Chapter Forty-Seven
I will find the way to save us. To have my son returned to me once again. I will find the way to have a peaceful life with Hadrian, our son safely tucked between our arms.
Even if I have to burn the world to ashes.
Tabitha Wysteria
Mal could still see the moment Morthos carried the queen’s body down to the shore.
The wind had been sharp that day, restless and salt-bitten, tugging at cloaks and hair alike as though even the sea wished to mourn.
Ash and Mal had followed behind in silence, the space between them heavier than grief itself.
They had not spoken since their daughter’s birth.
No shared glances. No fingers entwined in secret comfort.
No lips brushing against her neck in absent-minded affection.
Mal told herself it was for the best.
That silence was safer.
She stood on the dark sand and looked at her mother’s body, now wrapped in a thin white blanket stripped from one of the keep’s beds.
The fabric clung too gently to the stillness beneath it.
Mal felt the pull—fierce and desperate—to run forward, to gather her mother into her arms, to press her face into her shoulder and beg her not to leave.
Not to let this be the final shape of things.
But she did not move.
She remained where she was, far enough that when the flames came they would not touch her. Far enough to survive the goodbye.
Morthos guided one of his wyverns forward, the creature’s vast shadow stretching across the sand like a closing curtain. He turned to Mal, waiting. Always waiting for her word.
She gave a single nod.
Why prolong what could not be undone? Why stretch out the tearing of the heart?
The wyvern inhaled, chest swelling, and then blue fire poured forth, bright and terrible and absolute. It struck the white-wrapped body, and within seconds Queen Senka was consumed, the flames rising high against the grey sky.
Mal did not look away.
She stepped a little closer to the blaze, close enough that the heat licked at her skin and stung her cheeks. For a fleeting, foolish second, she let herself imagine it was her mother’s final embrace.
Across the beach, the creature lingered at the edge of the dunes, its hands curled into tight fists, its twisted features contorted with fury.
It was still enraged that Mal had fled to her own realm to give birth, still seething at being denied what it had wanted.
There was something almost satisfying in watching it squirm, in knowing she had outmanoeuvred it, even if only for a moment.
A darker thought stirred within her. The desire to reach out and drag that rage from it, to swallow it whole and feel it burn inside her belly. To replace grief with fury. To let anger consume what sorrow threatened to hollow out.
Ash’s fingers brushed against her hand.
Mal stepped away.
She cast one last look at the body engulfed in blue fire, at the shape dissolving into smoke and light and then turned, walking back towards the keep without another word.
She did not look at the hurt that flashed across Ash’s golden eyes.
She did not acknowledge the quiet devastation etched into Morthos’ face.
She did not meet the creature’s blazing stare.
She ignored them all.
If she stopped, even for a heartbeat, she might break.
Now Mal sat in the very chair her mother had claimed as her own during their stay in the keep.
Since the body had burnt to ash, Mal had scarcely left the queen’s chambers.
She would sit for hours, unmoving, staring through the open arch at the bleak horizon beyond, at the restless sea and the iron-grey sky, as if the world might rearrange itself into something kinder if she only watched long enough.
Morthos had come more than once with trays of food, setting them down quietly beside her. She had not touched a single thing. Wyverians did not require sustenance as often as others; hunger would not undo her. Grief, perhaps, but not hunger.
Ash had not come.
That absence hurt more than she allowed herself to admit.
Yet she felt it now. A shift in the air, a stillness that did not belong to wind or shadow. She did not turn when Thanatos crossed the room. She did not react when he came to stand at her side. Only when the tips of his fingers brushed her arm did her heart splinter anew.
‘I’m sorry I was not here sooner, Melinoe,’ he whispered, and there was something raw in his voice. Something almost mortal and living and real.
‘How did you know?’ she asked, her gaze fixed on the horizon. Every part of her longed to look at him, to look at Death itself, at the being who had taken her mother, yet she did not dare. She feared what she might see in his eyes. Truth. Regret. Or worse, nothing at all.
He did not answer.
‘Did you collect her yourself?’ she pressed, tilting her head ever so slightly.
‘I’m sorry,’ was all he offered.
Mal nodded faintly. Her attention dropped to her hands, to the ragged skin around her nails where she had torn at herself without noticing. ‘My daughter was born on the same day.’
‘I know.’
‘She’s in my realm. With Allegra and Vera.’
‘I know.’
She swallowed. ‘And Ash hates me now.’
Something shone in Thanatos’ dark eyes, too swift to name, too dangerous to linger on, but she refused to decipher it.
‘He could never hate you, Melinoe,’ he said quietly.
‘No?’ She finally looked at him then, if only for a heartbeat, before returning her attention to the views. ‘Are you so certain of that?’
‘I am.’
‘Why?’ Her voice sharpened, brittle as frost. When he did not answer, when silence once again settled heavy between them, she exhaled slowly. ‘I think,’ she said at last, her tone turning cold and resolute, ‘it is time I began setting my plan in motion.’
Thanatos inclined his head, then lowered himself to crouch before her, one hand resting gently upon her knee.
The gesture was careful, reverent almost. Mal told him everything, every thought that had festered in the quiet hours, every fragment of vengeance she intended to weave into something sharp and deliberate.
He listened without interruption. Without judgement.
Only the faint tightening of his jaw betrayed that he understood the cost.
‘I don’t want you going there,’ he said softly.
