Chapter Eighteen
Loving someone can be seen as a weakness. For when we love someone, they keep a little of us with them. And when they leave, that little piece is never returned. So when you are loved, and eventually abandoned, it can be felt as though not much of ourselves is left.
Tabitha Wysteria
Mal had spent the past few days wandering the lands that cradled the small, decaying castle her uncle called home.
There was little to see beyond rock and ruin, yet the beach below the keep had become her refuge.
Each morning she brought her mother there, the two of them sitting side by side, observing the storm-dark sea in shared silence.
Sometimes Mal would bring a book, though she rarely turned its pages.
Ash had carried wooden chairs down the narrow path for them, ensuring they could sit comfortably and watch the waves.
Mal had watched him do it with a heart quietly breaking—this man, her husband, lifting heavy chairs simply so the queen and she might find a measure of peace.
He never offered to stay. He knew the solitude they needed, and so he withdrew. To where, Mal did not know.
The chairs remained, a silent promise that Mal could return to the beach whenever she wished.
She made her way down the path now, steps soft and unhurried, her attention fixed on the stretch of sand below.
A faint smile touched her lips at the sight of wyverns gathered there, wild and untamed, roaring at one another.
They were not her own, but creatures bred by her uncle, free and fierce in their own right.
At first, the wyverns stilled at the presence of a stranger. Then they scented the air, and their tension eased. Mal felt a quiet relief bloom in her chest. The God-Killer within her did not frighten them and she was grateful for that, for such rejection might have shattered her.
If there was anything left of her to break.
Lately, Mal could not help but wonder whether she had already been broken so completely that nothing remained.
Mal sighed as she lowered herself into the chair, her arms settling along the armrests, her purple glare fixed on the restless sea. She tried deliberately to ignore the presence that now occupied the chair beside her, the one that usually belonged to Queen Senka.
Her hand drifted to her stomach, rubbing slow, absent circles as she hummed softly, caught in quiet wonder at the swell of her belly. It had grown so much in recent days. She found herself counting heartbeats, wondering how long it would be before the child finally arrived.
‘Not long now,’ the creature murmured. Its mouth stretched wide in something close to delight as it licked its lips, those dark eyes lingering on Mal’s stomach with unsettling hunger.
Mal expected to feel protective. She expected fear, rage, something, at the way the creature watched the life growing inside her. But she felt nothing at all. Ash already loved their child with a fierceness that bordered on reverence, and part of her cherished him for it.
Another part despised him.
She hated that he would choose the child over her.
The creature laughed, a sound sharp and knowing.
‘This is your fault,’ Mal hissed, turning towards it. ‘You are rotting my mind, poisoning me with these vile thoughts. I should not feel this way about my own child.’
‘Should you not?’ the creature asked in Mal’s own voice, tilting its head. ‘That child will be your end one day.’
‘I will not become my mother,’ Mal snapped.
The creature laughed again, louder this time.
‘But you already have, Mal Blackburn,’ it whispered. ‘You already have.’
Mal ignored the presence beside her, the thing that was both stranger and self, the God-Killer that had splintered from her soul and taken on a will of its own.
She did not question how it existed. She only knew that one day it would not sit beside her anymore.
One day, it would fold back into her completely.
And then she would be lost to the world.
Mal Blackburn would cease to exist.
A part of her accepted that truth with unsettling calm. A part of her was willing to let go, if it meant the world would be safe, if it meant Ash and their daughter could live in a realm untouched by gods, unthreatened by divine cruelty.
The creature chuckled softly.
Because Mal also knew this thing would not disappear gently.
It would wear her down, hollow her out, rot her soul from the inside until apathy replaced mercy.
The curse that bound her to Ash would ensure she loved him regardless.
Endlessly and irrevocably. But love did not forbid hatred. Love did not cleanse it away.
She could love him and despise him in the same breath.
Hate him for the truths he had kept from her. Hate him for choosing their daughter over her. Hate him for a curse that demanded devotion without consent. And hate him most of all…
For not saving her.
Mal cursed herself for entertaining such thoughts.
Since when had Mal Blackburn ever needed saving?
She was a wyverian princess, a fourthborn with purple eyes and fire in her veins.
