30. Chapter Thirty
CHAPTER THIRTY
AGGONID
T he reapers' arrival shatters something within this accursed place. A surge sweeps through the realm—a subtle shift that feels like a breath being released after an eternity. I can taste it—power, potent and sudden. It pulses around me, slithering through the fractures, a crack in the magical suppression. I seize it without hesitation, feeling the dark energy swell inside me like a long-lost part of myself.
Rook, leader of the Gravewoken, spots me immediately. Whatever rift they create when teleporting in isn’t bound by the realm’s constraints, so as long as this crack is open, I have access to my magic.
It’s all the time I’ll need.
The cuffs clamped around my wrists shatter, disintegrating into ash. It takes a heartbeat for the magic to flood me—an ancient force, the kind that makes lesser beings tremble, the kind that the living fear and the dead revere. It’s the power of a god, and now, it's mine again.
I rise, rage threading every inch of my body, but it’s tempered now—not blinding, but deadly cold. My scrutiny fixes on Valtorious, his hands still reaching for Morte, her body shivering beneath his grasp, her haunted eyes wide as she stares at the reapers.
The king doesn't even see me coming .
“Don’t you dare leave without us,” I snarl at the Gravewoken as I launch myself across the cavern.
Magic flares in my palm—dark tendrils of energy coiling, seething, itching to consume. The king turns, just in time for his eyes to widen in shock. My fist drives into his chest, the power splintering outwards, the impact crushing bone, blood spilling over my knuckles.
I hold his heart in my grip as I slowly climb onto the bed to tower over him, my shadows pooling around his feet and crawling up his legs.
“Just what did you think you were doing with my mate ?” I hiss, the words a guttural growl. The king’s mouth opens and closes, blood bubbling from his lips as he tries to form words. His eyes dart frantically between my face and his own chest, where my hand is still buried. He can’t move on account of my shadows lassoing his wrists and ankles.
“P-pl-please,” he chokes out.
I can feel the rapid thumping against my fingers as I reach out my other hand and extend it to Morte. Using my shadows to help her rise, she takes it.
“H-he was under his spell.” Morte weeps.
I guide her trembling fingers into Ollin’s chest cavity, wrapping them around the king’s still-beating heart. “Who was under what spell?” I bring my eyes right to her level.
“Az,” she cries. “He was under a blood oath to his father since childhood!” Sobs wrack her entire frame.
That’s why he could betray her. Betray us. Grief sears through the rage in me as I use my shadows to cradle her tear-soaked face, and I bring my lips to her ear.
“He sought to take what belongs to you,” I whisper, pressing my lips to her temple. “Your magic. Your realm.” My shadows caress the angry black X on her chest as I wrap my arm around her waist. “Your mates.” My shadows tilt her chin to look at me. Silver lines her blue-green eyes as tears spill down her cheeks. “Each heartbeat of his is borrowed time. He feared your light, yet sought to cage it. Show him what happens when a phoenix chooses her own destruction—and his. ”
Morte’s fingers clench tighter around Ollin’s heart, and a tremor ripples through the king’s body. His eyes, wild with disbelief, meet mine, the arrogant gleam fading into a raw, helpless terror. My shadows swell, twisting through the chamber, holding back his guards as they lurch forward, weapons drawn but instantly lost to the darkness. Their cries are muffled, swallowed by the living void, and silence falls—absolute and unbroken save for the erratic beat of the king’s heart in her grasp.
I take great pleasure in knowing the god’s council will have no problem with her ridding the realms of this tyrant whose power has gone unchecked for too long.
His mouth opens in a soundless gasp of protest—and then as she twists, my magic tears through him, ripping out everything he is. Shadows coil around her wrists like obsidian chains, anchoring her as the last dregs of his strength slip from his heart. Her brows draw together, and her lips part as if caught between a scream and a sob, but no sound escapes. With a final, feral curl of her hand, she squeezes, her face contorting into an expression of a power and rage honed by loss and love. It isn’t hesitation, nor regret—it’s the final answer to everything taken from her.
