Chapter 47
Daed
Before her. The storm is alive.
It screams as it tears across the cliffs, battering the black fortress of Baev’kalath until even the stones tremble beneath its fury.
Waves crash against the sheer walls, spray bursting high enough to soak the battlements.
The rain is relentless. It pours down my hair, over my eyes, through the seams of my leathers, filling my boots until the cold is bone-deep.
Before me, a Fae warrior kneels. Filth and rain streak his face, his hands clasp together in supplication. His shoulders tremble, not from the cold, but from the weight of his shame.
“Forgive me, Rook,” he pleads, voice hoarse against the wind. “I was weak. I should not have been tempted.”
I tighten my grip on Death Singer. The storm hisses across the blade, rain running down the steel like blood. My reflection wavers in the violet jewel at its hilt.
“You want forgiveness?” My voice cuts through the tempest. “You should have saved me the trouble and done this yourself. You’ve brought shame to your House, to your king… to yourself.”
His chin lifts, just enough for me to see his eyes. “I can’t fight this war anymore. I’m tired, Rook. Of the bloodshed. Of the screams. They haunt me.” His breath shudders. “Forgive me.”
I step closer, Death Singer angled toward the ground. The rain stings my cheeks like needles.
“I can’t give you forgiveness,” I tell him quietly. “But I can give you peace. From the voices. From the pain.”
He closes his eyes, lips parting in something between a prayer and a sob.
“Go well into the void, Blade.”
Death Singer sings once. The blade cleaves through rain and flesh alike. His head strikes the stone. His body topples over the railing, vanishing into the churning sea below.
Then, from above me, a gasp breaks the silence.
My head snaps upward. Through the storm, through the torrent, she stands on the balcony. The wind tangles her brown hair around her face, rain clinging to her lashes. Her eyes meet mine, wide as the dawn.
Amara Tyne.
The world stills. The roar of the storm fades into nothing and then I see it, the shimmer of golden threads spinning through the air, weaving from my chest to hers. The Binds of Fate.
They glimmer like sunlight through rain and I feel them tighten around my ribs until I can barely draw breath.
I never wanted it to come to this.
You were never supposed to be here.
I tried to stay away. Harder than I’ve ever tried for anything. But I am nothing before the will of fate.
We are its puppets, you and I. Our story was etched into our souls long before this world was born.
And still, I will try to save you.
From this place. From me.
I will make you hate me, Amara Tyne. Hate me until the mere sound of my name burns your throat.
Hate me until you turn and never look back.
Because that is the only way you will live.
So when I am cruel, when I taunt you and break you, when I become every monster whispered about in frightened tongues, know this.
That I love you.
With every cursed breath.
With every damned heartbeat.
Until the end of this life and all others.
I love you, Amara Tyne.
***
After her. The temple trembles as Gygarth moves.A god of smoke and bone and shadow, his form fills the world, every writhing tentacle a mountain, every breath a hurricane. The air is poison, thick and burning in my lungs, and still I charge.
“Together!” I shout.
Amara’s hand finds mine for a heartbeat, a spark of life that burns even in this place of death.
Then she tears away, green fire erupting from her palms. It arcs through the darkness, slamming into Gygarth’s chest, the explosion blinding, shaking the foundations of the temple.
Vines burst from the scorched stone, coiling up the monster’s limbs, thorns digging deep.
He laughs.
The sound is hollow thunder that crawls inside my skull. The vines shrivel to ash before they even finish blooming, their life devoured, absorbed. Amara stumbles, clutching her chest, as if he’s drinking straight from her veins.
The ground splinters. A dozen tentacles surge upward like towers, lashing through the battlefield.
Zyphoro is the first to answer, wings bursting as she soars high, twin daggers gleaming. She dives, slicing through tendons and shadow, each strike a blur of light.
Below her, Orios bellows, charging through the ash.
He grips two tentacles in his massive hands, veins bulging, muscles straining, and rips them apart with a wet, shuddering crack.
Black ichor spills across his armor, burning through the metal, but he doesn’t stop.
