Epilogue
EPILOGUE
The first time Acacius saw her, the need to destroy everything in his path ceased.
He’d never longed for stillness—the kind mortals sought from overlooking a lake at dawn, or the hush at dusk when the world softened. Not until Ruelle. The engrained need constantly stirring within him to leave chaos in his path had quieted. If only for a second.
Ruelle glittered like frost, turning everything she touched to beauty.
As he stared at her now, absent of her divine complexion, her auburn waves no longer glistening like velour, he still thought the same of her.
She stood across the room from him in a gust of moths, their wings fluttering over the soft skin of her rosy-shaded cheeks. Clutched in the grip of her small fingers dangled a gold thread. She held a dagger in her other hand, an ancient relic only the High Goddess of Fate could use. Its silver blade was double pronged with a citrine gemstone pommel. The dagger’s aura pulsed with rich, divine power.
Acacius’s insides twisted.
He started towards her, but she shook her head. “Stay where you are.”
“Put away the dagger,” he commanded, the muscles in his shoulders tensing. “And I will.”
“You know that is not how this works.” As she spoke the words, Acacius’s moths crystalized and fell like hail. Their frozen bodies shattered across the floor of his home.
When she is gone, these remnants are all I will have left of her.
The thought burned his throat. Panic welled up in his chest, and he stormed across the room for her.
She inclined her head and threads clawed from her forearms and tangled around his limbs. They bound tightly and his knees buckled. He shouted as he strained his arms against their grip.
“Ruelle!” he snarled, his heart tattering at the sight of her calmness. Peace was already softening her features, and she held a look of knowing in her gaze, almost as if she pitied him.
A sickness turned in his stomach as his eyes flashed from her face to the gold thread hanging in between her fingers. It was unlike the others that he’d glimpsed throughout the years. A part of him knew whose it was, but the other part of him wasn’t willing to accept it.
This was the last thing he’d expected when he’d teleported her from the Land of the Dead and into his realm. He was prepared to console her, to vow that the Council would grant her immortality back. He’d ensure it.
But the moment they landed within the walls of his home, she’d forced them apart with her threads and drew out the dagger. She had it with her all along.
He knew. Dammit, he knew what she was doing. He knew, but he didn’t want to stare down the truth.
Ruelle wanted the Himura demigod’s blood to ensure it did not get used on herself or anyone else. She told him so.
Ruelle is lying, and it is not me who she is lying to.
Cassian’s words returned to him, sharp and painful.
Acacius fought against the threads bound around him. It was no use. He couldn’t free himself through physical strength to stop her.
His whole body slackened, and he looked up at her. “I know I am not the one you want.” His voice cracked. “I know you do not love me as I love you, but I will do anything. Anything for you. Please, let that be enough. Let me be enough for you.”
She was all he could think about. The sheets of her bed tousled, the early rose-gold sunlight slipping through her window, her strands spread across his arm, her lips on his, her presence beside him, her words filling him.
Ruelle slowly approached him. A sign that his words had reached her.
She leaned down and kissed his forehead. “I love you, Acacius, I do. There is no question of that. But I must do this, for me.”
His eyes fell shut, her decisiveness stabbing through his heart. The pain stole his breath, and a lump swelled in his throat. “I love you. I love you, Ruelle . We can have a happy life together. Please, allow me to show you.”
“It is not enough.” She guided his chin up with her fingers, meeting his eyes. “You are not the one I long for, Acacius.”
Her words tattered like razors mixed in the blood of his heart, shredding every chamber, every artery, every valve, to slivers.
He wanted to believe their story had never been a placeholder for her. A pawn until she reunited with Klaus. He had gazed into her eyes hundreds of times, but he’d never looked past the surface, never truly delved deeply within them, too terrified of what he’d find.
“You planned it all.” Tears slipped down his cheeks, blurring the shape of her in front of him. “It is why you continuously watched over Naia’s Fate, why you broke apart Cassian and Saoirse, why you threatened to unravel his and Finnian’s threads. You could see it all intertwined and how your life would end.”
