Chapter Ten
CAIR
“G ather all the creatures we can muster in the Outerlands. We’re marching on the capital,” I demanded, barging into the room, uncaring if I startled its occupants. We could not delay. If my father desired a war, it was a war he would get.
Zadok dipped his head. “Those who feel resentment toward the king for their fates will fight for you, no questions asked, but are you sure you want to do this? There will be no turning back once your banners are raised against him.”
“It is not about want ,” I said, no airs or graces. In that moment, I was so close to the frenzied and cold-blooded prince my father was no doubt goading me to be. He would relish it. I was one strong wind away from crumbling apart entirely, a bomb ready to detonate, but I had to stay in control for my mate. He needs me . “It is about retribution. Will you assist me or not?”
“Of course.”
The last hour or two I’d spent writing missives to my sources back at the palace, and to Teighan, informing them of their tasks. I needed numbers, every able monster in the entire Otherworld prepared to fight. Our Shade companions had set off in separate directions, Cerila toward my brother, and Gary toward Rathe, beginning the relay race to deliver the notes to their destinations. It would be days before they reached their hands, and that irked me. It had to happen now . My father had made the first move, and it was imperative that I was not inactive. Arrangements were in motion, but more had to be done.
What had to be done?
What are the next steps?
I growled in frustration. I was suffocating in this fucking house, restless and impatient. Everything smelled wrong , burned and herbal, the sickening stench fogging my thoughts. Every time I paused, my mind would reel off visions of a lifeless body, frozen in time. The words ‘I love you’ would echo, louder and louder like a taunting chant, that sweet voice following me like the sound of my conscience. I would claw out my eyes and eardrums if it would grant me the clarity to do what needed to be done. I couldn’t be useless, not in this. The art of war was a subject I was familiar with, and I couldn’t disappoint my mate by fumbling now.
‘You promised.’
I aimed for the door, intent on drafting more missives or drawing up a plan, anything that would assist in the efforts, but I swayed forward, grunting as my temples pulsed and a wave of nausea roiled in my stomach. I brushed it aside, swallowing it down, but a concerned rustle came from behind me.
Was I not alone?
Why did it sound like…
“Your Highness, you are exhausted,” Zadok unhelpfully pointed out, the tone of his voice too familiar, too soft, too caring. “Rest, we?—”
I bared my fangs in a snarl. “I won’t rest until his body is torn to pieces.”
Why had my father done this? What was his goal? I knew he was vicious, but I hadn’t thought he would tear the realm apart to prove it. There was nothing to gain except bloodshed and ruin, a kingdom shrouded in darkness and ash. Unless there was a detail I’d missed, a clue that was staring me in the face.
Luca will know.
“He was so adamant that we mated,” I murmured, fragmented thoughts surging through my head at a rapid velocity. Nothing was truly sticking, all of it fleeting and jumbled, but there was a persistent need to know his motivation clawing at me.Why did it matter? I would destroy him anyway.
‘You promised me his head.’
“Was he planning this from the moment Luca walked through the Veil?” A conclusion was appearing in the distance, but I couldn’t reach it. My father’s smirk flashed behind my eyes. “Using him to weaken me?”
“Two birds, one stone,” Zadok said. I could barely concentrate on the words, that fucking smell was grating on my nerves. “He would have bided his time, lulled you both into a false sense of security at the palace, making you think he was indifferent to you building a home there, while he plotted in the shadows, using your mating to his advantage. Had he taken action then, it wouldn’t have had the same effect. This took you by surprise. This hurt you more.”
Hurt was insufficient.
“He tolerated the disrespect.” My gaze narrowed on the door handle, my fingers twitching impatiently. “He pretended to accept the fact that one day Luca, a half human, would rule beside me because he never planned on letting it get that far. I am such an idiot for not seeing it sooner.”
“You are not?—”
“He knew this would provoke me, but he waited until the right moment. Why is that moment now?” I shook my head sharply. “I don’t care. I won’t give him the satisfaction of believing he has won. He will never win.”
I reached for the door once again. There was somewhere I had planned to go, a desk I could envision, but I couldn’t remember the reason.
