, perhaps, she was right. We were bonded now, our abilities should flow freely between both of us, the light, the dark, she and I, we were one now.
As the cuorem was seen so infrequently these days, little was known about the implications of the mystical connection.
“I cannot access your rais,” I muttered. “And yet, the zar is overwhelming me.” Noxus, how humiliating.
“Zar is like nothing I’ve ever encountered, Reign. It runs in my blood, and still, it’s like a wild beast ravaging beneath my ribcage. You’ll—no, we— will tame it soon enough, together.”
Dropping her hands from my face, she offered her open palm and hauled me to my feet. Bracing myself against her, drawing from her strength and quiet calm, I shoved back the onslaught of energies and tucked them deep within my core as I’d shown Aelia to do all those months ago.
She regarded me warily, something indecipherable in that silver-blue gaze. It would be so easy to pluck the thought right from her mind, but I didn’t wish to abuse our bond.
Instead, I whispered, “When did you get so strong, love?” When did you become the one holding me together?
“I suppose it was sometime between the Ethereal Trials and being dragged beneath the earth by my grandsire, and by the throat no less.”
“So I had nothing to do with it?” I lifted a teasing brow.
“Oh, I don’t know.” She smirked, her body inching closer to mine. “I suppose your endless hours of training across the Luminoc may have had a little something to do with it.”
Leaning my forehead to hers, I inhaled deeply, breathing her in.
Gods, she was all I needed in this world.
“Waking up this morning and finding you missing nearly broke me, Aelia…” The confession slid past my lips without warning.
“I’ve faced brutal Fae, battled monsters like my father, stared down the prophecy itself.
But nothing has terrified me like waking up to find you gone.
And I firmly believe it was that fear that triggered this influx of uncontrollable nox and zar.
If I lost you again, there is no question, it would ruin me, love. ”
Tears brimmed in those brilliant orbs as they locked on mine. “You won’t lose me. Ever. We are bound together by the gods now, Reign. There is nothing anyone can do to destroy what the gods have forged, not even my damned grandfather.”
I brushed my knuckles along her cheek, catching the tear that slipped down her face. The sight of her, shining and shattered all at once, nearly gutted me. “Then why does it feel like I’m still losing you, piece by piece?”
Her breath caught.
“I felt it, Aelia,” I whispered, voice rough with the truth.
“When you raised that blade… when I looked into your eyes and didn’t see you anymore.
I didn’t care about the prophecy. Or the war.
Or even surviving. I felt a void swallow me whole.
” I paused, the full weight of the pain I’d buried meeting the brutal light of day. “I just wanted you to come back.”
A faint tremble ran through her as her hands curled into the front of my tunic. “And I did,” she murmured. “I found my way back to you. Because of how much I love you.”
I nodded, but the ache hadn’t eased. “But how many more times can we survive this? I’m afraid another crack won’t cause me to shatter, but instead, it’ll force me to raze everything in my path.”
She didn’t answer. Couldn’t.
So I closed my eyes and pressed our foreheads together again, anchoring myself to the steady rhythm of her breath.
“I need you to understand something,” I said quietly. “If Helroth ever gets that close again, I will kill him. Even if that means risking my own life in the process.”
“No,” she said, voice breaking. “Don’t you dare say that.”
“I can’t live like this, weighed down by the constant fear that he could steal you away from me at any moment. Knowing that he could infiltrate your mind, corrupt your feelings for me and steal your heart? I can’t bear it.”
“He can’t. He won’t.”
“What if it’s this strangling fear that is causing the chaotic state of my abilities? What if I truly can’t control myself? I could become a danger to you.”
“I won’t leave you, Reign, if that’s what you’re getting at. Not now. Not ever. And I will not allow you to go after Helroth alone. If you fall into darkness, I’ll follow you there. I’ll drag you back myself if I have to.”
I smiled despite the ache, brushing my lips across her brow. “Then I suppose we’ll be damned together.”
She leaned in, pressing her lips to mine, soft and sure. The kind of kiss that stitched broken pieces back together. And in that moment, I knew the gods didn’t just bind us.
They forged us in war, in pain, in love.
And I vowed that nothing, not even the King of Night, would sever that.
Curling my hand around the back of her neck, I deepened the kiss, our tongues dancing in perfect rhythm. My heart tapped out a frantic beat beneath her palm, desperate to be closer. “I need you, Aelia,” I whispered against her swollen lips.
“Then take me. I am yours.” Her hand slid down my chest to tangle with my fingers as she turned and took a step back toward the broken bed. With a gentle tug, she lured me to the edge of the mattress.
My heart swelled, the beginnings of a smile claiming my lips. How did you know this was exactly what I needed? I sent the thought through our mental connection.
Because it was what I needed too. She dropped down onto the rickety bed, pulling me down with her.
“Make love to me, Reign,” she whispered, her voice soft, almost reverent.
“It would be my pleasure, princess.”
I sank onto the slanted mattress, bracing myself over her with one arm as the other trailed down her torso.
My shadows whirled to life. Not the angry, vengeful ones from earlier, but rather the soft caresses of darkness, unfastening buttons and unlacing ties.
She arched beneath me, luminous and wild, a goddess draped in moonbeams and starlight.
Within moments, not a shred of clothing remained between us. I allowed myself a moment to take her in, to revel in her beauty as my shadows teased her sensitive flesh. Mine.
Our cuorem pulsed between us, the ancient bond thrumming like a second heartbeat as I kissed her again, slowly this time. It was not just a meeting of mouths, but a merging of souls.
“Sometimes, I still can’t believe you’re mine,” I murmured against her lips, brushing a strand of dark hair from her temple. “That in spite of everything, I haven’t lost you.”
Her hand rose to my face, fingers grazing the edge of my jaw with a tenderness that threatened to unravel me. “You never will. Not unless you let me go. And even then, I would still fight to stay with you.”
“Never,” I vowed, mouth grazing hers. “Even if the stars fall and the realm burns, I’ll always hold on.”
She pulled me to her, parting her legs, and I let go of everything but her, her taste, her breath, her body pressed against mine. My hips fit perfectly between her thighs, my arousal finding her center instinctively.
A growl vibrated my throat as I felt her desire for me. “Mmm, you are ready for me, love.”
“Always,” she rasped before her lips claimed mine.
As her kisses grew more desperate, her hips rolling against me, I thrust inside her. A groan spilled between our lips, a shared exhale of pure joy.
And just like that, the weight of destiny, prophecy, war, it all fell away in that sacred space where only she existed. Where only we did.
The glow of our joined energies ignited around us, soft and pulsing, not nox, not zar, not rais, but something uniquely ours. Starlight and shadow. Flame and frost.
Aelia gasped as our powers surged in tandem, shimmering over our skin like the gods themselves blessed the union. And I supposed they did…
“I love you,” I breathed, pressing kisses along the soft curve of her shoulder. “More than fate. More than destiny. More than anything.”
“I know,” she whispered back, tears brimming. “And I love you so much I’ll rewrite the stars for us.”
As we moved together, it wasn’t just pleasure, it was a reclamation. Of ourselves. Of everything Helroth had tried to take. With every touch, every breath, we wove a shield between us and his encroaching darkness.
And as we lost ourselves in each other beneath the canopy of gods’ blessed power and fated love, I realized this was not just a moment of comfort we both needed.
It was reaffirming a vow.
One that no king, no war, and no prophecy could ever break.