Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
Void Pyramids, Blood Kingdom
Lanlin
“You knew that these assholes were coming tonight to devour us.” Freya’s eyes are blazing with fury and fear. “Who has been hiding the largest secret now, huh?”
“Is it a contest?” Daire mutters like a guilty fae who knows that he’d win.
My gaze sharpens, as I scrutinize him.
Interesting.
He lets go of my chin, harshly shoving me back.
I rub across my reddened skin, lingering over where his fingers have marked me. “Not devour us if I can stop them. My dears, I shall only allow them to devour me.”
“Oh well, that’s so much better.” Freya hurls a cushion at me, and I dodge.
I didn’t realize that Omegas enjoyed destroying and throwing things around in their nests as much as Alphas do. I should have supplied even more cushions for Freya.
“Whatever ugly bastards are about to fly through that bloody great rift in the sky,” Daire gestures up at the night sky between the three pyramids, where shadows are now rotating around the widening tear, dragging wisps of starlight into the abyss, “they can’t eat you.
We’re married, and as much as I don’t normally mind sharing in a kinky way, not on my wedding night. ”
He bares his fangs and widens his wings like his courting display, impressive as it is, will be enough to scare off the Void Devils.
He doesn’t understand that the Void Devils are beings that existed before our realms were even born.
Fae may be gods who birthed our shadows. But the Void Devils are from a time before gods.
They are from the dark, swirling chaos that began us all…and will end us.
But not tonight.
I rest my hand on the bed, before I struggle to push myself up onto my feet.
My knees buckle.
I grit my teeth, however, forcing myself to remain standing.
I am calmer now that the storm has arrived. My heartbeat is steady.
They’re almost here.
I glance at the moon, which is smeared with blood.
It’s time.
“What are you doing?” Freya demands, startled. The high winds, which are screaming across the plateau from the Void, are whipping her hair across her face. “You’re swaying. Sit down before you fall down.”
She reaches for me, but I pull back.
“Stay here. Do not try to run, or the shadows may reach for you and then snatch you up into the Void,” I command.
“Then where are you going?” Daire demands. “We battle together, aye? It is us against the whole damn world.”
He reaches for his daggers, drawing them.
Freya scrambles around on the bed for her blade, holding it up as well.
I can’t hold back my smile at my fierce nestmates.
If the Void Devils could be held back by weapons, then I would choose to fight them shoulder by shoulder with my King and Queen.
But they can’t.
I knew that this moment would be hard. Yet surrendering…sacrificing myself…dying…isn’t the difficult part.
Leaving behind my fated mates is.
I clench my fists.
Shadows are already reaching out like living hurricanes. I judge the distance, flicking out with my own shadows to reach them.
I am not quite close enough to throw myself into their hungry embrace, and my magic is too weakened for me to shift and fly up.
I snarl in frustration.
“What are you doing?” Daire growls. “I can sense it in your magic and blood. Why are you reaching out to them?”
“I can see your shadows sneaking out of you.” Freya’s eyes are accusing.
“Moon save me, you’re not…? They called you the Void Vampire during the ceremony and in White Lotus Village.
I didn’t understand, but they treated you like a god.
” Tears tremble on her eyelashes. “I don’t see you as a monster.
I know that you’ve done terrible things, but I never once felt unsafe with you.
Am I a raven starving idiot? Because if you’re the Void Vampire, then are you from the world of these Void Devils?
Did you plan to use us from the start to open this rift and rejoin your true family? ”
Her words — every single one of them — hit me like arrows through the chest.
How can she believe that of me?
Yet is it easier if I let her keep thinking that?
If I die the villain…the little monster all grownup…then she won’t need to grieve.
“Freya,” Daire chokes out.
He never takes his gaze from my face like he is daring me to say that a single word Freya said is true.
I should simply walk away from them. Let them hate me, rather than grieve.
I owe them an explanation and a genuine goodbye, however, even though it will never be enough. It is messier than the easy narrative that Freya has spun.
Was it easier before I met my Omega and learned what love meant?
I never knew that feelings could hurt more than any torture from the punishment pits.
Above our heads, the widening tear churns like the eye of a cosmic hurricane. Spirals of shadow rotate around its edges. The heavens groan under the strain.
