Chapter Thirty-Eight
ROOK LAY CURLED AGAINST MY CHEST, her bare skin glittering with frost and dark hair spilling over my arm like silk. Flaming reds and pinks of the sunset poured through the circular window, painting us in fire where we lay naked in bed.
We’d spent another couple of days doing absolutely nothing apart from making love. Each time we shared energy and completed the circuit that ensured our hearts, minds, and souls were one, I felt delirious with bliss.
Who needed food or wine when a single kiss from her made me drunk?
With a cute little groan, she snuggled closer. “Promise me you’ll stay with me forever.” Pressing adoring little kisses along my collarbone, she whispered, “Stay with me like this...just the two of us. No one else. No stress or worries or pain. Forever.”
I gathered her in a vicious hug, kissing the top of her head. “Forever,” I promised.
For a moment, everything was perfect.
But those awful shadows crept closer, getting thicker and thicker, darker and darker.
I tried to ignore them like I always did, but they were getting worse. They’d gone from lurking in the corners to slithering along the floor and walls, slowly erasing Ashfall Cliff.
I no longer had the guts to leave this room because I had a horrible feeling that everything past the door was just...gone.
Sitting upright, Rook straddled me. Biting her bottom lip, she smiled all sly and sexy. “You know...it’s been at least an hour since you were inside me.”
I let her fill my entire vision as the edges of the room kept rotting.
A panther’s howl echoed in my mind.
Along with the creak and crack of destruction.
My gaze flashed to the ceiling, bracing for falling debris, but...apart from the shadows everything was fine.
It’s fine.
See?
You’re going crazy.
You’re seeing things.
Everything is normal and wonderful and—
“Husband...” Rook rocked over me, making my eyes snap shut.
I fisted her hips, pressing her down and grinding her against me. “You know what that word does to me.”
“I know.” Tipping forward, she captured my mouth in a wickedly sensual kiss. “That’s why I use it but...” She nipped her way down my jaw before sinking her sharp teeth into my neck. “You still haven’t married me.”
Sitting upright again, she reached between us—
I grabbed her wrist and stopped her.
My heart fisted as the shadows gathered thicker behind her, framing her in morbid black.
Focusing on her and only her, I forced a grin. “You want me to marry you? What here? With no ceremony or witnesses? Wouldn’t you like Frank to see you get hitched? I’m sure Dillon would kill me if I didn’t let him walk you down the aisle.”
“I don’t care.” She sighed wistfully. “All I care about is you.”
Her words ought to make me selfishly happy, yet...they were wrong.
She did care.
She cared a great deal...
“What about Whisper?” I choked, begging her to give me the answer I needed. “He’d be super sad if he didn’t stand with us at the altar.”
“Whisper? Who’s Whisp—Oh, that’s right. The cat.” She frowned. “Where is that pesky thing anyway?”
My heart wrenched painfully in my chest.
Everything I’d been ignoring—all the cracks in this perfect paradise—swallowed me whole.
I was home.
We were home.
Yet thick, dark tendrils slithered across the ceiling like hungry fingers. They dripped down the walls, coming closer, closer.
My heart thundered as the air grew heavier, pressing down on my chest with grief. Sweat broke out across my skin as my entire body tightened with the suffocating sense of loss.
“Rook...” I tightened my grip on her hips, anchoring myself to her as the shadows pulsed, licking at the edges of the blankets. “Can you see that?”
She blinked in confusion, her eyes glowing with silver-ringed affection. “See what, my Furnace Heart?”
I swallowed hard as shadows wriggled along the contours of the coverlets, reaching out to stroke my foot.
Ripping my leg away, I trembled so hard I threatened to dislodge Rook above me.
“Lucien?” Anchoring her hands on my chest, she frowned. “Are you okay? Why do you look so terrified?”
“The shadows,” I grunted. “They’re everywhere.”
She frowned again. “There’s nothing there, Lucien. It’s just us. Like it will always be.” Combing her fingers through my hair, her energy soaked into mine. Usually it would calm me, but this time...it only made sorrow break my heart. “We’re safe, Luxin. We’re happy. Together.”
She used the three renditions of my name almost as if trying to prove this was real. That it wasn’t a delusion created entirely by my heartbreak.
My gaze locked on hers, drowning in her, memorising every freckle and smile. I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was the last time I would ever see her. That she was slipping through my fingers even as I held on so fucking tight.
The cracking grew louder as if the walls started breaking apart.
“This is real.” I squeezed my eyes closed. “You’re real. I’m real.”
She snickered. “Of course we’re real, silly. What else would we be?”
The bed quaked as the floor shuddered. My eyes ripped open—
And I tripped into an utter nightmare.
Silk tapestries unravelled thread by thread, artworks unpainted themselves, furniture broke apart into shards.
Rook dug her nails into my chest as the ceiling crumbled, revealing snippets of the sunset above. “You’re scaring me, Lucien. What’s wrong? Why are you trembling?”
I sat up, dragging her with me as Ashfall Cliff unmade itself.
The sunset fragmented into pieces. The water in the ponds rose into the air like reversed rain. Lattices and blossom trees, stone dragons and corridors all splintered into ash.
