The Heart’s Curse (The Rift #4)

Blood on His Hands

With my head bowed, I watched my tears strike the marble floor beneath me.

Each drop felt like a mark of failure, disappearing into the pale veins of stone as my gaze searched them desperately.

As though they might reveal the exact moment everything had gone wrong.

The exact moment I had wasted a second on something that didn’t matter. The exact moment I had failed.

Because that was all it had been.

One second. One heartbeat. One single moment too late.

If I had been quicker…

Lazaros would still be alive.

Those potential lost moments spiraled around in my head.

All those ‘what-ifs’. All those instances when I could have been faster.

I should have recovered faster after Riley attacked me.

Aster and I should have reached the Rift faster, crossed the Labyrinth faster, traveled through the Badlands faster.

We should have bargained with the Gorgon King faster.

Found the Weaver’s Torch faster. Fought the Typhon faster.

Everything should have happened faster.

Faster.

Faster.

Just one second faster.

An icy voice, sharp with vengeance and hatred, sliced through the fog consuming my thoughts.

I gasped, and my head snapped up.

“Cutting your head off would be too swift a death for you!”

My heart lurched violently against my ribs. That threat from Atlas only meant one thing,

Lazaros… he…

He was still alive.

A sight proven as my eyes narrowed in on him, kneeling before his brother, blood slipping between his fingers as both hands clamped around his throat. Slowly, almost painfully, he lifted his head to meet Atlas’s gaze with unfocused eyes.

Sickly black veins shimmered beneath his skin, spreading from the wound across his throat like cracks in glass filled with ink.

Dark, tar-like blood seeped between his fingers as he struggled for each breath.

The sound was wet and uneven, more instinct than effort, reminding me of a wounded animal fighting to survive.

Every movement felt wrong.

When he blinked, it was slow, delayed, as though his body and mind were no longer working together.

His gaze drifted unfocused across the room, never quite settling.

A terrible feeling twisted inside me that Lazaros was trapped somewhere deep within himself, forced to watch everything unfolding while something else pulled the strings.

Demetrios.

The same darkness that had twisted Riley now held Lazaros in its grip.

Only this was worse. Because Riley had been controlled through a secondary host, one separated from the source by another vessel.

But Lazaros was connected directly to it.

Connected to the core of the corruption coursing through him, one that seemed far more volatile and far more complete.

The signs were impossible to miss.

Yet Atlas couldn’t see them.

Grief and betrayal had blinded him to everything except the villainous brother kneeling before him. I saw a victim. Atlas saw only treachery. A brother who had turned against him. A brother who deserved punishment.

Not a man being consumed from the inside out.

And strangely, that realization didn’t fill me with despair.

Watching Lazaros’s red-rimmed eyes stare back at Atlas without fear, without even the awareness that his brother had just slit his throat and was preparing to finish the job, should have broken my heart.

Instead, it gave me hope.

Because if Lazaros could be saved, then so could Riley.

“You deserve my sword to the heart, the same way you broke mine when you betrayed me!” Atlas growled, and I could feel the emotion radiating from him.

Raw. Powerful. But most of all, there was a hurt in his voice that physically pained me.

A deep, devastating hurt that seemed to seep from every word, every breath, every movement.

It was the sound of a man standing before someone he loved, forcing himself to do something he never wanted to do because he could no longer see another way.

The sword in Atlas’s grip remained steady.

Though he had his back to me, I knew his intentions were written across the rigid set of his shoulders and the slow way he drew the blade back.

There was no hesitation in him, no uncertainty, only the terrible conviction that this was necessary.

That whatever happened next would kill him just as much as the brother kneeling before him.

“Atlas!” I screamed, my throat burning as the ragged sound tore free.

His name echoed from the towering walls, reverberating through the throne room before crashing back into silence, yet it was as though he hadn’t heard me at all.

He seemed completely shut off from the world around him, consumed by grief, betrayal, and the impossible choice before him.

In that moment, there was only Lazaros, only the brother he believed had turned against him, and the sword he had already decided to drive through his heart.

“Goodbye, brother.”