His body crumples, lifeless, the expression frozen on his face one of disbelief. It’s almost laughable—this arrogant bastard, thinking he could best us. Best her.
The guards don't fare any better. They rush forward—desperation painting their features—but I’m done playing games. With a flick of my wrist, the room pulses, and the temperature rises.
The air shimmers with heat, and the guards' screams pierce the silence as they burst into flames, their bodies crumbling to ash before they hit the ground. Morte stands motionless, Ollin's heart still clutched in her trembling hand, her eyes fixed on the suppression cuffs now lying open at her feet.
Her attention catches on her chest. Bloody, trembling fingers drop the king’s heart onto the bed, and she places them against the X emblazoned there as Valtorious’s body slumps into a heap .
“W-wh-what does this mean?” Her head snaps up. “I-I’ve never seen it before. Was I cursed?”
I sink to my knees in front of her, cradling her hands in mine. “It means,” a cavern opens in my chest as I press my lips to her hands, agony coursing through me at having to hurt her, “a mating bond has been severed.” My shadows tighten around us. “Azazel,” I snarl.
Her eyes shutter and she lets out a sob. “Where is he?”
She must be in shock. I know she felt the moment their bond snapped because I felt it, too, saw with her own eyes where her mate lay motionless on the cave floor.
I hesitate, unsure how to answer as I pull her into my arms, her grief and sorrow too much for her to stand. The truth could shatter her, but lies would only delay the inevitable. "Morte," I begin, my words only for her ears, "Azazel is ...” I hesitate. “He’s gone. His final death."
After betraying her, and then severing their bond, he’s lucky I didn’t get my hands on him first. But I’m glad I didn’t, because now I know why he did what he did.
“He’s over here,” Caius croaks from behind us.
Morte, still naked, scrambles out of my arms and off the bed, stumbling towards the corner of the cavern. I follow close behind, meeting Emeric and Caius where Azazel’s body lies crumpled against the far wall, his once-handsome face twisted in agony, skin ashen and eyes unseeing.
The reapers, in all their unholy glory, stand sentinel nearby as they wait for my go-ahead to collect Wilder’s soul. My throat tightens as I watch them linger, as though even death itself hesitates to claim him. A part of me wants to snarl, to send them scattering into the void for daring to touch one of ours, but I know this is what Wilder wanted—what he chose. They’ve seen it all—sacrifices, betrayals, and everything in between—but Wilder’s decision carries a weight that even they can’t ignore.
Still, it doesn’t sit right. I should be relieved, even glad, knowing Wilder will be with us again in the underworld, where he belongs. But all I can think about is the sacrifice—the life he gave up for us, for her. The sheer unfairness of it twists through me. He should’ve had more time. He deserved more time. They deserved more time. To just be in the fae realm together.
The ache is sharper than I expect, grief and pride tangled in a knot I can’t undo. Wilder—damn him—always saw the bigger picture, always knew when to act. He didn’t flinch, didn’t hesitate, even when it meant giving up the life he had back in the fae realm. It’s proof of what we all are to her: pieces of a whole, willing to burn ourselves down if it means she’ll survive.
My shadows cushion Morte’s fall as she crashes to her knees, a keening unlike anything I’ve ever heard coming from her lips, more animal than fae. She cradles Azazel’s head in her lap, shrieking for me to do something.
The agony in her words pierces me—but there’s no time to let it sink in. I cross the distance between us in two strides, my fingers brushing her face, trying to ground her, to pull her back from the edge.
I crouch beside her, hand on her shoulder. “I’m so sorry, love. He’s gone.”
She whips her head around, eyes wild with grief and desperation. “No! You’re the god of the underworld!” Her words are frantic as she pours healing magic into him, a soft glow at her hands placed on his X-marked chest.
