Chapter 60 #2
“I’m sorry,” Rain said quietly, running a shaking hand through his hair as he stepped back. “I didn’t mean to take my frustrations out on you.”
He swallowed hard. “But I can’t leave. I can’t walk away knowing Snow is facing Drazier. I’d never forgive myself if something happened to her and I wasn’t there to prevent it.”
His chest tightened with guilt. The weight of responsibility pressed down on him; crushing, suffocating.
Jay and Jacklynn didn’t belong here. This battlefield, this war, this legacy; none of it was meant to touch them.
Yet here they were, terrified and loyal, dragged into a conflict far beyond anything they’d ever asked for
For a fleeting moment, Rain wished he could undo it all. Rewind time. Shield Jay from the consequences of loving him. Give them back the ordinary lives they deserved.
But the cold air thrummed with urgency. Snow was in danger. The threat was closing in. And the consequences of his choices were already spiralling far beyond this moment.
Rain drew a shaky breath, steadied himself, and made the only decision he could live with.
“We go back,” Rain said at last. “I promise to protect you—both of you—with my life. But I have no choice. Let’s move.”
Jacklynn yanked Jay behind her, fear sharpening into defiant courage.
“You’re insane. We can’t go back there—they’ll kill us all.” Her voice trembled, but she stood her ground. “Leave us if you must, but we’re not going back.”
Rain’s patience snapped.
“I don’t have time to argue. If you want to stay, then stay. But Jay is coming with me—even if I have to throw him over my shoulder and carry him kicking and screaming up this mountain. I can’t bear the thought of anything happening to him either.”
He stepped closer, voice dropping into something cold and lethal.
“Stop being stupid, trust that I know what I’m doing, and get your ass moving. Hate me, wish me dead—I don’t care. But if your resistance delays us any longer and something happens to my sister… then you will have every reason to fear me.”
Both Jacklynn and Jay gasped, startled by the threat but they moved. Reluctantly, stiffly, but they moved.
Jay huffed as he fell into step beside Rain, his energy a tangle of dread and irritation.
“I can’t believe you just threatened my mum.”
Rain shot him an amused glance. Of all the things Jay could be upset about, that was the one he chose.
“Lives are at stake. I said what needed to be said. You know I would never hurt her.”
Jay’s shoulders loosened, though uncertainty still lingered. Rain didn’t blame him — emotions were running high, and there were too many unanswered questions between them.
“Rain,” Jay said cautiously, edging closer as they trekked over frost-covered ground. “I didn’t know Wren was talking to anyone. Not until they ambushed me at dinner on Verday.”
“I know,” Rain replied simply.
“I mean it. I had no idea. I feel so stupid—because it all makes sense now. How she suddenly started putting doubts in my head, pressuring me to break up with you. I thought she was being a good friend. I didn’t know.
” His voice cracked with desperation; terrified Rain might believe he’d been complicit.
“I know you didn’t know,” Rain said, meeting his gaze. “And trust me—I made sure of it. It would have destroyed me if you’d betrayed me like that. Because I know you and I trust you more than I trust myself.”
He softened, voice dipping into something raw.
“Rouge…you’re one of the good ones. I swear the fabric of time itself would crumble if you ever turned against the people you love.”
Jay’s cheeks flushed – a faint warmth beneath frost touched skin. Rain felt it more than he saw it.
Jacklynn, catching them in another intimate moment, cut in with a hesitant curiosity.
“How long were you two dating?”
A simple question. Innocent. A mother wishing to understand her son’s secret relationship. But it hit Rain like a blade.
Because the truth was brutal: their relationship had been brief, fragile, overshadowed by chaos.
As Rain considered the question, he realised that their relationship was really over and that he had already begun grieving it; accepting that whatever they’d had was slipping away.
Jay was right. He’d clung to the hope of something real, something worth the risk…
but duty had always been waiting to tear it apart.
As much as he wanted to hold onto what they had, Rain saw now that their time together, however meaningful, had been brief; a fragile moment caught between duty and desire.
Before either of them could answer, gunfire cracked through the air ahead. Shouts followed; then a roaring gale swallowed everything.
Rain’s instincts surged. He grabbed Jay’s arm, senses flaring as he reached for the battlefield energies, searching desperately for Snow and Drazier. They were close to each other; too close.
