Chapter 18 #3
“You spent all this time believing revenge made men powerful.” My grip tightened around his throat. “You were too fucking empty to understand love makes men merciless.”
I grabbed Malrik’s neck in my hands and twisted till there was a pop. Malrik hit the floor hard. His lifeless body laid there by my feet, and I let of a breath I didn’t realize I was holding.
Although Malrik was dead, there was no relief crashed through me. No satisfaction. No sudden feeling of peace after spending years building my entire existence around violence. Just exhaustion. Heavy. Hollow. Endless fucking exhaustion.
My chest rose unevenly while blood dripped from my hands onto the ruined altar beside us.
The chapel had gone strangely quiet now that the fighting stopped.
Smoke still lingered in the air from gunfire and burning candles while bodies covered the marble floors between shattered pews and crushed white flowers.
Malrik stared upward without moving. The man who spent years poisoning everything he touched finally looked small. Pathetic even. I thought killing him would feel bigger than this. Instead, all I could think about was Emerald .
The second my eyes lifted from Malrik’s body, she was already running toward me.
The baby remained tucked carefully against her chest beneath the blanket while the ruined skirt of her wedding dress dragged through blood and broken glass across the floor.
Tears still streaked down her face despite everything, though there was something else there now too.
Relief. God, the look on her face nearly fucking destroyed me.
I barely had time to straighten fully before she reached me and threw herself against my chest hard enough to nearly knock me backward. Pain ripped through my ribs instantly from the impact, but I wrapped my arms around her anyway like letting go might actually kill me.
“You’re bleeding,” she whispered shakily against my neck.
“So are you.”
A laugh broke out of her unexpectedly then. Small. Broken. Emotional enough to crack something open inside me. Her hands moved to my face carefully, fingertips brushing across bruised skin and dried blood while she looked at me like she still couldn’t believe I was standing there.
She kissed me once more—not with desperation, but with enough feeling that everything else faded away.
Blood still coated my hands. My ribs still felt cracked.
Bodies still surrounded us. Didn’t matter.
Only her mouth against mine. Only the way her fingers trembled slightly against my jaw.
Only the fact she came back for me. Again .
Somewhere behind us, Roman cleared his throat hard enough to break the moment. I pulled back just enough to glance toward him. The expression on his face almost made me laugh despite everything. Confused. Annoyed. Slightly horrified.
Roman looked between the two of us like he genuinely could not comprehend how this situation ended with Emerald kissing me in the middle of a massacre.
“You cannot be serious,” he said flatly.
Emerald turned toward him immediately without stepping away from me.
“Oh my God, Roman, right now?”
“I watched this man kidnap you!”
“You also watched him almost die for me.”
Roman opened his mouth, then closed it again. Mira looked significantly less surprised standing beside him. If anything, she looked mildly entertained by Roman’s visible confusion. Rupert straight up smirked.
Viktor rubbed blood from his face before muttering something in Russian that sounded far too amused considering the circumstances.
Roman stared at me again. Then at Emerald. Then at the way she still refused to let go of me .
“I leave you alone for two months and this is what happens?”
Emerald rolled her eyes despite tears still staining her face. “You act like I planned any of this.”
“You fell in love with a psychopath .”
I finally spoke then, my voice rough from blood and the tape they’d ripped off earlier.
“In my defense, she was annoying from the beginning.”
Emerald gasped softly and slapped my chest immediately. Pain tore through my ribs hard enough to nearly make me black out.
“You’re hurt badly,” Roman said.
“I’ve been better.”
“That looks significantly worse than ‘I’ve been better.’”
I glanced down at the blood soaking through my shirt and shrugged slightly. “Still alive.”
Emerald's expression tensed at the sight of blood. Her fingers carefully touched the bruising along my face before drifting lower across my chest like she needed physical reassurance I was actually standing in front of her .
The baby moved gently on her shoulder, drawing everyone's attention downwards. The ruined chapel fell silent for a moment. Tiny. Innocent. Completely unaware of the bodies surrounding her.
Emerald adjusted the blanket carefully before looking back toward me.
“We need to find her parents.”
My eyes met hers fully. Not once through this entire nightmare had she treated the baby like a burden. Even terrified, dragged into hell against her will, she kept protecting that child like it came naturally to her.
“You still want to?” I asked quietly.
Her expression softened. “She deserves to go home.”
Something painful hit deep inside my chest at the way she said it.
Emerald should have never been placed in this position to begin with.
She should have been safe. Protected. Living some soft easy life far away from people like me.
Instead, she stood inside a destroyed chapel covered in blood asking if we could save somebody else.
Roman rubbed a hand down his face tiredly. “We’ll find the parents.”
Emerald looked toward him hopefully. “You’ll help?”
Roman stared at her like the answer should’ve been obvious. “You’re my sister. ”
Emotion crossed her face so fast it nearly disappeared before she looked back toward me again. Then quieter, softer, she said, “And we’ll find answers for you too.”
Once more, silence settled over the room. Roman frowned slightly. Mira's face grew tense. Even Viktor looked toward me more carefully.
Emerald stepped closer, her free hand sliding into mine despite the blood covering both of us.
“You deserve to know where you came from.”
My eyes drifted toward Malrik’s body lying motionless across the marble floor.
For years, I never questioned who I was.
I wore my name like armor, built my life around it, killed for it without hesitation.
Now, standing in the middle of shattered truths and bloodshed, I realized how dangerous certainty could be.
Everything I believed about myself had started to crack open beneath my feet.
Standing there now, covered in blood beside the girl who somehow loved me anyway, I realized the truth felt far more complicated than that.
Maybe answers existed somewhere out there. Maybe Lucien stole me. Maybe somebody abandoned me. Maybe the truth was ugly enough to ruin every memory I still carried.
My fingers tightened slightly around Emerald’s hand. Then I looked at Roman.
“You’d really help me? ”
Roman glanced toward the dead scattered across the chapel before looking back at me with clear irritation.
“I’m still deciding how much I hate you.”
Emerald immediately looked offended. “Oh my God.”
Roman ignored her.
“But apparently my sister is willing to start wars for you,” he continued dryly. “So yes. We’ll find the answers.”
A strange feeling weighed on my chest at that moment—not quite peace, but perhaps something resembling a sense of belonging.
Emerald smiled softly before leaning upward to kiss me again, slower this time, gentler, while blood and smoke and death still surrounded us. Nobody stopped her. Not even Roman.
The chapel remained destroyed around us long after the fighting ended.
Bodies still covered the marble floors while candles burned low beside shattered glass and bloodstained flowers.
Malrik’s empire died there with him. Yet somehow standing in the middle of all that ruin with Emerald’s hand in mine felt more real than anything I’d spent my entire life chasing.
Revenge consumed men, love rebuilt them into something else entirely .
Maybe one day I would search for the truth about where I came from, maybe I would uncover every buried secret Lucien tried taking to the grave, or maybe some things were never meant to be unearthed. Some secrets survived because the damage they caused reached farther than the truth itself.
For now, Emerald stood beside me. For now, I was still breathing. For now, that was enough.