Chapter 57 The Universe Couldn’t Survive
The Universe Couldn’t Survive
Lucian
M
y best friend—my brother—has come back to life. This is our reunion: Azaire attempting to choke the life out of me. Pain spikes through my neck, spreading like fire into my skull as my lungs beg for air.
Perhaps this is what I deserve; I am the reason he died.
“Get off him!” Desdemona yells, and I smile, if only for the fact that I know she truly cares.
She grabs him, attempting to throw him off me. Azaire doesn’t budge, not even as Desdemona’s eyes glow red. Blood magic doesn’t work against the dead, I suppose.
Azaire raises a hand and strikes Des in the temple, and for the first time, I fight him. I jerk up, his hands yielding as I try to reach her. I can survive being killed—but I couldn’t bear watching him lay a hand on her.
Then he does the very thing I thought he never would—never could. Darkness is pulled from my mouth, like my soul is being unspooled as he sucks the life out of me, just as Leiana has done my entire life.
And I let him. I killed him once, after all.
The suffocating pain in my lungs quickly spreads, rotting into my core, deep in the center of my being, as he pulls the last pieces of my soul away.
“You killed me!” Spit flies from Azaire’s mouth and onto my face with the ferocity of his voice.
The tree must have been bad enough to revoke his sentiment, “I’ll never blame you.” Yet I understand. I’d blame me, as well.
Lines of darkness travel through the room, obscuring my vision. I’m not sure I breathe. The light vanishes, my sight blocked by my own life force. I’m unsure how long I’m left in darkness.
Then Azaire falls atop me, unconscious. I lie beneath his weight, my back pressing into the floor, aching, and my neck throbbing.
When I can, I pull myself up and gently lay Azaire on the floor. His neck is still, his pulse gone, and there’s no breath in his chest.
Desdemona is across the room. There’s something in her eyes I want to reach for, even now, half-dead on my feet. But as I rise, I see Wendy standing in the doorway—her once dark hair transformed entirely, now a glowing silver, as if the moonlight itself has gifted her the color.
Wendy grimaces, glancing at Azaire, then me, her eyebrows pinching closer together. She’s slow as she appraises me, her gaze landing on my lips and staying there.
“Wendy?” I whisper. “What is it?”
Desdemona watches us both.
“Your lips,” she says. “They’re gray.”
My hand rises to my mouth, each movement heavy, as though I’m no longer human but something mechanical. Azaire truly stole my life force.
Is that what the dead do?
Gray lips—like Edward. Like all the dead bodies I found, collapsed beneath the academy in the girls’ wing.
“That doesn’t,” I whisper under my breath, shaking my head. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“No,” Wendy whispers. “It doesn’t.”
“Have there been more murders?” I ask. “Since we left.”
Wendy nods.
“How many?” I ask, eager for an answer.
Wendy doesn’t answer, and I repeat, voice growing louder, “How many?”
“Too many to count,” she whispers. “They only stopped when…” Wendy turns to Desdemona.
Desdemona nods and steps back. “I… think some people are waiting for me.” She glances at Damien, then at me. “Keep him safe?”
“Of course.” I nod, and she exits the room.
?
Each time Azaire begins to wake, Wendy closes her palm, sending him back to sleep.
It’s an awful sight. She controls the dead now, and he is the dead.
Wendy said the murders only stopped when the academy closed. They left the suites open for those who might need them, but with Hogan dead—which I recently found out—the headmistress gone, and the classrooms abolished, there was no way to continue their lectures.
She mentions that Lilac, Kai, and Calista are on Ilyria now.
I wish I were unsure of why she mentioned Lilac.
“When you were gone,” Wendy whispers, “I started regaining some of my powers—”
I shake my head, and she falls silent. I’m not sure how to speak either, how to say anything amidst this. “I can’t do this.”
“I can feel life force—”
I cut her off. “Wendy—”
“You have to hear it. The dead were drained of their life force.”
I stand, pacing back and forth as I take a deep breath. “Lilac isn’t a killer.”
Lilac is about to ascend to the throne.
Wendy pulls her bottom lip between her teeth, her eyes widening, pity within them. “I didn’t say she was.”
Meeting her gaze, I whisper, voice low and harsh, “You did.”
In everything she failed to say, she told me perfectly well my sister was the culprit.
For a long while, I stare at Wendy, unsure if I want to say what I must. But secrets have gotten me nowhere—and they will get me nowhere with Azaire.
“When Li discovered her powers,” I say, “she told me she could feel them changing her. I thought she was stronger than that.”
“It’s not about strength,” Wendy says, her shoulders dropping. “Power is complicated. But you can still reach her.”
“I have to,” I mutter. “There’s no other choice.” She can’t become another Leiana. The universe couldn’t survive it.
Nor could I.