“Hold hands!” he commanded. “Stay behind me at all times. I’m sorry for what you’re about to witness but this is war, and war is brutal.”
They linked hands, grim and pale. Rain tugged them forward, shielding them from the violent winds as they trudged into the clearing. Snow crunched beneath their boots, ankle-deep and thickening by the second.
The battlefield had shifted left, leaving them behind the main clash. The Shadow Guard fought uphill, disadvantaged and rapidly overwhelmed. The pyroforged aetherial pressed hard, coordinated, relentless; closing in on Snow.
Rage detonated inside Rain.
He released Jay’s hand and stormed into the fray, fury propelling him straight toward the exposed backs of the red guard. Jay and Jacklynn followed, terrified but obedient.
Rain drew a shaky breath and whispered, “Don’t hate me.” A plea to Jay, though he wouldn’t hear it over the wind and gunfire.
The words were heavy; soaked in regret, self-loathing, and inevitability.
Rain didn’t want to kill. He never had.
But war demanded cruelty.
And to protect the people he loved, he would become whatever the moment required.
Even if it destroyed him.
It cut Rain deeply that Jay; one of the few people who had ever seen him as anything other than a harbinger of death and destruction, would have to witness the darkness he was about to unleash.
Rain had stumbled into their relationship heart first, disarmed by Jay’s warmth, his softness, the quiet safety he radiated without even trying.
Jay had made him feel seen in a way Rain had never allowed himself to imagine, let alone believe he deserved.
Rain hadn’t thought about logistics or consequences; he had simply given in to the ache for companionship, letting them both pretend he could be something gentler than what he truly was.
Jay saw him through rose-tinted glass; saw the man Rain wished he could be, not the one he had been forged into.
But Rain had always known this moment would come. The day Jay would see the truth. The day the illusion would crack. The day Rain’s shadows would spill out in full, merciless force.
He wasn’t gentle.
He wasn’t kind.
He wasn’t selfless or forgiving.
He was karma.
He was justice.
He was the nightmare whispered about in enemy camps.
With one final glance at him—a silent apology, a plea for understanding, a farewell to the version of himself Jay loved—Rain steeled his heart. He let the warmth drain from his spirit, let the coldness rise, let the part of him built for war take the reins.
Because this act, however repugnant, was the only way to protect the people he loved.
The air thickened with terrifying malice as he released his power.
With a predatory glare fixed on the backs of his enemy, he began snapping necks.
The twitch off his head was the only indication that it was him orchestrating the massacre.
His piercing gaze jotting from one victim to the next as their heads jerked into unnatural twists.
Twenty soldiers fell to their death before others began to notice.
Rain smirked cruelly as the soldiers spun their weapons toward him, exactly as he’d anticipated.
Jay and Jacklynn gasped, clinging to each other as the first shots rang out.
Rain didn’t even flinch. With a flick of his will, he seized the trajectory of every bullet and sent them arcing back toward their sources.
The sudden reversal shattered the formation, shouts erupted, panic rippled through the ranks, and the remaining troops faltered.
Chaos erupted.
“The Blue prince—he’s here!” someone screamed.
Half the unit fled into the trees, abandoning their posts in terror. The others stumbled backward toward Snow and the Shadow Guard, desperate to regroup.
Rain advanced without hesitation, moving through the aftermath, stepping over the fallen as though they were nothing more than uneven ground. Jay and Jacklynn struggled behind him, stumbling, breath hitching as they tried to keep pace through the blood curdled snow and the remnants of the skirmish.
Rain felt Drazier’s energy signature tearing away into the distance; fleeing, scrambling, running like the coward he was.
Rain took a few steps in that direction, ready to pursue, but a sudden spike of adrenaline flared through Snow’s aura, sharp and urgent.
It yanked him toward her like a hook in his chest.
Drazier could run.
He could buy himself a little more time.
But he could not escape fate.
Rain would catch up with him eventually.
But Snow needed him now.
The snow deepened as they followed the carved-out path left by fleeing soldiers. Frosted mounds rose on either side, the terrain shaped by Snow’s earlier power. They rounded a bend and there she was.
Snow fought alone, locked in combat with two pyro-forged Reds, her breath misting in the frigid air, her stance unwavering.
Rain turned to Jay and Jacklynn. Their faces were pale, wide-eyed, mirroring the terror of the battlefield around them. He softened his expression deliberately, trying to look less like the force of nature he had just unleashed.