CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX Ghost of Your Name
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Ghost of Your Name
“No,” he whispered darkly, and something inside me roared.
What did he think of himself? I had played his games far too many times to even consider killing him. Though I was not capable or had the heart to harm anyone with that sort of intention, he made me feral like himself.
I didn’t care what consequences I’d face or how much I’d suffer; all I wanted was for him to disappear.
But knowing my luck and my fate in his hands, I resorted to the less violent path.
“You’re disgusting.”
Like insulting him would change anything. And like I predicted, it didn’t cause the germ of the devil to even shift with the force of my push, but something flickered behind his eyes. Something dangerous. His lips curved.
He leaned down, his breath brushing over the shell of my ear. “And yet… you still haven’t run.”
“I should,” I whispered.
“But you won’t,” he said, his lips ghosting along my cheekbone. “Not until you see him.”
That shattered everything. The name was unspoken between us. Adrian.
I stilled, my entire body going rigid in his hold. Zagreus felt it. His fingers loosened, and finally, mercifully, he let me go.
But not before he whispered, “Don’t mistake your grief for hatred, Dolcezza. Sometimes the lines blur.”
I stepped back so fast I nearly stumbled, dragging my arm to my chest as if I could wipe him off me. My voice cracked. “You don’t know anything about my grief.”
He didn’t reply. Just turned and began walking toward the grave.
And even though every cell in my body screamed to leave—to run—I followed. Because somewhere in the sea of tombstones, Adrian waited. And this… this was the last piece of him I had left to face.
The graveyard was too quiet. Not the kind of quiet that felt peaceful, but the kind that clawed at your throat, thick and heavy like the sky before a storm. And I was walking into it with him.
Zagreus.
The name tasted like a curse. Like ash and blood on a bitten tongue.
I hated that I flinched at the shadows now.
Gravel crunched beneath my heels the more we walked. My pulse was stuttering, wild and rabbit-fast in my chest, but I didn’t stop. The scent of damp earth and rotting lilies filled the air, and somewhere in the distance, a wind chime clattered like brittle bones.
He walked ahead, coat trailing behind him like the shadow of a darker thing, shoulders carved out of war and arrogance. His back to me. His hand was no longer on my arm. But I still felt it. The phantom imprint of his fingers branded into my skin. Adrian’s grave waited.
My knees wanted to buckle.
Please… please let it be untrue. Let this be a cruel trick. Let him be angry at me for believing it. Let him scream at me for showing up like this. Let him breathe—
But no. This was the kind of pain that was too still, too quiet. The kind of pain that didn’t blink. And Zagreus… he just stood there, hands in his pockets like we were visiting some fucking museum and not a field of the dead. His jaw ticked once. No words.
Then I saw it. The stone. His name was carved into cold granite. Adrian Valente. Born. Died. Buried.
No.
My breath strangled itself. My knees caved. I folded, graceless and broken, onto the earth in front of the grave as if my body had been waiting to fall. This was real. This was final. I pressed my palms to the soil. It wasn’t warm. It wasn’t him.
And then I heard it. The drag of leather boots behind me. A presence. A pause. Zagreus stood a few feet back, watching me with that same dead calm he wore like skin.
“You did this,” I whispered.
A laugh. Low. Hollow. “I buried him, Dolcezza.”
I looked over my shoulder, and the fury that surged up from the pit of my grief wasn’t something I’d prepared for. “You didn’t have to kill him to destroy him.”
His eyes narrowed, head tilting just slightly, the shadows under his lashes deepening. “Careful, Dolcezza.”
“Or what?” I spat. “You’ll kill me too?”
“You’re not that special,” he replied. But something inside him twitched.
I pushed myself up from the grave, dirt clinging to my palms, my chest rising and falling in a rhythm I couldn’t control. “You think this makes you powerful? This… killing? This silence?” I laughed bitterly, stepping toward him. “All this death you carry—you’ll face it one day too.”
He moved closer.
“I’ll tell you what I see,” I whispered. “I see a man who’s going to die alone. And no one’s going to cry over your grave, Zagreus. Not one soul.”
His jaw tightened.
“You’ll rot somewhere just like this. But the difference is—” I stepped into him, my chest brushing his coat, “—you won’t have a name etched in stone. You’ll vanish. Forgotten. No one will light candles. No one will miss the monster.”
The air changed.
Something inside him snapped.
The next second happened like a thunderclap. His hand shot out, curled tight around my throat—not choking, but holding. Owning. The breath stalled in my lungs.
“You talk like you know me,” he said, voice low, rasping, barely human. “But you don’t. You see the mask. You kiss the devil’s teeth and think you know his hunger.”