Zadok spoke up once again, making me pause. “How did you find me?”
I scowled, irritated by the strange question. “What?”
“What led you here?”
I struggled to recall. A book? “We found a book on tears,” I said, the memory gradually piecing itself together. “We practiced around the palace, and after I’d managed to create one to the human realm, a door appeared in the library. We found abandoned documents with your name on them.”
“Did you have to portal through the door?”
Green light. The buzz of magic. “Yes.”
“The king and I were the only two beings who were aware of that room,” he said, a note of suggestion in his lilting voice that I didn’t understand.
“What are you—” The fragments slotted into place, the fuller picture emerging, but it was blurred. “Are you saying it was a trap? That he was toying with us for months, watching us find the breadcrumbs he had laid out, so we would end up here when he was ready to play out his twisted scheme?”
“I believe so, yes.”
I should have known. Or… maybe, deep down, I had known, but I’d brushed it off as one of those instances I’d learned not to question. Luca had expressed concern, but I hadn’t listened. I had failed him.
I squeezed the bridge of my nose, willing away the heaviness gathering under the skin. Nothing was making sense, just a haze of movement and muffled noise, and I couldn’t stand it. I was distantly aware of a clock ticking in the background. I glanced up, finding its face and frowning.
It was evening again.
How had time passed so quickly?
“I must check on my mate,” I murmured absently, swaying on my feet. “He will be inconsolable if I let him sleep through dinner.”
Zadok opened his mouth, but closed it to nod instead.
I was out the door before I let his pity sink in.
* * *
I sat on a wooden chair at Luca’s bedside, staring, not truly seeing, but staring nonetheless. I was vaguely aware that his skin was paler than it had been before, almost ashen in tone. He was still beautiful, somehow. Like a timeless diamond that would never lose its shine. He would have blushed, hearing me make such a comparison, and what I wouldn’t have given to see that pink hue bloom across his cheeks again. To see him smile at me as if I’d hung the moon.
I had planned forever with him, had expected to wake up every morning and see his sapphire eyes staring up at me until the end of time, but that honor had been ripped away. It truly felt as if half of me had perished with him, all the good parts dissolving into the ether. The softness, the passion, the joy. I had none left. I could barely muster the strength to feel anything except overwhelming misery and hatred, but even then, it was too much strain to keep those flames burning. I was a husk. Hollowed out and left to rot in the darkness.
My father had purged my world of its brightest light, had stolen the sun, the moon, and the stars right out of the sky, leaving nothing but an empty void.
My only solace was that he would soon join me in this purgatory.
He would know, too, what it felt like to lose everything.
There was a knock on the door, and I must’ve permitted entry as Zadok’s footsteps approached, his bleak scent laced with nauseatingly familiar tones, but still not quite right. “We have to bury him,” he said. “I can prepare his body, and Flick will find a nice spot for him. You have to let him go.”
A spot? A dirty hole in the fucking ground where he would disintegrate into the unforgiving earth? No, he deserved better than that. He deserved a temple, an everlasting foundation where he could be worshipped. A monument built of marble and gold, his name engraved into every pillar so no one would forget him. No one would dare forget him. I would brand his signature into their skin if they tried. He would be remembered for eternity, if it was the last thing I did.
I didn’t know how many hours it had been. I had bathed him and dressed him in clean clothes, but not for burial. He wasn’t ready for that. Though he often teased me for my refinement, my mate would wish to be presentable. It would embarrass him to be so on display with his curls untamed and his skin beaded with sweat. I liked him that way. Wild. Ruffled. His scent at its strongest. There was only one sight more beautiful than when he first woke up, and that was when he laughed. If I closed my eyes, I could almost hear it.
“He’s gone.” Zadok spoke again in my silence, voice timid, as if he were dealing with a rabid animal. I didn’t have the energy to lash out at him.
I could hardly even find the will to live.
“Not yet,” I muttered. “I feel his soul. It’s clinging to me.”
Our bond had weakened, a faint ember in the ashes of a bonfire, but it hadn’t diminished entirely. I wanted to believe there was a chance he would return to me, that his soul was lingering for a reason other than the typical delay of a Fae’s life force rejoining nature. I would not abandon it, abandon him. As long as part of him remained, even just a spark, I would stay by his side, assured that he hadn’t the chance to feel alone. I never want him to feel alone.