Solena fights at his side, her blade hacking at tendrils of smoke, weaving as they slam against the ground, too slow to catch her, until luck runs out.
A tentacle whips through the air and catches her full across the face.
Blood sprays. She screams just before another strike sends her tumbling down the stairs.
Orios roars. His wings explode as he launches himself into the air. He dives, catches her mid-fall, folding his body around hers as they hit the stone. The impact shakes the stairs, and still he takes the brunt of it, shielding her with his wings.
Reon rushes forward, fury burning bright in his hazel eyes. His sword flares gold as he thrusts it toward the advancing tentacles. Time shudders, the world flickering and stalling, freezing one, two, three of the monstrous limbs mid-strike.
But Gygarth is too vast, too ancient to be slowed.
His other limbs surge through the cracks of time, moving faster than Reon can draw breath.
A spike of shadow pierces his abdomen, lifting him from the ground before flinging him aside.
He crashes against the temple wall, leaving a smear of blood as he slides to the floor.
“Reon!” Amara cries, but there’s no time.
Another tentacle whips toward her, faster than I can move.
Ronin moves instead.
He lunges between her and the strike, sword flashing, deflecting one blow before another coils around him. The pressure is immediate and unbearable. His armor creaks, then cracks, the sound a sickening symphony of breaking bone and splintering steel.
He gasps, blood spraying from his lips as the demon crushes him. Then Gygarth drops him like refuse, his body slamming against the stone with a thud that silences even the storm.
Zyphoro drops beside me, one wing dragging, feathers torn and dripping shadow.
Amara stumbles to my other side, green fire guttering weakly in her trembling hands.
Together we stand amid ruin. Our friends broken, our strength bleeding from us as Gygarth looms above, his writhing limbs blotting out what remains of the sky.
Zyphoro spits blood. “This is impossible. He is death itself. He has no weakness. He cannot be killed.” Her eyes flicker, mind grasping at anything. “Emranth. He could not die either, but you caged him.”
I shake my head. “Emranth was not a god,” I say quietly. “He was not pure death.” I force Zyphoro to meet my eyes. “To consume Gygarth is to die, sister.”
Her gaze cuts between Gygarth, then me, then Amara.
“Did you not hear me?” I snap.
“I heard you,” she whispers. “To consume Gygarth is to die.”
Then she punches me hard, stars bursting behind my eyes as I stumble. “But a cage does not need to live,” she snarls, “it only needs to hold.”
And then she launches herself into the sky, faster than I have ever seen her fly, even with one broken wing. A streak of black hair, a comet of fury and sacrifice, arrowing toward the monster that destroyed our world.
Amara grips my hand, voice shaking. “She won’t survive.”
“I know.” My voice is ash. “It’s suicide.”
I look at my wife. At the woman I bled for, burned for, would kill gods for. I memorize her one last time.
She catches my stare. “What?” confusion tightening her brow.
“I love you,” I murmur.
Realization hits her. “Daedalus… no.”
“Zyphoro is right. He cannot be killed. This is the only way we save Estra. The only way we end him.”
“There has to be another way,” she begs, voice cracking, tears streaking dirt and blood on her cheeks.
“No.” My voice is steady now. “I will not let my sister suffer for me. Not again.”
Before she can scream another word, I cup her face and kiss her, leaving every breath I won’t get to take, every word I’ll never speak, every future I will not see, upon her lips.
She trembles against me. I let her go.
The void rips open at my call. Darkness claws across my skin as I step through, reappearing in the air before Zyphoro. Her eyes widen in shock, wings flaring as she jerks to stop before colliding.
“What are you doing?” she roars. “Move!”
“No.” I plant myself in her path. “You cannot do this.”
“I didn’t ask you!” she snaps, rage shaking her frame. “Don’t you see? This is the only way. Then you will be free. Your family will be free.”
I meet her gaze. Twin storms, twin sacrifices and finally, softly.
“I know.”
I draw in a long breath. A strange lightness fills me, like air before dawn.
