Chapter 30
Chapter
Thirty
Barbie
The cage swayed with each rotation of creaking wheels against broken asphalt.
I had to grip the rusted bars to keep from sliding across the filthy floor.
My father could have teleported me straight to wherever he planned to drain me dry, but he was evil and petty—a toxic combination that meant he needed to see me humiliated first, to savor my degradation from the front row.
So here I was, caged like livestock on a wagon two stories high, a relic that belonged in a history book.
The shackles binding my wrists were forged from the same dark material my kidnappers had used at CrimsonTide.
But these were worse. Where the old chains had merely muted my power, these new ones, inscribed with my father’s latest spells, drank it.
Each attempt to summon my dark flame left me hollow, the metal having learned, evolved, grown hungrier, just like everything he touched.
I could counter the spells. It would take time and focus, and I’d have to drain the land, which I’d vowed never to do again.
Besides, this was the plan. To bide my time. To let him believe he had won.
So no matter how my instincts screamed at me to break this chain, I made my body still. I did not fight. I endured.
I’d half-expected an iron mask to complete the medieval torture aesthetic, but my father clearly wanted me to see everything. He wanted me to witness what he’d done to the world while I’d been playing house at the academy.
The wagon rolled through what was once Chicago.
I knew this had been Michigan Avenue only because a street sign hung by a single bolt, spinning in the wind like a hanged man.
Everything else was unrecognizable. Skyscrapers had crumbled into sandcastles, and abandoned cars sat with doors still open, as if their owners had vanished mid-escape.
Plastic bags danced on the wind like ghosts.
And the smell—it was death and decay and something worse: the stench of rotting hope.
We passed through city after city, each a monument to destruction. Behind my cage, the army marched in grim formation. Shriekers came first, their mechanical parts clicking in a nightmarish rhythm. Then came demons of every variety, from scuttling imps to entities that hurt the eyes to look upon.
The human collaborators brought up the rear, and somehow, they were the worst. The monsters were born or made for this. These people had chosen this. They’d traded their humanity for a few more desperate days of breath.
One caught my eye, a woman maybe thirty, wearing the tattered remains of a business suit. Her eyes held the particular emptiness of someone who’d watched their world end and decided to help burn what was left. She saw me looking and quickly turned away.
I forgot about her just as quickly. She would be forgotten, erased from the timeline like all the other traitors.
My father could resurrect his abominations endlessly, but humans stayed dead. He’d probably promised these collaborators immortality, power, positions in his new world order. They’d learn too late that Ruin only kept slaves.
Just like he had kept me. Just like he meant to keep me again.
The Shriekers at the front of the column turned to mock me, emitting sounds that might have been laughter if they’d possessed real throats.
As if animated corpses, held together by an evil god’s will, could make me feel shame.
Yet every second in this cage sent chills through my veins, as I imagined what would come next.
Think of Killian and Tyson, I told myself, clinging to the thought of my mates. Think of Sy.
The memory of the incorrigible heirs and their constant bickering brought a faint smile to my lips.
I’d come to adore the very people I once despised.
They were all so brave. Bea, tirelessly working her forge, never giving up.
Rock and his antics about the ghost guardian sipping his energy on nightly visits, which I put in his head.
Cami, content in her role as her cousin’s steadfast shadow.
Cassius now hid his best wine surrounded by scorpions after I’d raided his stash to romance Killian.
Their faces gave me courage before reality crashed back in, and my courage crumbled.
I was truly alone. No Sy sharing my body, bearing the worst of the pain, or cracking lewd jokes when things got too dark. Now it was just me and those bad memories.
The bleak sky. The desolate land. The bone palace waiting ahead.
The feeding chamber, and my father’s endless, insatiable hunger.
I shoved the memories down, hard.
I wasn’t alone. I carried everyone I loved inside me—their strength, their bravery, their loyalty. They would come for me. I just needed them to wait a little longer, to give me time to set my plan in motion.
I caught a flicker of movement in the cage’s corner. The air shifted, folding in on itself unnaturally.
And suddenly, I had company.
