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But Blue didn’t answer, and I couldn’t sense a single claw of his or the light weight of him on my body anymore. He was gone.
I felt it move closer, the power of this thing beyond anything I could imagine, its presence so consuming that it felt foolish to hold my blade against it. No weapon, no magic could halt this entity and as its cold, lifeless breath washed over my cheeks, I felt the weight of its gaze settle on me.
“You will bleed for your crimes,” the Reaper hissed. “You will be sacrificed to the Void and your pain shall be the first payment.”
They had found the weapon the Elysium Prophecy spoke of.
All of it brewed and boiled and burst from me at once and a roar of refusal left me, rejecting my fate as a girl who was nothing. Power spewed from me in an unimaginable wave, that darkness inside me spilling onto the outside and eating through the Reaper’s binds at once until they were dust.
Panic threatened to envelop me and I didn’t think twice before hurling myself at the pair of them, colliding with the Vampire and knocking him off of the man I had claimed for my own.
Death was a sweet caress against my cheeks, the Ferryman drawing closer, ready to guide me beyond The Veil, the echo of his paddle dipping into the waters of ruin echoing in my ears…
Kaiser was formidable in his full Fury form, his chest bare to reveal reams of blood-red armour coating his skin from the waist up above a pair of black trousers, the thick scales moulding to his body. Two curved black horns curled up from his head, sharpening to points, and his eyes burned deepest red.
Blue coiled between Kaiser’s fingers then scurried up his arm to perch on his shoulder with a purring chirrup as he nuzzled his cheek.
“My sayer dragon, Calcifiend, led me here, I had to sneak past the Sky Witch and her little clan of Skyforgers who are fully engaged in fighting the Vampires out there. You have been keeping the company of at least one of them, now more? What a traitor you are turning out to be, silka la vin,” Kaiser said in a dark tone. “And here you are with a Reaper pinned beneath you in a chamber designed for some unholy devices.”
“Calcifiend?” I breathed, staring from the traitorous little lizard to Kaiser.
“My magic. I cannot cast it,” he rasped and I stared down at him in shock, taking in the truth in his eyes and trying to understand it.
“He means you are what I suspected you are,” Kaiser said flatly, and my eyes whipped to him again. “And what is that exactly?” I demanded. “Only I will be the keeper of that knowledge,”
“You don’t have control over that power in you. You don’t even know what it is, do you? But I am certain of it now I’ve seen you render a Reaper powerless.”
Your death is mine. “Delusional as usual,”
But it was no true thing, the knife passing through its head just before its jaws latched around my arm. I cried out in agony, the beast able to hurt me but I couldn’t hurt it in return.
“Come then,” he conceded. “Show me what you can do with that dagger, silka la vin.”
It was pure, and honest, and spoke of the way my heart pounded harder just for him, of the secret we shared and how desperately I ached to make my claim on him known to all the world.
“Moraine,” I gasped, my knees buckling with her weight, the shadow of Cayde’s body moving closer, his expression driving through me just as forcefully as the knife that had pierced my sister’s flesh. All I could do was stare at him in horrified shock. I blinked at the man I had offered my blackened heart to, a mask seeming to slip from his features as he looked at me with feral hatred, his desires lashing against me with the bloodthirsty need for death.
He was my failure, the demon with the eyes of sin who I had distrusted from the first but had somehow slipped into my confidence. I had brought him here. And as he came to send me into the after behind my sister, I found I couldn’t move to stop him. I couldn’t release her. It was my fault. I deserved death for causing hers.
“You made it so fucking easy, Vesper,”
“I thought you were what stood between me and the prince but you weren’t, were you? You were so fucking desperate for love that the moment I offered you a hint of it, you were mine. And you never even questioned it, did you?”
“Well I hardly went to all this effort for a waifhouse brat, did I?”
“But now I have a prize far better than the head of a prince to offer my sovereign. You just gave me a path right into the heart of your nation and all the others besides. I’ll be praised above every warrior in Avanis for winning this war for him. And to think, all it took was a few turns between your thighs to have you spilling your secrets for
“You’re a Stonebreaker,”
“Do you think you were the first Fae to ever wonder at the secrets the Reapers keep from the rest of us?
The Stonebreakers have been figuring out the Reapers’ secrets for years and you don’t have to attend Never Keep for the stars to Awaken your power.”
“I told you I was watching you train so that I could learn your weaknesses, Vesper,”
“I know your habits, your preferences, the moves you hold back in reserve. And I never gave you the chance to learn mine.”
“If you came to kill me, why don’t you engage me properly?” I snapped. “Why keep pushing me back?” “Because I did not come here to kill you,”
“Do I truly effect you so deeply?”
“You cannot wield that power in you. You do not know how.” “What power? What do you know about it?”
“You are not a threat, but when you figure it out…” He regarded me. “You will be.”
His words had brought on a wild resilience in me, because he saw what I could become. He knew I could claim his life given time.
“Void,” Kaiser growled, that word like the voice of fate calling my name as the words of the Elysium Prophecy tumbled through my mind. Seek the Void, for it shall guide the victor to their glorious path, a weapon of purity, and the gift of null. “That is what you are,” he swore. “That is the power you possess.”
“Nightfire is a gift of Furies,” Kaiser said darkly, lifting his hand to grip my chin and make me look into those eyes of blazing crimson.
“It’s not a weapon. It has a single purpose. One sole use. And it is not something my kind wield lightly, for we can only do so once.”
“I can select one Fae in this forsaken world to be mine. Wholly mine. To the very root of your soul, you will belong to me,”
“And I have chosen you.”
“Everest Arcadia, I claim you as my Fearsire,”
“You will serve me in all the ways my Order demands. You will feed me your most haunting fears, you will suffer so that I might thrive, and you will offer me your nightmares in any form I require,”
“And know this. You cannot ever kill me; this soul-tie will not allow it.”
“The darkest pieces of our souls will unite as one, silka la vin.”
“There is no fighting it. No reneging on this power. It is as old as the stars and as binding as destiny. You will not be able to fight my possession again. If I will you to do something, you will do it. I can summon you with a single desire, and if you refuse my call or go against this soul-tie in any way, you will face the burn of the Nightfire.”
“There is only one way to seal this magic,”
“With a kiss.”
But perhaps it was because two enemies being bound like this would rock the foundations of what the four lands stood for.
My soul was no longer my own. It belonged to my nemesis.
“Because the Void has to be delivered to Pyros, silka la vin. You must belong to me. It will make it all the easier to bring you to The Matriarch once our time at Never Keep is done, and it will ensure you do not slip from my grasp in the meantime, nor tell a soul of what you are.”
“I know what I saw,” he said firmly. “You are the weapon the Elysium Prophecy speaks of, and for now, you are my secret to keep. And you will not tell anyone that truth.”
