Chapter 45 #3
“So you’re the trespasser everyone has been looking for.” The King’s hands gripped Xander’s cheeks, shaking him with deliberate spite. “I wonder how your blood will taste.” He lifted Xander’s chin and snapped it down with force.
“Fuck you,” Xander spat, though he was immobilised as well, forced to his knees by an invisible hand.
Ellaryn saw it then—the first crack in his composure. Fear swimming in his usually calm, blue eyes, like rocks tied to his feet. He had kept his head above the surface for so long, acting brave, never letting the King rattle him. But now… it stirred him. And they were drowning together.
People didn’t survive this.
The King laughed, drawing her sword and pressing it against the soft flesh of Xander’s throat—the very throat she had kissed only hours before.
Ellaryn wanted to gasp, but the air refused to pass through the seal the King had forced over her lips.
She wanted to scream at Sailen, to warn him to close his eyes, to shield him from what was coming.
But she couldn’t. He just stared at her, waiting for her to save him, and she felt utterly powerless.
“I should thank you, really,” the King said, his smile sharper, fiercer than it should have been, as his eyes flicked to Ellaryn’s. “Handing me a Potential after so many years.”
She recognised the hunger in his eyes—an insatiable craving for power that sent a chill straight through her.
He was going to kill him and take his power.
And she would have to watch.
The King pressed the blade harder to Xander’s throat, leaning in close so that his warm, fetid breath brushed against his skin. “Tell me,” he hissed, his voice a razor, “who helped you? Who taught you to sneak past my defences?”
Xander’s jaw clenched, blue eyes sparking with fire even as invisible bonds held him in place.
“Your mother,” he rasped, each word straining against the King’s magic, a defiant grin tugging at his lips.
The King’s dark chuckle echoed off the marble as he circled him like a predator. “You think you’re clever, don’t you?” His fist shot out, smashing into Xander’s jaw so violently that Ellaryn flinched. “You won’t be so clever when you’re dead.”
His black teeth gleamed as he grinned. “I’ll savour this. Slowly. Drink your power like a fucking cocktail.”
Xander’s lips curled in a smirk through the blood. “I prefer a large glass of wine.”
The King’s fist slammed again, and Xander spat crimson across the floor.
“I know exactly what you are,” Xander hissed, teeth gritted.
The King struck again.
“A fraud. You can’t make your own power, so you steal from others.”
Xander spat through a fresh blow. “And I know your truth too… The reason you’re such a dick is that yours is so fucking small.”
“That’s enough!” The King shouted, every weapon flying off the walls, fueled by his anger. Ellaryn jumped, the harsh sound of metal clanging around the space.
Then the King’s fist then struck Xander with twice the force, fury coiling in his movements. Ellaryn’s chest ached to scream at Xander to stop, to stay silent, but the magic pinned her in place.
The King’s grin sharpened like a blade. He lifted Xander’s battered head, eyes glinting with cruel delight. Slowly, deliberately, he raised her sword.
Ellaryn’s chest constricted. She tried to scream, to push herself toward Xander, to shove the King back—but her body remained frozen.
Her lips didn’t move. Her hands twitched uselessly in the air.
Panic clawed at her ribs, threatening to suffocate her as her vision blurred with tears.
Every instinct screamed at her to act, but she could do nothing.
The King angled the blade toward Xander’s chest, the silver trembling with deadly anticipation. Time slowed. Ellaryn’s heart hammered like a war drum, every beat screaming no, no, no!
She tried to shut her eyes; she couldn’t bear to witness this, couldn’t bear to see him die. But as if mocking her, her eyes refused to close. Pinned open. Forced to watch.
The King wanted her to suffer.
Xander had given her his heart. Loved her through everything she had done. Made her feel like she wasn’t a monster.
He had given her love—and she had loved him back.
She hadn’t even had a chance to tell him.
And now it was going to kill her when it was ripped away.
She should have known.
The King would win. Always.
The King always fucking won.
Ellaryn wanted to scream. She twisted and thrashed against the invisible chains that held her fast—but it was no use. Sailen’s eyes pleaded with her, and she bit down hard on her cheek to stifle the sound.
