Chapter 45
Forty-Five
Betrayal
“I’m sorry.”
Cerilla’s words echoed through my head as time seemed to slow.
“Cerilla!” the Commander roared. “What the fuck are you doing?” He thrashed against a cage made of her shimmering magic.
Before I could register what was happening, Cerilla tipped my hand. My blood spilled onto the silver symbol at our feet, and it drank it in as if starved.
A symbol of the sun. How had I not noticed that before?
I tried to rip my hand from her grasp, but that overwhelming floral scent was making me weak.
She chanted in a language I didn’t understand, the words ancient and bone-chilling.
Power exploded from the symbol in a rippling wave of wrongness.
The bystanders screamed, scattering away like frightened mice. The symbol glowed a deep, hellish red that crawled out across the granite like veins bursting beneath skin.
The Commander’s roar shook the ground as shadows exploded outward with each animalistic thrash against the cage. “No!” he snarled, slamming himself against the barrier.
Skanthi crawled through the open roof as if summoned by the hellish glow.
Solas ducked and rolled across the ground as one dropped in front of him, rearing on its back spider-like legs.
Caelum threw balls of white power from his hands towards the monsters skittering down the glass walls into the chaos-filled ballroom.
And Riven—
Riven stood still, grinning as if the world wasn’t ending in front of him.
Cerilla’s magic wrapped around me, locking me in place with the same floral scent that blocked my power. It smelled the same as the bath she had drawn for me.
An ear-splitting scream tore from my throat as betrayal cleaved straight through my heart.
“I had to,” she choked out, muscles trembling under the amount of magic she was using. Tears ran down her cheeks. “You were going to die for her!” She screamed at him with her teeth bared. “One day you will thank me.”
A sob ripped from my chest as the ground cracked beneath us, splitting me from the Commander. The earth screamed, deep and hungry, as the fissure widened into a void.
The cage around the Commander flickered as he slammed into it, threatening to give way under the force.
Cerilla screamed and dropped the barrier—only to hurl the last of her magic at him, sending him flying backward.
The crack expanded, the ground falling away, crumbling like a stale piece of bread, swallowing everything that got in its way. Monsters and Fae alike fell into the chasm.
The sulphur infused heat that radiated from the cracked earth was unbearable, like a thousand hands clawing at my skin.
The Commander hit the floor, rolling into a fighting stance amidst the chaos.
Solas and Caelum were fighting their way towards him.
The ballroom, once filled with hundreds, was now a graveyard. Most had either fled or been slaughtered. Only warriors remained.
Warriors… or the terminally foolish. Like my brother who had no business fighting.
“Let her go!” the commander roared through the chaos, shaking the ground and my very soul.
Cerilla dropped to her knees with tears streaming down her face and her magic let me go.
Aldric lunged out of nowhere, dagger outstretched, aimed straight for Cerilla’s heart. She barely turned, flicking her wrist and sending him flying into the horde of Skanthi that was attacking the Commander.
“Aldric!” I cried out, tears streaming down my face. He wasn’t a fighter. But I was.
I clenched my fist, slamming it towards Cerilla’s face. But, with one click of her fingers, heavy shackles bound around my wrists.
“I am so sorry, darling,” she whispered as I fell to my knees with a broken noise scraping from me, half gasp, half sob.
“You have done well, Cerilla,” Riven praised.
My head snapped to him, and I bared my teeth in an ear-piercing scream, thrashing against the shackles.
“Don’t look at me like that, princess.” Riven pouted down at me. “I gave you the chance to come with me willingly.” He crouched in front of me, brushing a stray strand of hair behind my ear as if I were something he loved.
The priest strolled through the chaos, untouched by the monsters as if he were one of them. I stared between my torturer and Riven, trying to connect the pieces.
“Who are you?” My voice trembled.
“Come on, you already know the answer to that.” He grinned down at me. “I saw the Commander’s journal on your nightstand.”
Pure agony tore through my heart, twisting through me and threatening to devour me.
The Commander’s journal.
The truth slammed into me with vicious clarity—and fury followed, white-hot and blinding. It was him.
He had stood beside me, touched me, sworn himself to me, while knowing exactly what he was.
He was the monster created to kill me.
My chest burned as betrayal ripped through our bond, twisting every memory into something sharp and poisonous.
I wanted to scream. To reach inside my soul and destroy the bond that tethered me to my killer. To make him feel the same pain I was feeling.
And yet—
“Rythos!” I screeched his name like a curse.
“Do not say his name! You are supposed to be mine!” Riven yelled down at me, spittle flying from his mouth. “I made him into a monster, and you still chose him over me!” His fist slammed into the ground, those golden flecks in his eyes blazing with fury.
“Helion,” I whispered, voice breaking on a sob.
“I’ve missed the way you say my name,” he smirked at me in a flash of dimples.
My heart didn’t break. It stopped. Shuddering like it didn’t know which betrayal to die from first.
Cerilla had betrayed us and turned to the fallen Sun God.
Riven was a lie.
A trick.
A manipulation.
And the Commander—Rythos hadn’t told me who he really was.
My breath shuddered out of me as though I had been winded. Riven closed his eyes, features morphing to reveal the real him. He filled out, becoming more muscular. Taller. The build of a god.
It broke my heart that he still looked like Riven.
“Edgar here has watched over you for me. Harvesting your blood for me to slowly resurrect the powers those other fuckers stripped from me. You were different, Lyra. The other versions had never dared to touch the Dead Sea. That’s how I found you before my monster could kill you, pet.
I kept you weak enough that he couldn’t sense you. ”
My breathing was coming quicker, tears spilling down my cheeks.
He was the one taking my blood.
“Until you fucking Ascended, plunging into my own ritual.” Riven chuckled.
I looked down at the symbol below my knees. The same mark worn by the Iron Guard. His mark. Ascension hadn’t been a plea to estranged Gods. It had been feeding the one God who had fallen.
In that single, shattering moment—I understood. I hadn’t escaped my cage that night. I had run straight into the arms of the god who built it for me.
“Don’t cry, there will still be a wedding tonight.” His voice sounded far away over the roaring in my ears. “Ours. And together, we will take back the Throne of Gods.”
Rythos roared from the other side of the ballroom, a primal heart-breaking sound that shook the heavens.
Helion lifted me into his arms, cradling my numb body against his chest. I was so numb. So broken.
My head lolled to the side, and through the swarm of monsters, I saw him fall to his knees—panic etched into his eyes as they locked on me.
Rythos. My cursed lover. My monster.
Tears spilled down my face as the realization finished its cruel descent. He was dying because he had chosen not to kill me—and that truth hurt almost as much as the lie.
Shadows exploded from him in a storm of pure agony as Rythos screamed my name.
“I love you and I will save you,” he vowed to me through the bond, his overwhelming grief pouring into my chest as another Skanthi rushed him.
I shut him out. I slammed the bond closed, cutting him off mid-breath, mid-feeling, and pushed him away as I fought to breathe through the soundless fracture of my heart.
Helion jumped into the gaping hole in the earth with me cradled in his arms, and the world dropped away beneath us.
Wind tore past my ears as the ballroom vanished above, swallowed by suffocating heat as we fell toward the Seven Hells.
I didn’t scream. I didn’t fight. I simply fell—letting the broken pieces of my heart sharpen into something dangerous.
I once believed the absence of love created evil.
I was wrong.
It was betrayal.
— THE END —