Chapter 48 Oblivion
Oblivion
Someone I once considered insignificant said their life flashed before their eyes, right before I executed them. Yet what they didn’t say was the things you never got the chance to experience during your lifetime stared straight into your soul when death reached for you with its bloody claws.
Alaric’s lips tasted like cherries the entire time we fell to our end, not even us hitting the water and sinking into the abyss could break our world-shattering kiss.
The water was so cold it felt like a million knives stabbing into my skin. The shock of the frigid temperature nearly had my iron-clad grip slipping from Alaric’s neck, but the moment our bodies sank beneath the water he pulled me tighter against him.
Under the dark river where no light reached, we remained tangled in each other’s arms, lips sealed together like we were each other’s salvation from the havoc we brought upon the realms. My hair floated around us, and if I wasn’t moments away from passing out from a lack of oxygen, I’d feel like I was in a real-life fairytale.
But this was no ordinary story.
Instead of me landing the prince, my fairy-tale ended with the most devastatingly handsome villain to ever exist.
Unlike the fairytales I grew up reading and loving, I knew our story didn’t end with a happily-ever-after.
Monsters didn’t get to ride off into the sunset on a white horse.
No, we drowned in the depths of our despair, or in this case, in the darkness of Adalina’s maleficent river.
It seemed impossible that drowning would be the end of two feared immortals, but these waters felt haunted—like they wanted to claim me, like they wanted to devour my skin and bones.
I couldn’t breathe.
I couldn’t breathe.
I couldn’t breathe.
The Serpent Queen’s vicious existence was nearly reaching its end.
Right when I was about to break our kiss, allowing water to fill my lungs until the darkness finally claimed me, Alaric surprised me by parting his lips and pushing air into my mouth.
Even when he desperately needed the last of his oxygen, he gave what remained in his lungs to buy me more time.
To save me.
Alaric was wrong when he said he didn’t deserve me, for I was the undeserving one.
If anyone should have the right to live, it was him.
Out of the two of us, he was the good one.
With another wave of air flooding my lungs, I let my eyes open underneath the murky water as his lips stayed pressed against mine. However, the pressure of our kiss quickly lessened, and Alaric didn’t open his eyes, even after he must have felt my lashes fluttering against his skin.
In fact, I didn’t feel his heart beating against me in our embrace.
No.
I gripped onto his arms as I finally severed the realm’s longest kiss, so I could look at him better. With his eyes shut and his hair floating around him, he looked like he was simply in a peaceful slumber, in a beautiful state of oblivion.
But I knew better.
Alaric wasn’t sleeping.
Everything I once loved flashed before my eyes . . .
Alaric would never again smile at me like I was the most precious being in all the realms, or hold me when the darkness tugged me into a fit of sorrow.
He would never again kiss my skin like he was worshipping the gods.
We would never build a life uniquely perfect for us, nor would we sit with each other through the misery eternally looming around us.
No, I’d never get to do all the things people did when they were in love, because Alaric's body sank against me, completely lifeless in my arms.