Her gaze flicked between Xander and Sailen in a brutal, torturous rhythm—a cruel ballet that made her heart hammer against her ribs until it ached.
In all her years trapped in this city, surrounded by pain and forced into acts she could barely bear to remember, she had never felt so powerless. And she hated it.
Hated the King. Hated Cinders. Hated her parents for dying. For letting him take her.
For leaving her with him.
A single tear carved a path down Ellaryn’s cheek.
The King lifted the blade toward Xander, the tip pressing lightly against his chest.
“Maybe I’ll just kill you for the fun of it.” He sneered. “Maybe I’ll take your power.” His smile darkened. “Or maybe I’ll make you a Defier—seen as you released the others.”
Then—
He lifted his hand, and invisible restraints seized Xander, lifting him into the air as he began to scream.
Ellaryn watched in horror as light poured out of him, his body convulsing as his soul was ripped away.
“No!” she screamed.
But the King was already turning to Sailen.
He lifted him next.
Sailen cried out, reaching for her.
“This is your fault,” the King said to Ellaryn as he released his grip on her, her knees hitting the marble in an aching thud. “This will teach you never to betray me again.”
Ellaryn couldn’t think.
Couldn’t breathe.
Couldn’t survive this.
And then she saw it.
The spear.
Lying on the floor like an invitation.
Right next to her.
Waiting.
Its sharp edge glinted at her—cold, merciless, catching the light like a living thing. An edge forged in fire and hammered beneath relentless blows, steel bent and beaten into obedience until it forgot what it had once been.
Her pulse quickened.
What made a weapon?
Was it the steel?
The fire that softened it?
The hammer that struck it again and again until it yielded?
Or was it the hands that shaped it—deciding where it would cut, who it would wound, what it would serve?
Steel alone was only ore in the earth.
Fire alone only heat.
But together—under pressure, under force—they became something sharp enough to end a life.
Her throat tightened.
If a blade could be forged…
So could a person.
She grabbed it without thinking and threw it with everything she had left.
The spear struck him directly in the chest.
The King gasped, his magic faltering instantly as Xander and Sailen collapsed to the floor.
He looked down at the weapon embedded in his body, his face filled with confusion.
He grabbed it and tried to pull it out.
It didn’t move. Instead, it sank in deeper, like an anchor in his chest.
Ellaryn walked toward him slowly.
“What…” he whispered. “How?”
She stopped in front of him, her heart steady for the first time in years.
No tremor. No fracture. No war inside her chest.
His favourite blade.
She was the steel—sharpened by pain, honed by loss, thrust into fire again and again until the weak parts burned away. Hammered by suffering. Tempered by survival.
Born from ash and cinders.
A weapon was something people feared. Something capable of damage. Something that could ruin.
She had spent so long trying to carve herself in two—Ellaryn on one side, Ruin on the other. One soft. One monstrous. One worthy of love. One deserving of chains.
Guilt had followed her like a shadow she could never quite outrun.
Xander had told her she wasn’t Ruin. That she was good. That the girl beneath the blood still mattered.
But the truth was far simpler.
She was both.
Ellaryn was the hilt—the part that chose where the blade struck. The part that held steady. The part with strength, with empathy, with restraint.
Ruin was the edge—sharp, deliberate, capable of ending what needed to end.
One without the other was useless.
Together, they were unstoppable.
She did not have to reject the darkness to be whole. She only had to wield it.
And she would keep Ruin alive to kill the King.
“You were wrong—you did forge something that could kill you,” she said with bitterness, looking into his eyes.
“Me”, she said, “I am your greatest weapon.”
She pushed the spear deeper.
He gasped, blood spilling from his mouth.
“Ruin… please… I did this for you…”
She met his gaze without mercy.
“My name,” she said, “is Ellaryn.”
And as she pulled the spear free, he collapsed at her feet.
And she watched him die, watched the crimson liquid trail down his chin and seep out of his chest until it pooled at her feet. It sparked like diamonds—beauty in the violence.
Above him, the shadow wall flickered.
And then it fell.
And this time—he didn’t get back up.