Chapter 54
KAI
Kai needed to get the hell out of here and find Isla. Immediately.
From the corner of the empty ballroom, he watched Aneurin peering through the stained-glass window as plumes of smoke from pyres of the fallen rose from his city to fill the storm-clouded sky.
He’d felt disgusted watching him tear through the continent, destroying everything he passed and losing the lives of so many wolves. But he was a man with all the power in the world, and nothing had come close to stopping him.
A gift—one that Kai felt in his own soul.
This power, this Goddess-damn curse.
Would he end up just like Aneurin? Corrupted by this… thing, the entire world falling to chaos by his own hand. The power clawed at him from within now, called him to use it, embrace it.
This was what he had to see. Perhaps to understand what he stood to become. He needed to tell Isla, but how could he explain that he was a monster? That it might already be too late, and they would need to find a way to stop him.
“I am me because I am yours. I’m meant to take you, all of you, as what you are.”
Goddess above.
“Darling.” Aneurin turned with the word, sensing Saoirse with the power he’d cast across the entire palace before she’d even crossed the threshold of the ballroom.
Kai straightened from where he’d been leaning against one of the ballroom’s many pillars as Saoirse, beautiful in an amethyst gown, swept into the room, carrying a music box.
Kai had seen Aneurin gift it to her and knew it played the aria from their first dance.
Saoirse wore a diadem—one that looked an awful lot like the diadem.
“You look stunning,” Aneurin said, and Kai didn’t pay attention to what came next because that’s when he saw her.
“Isla!”
He ran to where she kneeled on the floor, barely able to catch her breath, her face splotchy and tear-stained.
“What happened?” he asked, and she peered up at him like she was seeing a ghost. He held her face in his hands and swiped her tears away, but they just kept falling. “Breathe,” he told her as she’d once told him. “It’s okay. We’ll find a way ou—”
“No, it’s not,” she cracked, her body trembling. “It’s not okay.” She turned and sucked in a breath, her eyes widening. “No, no, no.”
Kai turned, seeing that Saoirse had opened the music box and the aria was playing. She wrapped her arms around Aneurin, but though the image of them was loving, the air was tense.
Something was wrong.
“Warrior Heart.”
Now, Kai heard it. That woman’s voice, and when he looked beyond Saoirse and Aneurin, he saw her there. Something about her struck him as familiar.
“Let us out,” Isla whispered, grabbing onto Kai’s shirt and holding him tighter as Saoirse’s hand dropped behind her, back into the folds of her skirts. “Please. I see it. I understand.”
“See what?” Kai asked, his eyes not knowing where to land.
He hadn’t been prepared for Saoirse’s cry or her mighty lunge as she plunged a blade towards Aneurin’s heart.
Hadn’t been prepared as he glimpsed the dagger clutched in her trembling hand, stopped not by Aneurin grabbing her wrist but by his power as it took hold of his mate’s mind.
The world around them pulsed, the ground beneath them shook, and the stained-glass window cracked. Radiating and jagged, the fractures spread, a network of gleaming vines, rivulets of shimmering blood.
Aneurin looked between the blade and his mate—the woman the goddesses had blessed him with. “What is this? Saoirse?”
Isla held Kai tighter, and he wrapped his arms around her, fighting back against the void inside him that attempted to push her away.
“I have to do it,” Saoirse sobbed through gritted teeth, fighting against his hold and her own will. The violin continued its serenade. “I’m the only one who can.”
“What?” Kai breathed and felt Isla shudder.
He met her gaze again. The look in her eyes as tears fell, as she mapped and memorized every plane of his face, shattered him.
Thunder and lightning rattled the skies, making the Pack Hall tremble so violently that Kai had to brace himself.
The diadem glimmered atop her head as Saoirse regained her strength.
“You won't stop. It won't stop.” Her limbs shook as Aneurin’s body locked up as if she had pulled at a leash, pulled at their bond, her link to his power. She seemed to hold him in place as the diadem glowed brighter, and as the dagger burned. Kai could’ve sworn some runes pulsed on the blade, on the hilt.
Aneurin’s eyes were murderous, crimson and shadow, and his hands shook. He’d kill her; Kai felt it within his own power. And Saoirse seemed to see it now, see the monster he was and would be forever.
With tears streaming down her face, she firmed her hold on the dagger and steeled herself. “You will destroy everything unless I… I… I’m sorry.”
With one more cry that rattled the realms, the Luna of Phobos plunged the dagger into her mate’s heart.
Everything stopped.
The world went quiet.
Still.
Saoirse and Aneurin dropped to their knees, the blade driven in to the hilt. The aria came to an end.
Aneurin swayed then slumped onto Saoirse’s shoulder as she sobbed. She laid him down on the marble floor and then folded over him, his blood coating her as she cried over his chest, repeating that she was sorry and that she loved him.
Isla was trembling, holding onto Kai like he’d vanish, and shaking her head. “I won’t do it,” she whispered to him, to Fate. “I won’t.”
As if in answer, thunder crashed, and lightning streaked so brightly it cleaved the room. The world quaked. He felt it break.
Aneurin’s blood began flowing from red to black, darkness leaking from him like ink in water. His power, Kai’s power, spread through the palace floor like vines—veins of rot and destruction.
Kai held Isla, shielded her, when the world exploded. When the floors quaked, the glass shattered, and the hall itself collapsed.
He held her when he lifted his head and beheld his fate, her fate, the reason they’d been bound together, why they’d found each other on that terrace.
Kai still held her when he peered outside, quiet once again.
Quiet because nothing lay beyond but the Wilds.