Chapter 31
Voren
“No.”
“No?”
“No. You are done.”
“Excuse me?” she blusters, propping herself up on her elbows even as Dreven’s cock brings her to a clitoral orgasm that she shakes through, her eyes going glassy.
“I said,” I say, going over to them and shoving Dreven away from her, “you are done.”
Nyssa’s eyes snap to mine, still hazy with lust, but there’s a flicker of confusion there too. She’s wrecked, pushed past any reasonable limit, and still begging for more because she thinks that’s what she needs to do.
“You’ve broken,” I murmur to her, crawling onto her other side. “You feel it. You feel the energy stirring.”
“I want more.”
“No.”
“This reaction is expected,” Dreven says, zipping up his pants and placing his hand on her foot. “I wasn’t lying when I said you were made for us. You were Nyssa. The slayers were made to serve the gods. They turned against us.”
Her mouth drops open.
So does mine. I didn’t think Dreven would ever tell her that.
“What?” she asks.
I resist the urge to smack the back of Dreven’s head.
“Serve?” she whispers, the word scraping out of her raw throat. “You mean like slaves?”
“Guardians,” Dreven corrects, his tone unyielding.
He stands at the end of the bed, looking like a dark king delivering a sentence.
“Anchors. The power of the Firsts was given to your kind so you could walk beside us, not hunt us. You were the tether that kept our divinity from burning the mortal realm to ash.”
Dastian, sprawling naked beside her, picks at a loose thread on the duvet. “Until your ancestors got greedy. They didn’t want to be the leash anymore; they wanted to hold the whip.”
Nyssa flinches. The air around her ripples, smelling of ozone and ancient dust. The energy we pounded into her is finally waking up, responding to the shattering of her worldview.
“So how are you walking around all not burning up the earth right now?”
“Why do you think?”
Her gaze bores into mine. “So that’s why you all showed up being a fucking nuisance. You needed me!”
“In more ways than one, as it turns out,” I murmur, brushing a strand of damp hair from her face.
“Why did the Firsts turn on you?”
“They got together and decided to rid the world of anything that wasn’t mortal. That included us.”
“Wow, that must’ve burned,” she mutters, pulling her knees up as she sits.
“It scorched the earth,” I correct, tracing the line of her jaw. “It created a divide that should never have existed. We were cast out, locked away in the Pantheon realm, while the Order rewrote history to make themselves the heroes.”
Dreven stares at her, his gaze heavy and unblinking. “We didn’t tell you to hurt you. You needed to break the mental conditioning before you could accept the power.”
“Well, consider it broken,” she mutters, wincing as she shifts. “Along with my pelvis.”
I scoff, a half-smile tugging at my lips. “Don’t be dramatic. You’ll be walking fine tomorrow. Probably.”
She shoots me a look that suggests she’s contemplating adding deicide to her CV, regardless of our earlier activities. Dastian chuckles, stretching his limbs like a satisfied cat.
“I feel like a discarded chew toy,” she complains, swinging her legs over the edge of the mattress.
Her movements are stiff, wincing slightly as her feet hit the floor, but there’s a new grace to her movements.
A vibration in the air that wasn’t present an hour ago.
The static hum of the Firsts is no longer chaotic; it’s a steady, thrumming baseline that makes the hairs on my arms stand up.
“A chew toy with the power to level cities,” Dastian points out. “How does the truth taste? Better than the lies the Order spoon-fed you?”
“It tastes like betrayal,” she mutters, rubbing her face with her hands. She pauses, staring at her palms as if seeing them for the first time. “And it feels... heavy.”
“That’s the anchor,” I explain, reaching out to grasp her hand. Her skin is cooling, but the fire underneath hasn’t gone out. It’s just waiting. “You were hollow before, Nyssa. Trying to fill a god-shaped hole with duty and violence. Now you’re full.”
“Full of shit, mostly,” she counters, though she doesn’t pull away from my touch. She looks up at Dreven, her expression hardening. “I’m supposed to be your leash?”
“Our partner,” Dreven corrects. “The Order severed the connection centuries ago. We just repaired it.”
“Violently,” she adds dryly.
“Effectively,” I amend, giving her hand a squeeze before letting go. “You feel it when you are with us. Like it was meant to be.”
“Never stop fucking me,” she murmurs.
“Exactly.”
“So you fucked your other partners?” The question is harsh, grating. She is jealous and pissed off at the answer she thinks she knows.
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “They weren’t you.”
She clenches her jaw, not quite sure what to make of that. Quite frankly, neither do I. This is new. But the feeling of possession is too strong. She is mine. Ours. She can’t walk away from us, or the worlds will burn and not just in a divine sense.
“You can go back to your home, Nyssa. You are stable now. Have a bath, eat something, and get some rest. Alone. We can’t retrieve the Crown if you’re wallowing in our mess.”