Lilith materialized like a bad dream made beautiful.
Even in this rusty cage rattling through the apocalypse, she looked untouched.
White robes flowed like moonlight, woven from materials that came from no earthly loom.
Her radiant golden hair cascaded past her shoulders, moving in a phantom wind.
Those green eyes held the depth of a primordial galaxy, ancient, knowing, and utterly inhuman despite their beauty.
Phantom wings arched behind her, pale like cathedral glass and somehow fitting in the cramped space bent to accommodate her.
While she looked like she’d stepped out of a Renaissance painting with too many secrets, I appeared as if I’d been dragged through hell backwards.
I bared my teeth. “What do you want?”
Shh. Her voice echoed in my mind instead of the air. I want what you want. To end the void god.
Haven’t you done enough? I snarled back mentally. You’ve been helping him!
Everything I’ve done has led to this moment.
To lead me back to the slaughterhouse, I snorted.
Yes, she said simply. But your sacrifice won’t be in vain. I have a short window while Ruin is distracted. Let’s not waste it arguing. You need to hear a story.
Before I could tell her where to shove her story, she opened her mind to mine.
The images hit like a punch in the gut.
Lilith in Heaven, shining as bright as her twin, Lucifer. The Fall—not cast out like him, but choosing to follow him to Earth. Knowing she’d never see starlight from the inside again. All for a single purpose that had consumed eons of her existence.
To fulfill Heaven’s mission: to destroy Ruin, at any cost.
Ruin wasn’t just Earth’s problem; he was a threat to existence itself.
A cosmic void that had gutted worlds before ours and would consume countless more if not stopped.
Heaven had fought and lost across galaxies, until Lilith found a thread of prophecy.
The one weakness in a being that had no form to wound.
I saw her endless search. Her finding the Maiden, one of the three Fates hiding from their mutual enemy. The prophecy, spoken in a whisper: He will be undone by his own blood.
The price: carving out her own essence to create that blood.
To create me.
She’d torn out her core essence, fused it with fragments of Ruin’s own being, and forged a weapon in the form of an infant. I was not born from a womb, but shaped from the primordial magic of Heaven and Void—a forced union of the holy and the unholy.
“You’re my daughter,” she said.
I swallowed hard, my throat dust-dry. “You bred me as a weapon. You are not my mother,” I whispered, “and you never will be.”
Her smile held infinite sadness. “This was never about bonds, child. Only survival.”
Not just our world’s survival, I realized, but the survival of all things, a cosmic balance too vast for any mind to fully grasp.
“Don’t call me child,” I snapped. After a heavy pause, I had to ask. “What about Grace?”
“A mistake. A distraction that ended,” she said, her voice going flat and final. “Do not concern yourself with her fate.”
“You’re a heartless bitch. But that doesn’t surprise me.”
“I am the necessary evil. I did what no one else could. Nature is cruel. Survival is harsh. As long as Ruin exists, no world is safe. You understand that better than anyone.”
She was right, and I hated her for it.
“So you gave me to him,” I accused. “To be consumed.”
“I sacrificed everything. My home, my nature, my daughter. If burning myself to ash would have ended him, I would have done it without a second thought.” She paused, her gaze unwavering. “You understand that drive, don’t you? If I could spare you, I would. But you have always been the key.”
“The weapon,” I corrected her mercilessly.
I would sacrifice myself a thousand times to stop my father. The difference between her and me was, I would never sacrifice Killian, Sy, or any of those I had come to love. She saw people as chess pieces, while I saw them as reasons to fight.
“An apology would only sound hollow,” she continued. “After you were born, I prepared your path. Every betrayal, every manipulation, every moment of suffering was to forge you into someone strong enough for this moment.”
“To be sacrificed on the evil god’s altar for your greater good,” I said, the words bitter on my tongue.
“This time will be different,” she said softly. “You rose from ashes no one else could survive. You found strength in connection, not in isolation.” She swallowed, meeting the unforgiving hardness in my gaze. “Even my…interest in your mate served a purpose.”
“You tried to enslave him,” I shot back.
