Chapter 23 Kieran
KIERAN
The blissful void in which I met the Creator was gone, and in its place, agony.
There was no gentle return, no breath of warning—only a tidal wave of sensation, thick and suffocating, as if I’d been dropped from the heavens into a body made entirely of fire.
My lungs seized as I gasped for air. My skin felt peeled back and stretched thin over the crackling weight of the stars now surging through every inch of me.
Steele’s voice, hoarse and frantic, murmured against my ear. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you, I’ve got you—fuck, Kieran, hold on.”
He cradled me in his lap, his body curled around mine like he could help contain the energy if only he held me tightly enough.
My fingers spasmed, curling against the front of his shirt as my body bucked again, helpless beneath the violent magic tearing me open from the inside out. My breath came in ragged bursts, lips parted in a silent gasp as every nerve lit up.
And through it all, just beyond the pain, I felt them. My mates.
I forced my head to turn, vision swimming through the pain and found them in a circle of scorched wings and blood-streaked bodies around Steele and me.
Gabe roared as he deflected a Dominion’s blast with his sword.
Ronan’s shadows twisted through the air as he created creature after creature, with a pack of black wolves tearing through a Dominion.
Niz above us in his wyvern form, wings tattered and bleeding, lashing out mid-air as he barreled into another Dominion mid-dive.
Bastian floated just beyond them, barely upright, his blood dripping from him as he fought to keep up a shield in front of us where the Seraphim were launching orbs of fire at us, free from their cages now.
His lips were drawn tight in fury, and fatigue bled through our bond.
They were holding the line. Fighting the heavens themselves to keep me alive.
Steele’s arms tightened around me, his breath ragged against my temple. “Just keep fighting for us, Kieran.”
Through the burning static screaming beneath my skin, the bond pulsed—frayed, erratic, and suddenly full of anguish so vast it nearly drove the breath from my lungs. The pain wasn’t mine, but all of theirs, and it flooded through me.
Bastian’s presence dimmed first, no longer the snarling inferno of blood and defiance I’d always known.
He felt hollow now, as if the magic he’d poured into those cages had drained the marrow from his bones.
I could feel his blood and energy leaving him in steady pulses.
His body trembled with effort, held upright only by sheer refusal, but even his refusal was faltering.
His magic stuttered with each heartbeat, too thin, too fragile.
Above, Niz let out a screech and my gaze jerked to him.
There were holes in his wings now, singed with what had to be celestial fire from the Seraphim.
I felt his fury, his primal need to protect me, to protect us, but it was dulled by pain and damage that ran deeper than even his body could sustain.
Tears began to trail down my eyes as they struggled to hold on, the same as me. I could do nothing but watch and force myself to continue to fight to draw each breath into my lungs.
Ronan was surrounded by dozens of shadow creatures that circled protectively, fighting back the tide that pressed in on us, but I could feel how much it cost him. Each new conjuration siphoned more from him. He was splitting himself apart to keep those shadows anchored in this realm.
They were all burning through the last scraps of their strength, still refusing to retreat in order to protect Steele and me.
My hands trembled where they curled against Steele’s arms and my chest tightened with grief.
I wanted to scream, to throw myself into the fray and bleed beside them, but my body was still seizing, still full of too much power and too little control.
Through the bond, I could feel what they weren’t saying, what none of them dared admit—this was it.
Their final stand. Every last ounce of strength they had was being given freely to protect me.
Not because I held the stars and the fate of the world within my body, but because they loved me.
Tears blurred my vision as I blinked through the haze, eyes straining past blood and flame and shadow beasts that lunged into the fray. My pain radiated through my bones, blistered through my veins, lit every nerve on fire with too much power and not enough body to hold it.
But none of it compared to the agony of watching them break. I choked on a sob as my gaze dragged over each of them over and over until suddenly Bastian’s gaze locked with my own.
His steps faltered, knees buckling for a half-second before he caught himself, hands braced on the hilt of a blood sword he was too drained to swing again. His magic clung to him like a second skin as his hair flicked through the colors of the rainbow as if it was consuming him.
He smiled just barely before his voice came through the bond, fading.
“I love you, Darling. Forever.”
The moment that final word left his mind, his body slumped forward and the light of our bond went out entirely.
“No—” The scream ripped out of me, making my throat bleed with burnt skin and the force of it. “No!”
I tried to force my body to move to go to him, to do anything but helplessly stare at his fallen form. “Bash!”
Steele’s arms wound around me tighter, his voice filled with grief as he yelled, “Kieran, stop! You can’t force your body to do anything else right now.
” His words caught as he crushed me to him.
“You have to live, Princess. You hear me? The stars are still coming—more of them. He knew the risk. We all fucking knew and we still chose this. We’ll choose it again.
A thousand times over. Focus on the stars for him. ”
I was screaming and sobbing and seizing all at once, my body no longer mine, my heart shattering with every pulse. I wanted to go to him, to feel the warmth of his skin one more time, but Steele held me tightly, anchoring me in a way that split my soul and somehow still kept it tethered.
We were falling one at a time, and I knew it wouldn’t be long until I lost another.
And I didn’t know how to find the strength to survive this without them. All of them. I didn’t want to live in a world in which they didn’t all exist.
“Enough.”
I knew that voice.
It rolled over the battlefield and it was as if the world obeyed instantly. The heat of the Seraphim faltered mid-strike and the clash of weapons halted.
The upper triads froze where they were—one of them with a glowing celestial blade poised at Gabe’s throat. A single breath from severing everything. Gabe stood panting, bleeding from his temple, his hands empty and outstretched like he’d been caught mid-parry.
Behind him, Niz roared as his wings failed mid-beat and his massive body crumpled from the sky with a devastating crash, his wyvern form disintegrating mid-fall into spiraling threads of magic and bone.