“More metal than fae,” Emeric whispers, more to himself than anything. “He died when he severed the only good thing keeping him alive.”
Her anguished cries echo through the cavern, each one a dagger to my heart. But I know there's nothing I can do. Azazel is already gone. Because he’s already died once, that’s it.
The final death.
“We’ll figure out a new path forward,” I promise. A promise I will carve into the fabric of the universe if I have to. My magic flexes from the pressure in the room, and I glance at the Gravewoken, who still wait to do their job. “Right now, we need to get out of here. ”
“Wilder, he has healing magic, where is he?” She frantically looks around, then takes in his body near the wall.
A wild shriek tears from her throat, the sound piercing the air, raw and primal, agonized enough to strip the marrow from my bones. Her hands shake, clawing at the empty space in front of her as though she can pull them back, rewrite what’s already done. Morte’s eyes dart between Azazel and Wilder, her mind refusing to accept the reality before her. I can see—and feel—the moment something inside her shatters.
Her grief crashes through the bond, a broken kind of sorrow that steals my breath. It surges into me, dragging me under like a wave I cannot fight.
“N-no n-no, no, no!” she wails, the words rip from her, broken, fraying at the edges. She crumples, clutching at nothing, at everything, as if she can will them back through sheer desperation.
The agony twists in me, her despair clawing at the walls of my mind, shredding my senses. My soul buckles under the weight of it. I stumble forward, hands outstretched, but a flicker of orange curls along her fingertips—embers born of an agony so deep, so embedded into the core of her being.
“Morte!” I cry out, but the flames erupt, engulfing her in an inferno that lights the entire chamber. It burns with a fury I cannot reach through. I double over, choking on the bond that still holds, still thrums between us—her agony, her despair, her fire—pouring into me.
Her grief is mine. Her death, mine.
It tears through me, wrenching a sound from my throat that I barely recognize. My knees hit the stone floor, my palms pressed against the surface as the fire rages. I feel everything. The moment her heart stops, the breath pulled from her lungs, the stillness—horrible, unnatural stillness—before the bond flares, pulling taut.
The flames collapse in on themselves, a vacuum snuffing the blaze as quickly as it began. Smoke curls across the stones, and there—through the haze—she lies, reformed. Her body still smolders, the ash of her death drifting like a cruel veil, smoke trailing from her skin like tendrils of mourning.
I drag myself forward, chest heaving, every muscle trembling from the force of what I just felt. I clutch her hand, her skin hot beneath mine, her presence still a fragile hum through the bond.
“Morte,” I rasp, my voice worn, my heart threatening to shatter again.
Emeric crouches between her and her view of the wall. “He saved us by killing himself. Wilder will be alright, the reapers are here to collect his soul right now. Why don’t we let them bring us back to the underworld so you can see him, okay?”
Morte's eyes, glassy with tears, fasten on Emeric's. For a moment, a flash of hope sparks within them. But then her attention drifts back to Azazel's lifeless form, and that flame extinguishes.
"I-I-I can't leave him,” she chokes out, her fingers curling into Az’s blood-soaked shirt. “I won’t.”
I exchange a pained glance with Caius. We both know the rift the Gravewoken created won’t be stable for much longer.
With a single nod, Caius scoops Azazel into his arms, his head lolling to the side while Caius’s tail caresses Morte’s cheek. “We’ll bring him with, okay?”
I bend down, scooping her into my arms, her weight barely registering as she curls into me. Her fingers clutch at my shirt, her face buried against my shoulder. I feel her tears, hot against my skin, her body wracked with silent sobs as I stalk towards the reapers, Rook already getting to work on Wilder’s soul. Morte doesn’t need to witness that process. It’ll haunt her.
The power surges, and the cave blurs around us, the stone walls melting away as the Gravewoken sift us from this wretched place. The last thing I see before we vanish is the bloodied form of Valtorious, his eyes still open, staring blankly at nothing. A fitting end for a king who dared to think he could take what was ours.