“The last thing he said to me was ‘I love you,’” I mused aloud, voice distant even to my own ears, the memory of how those words sounded drilled into my brain. “It was muffled, but I heard it, and I didn’t say it back. How am I to let him go knowing the last words in his ears were not that I loved him too?”
“He’ll have known,” Zadok said, and I couldn’t comprehend the purpose of his statement. Condolence? Compassion? Support? There was only one way he could be of any service to me now,and it wasn’t with meaningless words.
“Kill me.”
“What?”
I swallowed around the lump in my throat, barely hearing myself speak as the sound cracked from my dry lips. “You are an outsider, you’re the only one who can. I know you don’t owe me anything, and I wouldn’t blame you for refusing because of what my father did to you, but please . Once the king is gone, once his head is the first offering at my mate’s graveside, let me join him in the afterlife.” I tore my gaze from my mate, tears blurring the edges of my vision as grief distorted the rest. “Let me tell him I love him.”
A solemn expression passed over Zadok’s face. Anguish . He squeezed my shoulder, but I was too numb to feel its comfort, too broken to know its sympathy. “I can’t do that, lad,” he said, guilt-ridden. “I’m sorry.”
He left, and I didn’t acknowledge it. Luca’s fingers were unbearably cold. He wasn’t fond of the cold, and I couldn’t let his soul drift away in a state of discomfort. Without hesitation, I climbed onto the bed, nestling beside him, careful not to hurt him. I placed my head on his chest as I hooked my leg over his shins and my arm over his belly. He would feel warmth as his soul left his body; he would be surrounded and safe. Two sensations he sought out in me.
I closed my eyes, chasing the memory of his soft snores, the faint spasms in his muscles, the breathy whimper as he would mindlessly shift closer. He never slept so soundly as this. He was active even in dreaming: a ball of excitement and energy that never dulled. He’s too still . I sought out his hand, bringing it to the hair between my horns, mimicking the way he used to caress me. It wasn’t the same, but it offered the barest hint of comfort.
Time was irrelevant. It barely seemed to move inside our bubble, regardless, but between one inhale of his muted scent and the next, the last sliver of his life force dispersed into the air. His body no longer sang with the remnants of our connection, the vows we’d shared, the claim we had on one another. And the thread wound by fate that had tied us together… finally broke.
He’s gone.
I curled around him, the pain in my chest so debilitating I couldn’t even weep. Ripping my wings from my back would have hurt less, and there would be no deafening silence that had me shaking in fear. I lay there, fangs grinding, breath seizing in my lungs as I prayed to the Creators for the strength to survive it, for them to grant me the chance to avenge him before they took me too.
My demise was inevitable. I refused to live without my mate beside me, but I wouldn’t cross over the planes until I had what I’d promised him.
* * *
Somehow, I fell asleep—or I had collapsed unconscious—but jolted awake at the echoing thump ringing in my ear. I blinked through the lingering ache, listening for the sound to repeat itself, pleading for it, but when it didn’t, I released a dejected sigh.
I had imagined it, my dazed mind already playing cruel tricks. It may even have been my own heartbeat, the scattered pulse ricocheting off his body and back to mine with how tightly I clung to him. How desperately I wanted it to be his.
I sat up with a groan, scrubbing a hand down my face before dragging myself to my feet. It was time. I would inform Zadok of my plans for a grand memorial, a display fit for the divine. I didn’t want to let him go, but I had to.
However, just as my fingers touched the door handle, it happened again. Another thump , then another, each growing stronger than the last.
I was not asleep; I was not dreaming. I was striding back to the bed before I even realized I was moving, leaning over my mate, my heart lodged in my throat. My hand was reaching toward him, and I expected to swipe right through a mirage, for me to lurch out of a twisted nightmare. Everything around me was still and silent, except for that rhythmic thump, thump, thump .
“Luca?”
My fingers hovered an inch from his cheek when his eyelids flew open.
Bright green surged from clouded pupils.
Our bond flared back to life.