“I am called the Void Vampire,” I reply, “because I have been trained by the Void Cult to be sacrificed tonight. My blood is the only thing that can close the Void and save the realms. My twin and I were separated as fledglings. Lazarus was taken by the Void Cult because he was the good twin to become the sacrifice. When he went missing three years ago, I was told that I now must throw myself into the Void to save the realms. If I didn’t, then the Void Devils would bring something worse than hell.
I was the only one who could restore balance to the chaos.
But, dearhearts, I cared nothing about that.
I will die tonight only because then you will live. ”
Freya sucks in a shocked breath, before she says, brokenly, “Lanlin, I’m sorry…”
“You of everyone I have known in my life have nothing to be sorry for. And I have already met my true family. They are in my nest tonight.”
Suddenly, stronger winds howl from the Void, slicing across my face. I shield my eyes.
Sand rises in towering columns around the pyramids, circling them like worshipers around long-lost gods. The pyramids’ limestone glows with ancient runes hidden beneath their surfaces.
My back slams into the frame of the Eternal Royal Nest. I grunt in pain.
Shadow and Devil are pacing in a circle in the eye of the storm. Their heads are lifted toward the rift.
Their eyes are wide with excitement, and their tails are swinging side to side.
I don’t know whether they are acting as my bodyguards or guarding me.
I never have.
I remember how happy Lazarus was when they’d been given to us as cubs, one each.
We were never gifted anything, apart from our matching beetle pendants.
Lazarus played with the cubs every day, allowing them to sneak onto his bed, despite the scoldings that he received from our nurse for it.
If it had been me who had broken the rule, I would have been beaten.
Lazarus had loved Shadow and Devil with an uncomplicated, unconditional love just like he did me.
He was the kindest, sweetest person I have known. Despite that, our own mother marked him as the Void Vampire, wanting him to kill himself.
Didn’t Isis expect the same from Horus?
Are all parents as unfeeling?
Lazarus loved the demonic lions who had, in fact, been given to us to make sure that we served our kingdom, killing and dying for it.
Damn my fangs, I love them too.
When I sense Shadow and Devil’s joy at returning to the Void, their home, I can’t blame them.
Homesickness is strange to me. It means little, as even at my happiest with Lazarus, we were exiles and outcasts.
Yet I still have the faded memory hidden at the back of my mind of how we held onto each other’s hands as we escaped our nurse to play in the lotus pools and the wet tickle of fish kissing our feet.
Lazarus would laugh first, light like the twinkling of stars.
For all the years that came after, when I was forced to wear gloves, I could still feel the small, certain grip of my twin’s hand in mine, when the loneliness became too crushing.
The imagined warmth of my twin’s hand, when no one else was allowed to touch me, became a created home that maybe never existed.
Plus, I haven’t left this rose and oak and sunshine scented nest, and I am already homesick for it.
When the storm rocks the bed, I order, “Hold onto the frame. It will keep you safe during the opening of the Void. I built it into the plateau. I designed it to withstand what comes next.”
Freya sheaths her dagger, clinging onto Daire.
My King sheaths his own knives.
Freya wraps her arms around the sturdy frame, while Daire clasps his wings around her.
The scarlet linen, which hangs from the gilded frame, ripples in the wind like the waves of a bloody sea.
“You planned for everything, didn’t you?” Daire yells above the storm.
His eyes are filled with ice-cold fury.
“Indeed.” I start to push away from the bed, but Freya’s anguish stops me.
“Don’t you dare walk away,” she screams. “You just stood in front of your entire court and promised us an eternity and an afterlife. You don’t get to take that back.”
Daire snarls, reaching to grab onto my elbow.
I attempt to shove him back, but for the first time, he is stronger than me.
My stomach swoops.
How long has it been since anyone could beat me in a fight?
My face heats.
I am never the prey.
Daire yanks me back, and I tumble onto the bed. Freya keeps her firm hold on him, while he tangles his legs over me.
I growl, attempting to force Daire back with my shadows, but despite being recently drained, his elemental magic sparks along his wings.
He is frighteningly powerful.
The storm is barely affecting him.
He wraps his own, freezing, feathery shadows around me. I can’t move my arms or legs.
I am panting.
Then he leans over me. “The tables are turned, huh? Everyone else is always binding me. Now, you’re safe and can’t do something stupidly reckless like I would. Talk. And be quick because apparently, our epic rutting was so good, it didn’t just move the earth, it may have ended it.”
“I already told you.”
Daire huffs a humorless laugh. “Did you? I must have missed when you explained why you married, fucked, and then abandoned us without any warning.”