Chapter 36 I Love You’s #3
She swallows, glancing upward and then back at Mera whose flames still rage and crackle within her palms. “None of us are who you believed we were, Kairos. Not me. Not him. Not even you.” Her hands tremble as she reaches up and places them against my cheek.
“The River showed me the truth. I am not just a queen, Kairos. I am a goddess. And the old gods have spoken. Ere was using his power to block out the truth that sits right above us, but just now, when he used his shadows and was too distracted to care, the gods who rest in the Elysian Fields spoke to me and urged me to look up, and I did.” Sadness fills her eyes, tears glistening in the corners.
“Look up, Kairos. Mera’s fate is out of our hands.
” Her eyes drift up my face as she tilts her head back, a tear sliding down her pale cheek.
I shouldn’t have fucking listened to her.
I should have ignored her words. Glancing up at the sky stops my heart, because the divine light twinkling brighter than the stars back home mixed with the swirls of velvety darkness that resembles Eres power, is a clear fucking sign from the gods that I am fucked.
Is love a game to the gods, then? The gods who have abandoned us and choose now to show up and obliterate my entire life. Mera’s fate is literally written in the stars and she will not be leaving with me. The gods have chosen for her to stay in the Underworld. Without me.
Faintly, I can hear words being exchanged between Mera and Nyx as I step away from Hekate, shaking my head in disagreement with the truth.
It cannot be real. It isn’t true. She has always belonged with me.
Love is a curse. Fate is a blatant, fucking lie.
And prophecies, well, they are nothing but absolute bullshit if it means we don’t get to be together.
I won’t allow it. Fuck the gods or the rulers of the realms or anyone else who’d like to stand in my way.
I am not a fucking pawn in the games gods play.
Running to Mera, I conjure lightning in my palms and focus it on Nyx as she smiles cruelly and sends her black flames spiraling toward my face.
I will kill both the demons if I have to.
My fated mate—and mine is exactly what she is—will not be staying here with them.
I dive and roll across the steaming, hot ground, ducking just in time for the fire to miss me and go hurling into one of the half-broken pillars near the pit.
It groans, roaring across the realm as it tumbles and crashes to the ground.
I aim at Nyx and my power jolts from my fingertips, wrapping around her like one of her serpents and she shrieks.
Even stunned by the electricity and unable to move, she still fucking smiles, sending out a puff of air from her lungs tainted with her venom.
The scent of her dark power makes my stomach churn, and I hold my breath as I force my way through her cloud of death, gripping her by the throat and squeezing as I lift her.
Her stilettos kick at my raging wind that swirls around us, rocks and dirt flying past as she dangles helplessly in the air.
“Kairos, enough!” Hekate screams, but I smile up at the demon queen and ignore her completely.
Nyx ruined my life. She took everyone and everything I loved from me. Mera wouldn’t be here right now if it weren’t for her. She needs to pay. My plan hasn’t changed. I was always going to end her pathetic life.
I stumble back as two demons slam their monstrous heads into my sides.
My ribs ache as pain slices through me, but I don’t fall.
The celestial dagger on my right thigh slips free and goes tumbling across the black dirt directly toward Nyx.
My lightning dies out as soon as the shooting pain makes me lose focus of my power.
Nyx is no longer unable to move. She blows me a kiss, wiggling her fingers in a taunting wave goodbye as more venom leaks from between her puckered lips.
Crouching low, she picks up my dagger and spins it in her hand with expert precision as she prowls toward me.
Her demons grip my arms and shove me to the ground, holding me down so I can’t move.
I thrash and pull as I try to stand, but her venom takes hold because I was too distracted to hold my breath, and now my body feels heavy and useless. Fuck.
A flash of red hair steals my attention as Mera runs to me, but Hekate and Ere grab her and pull her back.
She screams my name, the sound muffled and on repeat like I’ve been trapped within an echo chamber in my own mind, her wailing at the top of her lungs as she fights to be set free.
All I can do is watch from a distance as she tries and fails to come to me.
Tears fall, splashing and sizzling on the scorched ground.
Her mouth opens and closes again and again, blood rushing to her cheeks in anger or possible heartbreak, all of it in slow motion.
It brings me comfort in death though, to see that a part of her, at least, still cares.
Hekate pushes Mera behind her and steps forward.
A flash of blue light whirls closer, barreling into one demon and then the other, and they fly back, slamming into the mountain wall.
Ere’s shadows creep closer, ripping and shredding them until they’re nothing but a puddle of thick, black blood at the foot of the mountain.
As if he cares whether I live or die. It’s an act.
A show just for her. A facade, the way it has always been with him.
My blood boils and my internal organs are on fire, hot pain tearing through me.
I’ve felt the demons’ venom countless times, but this…
godsdamn I’ve never felt anything like it.
All I can do is lie here and wait to die as Nyx raises my celestial dagger above her head, light flaring out around us as she prepares for the kill.
I still can’t move. Her venom races through my system making it harder by the second to even use the muscles of my diaphragm to fucking breathe.
I am going to die here. Flames, beautiful blue and purple flames, soar toward Nyx and hit their mark.
And fuck, if I could smile right now over how proud I am of Mera, I would.
Seeing Nyx slump over in pain, her body curling in on itself and screeching so loud the demons grumble low in surrender, the ground trembling as they run away, offers a small amount of relief.
It all happens so fast after that. One second, I’m paralyzed and watching in slow motion, like an outsider who’s not even here, and the next second Nyx is lying on top of me.
Warmth spills from my stomach and gushes down my sides as my own celestial dagger tears through muscle and nerves that are already burning from Nyx’s venom, so hot that I can’t even feel the stab wound.
It’s a death sentence and she knew it. Her final gift to me.
“Kairos!” Mera screams, and the pounding of feet on the hard dirt is fuzzy and far away as blurry shadows and shapes rush to my side.
Hekate rolls Nyx’s motionless body off me, and I can sense her heartbreak, smell her tears in the air, her knee brushing against my arm when she collapses between the two of us.
“No!” She screams, her pain ripping through the air, my numb mind and body still feeling the ache of her bleeding heart as my own slowly dies.
“Nora, help me!” Hekate grabs Mera’s arms and drags her to the ground in front of her.
“Place your hands on my shoulders so I can draw from your power and heal them. I don’t know that I’m strong enough to do it alone.
They aren’t dead yet, but they will be soon.
” Taking a deep, trembling breath, her eyes snap closed.
“We can do this. They will be fine,” she whispers, soft shimmers of blue light illuminating the hazy shadows.
Mera doesn’t look at her. She only looks at me.
At my gaping wound and the blood draining rapidly from my body.
I cannot be healed. This wound is deep. Permanent.
The way our love once was. Her mouth hangs open in disbelief, a tortured, knowing expression on her face as she takes my hand in hers and squeezes it once before placing her outstretched palms on Hekate’s shoulders.
She’s ignoring the fact that Nyx is going to be healed, and that I cannot be saved, but I can’t fucking speak or resist or argue for them to just let us both go.
I push the truth away the way Mera does now beside me, not accepting that I’m going to die, because I can’t face it.
Dying means never getting to spend even one more day with her, and it’s not a truth I can fucking bare. Lying to myself is better.
The glowing lights of their magic float above me, and as soothing as their power is, my eyelids are too heavy to hold open. I let them close. I let my mind wander to memories of date nights under the stars followed by I love you’s. To promises made that could never be broken.
I drift off with only thoughts of her, the way I always do.