Chapter 14 #2
“Motivated by what? Saving her?” He laughs, sharply. “She is going to die, Azrael. Today. Tomorrow. Next week. Humans are fragile. Even ones with diluted magic. You will watch her age, wither, and die while you remain young. That is your fate. That is what loving her costs.”
“Then I will pay it.” I catch his blade mid-swing. Shadows coil around the steel, corrupting it, tightening like chains. “Gladly.”
Something flickers across his face. Not fear. Not anger.
Something like pity.
“You really love her,” he says. Not a question.
“Yes.”
“Then you are lost,” he says. “You always knew how to choose the realm over yourself. You were never meant to choose it over her. Now you will lose both for trying.”
He kicks me back and releases a burst of corrupted shadow magic. I raise shields, barely. The impact slams through me and drops me to one knee.
“I’ve never seen you hesitate. Not until she gave you something to lose.”
Through the chaos, I see Morgana.
Still fighting. Still alive.
Chella and Kieran flank her now, cutting down anything that reaches her.
My warriors have rallied around her position, protecting their future queen, even if they do not yet know that is what she is.
Pride surges through me.
Then the ceiling collapses.
Not all of it. Just a section. But enough. Stone and shattered beams rain down, tearing the room apart, splitting the battlefield cleanly in two.
I am separated from her.
For half a second, I cannot feel her through the bond.
The absence hits harder than any blade.
I turn, scanning through smoke and falling stone, forcing my senses past the chaos.
Then I see her.
On the opposite side, Morgana stumbles but does not fall. Kieran and Chella tighten around her.
“Morgana,” I shout.
“I’m okay,” she calls back. It is a lie, but she is steady. “Keep fighting.”
So I do.
What choice do I have?
The battle stretches on until time stops meaning anything. Minutes or hours, I can’t tell. Everything becomes instinct. Blood. Breath. Steel. Shadow.
Eventually, the corrupted warriors retreat.
Not defeated.
Just gone.
Like the destruction was the objective all along.
Not assassination. Not conquest.
Disruption.
They did not come to win the throne room. They came to make sure we had no time left.
The throne room is unrecognizable. Bodies are everywhere. Friend and enemy tangled together in ruin. Innocents caught where they should never have been.
The palace groans under its own weight, structural damage spreading like a living wound.
I climb over broken stone until I reach Morgana on the far side.
She is bleeding from too many cuts to count. Exhausted. Standing only because she refuses to fall.
“You’re hurt,” I say, already reaching for her.
“So are you.” Her hand finds a gash on my shoulder I had not felt. “We need to leave. This section is going to collapse.”
She is right.
The palace is failing.
“Kieran,” I call.
He emerges from the debris, face streaked with blood. “East wing is gone. The north wing is evacuating. South entrance is barely holding.”
“Casualties?”
His silence answers before his words do. “Too many.”
The weight of it settles over everything.
“We cannot survive another attack like this,” he adds.
I look at Morgana. At the surrounding ruin. At the truth settling into place.
“We perform the ritual now,” I say. “Tonight. Before the Voidbringer’s forces regroup.”
“We’re not ready,” someone starts.
“We’re out of time.”
My voice cuts through the collapse of the room. “This was a test. The next attack will be worse. We seal the rifts now, or we do not seal them at all.”
Morgana’s hand finds mine and squeezes once.
“Prague,” she whispers. “The museum. That is where we do it.”
“Yes.”
I hold her hand tighter. “Where it started. Where it ends.”
Kieran nods once, grim acceptance settling over him. “I will gather what is left of the strike team. Ten minutes.”
He disappears into shadow.
Then it’s just us.
Surrounded by ruin. Standing in the aftermath of everything we failed to stop from breaking.
“If this is the end,” Morgana says softly, “I don’t regret any of it.”
My shadows curl around her instinctively, protective, possessive. “It is not the end. I will not let it be.”
“You cannot promise that.”
“I can.” I pull her closer, refusing the distance the world keeps trying to force between us. “We’re surviving this. Together. I am not losing you. Not to the Voidbringer. Not to the ritual. Not to anything.”
She looks up at me. Blood on her skin. Exhaustion in every line of her face. Still the only thing in this ruined world that feels real.
“Before we do this,” she says, “before everything changes, I need you to know something.”
Her hand rises to my face, steady despite everything shaking around us.
“I love you. Not because of the binding. Not because I have to.”
Her voice does not break. It does not waver.
“I choose you, Azrael Nightveil. I choose this life. This world. This impossible future where I am yours, and you are mine. Forever.”
The words hit like a rupture.
Not destruction.
Revelation.
They do not just break me.
They rebuild me.
I kiss her and pour everything I cannot say into it. My fear, my love, the desperate hope that we survive what is coming.
When we break apart, both of us breathing hard, Kieran returns with our strike team.
“Ready?” he asks.
I look at Morgana. At the woman who crashed into my life and refused to leave quietly. The woman who is about to give everything she has to save worlds that do not deserve her.
“Ready,” I say.
Just before the shadows take us, the palace wards scream one final warning.
Not from the throne room.
From Prague.
From the place where the world first broke.
We step into the shadows together.
And go to end this once and for all.