Chapter 19 #2
I glance down at my arm, where my blood, once a river, is now only a trickle.
“It needs more blood to open fully,” I realize aloud. “They won’t fit through.”
The Golden Son’s jaw tightens. “Do you want to test that theory?”
I don’t answer. I don’t have to.
I seize Ashen’s mane, fingers knotting through the strands. I yank hard.
“Hear me, Ashen! Turn around! Please!”
But the beast does not stop. If anything, he moves faster, drawn to the world within the portal, an unholy pull dragging him forward.
The cries sharpen, rising to a fever pitch, matching the frantic hammering of my heart, the pulse in my throat, the blood pounding through my veins.
Then a white-hot pain rips through my stomach. A scream tears from my throat, raw and jagged, louder than the horrors swarming towards us.
I double over, clutching at my middle as my baby shifts inside me. My skin stretches so tight I think it might tear, veins pulsing beneath the surface.
I grit my teeth, my breath shuddering as I force my eyes open. The portal is closing.
Slowly, like a stitch drawn through fabric, the darkness begins to weave itself shut.
A small mercy.
But then, there’s a hand. Skeletal, wrapped in blackened, withered flesh, the bones straining against their decaying sheath.
It thrusts through the narrowing rift, fingers curling and clawing, desperate to rip the wound in the world even wider.
And behind it, something follows. A figure cloaked in tattered black robes, the fabric snapping in a wind I cannot feel.
Its eyes blaze, twin moons of searing white that cut through the dark, and from its chin, a writhing nest of tentacles, each one twitching in a slow, grotesque rhythm.
Those eyes. They don’t just see me. They see through me. They burrow into my very soul.
Frozen. I can’t move, can’t breathe.
“You,” the thing hisses, its voice a slithering whisper like serpents tangled in the depths of a black pit. It holds the portal open, its other hand stretching impossibly toward me, its fingers curling like the promise of doom.
No. Not toward me. Toward my stomach. My baby.
Fear churns in my veins, and the pressure in my belly intensifies, sharper than ever before. The tiny hands inside me claw, the little feet kicking with such force I fear they’ll tear me apart from the inside. My breath comes in ragged gasps, the pain nearly overwhelming.
The thing’s lips curl into something like a smile, its voice a hiss of hunger as it speaks. “You bring a feast for my master. Meat for the beast.”
“No!” I scream, my voice a desperate cry that cracks through the air. “Daedalus!”
Then, somewhere in the distance, past the roar of my blood pounding in my ears, beyond the monstrous army crashing toward me, beyond the creature still reaching for my baby with its clawed, twisted hands, I hear it.
His voice.
“Amara!”
It cuts through the chaos, a lifeline, a tether in the storm, and for a moment, everything else fades.
My body jerks toward the voice, as if the very threads of my soul, our souls, are being pulled taut, stretching across the darkness to find him. Thin, golden strands shimmer like dust caught in moonlight, weaving through the abyss, parting the shadows as they reach for me.
Tears burn behind my eyes, hot with exhaustion, frustration, and anguish. Please, Souls, do not let this be a trick. Do not let this be another cruel illusion. I could not bear for this to be anything but real.
“Daedalus!”
I lean toward the glowing threads, desperate to meet them, desperate to feel him again.
The darkness yawns beneath me, the void-demon still clawing at the portal’s edges, but I don’t care.
Not anymore. All I care about is him—his hands on my skin, his arms crushing me against his chest, his lips against mine, erasing the nightmare with a single breath.
I don’t even realize I’m falling until the Golden Son’s arms catch me, keeping me from tumbling off Ashen and into the dark.
“What are you doing!” he snaps with disbelief.
“Can you hear it?” I whisper, trembling. “Can you hear him calling my name?”
His silence stretches. He shakes his head at first, resolute, but then, Daedalus’ voice carries through the air again, cutting through the storm of screams and screeches like a blade of pure light.
And the Golden Son flinches.
My breath hitches. My fingers dig into his arm, gripping tight, shaking him. “You hear him! Don’t lie to me! You hear him!”
He swallows, throat bobbing. “Yes, Amara,” he says at last. “I hear him.”
The confirmation almost breaks me.
But before the relief can take hold, agony lances through me, wrenching the breath from my lungs.
My stomach tightens, pain so deep and brutal that my vision swims. A cry rips from my throat as I double over, clutching myself, and through the haze, I see my gown, once soft teal silk, now blooming red.
Blood, seeping down my thighs in thick, trailing rivers.
My hands tremble as I press them to my belly. Souls, no. No. Not my child.
Tears spill freely now, raw and frantic, as I scream his name into the void, pleading, praying.
“Daedalus! Help me! Our baby!”
The world tilts, and I am weightless.
Pain pulses like a second heartbeat, tearing me apart from the inside, but I barely feel it now. My body is slipping, my strength unraveling, yet something—someone—holds me together. A warmth cradles me, steady and firm.
“Amara,” The Golden Son breathes. “Hold on.” His hand comes to my face, his fingers brushing my cheek with a tenderness that eases the pain.
But I can barely think beyond the steady drip of my blood, cooling as it slips from my toes into the dark below.
The air shudders with a scream, a thousand voices tangled into one, and I hear it again. My name. Louder. Closer.
The Golden Son stiffens, his grip on me tightening, desperate to protect me. But I know that voice. I know it in my bones, in my breath, in the places of me that have only ever belonged to him.
Another hand finds me, burning hot, familiar. My body knows before my mind does, my skin waking beneath his touch as though drawn to him even now. My fingers twitch, my heart stutters, and I open my eyes to a storm.
Not the howling dark around us. Not the raging void that waits to devour me whole. His storm.
Gray and violent and endless.
“Wife,” Daedalus whispers, his lips parting, his fury and his relief braided into one.
A small, weak breath escapes me, something close to a laugh, something close to joy. My lips curve, even as the edges of the world blur.
“Husband,” I whisper back.