Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Scarlet Temple, Blood Kingdom
Lanlin
Golden flames, bones, and ash…
Nothing but ash.
My eyes snap open. I turn my head to the side to vomit.
Then I groan, pressing my fevered forehead, which feels as if it also is burning up like the realms were under Emperor Hadrian’s tyranny, against the cold stone.
The stink of seared flesh clings to the inside of my nostrils and coats my tongue.
I scrabble, scratching across my cheeks; I still feel ash falling across my skin like blossoms.
I can’t stop breathing too fast. I’m panting, shaking, dying.
My muscles ache, as weak as if they are lost in a past where the brutal Hadrian is destroying the realms, until sorcerers in his kingdom turned his own cursed dagger against him, reducing him to ash.
Nebet will never stop using her visions against me, will she?
“That is who your best friend is…who he will become. It is destined.” Nebet leans over me.
I force myself onto my back, glaring at her.
Her too crimson lips smile, thinly. “My family have dedicated themselves to hunting and putting down monsters like you. I thought that I could turn you into something useful for this kingdom. But twice now you refuse to do your duty by assassinating Aurelius. Why won’t you show your gratitude for me training you as an assassin, rather than slitting your throat and offering your blood to the Void Gods on this shrine like the fate of so many others with the Power? You never offer me a simple thank you.”
She rests the sharp tip of her sandal under my chin, forcing my head back to look up at the dark shrine, which is stained with blood — the blood of my people with the Power.
Beasts, to her.
The persecuted, to me — my ancestors.
The lost family whose spirits I pray for in secret, who I draw, honor, and remember because no one else will.
I jerk my head to the side with a growl. “I will kill Hadrian. But I won’t kill Aurelius.”
“Foolish monster.” The ribbons on Nebet’s dress whip out to wrap around my wrist, deliberately squeezing around my bond mark.
My eyes widen. Is she trying to hurt Freya through it?
“They are one and the same. Do you think that anyone can keep two sides of their natures apart forever? Can you? Are you not the beast as well as the Blood?”
I glance at my wrist, distraught.
Nebet has spent over a decade hurting me.
But now, she has hurt my Blood Lover.
My Omega.
And in the name of the Shadow Devils, no one hurts them without finding out how truly monstrous I am.
My head clears, and my eyes gleam. “Hmm, I’d say that I had three sides thanks to your training: beast, Blood, and killer.”
I yank my wrist sharply, which Nebet has connected to herself with ribbons. Taken by surprise, she is pulled off balance.
I leap up, as if to steady her.
Instead, I sink the iron tipped claws of the gloves, which she has forced me to wear since I was a child, into her neck.
It seems like a fair method to fulfill the deal that I made with the fae, when Nebet sliced Dove with iron.
Nebet was never going to escape me, after what she did to Dove and the other Shadow Human.
After what she tried to do to Aurelius.
I protect my nest.
Freya and Dove don’t appear to be impressed by severed heads. I don’t know why. Will the deaths of those who would assassinate them, however, earn the forgiveness of my nest mates?
I hear the crunch of bone and Nebet’s desperate gurgling as she chokes on her own blood. When I push my claws further into her neck, she scrabbles at me.
Her ribbons whip furiously at my cheeks.
“What are you doing?” Ruin’s voice behind me is high with panic.
“Saying thank you.” I drive Nebet back over the shrine, flooded with vicious joy. “And offering the spirits of my ancestors my sacrifice.”
I stare down at Nebet.
I still can’t see her eyes. I never have.
If they are the windows to the soul, however, then I am glad that I haven’t because her soul must be even darker than mine is.
I give a final twist of my nails.
Nebet’s body jerks and then becomes as lax as a broken doll. The ribbons still as well, before blood drips down them, as if they also have torn open.
Blood spurts up like a fountain from Nebet’s throat over the shrine.
I watch in dark delight.
“You have unbalanced and desecrated this place.” Ruin stares in panic at the shadows that are creeping from the walls and shrouding the walls. The floors are shaking and groaning. “How dare you shed the blood of the High Priestess in her own Inner Sanctum?”
“I am the last Shadow Vampire of the House of Sin. The King.” I pull off my blood-soaked gloves and hurl them on top of the shrine in triumph, freeing my hands. I am never covering them again. “You should fear what I dare.”
Suddenly, a roaring abyss howls through my mind.
I scream, dropping to my knees.
Overwhelmed, I slam my hands over my ears.
“Lanlin Sin,” a voice that sounds like it’s made up of an infinity of voices but oozes with temptation and the faint rumble of something older than language, rasps directly into my mind.
The pain of something from another plane breaking through to speak to me is like being cracked in two.
I writhe on the floor, as tears of agony trail down my cheeks.
“Why do you suffer for these creatures who do not recognize your uniqueness as we do? Resist…rebel…allow us through the Void…allow your petty world that has done nothing but hurt you to be devoured and destroyed, then you will reign at our side.”
I shake my head.
Each word holds an intoxicating promise: I will guide you to the edge of a cliff, but if you throw yourself off into the abyss with me, you will fly and not fall.
It’s a lie.
The ultimate betrayal.
They are the same temptations that have haunted me in my dreams for the last three years that I was forced to take over the role of Void Vampire, since my twin went missing.
Since Lazarus was kidnapped, I’m sure. I simply don’t know who by.
