THIRTY-FIVE #2
Silas stepped forwards and pressed his forehead to hers, eyes closing as he exhaled.
“You’re the only one strong enough to survive what comes next,” he whispered to her. “The world needs you, Amelia. I just need to make sure you make it through.”
She shoved him back with a burst of panicked strength, her eyes wild now, glittering with tears. “Don’t do this. Please, Silas, don’t do this. We can’t have done all this, come all this way, for nothing!”
The chamber seemed to roar around them, the ground shifting beneath their feet as though the magic responded to the rising emotional pitch, the swell of their connection.
Silas stepped closer, taking her hand.
“Amelia, please,” he said, quieter, “let me do this. It’s the only way I know how to protect you.”
But Amelia wasn’t done. Her voice shook, fierce and raw. “You don’t get to choose that for me. You don’t get to leave me.”
“Enough,” Demetrius said impatiently. They kept their eyes on each other, ignoring him. “Do it now.”
She stared at him, and the pain in her chest felt like it would tear her in half. “We can still find a way,” she said, voice shaky.
Silas hesitated, his hands trembling.
Then he looked at her, truly looked, and his expression crumbled.
“Amelia…”
The magic thrummed louder, sensing that a decision had been made.
“Together,” she whispered, pleaded.
But she could see it in his eyes, heart-wrenching sorrow, and resignation.
Amelia couldn’t let it happen. She could talk him out of it, she knew she could. “Silas…”
“No,” he said at once, firmly. The blue of his eyes shuttered, and he looked away from her, a torrent wind whipping through the chamber and lifting the hair around her shoulders.
“I’m so sorry, Amelia…” His voice hitched, his chest rising on a hurried, gulping inhale.
“As selfish as it makes me, I can’t risk you . ”
She lifted her chin. “You can’t turn your back on everything we’ve worked for.”
His eyes raised, meeting hers, and the anguish in his broke her heart.
“I’m so sorry…” he said again, voice wavering. “I can’t...but I have to.”
She grasped his hand firmly and he almost flinched as they connected, pain flashing across his eyes. “Silas, please—”
“ Domare .”
Her eyes blinked, registering for only a scant second what had happened, what he had done.
Betrayal .
The word squeezed at her heart in that small moment she was still herself.
And then, she was gone, sinking into oblivion as the runes on her back activated.
The world around him shook.
Not because of the Rift, the magic, or the wind beating at him.
No.
The ground felt unstable beneath his feet, his world rocking irrevocably as if it would never be the same.
And he knew, with certainty, that it wouldn’t.
The moment he had said the activation word, he had seen it in her eyes. The utter shock, the treachery, the heartbreak.
But worst of all, were the moments that followed. The glazing over of her eyes, the dullness that entered those dark brown irises as though Amelia had been leeched out of her entirely. Her face relaxed into complete complacency, and now she just looked at him. Expectant. Waiting. Obedient .
Silas wanted to be sick.
His stomach roiled with the decision, with breaking her trust so hideously.
But he was saving her, and he knew it deep inside of his heart. There was no getting out of this for him. It was his fate to be the sacrifice.
She would never have understood, he tried to tell himself as he sunk to one knee as though his legs simply wouldn’t hold him any longer. He looked up at her blank expression, feeling ill with it.
After a moment to gather himself, he raised himself up once more and cleared the emotion from his throat. He looked at Demetrius.
The Sanctum leader glanced between them, looking at Amelia. “What is it you’ve done?” he asked, curiosity tinging his voice. “How did you…”
“We do the original ritual,” Silas said, cutting Demetrius off and focusing on Amelia, letting the order flow into her.
She blinked at him slowly, and her lips parted only a fraction as she said dully, “yes.”
His eyes fell shut at the tone of her voice, so lifeless. He forced himself to look at her again, to see what he had done, the terrible choice he had made.
“Do you remember it in its entirety?”
“Yes.”
He pulled in a deep breath and turned away. “Come,” he said, placing her on one side of the pedestal while he moved for the other, standing opposite her.
Silas glanced again at Demetrius, who still looked curiously between them before giving an encouraging nod to start. “If I catch you trying to be clever, she dies.”
He seethed before looking back to her, hating the blank expression.
His soul trembled with it, knowing that when he was gone, when she woke from this state of compliance, that she would never forgive him for his choice. That she would spend the rest of her days hating him.
But she would live. And the world and magical balance will be restored.
His life was not worth jeopardising that, and it was something she would have to understand one day.
At least, he hoped she would. He hoped she would manage to find peace, knowing that it had been his choice.
Silas let his brain think of nothing but the words he would need to say, knowing that if he let his mind stray, he would comprehend these were his final moments, that he was about to leave the world before he had even begun to truly live in it.
He looked at Amelia, standing with perfect obedience, waiting for him.
He stared into her eyes, wishing for peace in her being the last thing he saw before he disappeared, but there was no clarity or peace to be found.
Not in dark eyes that held no life, no spark that was so innately Amelia.
She was not her , not after what he had done.
And he would need to live and die on that choice.
He cleared his throat. “Alright,” he said, voice shaking even as he tried to be strong, “we begin.”
Amelia nodded her head and opened her mouth.
His heart leapt into his throat.
The ritual began.
The words spilled from Amelia’s mouth, ancient and melodic, pulled from her against her will. Silas joined in immediately, reciting the words from Bane’s journal.
The ground shook, dust falling from the ceiling as they spoke, their eyes fixated on one another.
The air itself trembled as the magic around them swelled.
A purplish light flickered around them, growing thicker as they progressed through the ancient language in perfect sequence.
Then before he knew it, the time was upon him.
Don’t think.
Just do.
But he hesitated. This next part would take him.
He would be gone, and he would never look at her face again.
“Do it,” Demetrius’ voice commanded from somewhere outside of the magical maelstrom.
Swallowing, Silas reached across the pedestal and Amelia took his hand automatically, no emotion, nothing on her face.
Amelia’s magic surged around them, the air bleeding with a violet light.
There was no hesitation from her, using her siphoning ability to draw the magic from him as the ritual dictated. They kept speaking, reciting the binding incantation, the one of consuming, of connection.
The air around them roared to life.
Silas felt the energy being drawn from him as her magic tore itself through his system. His soul pulled at the seams, stretching, reaching towards something else.
A tear in the fabric of the air rippled before him, shadows pouring from it like ghostly hands reaching for him. Silas’ vision blurred and his hand shook in Amelia’s grasp.
It was almost over.
He had almost done it, saved her, saved everyone.
He could die, knowing these things.
Silas would be gone, but Amelia would remain, safe.
He watched with the last of his energy as the dark tendrils of hair flew around her head, the brown of her eyes watching him as she drew his spirit from his body.
“ Live ,” he choked out. “Don’t stop being the storm, Amelia. I beg you.”
She didn’t even blink at the words, her magic pulling the last of him into herself, completing the ritual in another few short seconds.
“Amelia, I lo—”
The shadows exploded around him, and he thinks he pulled in one final breath, he couldn’t be sure, because in the next moment, he was swallowed whole, and the darkness took him.