Chapter 37 #2
That, at least, sounded like Dara again.
“He doesn’t kill her for it,” she said. “Which perhaps would have made things simpler. Instead, he imprisons her. She tells him to kill her. He refuses.”
Her fingers rested lightly against the table now, still, precise, controlled.
“He tells her she promised to stay,” Dara said. “And to him, that promise means something absolute, because everyone else in his life abandoned him. She was the one person who kept coming back. The one person who made the world bearable.”
Valerius was quiet for a long moment. “That is not love in any healthy sense.”
Dara’s gaze lifted to him, and for the first time since beginning the story, there was something faintly sardonic in her expression.
“No,” she said. “It isn’t.”
He accepted that.
Neither excusing nor condemning too quickly.
Good.
Dara resumed.
“There’s a moment later,” she said, “when everything collapses. They are suspended high above the world, and she is dying—struck down by heavenly punishment for using a forbidden artifact. He finds her in the midst of that, and because death tends to make honesty difficult to avoid, she finally tells him the truth.”
Valerius’s gaze did not waver.
“She tells him she is not truly his wife,” Dara said. “Not the person he thought she was. She is someone from another time. Another world, almost. And then she shows him the future.”
The words slowed there, the memory of the story growing heavier as she told it.
“She shows him what he becomes. The Devil God. She shows him the destruction. The deaths. Her father. Her uncle. Her sect. Everything he does.”
Valerius’s hand stilled beside his glass.
“And he says,” Dara continued, quieter now, “‘That’s not me. I don’t even know those people. I didn’t kill them.’”
Silence followed.
For a second, neither of them moved.
Dara looked at him steadily.
“And he meant it,” she said. “At that moment, he meant it. Because the man she was speaking to had not done those things yet. He had not become that creature yet. He was floating in front of her as himself, being judged for a future he had not chosen.”
Valerius’s expression altered very slightly.
Not disagreement.
Something more careful than that.
“She tells him,” Dara said, “that he was born to become the Devil God. That his loneliness, the weakness of his family ties, the absence of love in his life, even the fear others felt around him—none of it was random. It was all tied to that fate.”
A faint pause.
“And then he asks her who she really is.”
Valerius’s eyes remained on her face.
“She won’t tell him,” Dara said.
“Why?”
Dara’s answer came at once. “Because she still cannot afford to trust him.”
That landed.
The room around them seemed softer now, the rest of the restaurant fading in importance against the weight of the story gathering between them.
“She tells him,” Dara continued, “‘Do you think I can gamble the fate of all living beings on the faint possibility that there may be some trace of goodness in your heart?’”
Valerius did not speak.
“She says it is a risk she cannot afford.”
A long stillness followed.
Then Valerius asked, “And what does he say?”
Dara’s gaze drifted to the candle again.
“He tells her he is not the Devil God,” she said. “That he will never let her go. That even if his soul shattered under divine punishment, he still would not let her leave him.”
Something in that line remained as absurd as it was tragic.
Dara let it rest there only briefly before continuing.
“She answers with cruelty,” she said. “Deliberate cruelty. She tells him he was always only a target. That every step she took toward him, every kindness, every moment…” Her fingers tightened once. “All of it belonged to the mission.”
Valerius’s gaze sharpened. “That was a lie.”
Dara was silent for a beat.
“Yes,” she said. “Partly. But it was the lie she chose.”
The next moment of the story came with the inevitability of a blade already falling.
“She tells him that this matter is no longer his concern, because she is taking his dark essence,” Dara said. “She will remove the darkness in him that ties him to the Devil God. In exchange, she will give him her divine essence, so he can live as a normal man.”
Valerius’s voice was quieter now. “And he agrees to this?”
“No.”
That answer came without hesitation.
“He refuses,” Dara said. “Completely. He would rather live with her hatred than accept a sacrifice that leaves him alive without her.”
Dara looked up at him again.
