Chapter 9 #2
I thrash but I can’t break his magic.
How powerful will Daire be when he’s at full power?
I saw hints of it in the Crocodile House.
Melancholy grips my heart. I wish that I would be around to see it. Daire would have been a truly worthy King for the House of Sin.
“I was bound by a Blood Oath not to tell you that I was the sacrifice, one chosen from each generation,” I explain. “If I don’t do this, then—”
“You think that we don’t know about threats that could burn the world?” Freya demands. “We’ve been living with Hadrian.”
I bare my fangs. “I had visions of Hadrian’s fiery destruction.
I experienced it, deep in my bones. I have had nightmares of what will happen if the Golden Dragon is resurrected.
The ancient world that will come through into ours from the Void, however, will be different.
Everything and everyone will be devoured, creating a new world. Once, I thought that was…”
“You wanted that.” Daire tilts his head. “You were tempted.”
“The Void Devils are in my head. They whisper to me.”
“Now?”
I shake my head. “They’re waiting on the other side. They will punish me for defying them. If jumping into the Void doesn’t kill me, then the Void Devils will tear me apart for standing up to their plan. I will have disobeyed beings who expect to be worshiped.”
“A bit like you, the dark gods, expect to be worshiped by the Shadow Humans, hunting and executing them when they don’t.” Daire gives me a long look. “It doesn’t feel good to be on the other side, right?”
Guilt seeps through me. “Which is why I am delighted that I slaughtered Sobek, and you fed Isis to her own crocodile.”
“You did what…?” Freya’s eyes widen.
Suddenly, from the depths of the living abyss, I hear a distant chorus — more voices than there are grains of sand in the dunes, speaking in a language older than existence.
The voices are still too far away to make out the words.
But they are getting closer.
I shudder.
Freya and Daire exchange a glance.
“What changed your mind?” Freya asks.
“Meeting you,” I reply. “My blood will seal the Void. My Omega’s would too, but I threatened to tear out Ruin’s tongue for even speaking of that. Instead, I made the deal that you will reign as my royal widows under Ruin’s guidance.”
“Idiot bat.” Daire hisses. He pulls back his shadows from me, and I sit up. “We could have worked out a plot to save you.”
“Don’t you think that I have looked at every angle of this since my twin was taken by the Void Cult?” I shove him back from me into Freya’s arms, but a fond smile dances around my mouth.
I respect that he never stops fighting. It is one of his best qualities.
There comes a time, however, when stopping is a type of defiance too.
I crawl closer to Daire and Freya, sheltering them with my body against the violent storm, which whips my back.
I shiver.
How cold will it be in the Void?
Will I die straight away? Or like the myths that Ruin has taught me, will I be lost in the other world, toyed with as the Void Devils’ plaything, until they grow bored and take me apart piece by piece?
Then my spirit will be forever trapped in the Void, separated from my ancestors and descendants.
I steel myself.
Together, my King, Queen, and I are huddled in a small world of our own, our warm breaths and scents mingling against our cheeks, our mouths almost touching, and our tormented gazes meeting.
I want to be close enough that Daire can see me clearly one final time.
“Being able to spend this night with you, before I had to tell you the truth, was my last wish. To experience a rut, touch, and love. Acceptance. Just once. If you’d known what was coming, then we couldn’t have had this joy,” I murmur, “as the sun would not shine, if it knew that it would be eclipsed by the moon. Would the majestic Luna moth fly so boldly in the night sky without fear if it knew that it had only a month to live?”
Freya throws her arms around my neck. “But we’ve just found you. We face everything together.”
I pull Freya’s arms from around my neck and shuffle back.
Freya is crying silent tears.
I push myself onto my knees. “Let me die so that you may become the queen that you deserve to become. My body, blood, and heart are yours. My soul and spirit may be lost to the Void, but we both know that they belong to you and that is the vow that matters. It is what I will be holding onto. Remember that. Let me guard you from the shadows of the Void; it’s all I beg for.
To die for you. The realms may be devoured for all I care.
On my blood, I sacrifice myself tonight for my King and Queen.
I am yours, eternally. Please, before I do this, tell me that I am. ”
I look up at them from underneath my eyelashes, barely daring to breathe.
If these are the last words that they speak to me, they will kill me more surely than the Void Devils will, if they call me monster again or reject this offer.
Freya’s face crumples.
She opens her mouth in protest.
But Daire warns, “Love…”
She glances back at him. “I can’t…I can’t watch…”
“I know.” A fine tremor is running through Daire’s wings. “I bloody know. Just let me think.”
“You’re my Alpha,” Freya finally whispers like each word costs her a year of her life. “You’re mine eternally.”
I let out a breath. My shoulders relax.
It’s all that I needed to hear.
I bow my head, reaching for Freya’s hand.
I smooth over her knuckles with my thumb, before kissing the back of her hand.
“We can’t spend our afterlives together.
But that is as it should be.” When I hold her hand tighter, I feel the ghost of a smaller, warm hand, a laugh like stars, and the tickle of fish against my feet.
My voice is steadier than I’m expecting it to be.
“When you arrive, if Laz is there, tell him that his brother may have grown up to be the bat-winged little monster who was born to bathe in blood that our nurse said I was, but I didn’t die entirely wicked. ”
Freya pulls a complicated expression like she’s trying hard not to fall apart.
She simply nods.
“For now, however, you’ll live, safe from the Void Devils, as it should be.
” A stillness falls over me like before a battle.
I glance between my beautiful nestmates.
“You have each other. You even have Relius. You can forget about me, as my own family did. Pretend that I never existed. You have gifted me with the only happiness I have truly known in my life. Now, I gift my blood and life to the world.”
With preternatural speed, my claws extend. I raise them to my wrist that doesn’t have my Ankh bond mark on it because I would never share this pain with my Omega. I sink my claws deeply enough to draw blood with them.
My blood winds from my body in scarlet tendrils into the night sky, as my shadows guide their way toward the Void.
I lock eyes with the people who are everything to me.
I smile.
Then my back arches in agony, as I am lifted into the air through the open frame in the whirlwind of the storm along the path of my blood.
Immediately, I can sense Daire’s magic tugging on me and attempting to hold onto me. This time, however, he’s not strong enough to fight against the primal magic.
To my horror, I feel desperate arms grabbing around my waist.
By the Shadow Devils, no…
Freya grabs onto me, refusing to let go, as I am hauled into the air toward the gaping mouth of the Void, which is already shrinking, painted with my blood.
“I can never forget you,” Freya gasps hot into my ear.
I coil my shadows around her, lacking the strength to return her to safety but determined that she doesn’t fall.
Shadow and Devil roar in exultation. Their shadows wind out of them, raising them into the heavens back home alongside me.
Together, we are drawn into the Void.