“I did.”
Her confession was another cut.
“Then why not use the blood on yourself? You had it in your hands.” His tone was thick with disapproval, of a gut-wrenching rage. He knew the answer, having been with Ruelle long enough to know the complexities of Fate, but he needed to hear the words directly from her.
“It would’ve caused ripples in others’ Fates. Vale was meant to die. Naia was meant to take away my immortality. Just as I was meant to cut my own thread.”
He lowered his head.
One finger at a time, she lifted her hand from his face. “You deserve someone who truly loves you, Acacius. I cannot be that. When I am gone, please do not think of me. Find your own happiness, as I am.”
Acacius stared down at the floor, her bare feet caught in his periphery. Her light skin was dirt-stained and speckled with dried blood. The imperfections were a horrid reminder of her mortality, of the past few hours and how none of it was only a nightmare. The finality of her words was real, and there was nothing he could do.
The tears were endless, dripping like rain from his eyes. This was the end, and he knew it. If she would stay, he would gladly be second-best for the rest of their days, even knowing that he could never fill her heart the way Klaus had.
The idea of her disappearing from his life made it difficult to draw in a breath. Inky splotches painted the edges of his visions. The blood of his pulse throbbed in his ears.
“You have my gratitude for everything, Acacius,” she said, her voice wobbly with her own tears. “Please take care of yourself.”
He sobbed, unable to watch. Everything in him screamed to fight through the threads holding him captive, but a distant part of him wished to respect her desires. The destiny she’d meticulously tracked to arrive on this day.
The slice of the dagger, the tearing of her thread—it was deafening. It echoed in his ears, again and again.
He lifted his chin and watched it play out, slow, unmerciful. The crumble of her knees, the fall of her body, the way her eyelids fluttered closed right before her head hit the floor. Her long hair fanned around her face. She held the dagger in her uncurling grasp, one half of her thread in the other.
No.
Acacius’s body shook with disbelief.
No. She can’t be ? —
The threads around him crumbled and turned to dust.
She isn’t ? —
His trembling hands slid over the sides of his head, tangling in his strands.
Dead.
He blinked through his fuzzy vision down at her, analyzing the emptiness in the room. The plush, sweet, cloud-like presence of her aura that filled every space she was in—it was gone. He felt the absence of it the moment she’d cut the thread.
Pain stabbed through his chest, and he felt overwhelmingly dizzy. Time slurred around him. He remained stuck in the moment, gaping at her corpse, drowning in the marrow-deep ache of his splintering heart.
“Ruelle?” he croaked, crawling to grab her hand. “Ruelle!”
He hauled her up in his arms and hugged his head into her chest as he wept.
Wind ruffled the tops of the lavender stalks. Their purple tips filled the atmosphere with a sweet, earthy fragrance.
Acacius stood atop the knoll under a wisteria, its plum blossoms adorning the tree like an umbrella. The wispy branches swayed around him as he peered into the distance.
Ruelle hung around a man’s neck, a vibrant smile lit over her face. She held him with fervor, a passion she’d never shared with Acacius before. Laughter spilled from her lips before she pressed them into the man’s.
That true, pure happiness—she could’ve one day found it in him. If only she’d had more time to let go of Klaus, she would’ve seen Acacius and the wellspring of love pouring out of him.
The chasm of emptiness mined deeper into his core.
The loss. The pain. Ruelle’s fate could’ve been different.
He obsessively turned the past around in his mind.
Everything had gone wrong the moment he entrusted Marina to help him find the Himura demigod’s blood. If she would’ve handed it over to him, he could’ve gotten rid of it and brought peace between her and Cassian. Naia would’ve never appeared and Ruelle would still be at his side.
Marina was to blame for his sorrows.
The High Goddess of Night had not known true Chaos; had never felt the wrath of insatiable Ruin. Wherever she was, he would find her and destroy her for what she’d taken from him.
Without Ruelle, his devotion withered and burned and turned into a violent, vengeful smoke.