“Zyphoro.” Her name trembles on my tongue. My fingers move to the moonstone at my neck. I tear the cord free and fling it toward her. She catches it on instinct, confusion flashing across her face.
“Now we are even.”
Her brow tightens. “Daed…”
I do not let her finish. Shadow rises at my call, a whip of smoke snapping toward her. It coils around her body, binding her arms, winding again and again until she cannot lift a finger. Her wings falter, and she plummets toward the earth screaming my name.
I watch as she falls, as the ground rushes up to claim her. At the last breath I catch her descent, slowing it so she crumples rather than breaks. But I do not free her. If I release her now she will rise again, furious and relentless. Infuriating, stubborn sister of mine.
She would follow me into death without hesitation.
So I must leave her behind to live.
For a moment I hover, breath shaking, fingers tingling like they are waking or dying. I do not know which.
Then I turn away.
I spread my wings, pin them back tight against the wind, and take the path my sister meant to fly.
The one she will not die for.
The one I will.
I turn to face Gygarth. All my life he has haunted me. Controlled me. Made me his weapon. His shadow. His mirror and yet, now that I stand before him, ready to end this, ready to take him into the dark with me. I feel no hatred.
Because when I fall, I will take the Father Below with me, and the world, and everyone I love will finally be free.
I soar high, wings cutting through smoke. Gygarth lashes his tentacles at me, the air screaming with every strike. I summon a shard of shadow. It spears through one tendril and pins it to a crumbling column of the temple. Another comes. Then another.
I throw more shards of darkness, each one sharper, more lethal than the last. They sear through Gygarth’s flesh until the god howls, black ichor spilling across the stone like spilled night.
His voice follows, not from his mouth, but inside my skull, a thousand whispers layered as one.
“Favored son. Little prince. I command you. Kneel and serve me!”
My jaw tightens. Wings flare wide. Every muscle in me trembles with the pressure of his command. But I do not kneel. I do not bow. I hurl another shard and another until the air fills with them.
He roars once more, summoning the remnants of his army, the twisted demons still crawling through the ruins, but below me, Amara and Zyphoro meet them. Green fire and daggers of smoke and shadow.
“Kneel!” he booms.
But he cannot control me. Not anymore.
Because I have given myself to her completely.
To the light that burns brighter than death.
To the only soul I will ever kneel before again.
She is my queen, and I will love her until the stars burn out.
I open my mouth, close my eyes, and inhale.
At first, it’s only smoke, thin tendrils curling down my throat. But then it grows heavier, darker, thicker, until it’s pouring into me in torrents. I drag Gygarth into myself one wisp at a time, swallowing his essence, his power. I feel him inside me.
The god. The void. The death that was never meant to be contained.
I have never seen fear in his single eye. Only hate. Only malice. But today… he is afraid.
“Enough, Daedalus!” he booms, his voice as frayed as his form. “Stop this now and we can rule together! I will give you everything you have ever desired and wonders you have not even dared to dream!”
I look at him, a strange calm settling over me. “You have nothing I want.”
He roars as his very essence floods my veins, burns through my skull, claws at my insides.
His poison spreads, his rot devouring what’s left of me.
I glance at my hands and watch my veins turn black, branching beneath my skin like roots in dead soil.
The corruption creeps higher, painting me in shadow.
Tears spill from my eyes, hot and stinging and when I touch them, they come away thick and dark as demon blood.
My wings falter. The shadow in them flickers, thinning, fraying at the edges. My body is breaking under the weight of the god I’m consuming, but I don’t stop. I cannot stop.
I draw the last of him in. Every drop of unholy power until that single eye closes and Gygarth is gone.
Vanished.
Devoured.
The voice in my head finally silenced.
Meat for the beast.
My mouth closes with a snap that echoes through the ruin.
I feel so cold.
My wings collapse, my body plummets. I fall through the stillness, through the ash and the smoke, through the fading echoes of a god’s death.
When I hit the temple floor, the sound cracks the air.
Pain surges, then nothing and just before darkness claims me, I swear I hear her. Estra.
Her laughter, soft and bright.
Then darkness.