41. Keira #2
I have had enough. They dare to bicker while my world falls apart.
To speak of the death of my mate while he chokes on poison at their feet, without even a glance in his direction.
I am sick of ruthless, heartless rulers hurting everyone around them only for their own gain. For more power and more money.
No more.
It stops here.
They will abuse and terrorize no fucking more .
My gaze flicks up to Titania. She sits forward in her throne with thrill dancing over her face as another king stands at the bottom of her dais and answers to her. Leonardo stands straight-backed and tall, without a hint of shame for his betrayal, and Belladonna and Valentine match him.
No. Fucking. More.
I will not be a victim here. I will not allow my mate to die. The world can burn for all I care. They will meet the wrath of this queen.
Something breaks inside of me.
A dam. A block.
The door of a hidden vault.
More magic thrums through me from a chasm deep within.
Even though I am no longer connected to Aldrin, it pours out of my mate bond.
From my very soul and essence, which grew and transcended the moment we accepted each other and became joined.
A vicious, violent kind of raw power thrashes within me.
I unleash all of it.
I am blinded by the sheer intensity of magic that pours from me. Every last drop is soaked up by my cage. The bars groan as an inferno of heat radiates from them. They turn the bright orange then red of metal being tempered in fire.
One moment the golden cage is whole and intact, and the next, it shatters. Shrapnel flies out, long bars piercing the wisteria wood of the throne room. The air fills with shouts.
The magic the cage’s enchantment stole from me, every drop any other fae put into it to try to free me—it all hovers in the air like its own entity for a heartbeat, then I grasp it and suck it up inside myself.
My mate bond snaps back into place. I stagger with the intensity of the pain that consumes Aldrin. His thoughts are completely incoherent. The sheer evidence of what they have done to him only enrages me further.
It breaks my fucking heart that with all my earth magic, I don’t have a drop of healing ability to save him or take away his agony. I would bring all of it into my body so he wouldn’t have to feel a moment of it if I could.
I step out of the cage as everyone whirls toward me.
My feet don’t touch the ground as I walk. My burning hair hovers around me like a bright halo and the entire surface of my skin radiates the golden light of raw magic.
Time drags out unnaturally as they scramble for weapons, each inch they move taking minutes. Titania launches out of her seat. Guards step toward me. Leonardo’s shadows churn as Belladonna and Valentine position themselves to protect him with their bodies.
All I know is that my mate is dying and these people are at fault.
I cannot hold all this magic. I must use it and they must die.
Everyone in this room must die. The strings of my heart attached to Aldrin draw my body toward him in that slow dance.
The need to clutch him to my chest and thrust my power, my life force, into him is overwhelming.
But with this much power, I can do many things in a single heartbeat.
I lose my mind.
My wrath whips out of me in lashes. In dozens of wields while I move toward Aldrin.
My power of death and decay wraps around Titania.
It pierces Torin. Leonardo, Belladonna, Valentine—I spare none of them.
I penetrate key senators from Titania’s inner circle.
I find Dante in the crowd and target him too for daring to befriend my mate, only to betray him.
I can’t even hear their screams, not over the agony screeching in my head. Aldrin is fading. I can barely feel his essence now.
So much ash floats into the air as the skin of my enemies cracks in jagged red lines like parched soil.
As flesh peels away to reveal the red of muscle beneath, then that too disintegrates.
My anger knows no bounds. It is hungry and uncontrolled.
It becomes a beast in itself, targeting more and more people who stand against us.
Who allowed this. Guards. Templars. Anyone. No number of lives consumed is enough.
I pass easily between the guards still reaching for the hilts of their swords.
Either they are stuck in time, or I am moving impossibly fast. I fall to my knees beside Aldrin and pull him into my lap, shaking uncontrollably.
So much of that magic is pouring out of me in death and destruction, but there is so much more left.
His eyes stare up at me as I wipe the blood and hair from his face, but I don’t know if he can see me.
My tears fall on his cheeks and run away in pink rivulets.
I join the open cuts on my hands with the seeping wounds of his body, combining our blood once more, and I find him in there.
His breathing is terrifyingly shallow and his heart misses every other beat, but his mind is active.
