Chapter 58
“Elodie, please, don’t,” Will whispered.
Until he had descended into this hell, he had believed her will was strong enough.
That perhaps his blood could help. But how was he supposed to help if he was dead—or worse, trapped forever, reduced to nothing more than a pair of eyes? Did she even want to be saved?
“It is the only way. I was meant for this,” she said as she took another bite. Her teeth sank into the flesh, blood dripping from her chin.
“You were never meant to be anyone’s instrument. You were meant to be free.”
She smiled sadly. “We are all meant to be free, but I have to sacrifice myself so that everyone else can be.”
She truly believed it. She still believed she was the cure to the curse. That her mother’s death and her father’s torture had destined her for this path. Will shook his head sadly, and Elodie looked away.
“Now, my daughter, tell me—who is your sacrifice?”
“What difference does it make? They will die either way.”
The king gestured toward the living corpses. “They were all beloved. They accompany me in my torment.”
Elodie swallowed, because even she knew that was worse than death.
“Do not lie. I will know.”
At last, tears filled Elodie’s eyes as she looked between them.
At Eric, who stoically endured the judgment passed upon him.
He had lost; the king had decided against him.
Whatever his years of service had asked of him, they had gone unrewarded.
Their eyes met, and for the length of a heartbeat, Eric dropped all his masks and showed Will his sorrow—his broken heart.
He had tried to save Will, tried to save the ones he called his, but again he had failed.
Elodie looked at Will, who could not summon the strength to be heroic. Would he have survived if he had boarded the train? The ticket burned inside his breast pocket.
“Will,” Elodie said, but her voice broke. She looked up at the king, who nodded. “But let Eric go. He is a good servant. Sacrificing him would be a waste.”
The king tilted his head, his brow furrowed. “You are not lying. You sacrifice your love, yet you do not ask me to save him. A true warrior. So be it.” Once again, the king reached into his abdomen and tore out a piece of flesh. “Eric, I expect a lifetime of service from you.”
Eric accepted it hesitantly, his eyes still wide with shock. He looked at Will and opened his mouth to speak when an invisible force lifted Will’s body.
Slowly, he rose to the king’s height, his arms spreading like the wings of the Albatross.
I am sorry I cannot keep our bargain, Albatross. If he had to choose, he preferred to die for Elodie and her noble cause rather than an ancient god.
Somewhere inside him, the Albatross awoke from his slumber. You are mine, my beloved. Your body is mine, my beautiful one. The greedy bastard will not have what belongs to me.
But the god got no further. Will heard Elodie’s desperate cry and saw tears in Eric’s eyes—and then his body was torn apart.
Again, he thought of the vampire filled with pig’s blood—perhaps none of them were so different after all.
It took no more than a thought from the King, and his body came undone.
His fingernails lifted and tore free, skin peeled from his fingers, muscles and tendons ruptured.
Blood rose like mist, and his bones shattered.
Time seemed to slow down until it almost stopped, the pain seeping into his mind only gradually as his arms and legs dissolved, his chest split open, and his entrails unraveled.
Will watched the shell that made him human break into its individual parts.
Blinding pain swelled inside his skull until there was nothing else.
Death came slowly, ripped him from his mortal remains.
But through the glaring pain, one angry thought echoed: If he were to die like this, his bones would never touch the soil; he would never be able to build a castle from them. The King stole from him his final wish.
“You will not have what belongs to me!” The Albatross’s voice thundered through the cavern, making the king recoil and sink back into the wall.
And in the next instant, Will’s body reassembled—not as a man, but as a god. He was neither quite the emaciated creature that visited his dreams nor the sorrowful beauty he had found on the shore as a child.
Will gasped, but it emerged from his maw as a growl. His silver hair danced over the feathers covering his head, and his scaly tail lashed wildly through the air. He was immense; his claws struck the floor, his legs bent like the ones of a predator.
The moment he settled into this body, he hurled himself at the king.
Teeth and claws tore into the defenseless flesh of the King. Bones broke beneath his blows, tendons and muscles ripped apart. The god screamed like every other being, unable to shield himself from the rage overtaking Will.
When he heard his friends screaming, he stopped.
Eric and Elodie lay on the ground. Eric choked up the small bite he had swallowed and managed to push himself upright, his face twisted in pain. Elodie lay unconscious, her chest grotesquely caved in, blood soaking her white dress.
Every blow he had struck against the King had also struck his friends. Eric had merely been clever enough to sever his connection to the king in time.
“Will?” Eric gasped, looking up at him.
“Albatross.” The King’s voice gurgled as blood filled his lungs. “You are here.”
“I came to free you, and this is how you repay me? You take what belongs to me?” the Albatross spoke through him.
“I did not recognize you.”
“They say love is blind. And I was the fool who believed you would recognize me even blind.”
“Please. Set me free,” the king begged.
“You know I cannot. Only she can do that.”
The King shuddered and turned his face away. “She will never release us. However you managed it, she will capture you again. Subjugate you again.”
“Release my friends,” Will demanded, wresting control back from the Albatross. “I freed one god. We will do it again.”
Eric stepped beside the monster Will had become and placed a trembling hand upon the wing growing from his back.
“You intend to free me?” the King asked. “To break this curse?”
“Yes.”
“Yes.” Will’s voice emerged clearly through the monster’s lips.
“Yes.” Eric straightened as far as he could.
Had Elodie been conscious, she would have agreed as well. Everything she had fought for led to this.
“You have one year. One year to free me from a curse that has imprisoned me for centuries. And if you fail, I will claim my sacrifice. You cannot flee far enough to escape my power.”
“He is not your sacrifice. He is mine!”
“Then in one year, you will belong to me. It makes no difference. At least I will no longer be alone in my captivity.”
Starry sky to my storm, I’m sorry, I can’t do more. With a weary sigh, the Albatross released his hold upon Will’s soul, and his monstrous body began to shrink. Will exhaled as his muscles and bones relaxed, and he crashed to the ground in human form.
The moment he regained enough control, he crawled toward Elodie’s lifeless body. “We have to heal Elodie.”
He bit into his wrist and tore open the skin.
He no longer felt the pain—his nerve endings had endured too much to respond to something so small.
Eric hesitantly followed his example and whispered spells while their blood dripped into Elodie’s throat.
She remained alive only because of her connection to the king.
Only then did Will realize he was crying as they pieced Elodie’s body back together.
He had done this to her. He had destroyed her so completely.
Even though she would have sacrificed him, he could not hate her for it.
His next tears fell for how irreparably broken their relationship had become. It had never been perfect. It never had a future. But they did not deserve this ending.
At last, Elodie opened her eyes, and the pain within them came from her soul rather than her body.
“Now go,” said the king, whose body was slowly knitting itself together as well. “One year. You must kill the Golden Queen to break the curse.” The king’s bald head sank against the wall, and he closed his eyes, carried away by a pain older than his wounds.
Eric and Will helped Elodie to her feet, and then they saw that the curtain of reality had been drawn aside once more.
Limping and half-stumbling, they moved toward it, faster and faster.
Even without knowing where it would lead them, how they would save their broken souls, they ran toward the escape from this hell.
Suddenly they stumbled onto hard stone.
When he raised his head, a cold wind caught in his hair and swept away the stench of blood.
“Where are we?” Elodie asked hoarsely.
A cloudy day dawned. Several tracks away, a white-and-gold train rolled into the station while commuters crowded across the platforms. Where they stood, however, it was quiet, an isolated stretch overlooking the canyons of the streets below.
Smiling, Will looked at Elodie in her bloodstained wedding dress, then at Eric, his hair disheveled and streaked by silver.
“Welcome to the Capitol.”
The End