I clawed at his wrist. “Let—go—”
But he wasn’t listening.
His other hand fisted the front of my dress and shoved me back with brute, calculated force. My spine slammed into the cold marble of Adrian’s grave. A gasp tore out of me. The stone bit into my skin.
Zagreus pressed in, body a wall of fury, lips close enough to graze mine if he leaned just a breath forward.
“You think I haven’t felt love?” he whispered, and this time there was something else—something raw, ugly, broken in the way his voice trembled at the edges.
“I have. I killed it. I buried it. I slit its fucking throat because it made me weak.”
He laughed. One short, bitter sound. “And look at you, trying to tell me what I’ll never have. Like you’ve seen the ending to a story I’m still writing.”
“I have,” I whispered, gasping. “It ends with you—alone, bitter, with nothing but a name carved in a stone no one visits.”
That broke him.
His hand slammed beside my head on the grave. The marble cracked beneath the force. Dust and splinters of stone trembled into the night air.
His eyes—God—his eyes weren’t human anymore. There was violence there. A storm that hadn’t broken yet.
His voice dropped, dark and dangerous. “Keep talking, Dolcezza. Let’s see how many pieces I have to break you into before you stop.”
I stared at him, trembling. Not from fear. From the sheer weight of everything I was trying to hold in. The grief. The rage. The loss. But I didn’t look away. Not this time.
Because maybe I wanted to be broken. Maybe then, I’d finally stop feeling.
And maybe… just maybe… he would, too.
But reality didn’t work like that. It never did.
Grief doesn’t soften a monster’s heart.
Zagreus's breath ghosted over my skin with that unholy intention. I could feel Adrian’s grave pressing into my skin. But the one looming over me had my full attention.
“You think I’m afraid of dying alone?” he slowly asked. I caught a faint sense of emotion in his tone before it was gone. “I was born alone, Dolcezza. I live in solitude and I rule it well.”
“You don’t rule it,” I said. “You survive it. Barely. But deep down…”
I saw it then. A flicker in his brow. “…you wish someone would choose you. But no one will because you’re a monster!”
I spat viciously. Not afraid of what he might do to me. I was so consumed by my grief and pain, I wanted something else to hurt. Maybe physical pain. But not this gut-wrenching suffering. I wouldn’t survive it.
Instead of punishing me, the monster smiled. I thought he might let go and slap me, or worse, kill me too. But when he moved, fingers dragged down the front of my bodice with deceptive calm, and I panicked. “What…”
His gaze didn’t leave mine, even when the sound of fabric ripping filled the chilled silence of the graveyard. The fabric split under his fist like paper, and I gasped at the audacity of it.
“You want to see the monster?” he asked. “You want to peel back the skin and stare into the pit?”
Hand curled around my jaw, tilting my face up until I could see him, his fury, his hunger, and the graveyard of emotions he’d buried beneath that deadpan cruelty.
“I’ll show you, Dolcezza,” he rasped, staring down at the partially covered chest. “I’ll ruin your idea of monsters.”
I stared at him wide-eyed, chest heaving. “Adrian would’ve never touched me like this.”
I regretted it the moment the words left my mouth, ‘cause in a blink, a feral primal sound came from his throat as he fisted what was left of my dress, yanking it harder until the fabric gave way completely. I cried out, one hand flying to shield myself, but he didn’t stop.
“Stop, please!”
He didn’t. If anything, he manhandled me under him.
“I'm going to fuck you,” he growled, grabbing my waist and pulling me flush against him, “I'm going to fuck you right here, on the grave of the man I killed for you. I'm going to make you scream so loud, everyone for miles will know you're mine.”
He crashed his lips against mine, kissing hard and rough. His hands roamed my body, squeezing every inch as if I solely belonged to him, my chest, my thighs. He wanted to mark me, to claim me, to make me forget that I ever loved anyone but him.
“You're mine,” he growled against my lips. “You've always been mine. I'm going to fuck you until you can't remember your own name, let alone his. I'm going to make you crave my cock, need it, fucking worship it.”
“I'll kill him again if I have to,” he snarled. “I'll kill him a thousand times if it means you'll be mine...”
He attacked my neck with bites and kisses, sucking dark marks into my skin. His hand slid down the back, cupping my arse, squeezing it hard.
And there was this thing about monsters, they never know when to stop. They didn’t draw lines. They didn’t ask for consent. They took.
Because somewhere along the way, someone taught them love was a war and they were forged to win, no matter the cost.
Zagreus wasn’t a man. He was the war itself. And the way he looked at me now, he wasn’t seeing a woman. He was looking at a toy to be owned.