She had been forged by battle, tempered by blood and steel, and had spent her life fighting her own wars with blade in hand.
‘Damn you,’ she hissed at the thing beside her. ‘Stop clawing at my mind.’
The creature cackled, delighted by her fury.
‘Get out of my head!’
‘I cannot,’ it replied smoothly. ‘We are bound, you and I. Two faces of the same truth. Always.’
So Mal closed her eyes and vanished.
She fled far from mortal lands, abandoning the place where the creature lingered, laughing at her desperation.
She slipped into her shadow realm, a place no other could enter.
There, she landed lightly upon the ground of an empty kingdom that mirrored her wyverian lands, but only in shape.
Everything here was cursed to smoke and shade, to drifting darkness.
Even her own body had changed, unraveling into mist, no longer flesh but shadow given form.
‘Took you long enough,’ a voice drawled behind her.
Mal turned, relief softening her chest at the sight of Vera standing near the castle’s entrance.
She glanced up at the structure looming above them, just as grand as its mortal counterpart, yet fashioned of nightmares.
It rose like liquid darkness, smoke and dust flowing upward into an endless, lightless sky.
Wyverns roared somewhere far away, their cries echoing through the void.
‘Come,’ Vera said, her form shimmering, no longer bound by flesh or bone but shaped of shadow and drifting smoke. ‘My sister Allegra is inside. She’s been waiting.’
It was strange to see Vera again. The last time Mal had looked upon her, she had driven a sword through Vera’s stomach—though it had not truly been Vera then.
Her body had been stolen, worn like a skin by Eris, used as a vessel upon mortal soil.
By killing Vera, Mal had banished the goddess from the world of flesh.
Where Eris had gone after that, no one could say.
And yet here Vera stood.
Though her form was no longer solid, Mal could still see her as she had once been—strong-willed, with long platinum-white hair, dark skin, and those unmistakable purple eyes. Beautiful. Unbroken. Untouched by what had been done to her.
Mal followed Vera through the castle. Vera pushed the doors open, though neither of them truly needed to.
These walls were not real in any mortal sense.
Everything here was shadow and smoke, thought given shape, substance only because Mal willed it so.
They could have walked straight through if they wished.
At the head of the table sat Allegra.
Her purple eyes burnt brightly, violet smoke curling up from them in this nightmarish realm. Her brown curls could no longer be properly seen in a place like this, but Mal imagined them all the same—soft, familiar, real in a way nothing else here was.
Mal took a seat on one side of the table, while Vera moved to stand at her sister’s other side.
Before Mal could speak, she felt that shift in the air, the subtle tightening that warned of another presence drawing near. She turned just in time to see the doors open once more.
Thanatos looked as devastatingly handsome as ever, even rendered in shadow. His white hair refused all restraint, and his sculpted features seemed cruelly deliberate, as though the gods themselves had shaped him solely to torment mortals.
Mal hated that he was so beautiful.
‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded, turning briefly to glance at Allegra and Vera. She loathed how easily he had slipped into her realm, as though it belonged to him by right.
Thanatos stopped beside her chair. ‘You need to fetch Kage,’ he said quietly.
Mal noticed the hesitation in him, the way his hand almost lifted, almost reached for her, as if memory or longing had betrayed him for a heartbeat. He let it fall instead, shoving it into his pocket with a sigh before moving on to sit opposite her, beside Vera.
‘Persephone is searching for him.’
Mal nodded. She reached inward, grasping at her power, power she did not fully understand, yet wielded as instinctively as breath.
It answered her without resistance. One moment she sat at a table in a realm of smoke and shadow; the next, she stood within the Underworld itself.
Her body remained half-shadow, as well as lighter and faster, untethered by mortal weight.
A rare smile touched her lips at the sight of the great white wolf racing towards her. Wren skidded to her side, blue eyes bright with urgency.
Mal glanced up, taking in their surroundings by the looming entrance to Tartarus. Wren tugged insistently at her, urging her towards the prison gates, and Mal allowed herself to be pulled along.
Her brother Zagreus lounged upon his throne, irritation and boredom etched into his sharp features. At his side stood Kage, still and watchful. Zagreus was the first to notice her, his mismatched eyes lighting with unmistakable interest at her sudden arrival.