Dreven glowers at me, but I ignore him. We need to do what’s best for Nyssa now, not ourselves.
Nyssa blinks, looking between the three of us as if trying to decipher a particularly difficult rune.
“It’s not dismissal, Nyssa. It’s mercy.”
She accepts that with a brisk nod. She is terrified we are going to use her and abandon her, but she doesn’t know the lengths we will go to keep her by our side. Anyone touches her, they will die a painful and prolonged death.
Dreven creates a low, rumbling growl in his chest, vibrating through the floorboards.
He hates this plan. Frankly, I hate it too, but we can’t have her imploding before we even reach the Pantheon realm.
With a snap of Dastian’s fingers, she is dressed and ready to move out, her blade with her as it should be.
“Tomorrow night. Meet us at the crypt. Bring your blade, leave the attitude.”
“I make no promises.” She pauses at the door, glancing back at the three of us. Her gaze lingers on Dreven, then Dastian, finally settling on me. There’s a question there she doesn’t voice, a hesitation that almost breaks my resolve.
“Go, Nyssa,” I order. “Before I change my mind and chain you to the bedpost.”
She turns and flees. The moment the front door slams, the silence in the room becomes suffocating.
“I despise you,” Dreven mutters, staring at the empty doorway.
“I know,” I reply, collapsing back onto the mattress that still smells of her. “I despise me too.”
Dastian rolls off the bed, stretching his arms high above his head, utterly shameless in his nudity. “Well, that was bracing. I haven’t felt a connection snap into place like that, since ever.”
Dreven’s shadows in the corners of the room lengthen, stretching towards the door Nyssa just exited as if trying to drag her back. “She is exposed,” he growls, turning his silver gaze on me. “If the Order sniffs out what she is now...”
“They won’t,” I say, forcing myself to stand and ignoring the protest in my own muscles. “They are blind to true divinity. They see what they want to see—a tired slayer who did her job. Besides, her aura is stabilised. She won’t leak chaos unless provoked.”
“She is always provoked,” Dastian counters, snapping his fingers to conjure a pair of joggers. He pulls them on, looking far too cheerful for a man facing the apocalypse. “That’s her charm.”
I walk to the window, watching the small figure of Nyssa retreating down the hill towards the village lights.
The rain has started again, a miserable drizzle that suits my mood perfectly.
Letting her walk out of here felt like tearing off a limb, but keeping her would have been a mistake.
She needs to choose us, not just endure us.
“We gave her the truth, Dreven. Now we have to trust her to carry it until tomorrow.”
“I’ll watch the house. From a distance,” Dreven mutters, the shadows finally retreating to wrap around him like a cloak.
I don’t argue. I know better. “Just don’t let her see you. She’s liable to stab you on principle.”
“I’m counting on it,” he replies, and then he dissolves into the dark, leaving Dastian and me in the silence of the empty room.
“So,” Dastian says. “Do you think she’ll change her mind?”
I’ve never heard the God of Chaos sound so serious before.
“No,” I say, although it lacks confidence. “She knows what she has to do.”
“Her job,” he says so bitterly, I frown.
“You have fallen in love with her,” I state.
His gaze snaps up to mine. “And you haven’t?”
“Oh, I have. The second she threw herself at me. But this is about you. Chaos doesn’t do positive emotion.”
“Says you.”
“Don’t hurt her,” I say quietly. “I will stand between her and anything. Even you. Even Dreven.”
“You fell bad.” His expression is trying to be cavalier, but I can see the depth running underneath.
“Fate,” I murmur, turning away from him and back to the window, staring at the path where she disappeared, “has absolutely nothing on Nyssa Vale. She is an apocalypse.”
“Blowing our worlds apart,” Dastian mutters and then vanishes. I’m alone. Well, as alone as the God of Wraiths ever gets.
The moment the chaotic static fades, the house breathes a sigh of relief. Or rather, a rattle. Agatha drifts down from the ceiling, looking particularly sour as she eyes the stained sheets.
“Disgusting,” she whispers, her voice sounding like dry leaves skittering on pavement.
“Oh, hush, you old bat,” I mutter, waving a hand to disperse her ectoplasm before she starts lecturing me on propriety. “You watched the whole time.”
She flickers, indignant, before fading back into the wainscoting.
“Pervert.” I stare at the bed. Dastian’s glamour has completely collapsed. It’s a ruin. Literally.
If we don’t get that Crown, the Devourer eats the world. If we do get the Crown, the power might incinerate Nyssa from the inside out.
Whatever happens, blood will spill.
I walk to the window, pressing my palm against the cold glass.
The reflection staring back at me looks tired.
Centuries of imprisonment, days of freedom, and I’m already exhausted.
But beneath the fatigue, there’s a hum. A tether.
I can feel her moving away from the house, a bright spark in the dull grey of the mortal world.
My anchor.
“Don’t die, slayer,” I whisper to the empty room. “I’m just getting used to the noise.”