He hit the ground in a heap of naked, bloodied skin, body curling instinctively to shield what he could, even in unconsciousness.
A whimper escaped me before I was openly sobbing, choking on the grief clawing up my throat.
My chest wouldn’t rise. My lungs wouldn’t fill.
Bastian was gone. Niz was barely alive. Gabe stood on the edge of death.
Ronan’s shadows were beginning to disappear as his own strength waned.
And Steele—I turned to him, needing something solid, needing the strength that had always been in his eyes.
And I saw what it had cost him to hold me to him.
All of him, blistered and blackened from where he’d held and refused to let go of me while I burned with the stars. His jaw was clenched through the pain, his breath ragged, chest heaving, and still he held me like I was the only thing in this world worth anchoring to.
“Oh stars,” I sobbed, “Steele… what did I do—”
“You lived,” he rasped, eyes burning with pain and something far fiercer. “You’re still here. That’s all that matters.”
But I saw it now—how much he’d given to keep me in this world. His energy was draining from the amount of runes pulsing all over my skin, giving me everything he had and more.
The sky split with a flash of purple lightning spiderwebbing through the clouds, and down came a lone figure.
The Creator.
No wings, no armor, no battle cry. Just power incarnate, wrapped in a flowing white and gold dress that shimmered like galaxies had been threaded into silk.
Her white hair billowed weightlessly, aglow and drifting around her.
Her eyes were like molten suns as she dropped down to hover above us, scanning the scene before her.
With a single flick of her hand every weapon the upper triad members gripped was wrenched from their grasps.
The steel turned to ash midair, disintegrating into dust and light, as if it had never been forged at all.
The celestial sword at Gabe’s neck vanished in a shimmer of ash, and he staggered back, eyes wide, too stunned to speak.
The Dominions and Seraphim froze, and for the first time, they looked small.
She touched down to the ground between us and the triads. Power rippled from her with each breath, rippling out across the battlefield in waves of terrifying energy.
“How dare you,” she said as she surveyed the triad members before us, her voice no louder than a whisper, yet it rolled like thunder across the ruined city, shaking stone and soul alike. “How dare you presume that I would ever agree to such violence through my slumber?”
Each word carried the weight of divine judgment.
“Slaughtering creatures of my creation for your own gain?” Her glowing gaze raked across each frozen Seraphim and Dominion. “Trying to take the stars into yourselves to become deities, as if I haven’t given you enough power?”
One of the Seraphim moved forward with trembling hands. Their voice wavered, carrying a strange echo, like two people speaking in perfect unison, a breath out of sync. “We only—”
“You only thought of yourselves above my will,” she interrupted, her voice sharp and cold. “You only claimed righteousness as an excuse for domination. You only destroyed what you could not control.”
She stepped closer to them, and the air thickened, magic suddenly crawling like frost across the stone as she walked.
“I don’t need to hear your side of this,” she said quietly. “I stand with the victims of your violence.”
Her hand rose, palm open toward the sky. “You will pay for it with your lives.”
She lifted one hand, fingers tipped with molten energy as the triad members all opened their mouths to try and rebut, but there was no time for it. With ease she flicked her hand back and seemed to tear the power from them.
The triad members’ magic unraveled from their bodies. It lifted from their flesh in tendrils and arcs, spiraling toward her hand as she seemed to absorb it.
Their wings blackened and their bodies crumpled. Light bled from their opened mouths and eyes, and when the last of their energy was dragged from their bodies, what remained of them turned to dust.
There were no final screams. No last attempts at salvation.
Just silence and dust in the wind.
The breeze caught it all and carried it off, scattering it across the ruins of the battlefield.
They were gone and the silence they left behind was thunderous.
I knew I should have felt triumph and justice—maybe even peace—but what poured through me was a slow, aching sorrow that made my ribs feel too tight to hold it all.
Because what they’d already done couldn’t be undone. The deaths. The ruin. The centuries of pain.
We may be free now, but at what cost?
My shoulders trembled as I tried to catch my breath, tears tracking down my cheeks.
The Creator turned, and her gaze swept around the courtyard and when her eyes met mine, I felt the breath leave my lungs again.
She stepped toward us, hair suspended in waves of light, her entire being threaded with power that vibrated through the air.
She was terrifying, breathtaking, and unshakably calm all at once.
“With the power I took from my forces,” she said, her tone softer now, rich with a grief that mirrored my own, “I have enough energy to heal all those in Alfemir. I will pull the fallen souls back if they have already left their bodies.”
Relief crashed into me as my eyes swept over all of my mates before fixating on Bastian’s still body. I whispered, voice breaking around the pain of it. “Thank…thank you.”
It was all I could say. All I could offer. I would have torn open my chest to give her anything she asked if it meant my mates and the brave people on our side in this battle would be spared.
The goddess’s eyes remained closed and her hands whipped through the air—strands of golden light flowing from her and stretching endlessly across Alfemir as far as I could see.
I felt a fluttering through my bonds as, one by one, each connection surged brightly in my mind, as though energy were being breathed back into them, until five distinct pulses bloomed in my chest. The pain and weariness faded from each of their minds in turn.
Bastian’s crumpled body stirred before a cough tore from his chest as breath returned to his lungs. His bloodied fingers curled, and the instant his eyes opened and found mine once again, I whispered to his mind, “Don’t you fucking dare die again. It’s terrible for my nervous system.”
A smirk tilted the corner of his lips up. “Sorry about that, Darling.”
My chest cracked open around the impossible truth of it all.
My mates were alive.
The upper triads were no more.
My eyes closed as certainty settled within me. I didn’t care if I burned from the inside out a thousand times over.
Because this—this moment, this mercy—was everything.