“He tells her, ‘You want me to be good. You want me to change my ways and love this world. But if you are no longer here, what do I care about the world? If you dare leave me, I will destroy everything and die with you.’”
A pause.
“And she tells him he has no choice.”
The line stayed there between them.
Simple. Merciless. Inevitable.
“She tears the dark essence out of him,” Dara said, and her voice was calm now in a way that made the horror of it worse, “while they are suspended in the sky under divine punishment. He screams. She takes it into herself and forces her divine essence into his body in return.”
The candle flickered again.
“Then she lets herself fall.”
Valerius did not move.
Dara kept her eyes on him as she said the next part.
“He tries to follow her. He can’t. The heavenly punishment traps him for a moment too long.” Her voice lowered. “And by the time he breaks free, she’s already on the ground in the snow.”
The words settled into the quiet.
“She dies.”
No one around them seemed to exist for a moment.
Not Grace. Not Leon or Edric. Not the other diners. Not the music murmuring from somewhere farther off in the room.
Only the story.
“And he refuses to accept it,” Dara said. “He carries her body back himself, remembering every warmth she gave him, every small kindness, every promise, and the confession that she loved him.”
A pause.
“Later, he learns the full truth: her sister’s schemes, his own choices, and all the things left unsaid had helped lead to the tragedy that destroyed them.”
Valerius’s expression had become unreadable.
Dara continued anyway. “He had spent most of his life with nothing. No love. No trust. No belonging. And then she became all of that at once.”
A pause.
“And then she was gone.”
Valerius’s voice, when it came, was very quiet. “So once she’s gone…”
“Once she’s gone,” Dara said, “he does not decide to love the world as she had loved it.”
That was important.
“He has no interest in the world after her death. No gratitude. No noble awakening. No holy understanding.” Her mouth curved faintly, bitterly. “Only grief. Only guilt. Only the need to follow her.”
Something in Valerius’s face shifted there. “He tries to die?”
“Yes,” Dara said quietly. “He wants to find her spirit in the afterlife.”
The restaurant had gone very still around them.
Or perhaps that was only how it felt.
Dara looked down at the candle between them.
“Later, much later, the story continues. There are other lives, other losses, other chances to become something more than what fate first shaped. But I think that part…” She exhaled softly. “That part is the one I keep returning to.”
Valerius said nothing for a few moments. Then he asked, “And what do you think of him?”
Dara’s fingers loosened where they rested against the table.
She had known that was the question waiting underneath all the others. Not whether the story was sad. Not whether it was well told. What she believed.
Dara leaned back slightly in her chair and looked at him across the candlelight.
“I think,” she said slowly, “that people are very quick to condemn monsters once they are fully formed.”
Valerius did not interrupt.
“They’re much less interested in the years of neglect, cruelty, and isolation that shaped them first.” Her eyes remained on his. “Everyone likes the simplicity of saying he was born wrong.”
A pause.
“It removes everyone else from responsibility.”
That, too, landed.
Valerius’s gaze stayed steady. “And yet, he still became dangerous.”
“Yes.”
“He still chose cruelty.”
“Yes.”
“He still hurt her.”
Dara’s expression did not soften. “Yes.”
The candlelight moved across the dark line of her hair, the calm planes of her face, the green of her eyes gone deeper now in the warm low light.
“I’m not saying he was innocent,” she said. “I’m saying no one ever gave him the chance to become innocent.”
Valerius was silent.
Dara continued before he could answer.
“If someone becomes a monster because of everything done to them—because they were starved of love, dignity, mercy, and choice from the beginning—then I don’t know if it’s enough to simply point to what they became and call the matter settled.”
A long, quiet beat passed.
Then she said the thing that had been sitting at the center of the story all along.
“Tell me, Your Highness.”
Her voice was low.
“Was the Devil God truly to blame for what he became,” she said, holding his gaze, “or was it the world that made him?”