The Void Devils grow more insistent, the closer it comes to the day that I am meant to stop them breaking into the Shadow Kingdoms.
Once, I was tempted.
But now, I have a nest to protect with my life.
I haven’t been able to tell Freya and Dove; I’m bound by a Blood Oath to keep the secret. And I wished to experience…just for a short while…the happiness that I have seen others find in love without it being overhung with sadness.
“We would wipe away your pain; wipe away everything into the Void.” The Void Devils raise their voice, and I scream again, tightening my hold over my ears like I can somehow keep them out when they are already inside me.
“What have you known but betrayal, fighting, and suffering? An outcast? Orphan? What are these Shadow Kingdoms to you, really? Look at your own court. Are these emotions of your realms so much worthier than ours? Hate? Greed? Thirst for power? Sorrow? Loneliness? Lust? What is worth saving?”
“Love,” I manage to force out. “Hope. Respect. Joy. Acceptance. Pleasure. Who is worth saving? My beautiful Omega. My rebellious Blood Lover. And the best friend who was the first person to see me for who I truly am. So, get. Out. Of. My. Mind.”
I slam my head against the floor. My warm blood trickles down my temple.
I slam it against the stone again.
The voices howl in fury.
“Stop this, beast, or you’ll kill yourself before I need you as a sacrifice.” Ruin rolls me onto my back.
I look up at him through dazed, pain filled eyes.
Scarlet cakes my hair, running down to make my eyelashes sticky.
“I c-can’t g-get the voices to s-s-stop…” I rasp.
“The Void Devils are talking to you.” Ruin straddles me. He studies me like I am an experiment. “Such an honor.”
Ruin wouldn’t say that if he knew that the Void Devils were tempting me to allow them out to devour him.
“S-s-top them,” I hiss.
Ruin sighs, before muttering an incantation under his breath. The pyramids on his robe glow brightly.
At last, the voices die in my head.
My hands fall from my ears.
The silence is crushingly loud. I wish that I had my animals here with me. I blink, listening as hard as I can for the scamper of rats in the outside chambers.
My shoulders slump.
“What did they say?” Ruin leans closer. “Were they angered by the High Priestess’ death?”
I take great delight in smiling. “They didn’t even mention it.”
Ruin frowns. “Oh…well…”
“Let me up.”
I flinch, when Ruin pats my cheek. “Don’t worry, the Void Cult can step into the hole that you have created.
I should be thanking you for increasing our power by removing my rival.
” My eyes narrow. The Void Devils weren’t wrong about the thirst for power.
“I will make sure that the Blood Court and kingdom run smoothly after your sacrifice.”
“Sacrifice,” I force my voice to remain steady, “sounds so much more noble than my death.”
Ruin pushes himself up, glancing at Nebet’s bloody body dismissively.
“Lazarus was trained his entire life for the honor of jumping into the Void and sealing it with his blood. He was eager to do his duty and save the realms. Do you know what would happen if the Void opened between the pyramids? What the Void Devils would do to us? They would not merely open a hell upon us like the Shadow Devils would, but rather, an abyss from an ancient world before the shadows came into being from the fae. A gaping void would devour us and create a new world. A world where we did not exist, despite anything the Void Devils may have told you.”
He levels a glare at me, and I meet it frostily.
“I’m not my twin.” I push myself up onto my elbows. “I’m not in your cult.”
“But you always knew that this day was coming.” Ruin raises his arms. “You’ve spent the last three years knowing that only your blood can save the realms.”
And I have.
The night of the Blood Moon is the night that the Void will gape open, threatening to devour the Shadow Kingdoms.
The night of my wedding is also the night that I will die.
I tilt up my chin. “Then maybe you all shouldn’t have treated me like the dirt beneath your sandals.
Because I only care about saving three people in the entire realms. You may have the power when I am gone.
You will make an unbreakable Blood Oath today, however, over this sacred shrine if you want me to murder myself for this kingdom.
When my death seals the Void, the fae and the wolf will reign here safe, happy, and in luxury as the widow King and Queen, under your guidance. ”
“Puppet King and Queen…?” Ruin pushes.
“As long as they are never killed, harmed, or pressured to take another into their nest.”
It’s the best that I can manage.
Ruin’s eyes twinkle, and he grins. “They will be treated like the kingdom’s grieving jewels, while the Void Cult manages the boring day to day political work. We have found an excellent balance and order here. No one will forget your name for this.”
“I’m not doing this to be remembered.” I look away from him.
“You know,” Ruin gives me a sly look, “there is another way. You must bond with, rut, and feast on your Omega on the night of the Blood Moon. The ritual must be completed. But the secret only the Void Cult has long held is that the Alpha has a cruel choice. Is he prepared to sacrifice the blood of what is most precious to him?”
My brow furrows. “My life, I understand.”
“That’s one option. The other is for you to break our deepest laws and instincts and offer up the blood of your bonded Omega.”
My blood chills. “Say anything about using my Omega’s blood rather than mine again, and you will be lying next to Nebet in a pool of your own blood.”
Ruin swallows, backing away.
I turn my head away from him, troubled.
It isn’t a choice.
I am dying for Freya. I would never trade her life for my own.
At least I will have a wedding, one rut with Freya, and one more feast on Dove’s blood, before I sacrifice myself for them.