Chapter 56
Chapter Fifty-Six
Thea
Ishook my head, hearing his words but not quite making sense of them.
“I knew you would never find the strength you needed to claim your divine power locked up here at the castle,” he explained, waving an arm at the ruins around us. “And I was right. Look at you now. You’re incredible.”
He lifted the blade into the air between us, the sun catching on its sheen. “And with this? Thea, together, we’re going to be magnificent.”
The eerie stillness of the air felt oppressive. Wrong and uncomfortable. Even the breeze had found itself frozen against his words.
“I don’t understand what you’re saying, Caldrius, but I need my blade. My friends are in trouble.”
Caldrius approached me, his eyes warm as he reached out to tuck my wild hair behind my ear. His touch against my jaw was gentle, a tingle of sensation that traveled through me as he rested his free hand on the nape of my neck.
“I told you, when you don’t have any power, you need to claim it.”
“You’re not making sense,” I protested, reaching once more for the blade.
And just as he pulled my blade from my reach, his mouth descended on mine in a punishing kiss.
He caught me entirely unaware, and I froze in confusion while his mouth moved on mine relentlessly.
He pulled me closer until his chest was pressed against mine so tightly that I felt every rise and fall as he breathed me in.
With easy precision, he parted my lips and kissed me as though he’d done it a million times before.
He explored my mouth with all the passion of a hungry lover, but with the lazy elegance of someone with all the time in the world.
As if he knew the exact shape of my mouth and the exact way he liked to hold me.
“This is the beginning of our forever, darling.”
His grasp on my neck tightened and pain sparked down my spine as he ripped me towards him, grabbing my arm and turning me until my back slammed against his chest. I stumbled, trying to pull away, when the tip of steel met the delicate skin of my throat, piercing it with easy precision.
My own blade.
He was holding my own fucking blade against my throat.
“Don’t even think about it,” he warned in my ear as I began gathering my power. “I’ve spent a millennium next to a God, do you think I don’t know how to move fast enough to kill you before you strike me?”
His voice was low and almost unrecognizable, the words cutting and... true. He meant every single thing he said. I didn’t need to feel the dampness of blood dripping down my chest to know that.
“Why?” my voice broke. “Why are you doing this?”
It made little sense. After everything we’d been through, after he’d earned my trust for a second time, I couldn’t believe that he really meant to harm me. I just couldn’t.
Caldrius was my friend.
He had sworn he was my friend.
He had loved me.
I knew that. I did. He loved me.
Not Isidore. Me. Even if I hadn’t fallen for him in that same soul-defining way I had for Clay, I had seen it in his eyes. I had felt it in his touch. I had noticed it in the ways he had defended me or tried to protect me from Hyrax.
I knew what love looked like, and I knew Caldrius had felt that way about me for a long time.
Or at least... I thought he had.
Clearly, I had been wrong.
He had shown me who he was right from the very start, and I had been a fool to believe any different.
“You’ll understand soon,” he assured me, and I could hear the smile in his voice as if threatening my life was a pleasant surprise that I would be grateful for later.
“Why don’t you explain it to me now?” I moved to slam my foot down against his ankle, but he just laughed and shifted out of my reach, wrenching my arm to further arch my back against him.
“Tsk, tsk,” he chided. “I prefer to keep that kind of fun in the bedroom, darling.”
I hissed through my teeth, trying to jam my elbow towards him. How could I possibly have been so stupid as to continue trusting him?
“I’ll kill you.”
“Give it time,” he suggested, as darkness began seeping from the ground in front of us. “I believe that this ends with us together, Thea. That’s the only way this can end.”
“There is no us, Caldrius! There never has been.”
“Really?” I felt the stubble along his jaw graze against my cheek. “The steel on your wrists says otherwise, wife.”
I seethed through my anger as the darkness around us began twisting and curling. “That steel breaks when one of us dies.”
“I suppose you’re right about that.” He laughed, breath tickling my neck. “Now do be a good girl and be quiet for now. The main event of the evening is about to begin.”