‘It was your idea.’
Thanatos sighed. ‘Yes, it was. But I never thought you would have to carry it out.’ His entire body tensed. ‘I don’t want—’
‘I don’t really care what you want,’ she replied. There was no cruelty in her voice, only exhaustion and a sorrow that had settled too deep to uproot. ‘It is what needs to be done. Or would you rather serve Persephone as your queen for the rest of eternity?’
Thanatos exhaled slowly. ‘No. I would not.’
‘Then I must return to Hell,’ she said. ‘And repay Persephone for sending me there all those years ago.’
His fingers tightened instinctively against her knee. ‘I will come with you.’
‘No.’ She shook her head at once. ‘I must go alone. If you vanish for too long, Persephone will grow suspicious. She cannot know what I am planning. You must distract her and keep her attention elsewhere.’ She paused, worry creasing her brow. ‘But first I must find a way past Zagreus.’
‘Zagreus?’
‘He won’t allow me through Tartarus to reach Hell.’
A faint smile touched Thanatos’ lips, and Mal forced herself not to dwell on how it unsettled her.
‘I wouldn’t be so certain of that, Melinoe.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘What do you mean?’
Thanatos turned his stare towards the grey wyverian sky beyond the archway. He stared at it for so long she wondered if he would retreat into silence, hoarding yet another truth from her.
‘Makaria and Zagreus,’ he began at last, ‘have never truly known what it is to be loved. Not properly. Their mother married Hades for power. Perhaps she loved him once. I believe she did, but she could never forgive him for choosing Hecate over her, time and again. Makaria and Zagreus were born not solely of affection, but as leverage. As anchors to keep Hades bound to her side.’
His voice grew quieter.
‘She loves them, yes. But I am not convinced she loves them more than she loves power. And if she does… I do not think they have ever felt it.’
He reached for Mal’s hand and clasped it firmly.
‘When you were Melinoe, you were the only one who treated them as siblings. You cared for them without ambition. You loved them without calculation. You never used them to gain influence or favour. They have not forgotten that.’
Mal stilled.
‘Why do you think Makaria was so willing to remain trapped in Hell for you?’ Thanatos asked quietly.
Mal bit the inside of her lip. Too many nights had been spent staring at nothing, sleep evading her, guilt gnawing steadily at her bones. She had left Makaria behind. She had not gone back.
Until, at some point, she had forced herself to stop caring.
‘So you believe Zagreus will help me?’ she asked instead. ‘Even if it means condemning his own mother to Hell?’
‘I do.’
She ignored the unease shining through Thanatos’ eyes, the silent question of what she had become, of how easily she spoke of using Zagreus, of how little she seemed to care that Makaria still suffered below. It should have unsettled her too.
Once, it would have.
But she had lost too much to tremble now.
Mal rose to her feet and crossed into her own chamber.
She did not need to glance behind her to know Thanatos followed, quiet and inevitable as a shadow at dusk.
She stripped off the dress she wore without hesitation and searched for something more fitting, something that belonged to fire and ruin rather than mourning halls.
She felt Thanatos’ eyes upon her bare skin and did not flinch.
She drew on a simple grey dress, practical and severe, tugged black boots over her feet, and fastened a sword across her back. When she caught her reflection in the dim metal of a shield hanging by the wall, she allowed herself a small, crooked smile.
There she was.
A little closer to the version of herself the world had once feared.
‘Wait for me,’ she told Thanatos.
Then she stepped from the chamber, down the winding stairs and into the main hall, where Ash sat waiting.
Those golden eyes narrowed when he saw her, yet he said nothing, as though he had already known this moment would come. He probably had.
‘I’ve come to say goodbye,’ she said, her shoulders drawn tight as bowstrings. She wondered if he could sense Thanatos within the keep, lingering like a chill behind the walls.
Ash only nodded.
The words she truly wished to speak lodged painfully in her throat. She wanted to cross the distance between them, to fold herself into his arms and weep until there was nothing left inside her but salt and sorrow.
But she did not move.
This was what lay ahead of them. Their future. Their fracture.
Nothing between them would ever be the same again.
She saw it there in the molten depths of his stare.
Then Ash rose.
His jaw was clenched so tightly it seemed carved from stone. He crossed the hall without hesitation and stopped before her. His hands came up, warm and steady, cupping her face as though she were something precious and breakable.
He kissed her.
And Mal broke.
It was a farewell. She felt it in the way he held her, in the way his breath trembled against her lips. A kiss meant to be remembered when everything else had burnt to ash.
When he pulled away, the tears were already falling. He brushed them from her cheeks with his thumbs.
‘I want them all dead,’ she whispered, her teeth grinding together. ‘For what they’ve done to my family. For what they’ve done to us.’ More tears slipped free and he wiped them away, one after the other. ‘I want them to burn, Ash. Make them burn.’
‘I’ll make them all burn for you,’ he said, and there was no hesitation in it.
He released her then, stepping back. They stood facing one another across the widening space, memorising what they had been—the laughter, the fury, the stolen tenderness, the love born of curse and choice alike.
‘Promise me,’ she breathed, sealing every memory into herself. The first time she had seen him before the drakonian castle. Their vows. The way she had fainted. The dances beneath torchlight. The quiet hours tangled in sheets and whispers.
She pressed each one into her skin like ink that would never fade.
Never forget.
And she saw him doing the same.
‘I promise,’ he said.