His essence still clings to his flesh. I pour so much of myself into him, my magic, my life force, my love, but it is simply whisked away by the toxins.
Stop, dear heart. You need to stop. His voice is so weak and distant it makes me more afraid than anything else.
“How can you ask that of me? How can you expect me to stop?” I whimper, running my fingers across his face. Gods, he is so cold.
I glance up at the fae taking the full brunt of my power and wrath, still in the throes of death but nowhere near the piles of ash and dust I need them to be.
King Leonardo is on his knees, clutching at his ruined face, Starlight warriors crumpled all around him.
Titania claws at her eyes with those long artificial nails, screaming wildly, while Torin tries to pry her hands away.
Belladonna crawls toward me, lips peeled back in a snarl as chunks of her blackened flesh steam away in great channels of ash, revealing her cheekbones.
Behind her, Valentine lies unconscious, body thrashing.
Good. She will learn what it feels like to have your mate die in front of your eyes and be helpless to stop it.
I have no doubts about where the poison that is killing Aldrin came from.
They are dying far too slowly, but I can’t spare more of my magic for them.
There is a third pull on my power. One that I don’t immediately understand.
Then I see it. The thin, black lines of poison running across my hands.
I could save myself now if I pulled away from Aldrin, if I focused on destroying those sparse molecules instead of bringing him back, but I don’t want to live without him.
I give him everything. Each last drop of magic.
It isn’t enough.
More toxins channel into me as they overflow from him, and I realize the fate of our position.
The fact that our stars were crossed. Because the majority of the poison doesn’t come from where our blood mingles.
No, now that it has overtaken every part of him, it races into me through our mate bond.
It is a monster that will keep growing and replicating until it has nowhere else to go.
My magic fades as it is consumed by the poison. My grip of death and decay over our enemies drops away and the wields unravel, releasing them. More importantly, my desperate attempts to heal my love fail completely. The raw power pulsing through my veins winks out.
A chill floods my body and my muscles slacken. I collapse onto my side, but frantically try to clutch Aldrin closer to me with hands quickly turning numb. I run my fingers over his brow and across his cheek, brushing away loose tendrils of dark hair. His skin is clammy and so cold.
How did it come to this?
We are face-to-face, staring into each other’s eyes, as I watch the light fade from his. As their amber depths become cloudy, unseeing and vacant.
“No! Gods, no!” I whimper, my words slurred and hardly audible.
I feel the moment Aldrin dies.
His last exhale.
The final beat of his heart.
The mate bond between us winking out.
The death of half of my soul, violently torn from me.
I lose myself to hacking sobs as everything falls apart around me. Intense shakes engulf my entire body as my heart is surely torn in two.
At first I hear distant, garbled shouts. Then there is movement around me. None of it matters anymore.
After a lifetime of torment and regret, I recognize that two people stand over where we lie, but I refuse to look at them.
I will die with Aldrin’s face as the last thing I see, even if it is lifeless and covered in black veins.
He will always be the most beautiful thing I have ever beheld, in any state.
“Your minion’s poison shouldn’t have affected the girl,” Titania snaps. “I still had use for her.”
“One can never anticipate how the mate bond will react to unique magic. She shouldn’t have been here,” Leonardo states coolly.
I see someone reach for me from the corner of my eye, and a counter-motion to hold them back.
“Wait,” Leonardo snaps. “You cannot have your people touching their skin until the poison fades, or they will die too. They must sit in the morgue for a few days, untouched by any except my people, then when the black disappears, you can string their bodies up on the palace walls and have your celebration ceremony.”
They have won.
Titania won.
And she will break this realm.
I can’t find it within myself to care, while my king lies dead beside me. While the life bleeds from my body. When the darkness of oblivion comes to claim me, I throw myself to it eagerly. Anything is better than the agony of this reality.
Aldrin died thrice for his kingdom, but more importantly, he sacrificed himself thrice for his queen.
Maybe I will find him in the next life. Perhaps we will get the peace we deserved in death that we never achieved in life. I always knew I would give up my all for him. Now, I die alongside him. My heart stops beating. My lungs refuse to fill. My soul leaves my body.
I embrace death gladly.