The shadows among the ash began to rise, slithering unnaturally until tendrils of darkness twisted into something firmer, something with a clearly defined shape. Legs. Arms.
Hyrax.
He wore no armor, still in the dark, simple clothes he favored instead. Though he seemed more polished than when I had last seen him, with a clean-shaven face and neatly combed hair. It took a moment to glance quickly between the two of us and try to figure out what he was seeing.
His face was a picture of confusion that soon morphed into unrestrained rage, but as he lurched toward us, Caldrius pulled me back, the blade pressing even tighter against my skin, and I hated myself for giving him the satisfaction of my wincing against it.
“What are you doing?” Hyrax roared, his eyes going slightly black as shadows climbed around him, floating through his fingers and hair. “Let her go!”
“So nice of you to join us, Hyrax. I was worried you wouldn’t get my message in time.”
My father’s upper lip curled back, a puff of shadow flashing in his hand before an onyx broadsword replaced it. “You said my daughter was in danger.”
Caldrius stepped back further, dragging me with him, and my bare feet scraped against the rock and debris. I cried out against the sensation, and Caldrius ignored the sound.
“She is,” he said simply, glancing at me.
Hyrax glanced wildly at me, fear breaking through his rage for the briefest of moments. “Do not hurt her! Please.”
“What do you even get from this?” I hissed, shifting my weight between each of my feet to ease some of the pain from where the skin had torn off.
Caldrius always had a motive. He always had a plan. He did nothing unless he got something he wanted out of it.
What did he gain from my death?
Nothing.
My death went against anything he had ever said to me, or Clay, or even Hyrax.
Even now, he insisted that he wanted to be with me.
And past any romantic imaginings, my dying wouldn’t bring him more power or status.
If anything, if I died, he wouldn’t be the heir consort anymore. He would lose his power.
I replayed his words in my mind, searching for some answer in all the confusion.
This ends with us together.
That’s the only way this can end.
He wasn’t planning to kill me. It was a bluff.
Caldrius wasn’t searching for the kind of power that came from a title or crown.
The realization smashed into me as sharply as if I were seeing another vision of the truth.
Every word Caldrius had ever said to me now seemed loaded and too obvious.
He’d essentially told me his plans from the start.
He’d laid out the pieces of it like breadcrumbs that I’d been too blinded to follow.
“Hyrax, run!” I screamed, thrashing against Caldrius’ grip.
My father looked at me, and I saw the same understanding in his eyes that I felt echoing in every one of my heartbeats.
“Put down the sword,” Caldrius commanded, his voice hard.
“No!” I kicked at Caldrius. I readied my power, warnings be damned.
Hyrax kept his eyes on me as he lowered to the ground, setting aside his sword, and not sparing a single glare for Caldrius. No, he wanted his last vision to be of me. His daughter.
“Don’t,” I begged him, eyes watering with fresh tears. “Don’t let him do this.”
Hyrax’s brow furrowed, his expression glimmering with that same love I had seen the moment he had decided to create me. “I would do anything to save you, Theadora.”
My heart broke into thousands of tiny pieces, pieces that all longed for the relationship I might have had with my father if things had gone differently. And just as I gasped my way through that pain, the blade was pulled from my throat.
I reached for my magic just as Caldrius leveled his palm flat against my back and shoved, sending me sprawling forward.
Hyrax instinctively rushed to catch me. His hands steadied under my elbows, holding me as Caldrius spun.
He darted to the left, swinging my blade just as the power I summoned slipped from my grasp and surged instead to the blade in his hands.
Hot, sticky blood splattered across my face as Caldrius severed Hyrax’s head from his body.
I choked, a gasping wheeze tearing out of me before the world exploded into darkness.
My head throbbed. Darkness swam at the edges of my vision.
I closed my eyes, falling into a memory.
"Her highness is preparing for the Eternal Slumber."
"What does that mean?"
"She's dying," Caldrius said simply, his voice quieter than before.
"What will happen when she... slumbers?"
He didn't look at me. "Someone new will rise. Her vessel may fade, but her power will find a new host. That's how it works."