Chapter 19 #2
He turned away from her, unable to bear the compassion he saw flickering in her eyes despite everything he'd done to her. “Do you know what my beloved Abigail will choose when she arrives? When she sees you hanging here, bleeding for the Unseelie, dying so slowly and so very, very painfully?”
“She'll choose to save me,” Alexandra said with absolute certainty. “She’ll choose…whatever the fuck she’s planning, over you.”
“Yes. She will.” Valroy's smile was infinitely sad.
“She will choose duty over love, wisdom over compassion, the needs of the many over…me. And in doing so, she will sacrifice herself.” He glanced back at Alexandra.
“Just as you would choose the survival of your entire race over saving the memory of Izael. Just as the spider will choose his chance for revenge over protecting his Weaver. Just as the Weaver will choose sacrificing herself over her love for the spider.”
“You think love will lose.”
“It will. Because it cannot survive when everything else will die in its wake,” Valroy replied, though his voice lacked conviction.
“Love makes us predictable. It makes us…vulnerable. It forces us to act against our own nature, to choose paths that lead only to suffering. Abigail could stand at my side as I burn down the world. She will not. She loves me—up and to a point. But never across it.”
“Then why do you love her?” The question was quiet, but it cut through his defenses like a blade.
Valroy was silent for a long moment, staring out at the horizon where the aurora lights danced between realities.
“Because I cannot help myself,” he admitted finally.
“Because she is the one perfect thing in this imperfect universe, and even knowing that my love will destroy us both, I cannot stop myself from wanting her.”
“Then maybe that's not weakness,” Alexandra said gently. “Maybe that's what makes you more than just a weapon. More than what the Morrigan made you. Maybe that’s what makes you real.”
“No.” His voice hardened again, the moment of vulnerability passing like a cloud across the sun.
“It is precisely what makes me dangerous. Because a weapon that loves is a weapon that can be turned against its wielder.” He looked at her directly.
“And tonight, when my dear wife comes to save you, when she makes her choice between duty and compassion, she will learn exactly how sharp that blade can be. Do you think my designs upon this world end here?” He chuckled.
“Hardly. I have words for dear mother. Words that start and end with the tip of a blade. Sadly, I will need the Weaver’s assistance. ”
“What?”
He chuckled. “All of you truly think me such a fool.” He turned to go, before pausing. “For what it is worth, Alexandra, I am sorry about Izael. He was amusing in his way. I will miss his presence. He was an honorable Unseelie. Too honorable for what is coming.”
“Then why—”
“Because honorable men have a way of getting in the path of necessary evils.” Valroy shrugged without looking back. “And I learned long ago that mercy is a luxury I cannot afford.”
He walked away, leaving Alexandra to her slow communion with the tree.
Behind him, he could hear her weeping—not for herself, he suspected, but for the husband she would never see again, for the future they would never have, for all the small kindnesses that would die along with the rest of the world.
The sound followed him back to his command position at the edge of the camp, where an Unseelie general was waiting with barely concealed anxiety. “Orders, my lord?”
“We wait,” Valroy said simply. “We let anticipation and dread do their work. We allow my beloved wife to imagine all the terrible things that might be happening to our guest.” He smiled, and this time there was no sadness in it at all. “Fear is always more potent than reality, after all.”
“And when they come?” The general frowned.
“When they come, we shall discover whether love truly is stronger than duty.” Valroy spread his wings, feeling the weight of centuries finally lifting from his shoulders. “Then regardless of what choice she makes, we shall finally have our war.”
He thought of the visions the Morrigan had shown him—of three women bound to three realities, slowly losing themselves to the cosmic forces they would become.
Of his beloved Abigail fading away into silver threads and empty space, her consciousness scattered across infinite possibility until nothing remained but an echo of who she had been.
Love makes us vulnerable, he reminded himself. It makes us weak.
But as he watched the fires burn and felt the intoxicating rush of bloodlust singing in his veins, Valroy couldn't help but wonder if perhaps that vulnerability was the price of being truly alive.
He dismissed the thought as soon as it formed. Such philosophical considerations were luxuries for creatures who had choices. He was what he was—the void that hungered for meaning in a universe that offered none.
Tonight, when Abigail came, he would offer her one final chance to stand at his side. To choose love, to embrace the beautiful destruction he had been born to wreak.
And when she refused—as he knew she would—he would finally be free to love her the only way a creature like him knew how.
By letting her go.
By watching her sacrifice herself for the greater good.
By adding her name to the endless list of beautiful things his nature had forced him to destroy.
Paradise, he reminded himself. This is paradise.
Even if it was destined to be an empty one.
The fires burned brighter in the distance, and Valroy settled in to wait for midnight, when all their careful plans would finally collide in beautiful, terrible chaos.
Just as the Morrigan had always intended.
Just as he had always known they would.