I screamed again, louder this time, the force of it tearing at my throat as I threw myself forward.

“Atlas!”

My hands slipped against the marble as I pushed myself upright.

The fight with the Typhon, the desperate run through the castle, every injury and every exhausted muscle screamed in protest. Yet somehow, I still managed to close the distance between us.

I stumbled forward and dropped to my knees between them, throwing myself in front of Lazaros before Atlas could drive the blade home.

I would not let Lazaros die.

Not when I still had a chance to save him.

If I hesitated now, if I allowed fear to root me to the spot, then I would lose them both.

One brother to death, the other to a regret he would carry for the rest of his life.

I had crossed the Rift for this. Traversed the Labyrinth.

Bargained with a king and fought monsters.

Fought my way through impossible odds. I hadn’t come this far only to watch them destroy each other at the last hurdle.

And perhaps that was the real reason I couldn’t move aside.

It wasn’t simply because Atlas was the man I loved, or because Lazaros was innocent.

It was because I had never been able to stand by while someone suffered when there was still something I could do.

Not even when exhaustion and fear threatened to break me.

Too many lives had already been lost to the Rift.

Too many people had paid the price while I stood helplessly watching.

Some of those losses still haunted me, lingering in the quiet moments, and whispering that I should have tried harder, fought harder, done more.

I refused to add Lazaros to that list.

My loyalty to Atlas burned brighter than my fear, and because I loved him, because I understood what this would do to him if he carried it through, I was willing to risk everything to stop it.

“Stop!” My voice tore from my throat, raw and desperate, and my stomach lurched as the blade came down towards me. Every instinct was screaming at me to move, even as I forced myself to stay exactly where I was.

Atlas’s eyes widened as if he were seeing me for the first time, his sword shifting at the very last second. The blade missed flesh and instead caught the fabric of my shirt at my arm, slicing through it with a whisper of steel that stole the air from my lungs.

“Al… Alexandra?” He choked on my name, his skin paling as his gaze dropped to the torn fabric, to the place where his blade had almost found me, and my heartbeat quickened as the truth of how close I had come to death crashed through me.

“What…” he stumbled back a step, then another, his chest heaving as the fury in his gaze fractured into disbelief. “What are you doing here?”

For a single heartbeat, I saw only him. Not the war.

Not the blood. Not the brother behind me.

Only Atlas, the man I had crossed realms to reach.

The man who had stolen my heart and promised he would return for me, standing before me with a sword in his hand and horror dawning across his face.

The need to run to him was almost unbearable, to throw myself into his arms and feel for myself that he was real.

That he was alive, that I had made it back to him.

But there was no time for that.

“You can’t kill Lazaros,” I said quickly, forcing the words past the ache in my throat. “It’s not him. He’s possessed. Atlas, please, just listen to me. He’s...”

My explanation broke into a cry as an iron-strong grip seized my arm and yanked me upright.

I slammed back against a solid mass, shadows closing in around me as the hiss of steel echoed from behind.

Instinct took over before thought could catch up, shielding my face just as a blade came in.

The dagger’s tip kissed my throat before I caught the attacker’s wrist with both hands.

I stopped the blade from driving deeper, though not before its edge bit into my skin.

A sharp breath escaped me as warmth trickled down my neck, sliding beneath my collar and pooling in the hollow of my throat.

“Don’t!” Atlas growled, his voice little more than a barely restrained snarl. “Let. Her. Go.” His knuckles whitened around his sword’s hilt.

A dark, demonic laugh reverberated beside my ear, sending a chill racing down my spine.

It sounded wrong, as if stripped of any trace of humanity.

Filled instead with a cruel amusement that twisted my stomach.

At the same time, his arm tightened around me, dragging me harder against him with a strength that didn’t match the broken, barely conscious man who had been kneeling before Atlas moments earlier.

“Mine isn’t the only throat that will be slit tonight, brother,” he said, his voice unusually soft, the certainty in his voice far more terrifying than if he had shouted. “Make a single move and your pretty little key will bleed rivers of crimson.”

His words brought bile to my throat as I saw the fear and pain in Atlas’s eyes.