But then...a shadow touched her.
A single finger of blackness brushed her bare shoulder, and a tiny snowflake lifted from her skin.
“No...” Grabbing her cheeks, I shook her. “Don’t you dare do this. Not again. I won’t survive it again.”
Rook gasped, her fingers locking around my wrists. “Don’t do what?”
I snarled as another shadow coiled around her neck, turning her skin translucent. Her hair floated on a non-existent breeze...swirling away into dust.
“No—” I hugged her until I bruised her, holding all her pieces together even as she kept breaking apart.
I couldn’t.
I couldn’t watch her die in my arms again.
I can’t!
“Stay with me!” My voice cracked, grief so sharp it carved out what was left of my soul. “We promised neither of us would leave. I fixed it. I fixed everything!”
Pulling back in my embrace, she searched my eyes. “Lucien...what’s happening? I-I feel...strange.”
“It’s fine. Everything will be fine.” Crushing my mouth to hers in a desperate kiss, I poured every ounce of power and love into her heart.
“We survived the ascension. I rewrote destiny so we could be together. This is just madness. I’m going mad.
Tell me I’m going mad and you’re okay. Tell me!
” I shook her, and a cloud of silver dust erupted from her skin.
Stay. Stay. Stay.
Please, please don’t go.
A guttural, animalistic roar ripped from my throat.
Not again.
Please, not again.
Her hands glowed with hairline fractures as she cupped my cheeks, wiping away my scalding tears. “You’re burning.” She smiled with grief as crippling as mine. “You’ve always been burning, Lucien...it’s time to stop. Before it’s too late.”
“Stop? Stop what?”
Her voice turned achingly sad. The playful, insatiable woman who’d shared my bed burst into tears as truth flared in her eyes. Truth I wasn’t strong enough to see. Truth I’d give anything to ignore. “You’ve burned your soul to stay here with me, Lucien...and now...now you’re about to die.”
“You’re lying.”
“I love you, but...you have to stop.”
“No—” I hugged her tighter, burying my face in her neck, breathing in frost and honey and her. “Don’t say that. You’re real. You have to be real.”
Her body turned hazy as the shadows blotted everything else.
It was just us.
Me and her.
Surrounded by darkness.
She suddenly jerked in my arms. “Lucien?” Her voice switched from calm acceptance to sharp panic. “What’s happening? It hurts. It hurts so much. Make it stop. Please make it stop.”
Fuck.
She was killing me.
I roared at the universe as I rocked her in my arms. “Don’t go. I’m begging you, Rook, I can’t do this without you.”
I didn’t care if I’d made all of this up. I didn’t care she wasn’t real. I didn’t care I’d been making love to a ghost or living in a dream because I couldn’t exist in a world where she was gone.
This was all I had.
I didn’t want anything else.
I just wanted her.
A whip of black wrapped itself around Rook’s waist, wrenching her out of my hold.
“NO!”
“Lucien!” She tore at the darkness, reaching for me. “Don’t let it take me. I want to stay here, with you!”
Flinging myself toward her, I caught her hand—just as a shadow caught me.
Two tendrils wrapped tight around my wrists, wrenching my arms back and keeping me pinned. “Rook!”
Her body fragmented, glowing with inner light as more shadows wrapped around her legs and arms. Her frost ignited, ice flinging out in all directions. But the shadows looped around her neck, strangling—
“Stop it!” I thrashed and fought, kicked and smashed, but I couldn’t get free.
Ashfall Cliff broke apart into a million pieces.
With a loud boom, everything detonated, leaving us in an empty void with no sky, no ground, no light.
Rook screamed as the shadows reached her mouth.
“I’m here,” I yelled. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m right here.”
The darkness crawled over my own body, sucking me further and further away from her.
I couldn’t go.
Couldn’t save her.
“FUCK!” I turned feral, bucking and kicking, punching and slashing.
And the shadows just thickened.
Fire shot from my flesh, casting the void in golden power.
Darkness just snatched it.
I couldn’t win.
Couldn’t fix this.
Rook caught my eyes as the rest of her dissolved piece by piece, her beautiful skin fracturing into snowflakes.
Her voice changed again from pleading to sorrow.
“I need you to wake up, Lucien. Please wake up. Before it’s too late.
” Her eyes blazed completely silver as her power erupted with icy daggers.
“Wake up, Lucien. Wake up. You have to wake up. Wake up and let me go.”
“Never!” I lunged for her. “I will never leave you!”
“Wake up.” Her arms flung wide as shadows poured down her throat.
Silver dust and black frost detonated.
She turned into a galaxy, a blackhole, a firework full of every memory and moment we’d ever shared.
I dropped to my knees, screaming.
The weight of loneliness turned me into a monster.
I didn’t care anymore.
Couldn’t fight anymore.
You win.
The darkness lit up with blinding gold as my power went supernova.
The fire detonated with mindless, apocalyptic fury.
A cataclysmic inferno.
A destruction of hellfire.
Burning, burning, burning.
Burning until there was nothing left.
Burning until death took me.
Burning so I could find her again—