“I am not proud of it.” For the first time, a hairline fracture appeared in her composure. “Eons of loneliness corrupt even celestial beings. He was the first to ever refuse me. It stung my pride more than I care to admit.”
But it went deeper than wounded pride. She’d known Killian was meant for me, so she used the situation to push me toward my potential. Every moment had been orchestrated, even her own humiliation.
“During my search, I found something else. A wounded bird of pure light—the last drop of old magic Ruin has sought across worlds.”
My breath caught. Sy.
“I hid it in the only place he would never look: inside the daughter he saw as mere sustenance. I fused it with your soul, where even his feeding could not reach it.” Something resembling regret flickered across her stunning features.
“I could not spare you the pain. But I could ensure you would survive it.”
The weight of a lifetime of manipulation pressed down on me. Every moment, every choice, guided by her invisible hands. And yet, she had protected Sy. She had given me the strength to endure. She had made certain I would not face my fate alone.
The air shifted abruptly, the pressure dropping like the calm before a storm.
“He is returning,” she said, her mental voice sharp with urgency. “You need to consume me. Now.”
“What?” The word came out strangled.
“Five elements to freeze the void abomination. The Seed of Heaven in your bones. Heaven’s Arrow in your chest. Death magic from your mate’s bond. Your dark flame—your goddess essence.” She pressed a hand to her own heart. “And a celestial star. I am the final piece.”
Panic clawed up my throat. “No. I’m not going to—I won’t eat you!”
“It is the only way.” Her hand touched my cheek, solid, warm, and callused. It was the first time she’d ever touched me. “I have waited for this moment since before your first breath. You will absorb my essence until I become part of your power.”
“There has to be another way—”
“There is not.” Her voice hardened, stripping away any comfort.
“What comes will be worse than anything you have known, without your sister to share the pain, without the mercy of unconsciousness. You must feel every second of his feeding. You must stay awake through all of it. Only then will you know the exact moment to strike.”
Terror locked my muscles, but I forced a breath. I tried to let fear pass through me, as some guru said that it would work. It didn’t. Fear turned to ice and lead in my bloodstream.
“Too early, and he will counter. Too late, and there will be nothing left of you to act.” She glanced toward the horizon where the foul darkness gathered. “I am sorry for all of it. But mostly for this, for what you must endure. Take what I offer. You know how.”
“I don’t—”
“Then I will make it easy for you.”
Agony contorted her remarkable face. Her phantom wings spread wide, and then the feathers began to fall like burning snow. The wings dissolved into motes of light. Her entire form began to compress, folding in on itself with a sound like dying stars.
“I started the fight, but you’ll end it,” she whispered, her voice fading. “Be brave, my beautiful daughter. You have always been most worthy.”
Where the archangel had stood, a starstone now pulsed in my palm—a star compressed into the purest diamond, containing the light of galaxies in an object small enough to swallow. It burned against my skin, radiating both immense heat and infinite possibility.
I knew what to do. The knowledge was written into me, a dark inheritance in my very blood.
I brought the starstone to my lips and breathed it in.
Brilliant starlight flooded my veins, a searing, cosmic fire.
I held it inside, tasting the essence of a fallen star—my mother.
Endless sacrifice, a will of steel, a duty that crushed, and a regret that poisoned.
A love that had long since curdled into obsession.
Lilith’s entire existence condensed into pure energy, filling hollow spaces within me I never knew were empty.
The starstone turned to mist.
The last light that had held the darkness at bay winked out.
I now possessed all five elements. The Arrow was lodged in my chest like frozen lightning, disguised as a tattoo.
The Seed swam in my marrow like liquid starlight.
Death magic, taken from Killian, shielded my mind.
My dark flame raged at my core, full of hunger and vengeance.
And now, star fire—a final gift from the mother who made me to die.
A sound like the very air tearing announced the return of my father.
The God of Ruin had come to feed.
The cage shuddered as the pure evil’s vast, void presence drew near. I gripped the bars, the rust embedding itself in my palms.
I was ready. And yet, I could never be ready, as every cell in my body screamed to break the chains and run.