The Syndicater (Dark Verse, #6)

by RuNyx

"No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell."

"This thing of darkness, I acknowledge mine." —William Shakespeare

She was his north star, the only thing constant, bright in his tenebrous world.

"We will become ashes before we are apart," he murmured against her mouth. Her breath hitched. He knew she liked his words, that she cherished them and held them close to her heart. "I will never let you go."

"Because you're on a journey of self-discovery, of healing and rising from your own ashes," he reminded her. "You're finding who you are, and your mind is finally ready to face your past. You are an emotional creature, flamma. You need all these pieces to feel whole and happy. And I happen to like it when you're happy."

"But what if I'm never whole? What if, after all of it, I'm left… empty?"

Her mouth trembled, her eyes half-lidded. "Not with you." "Never with me. No matter what happens, you'll never be empty with me."

Being a mother was exhausting. Being a mother while being a mob wife was extra exhausting.

Don’t I know it girl

They had always come together explosively, but now there was desperation there, of watching each other and etching it all to memory, of spending every second they had together pressed into each other so their flesh could remember, their bones could recall, their blood could carry the moments through their bodies in the absence.

"But only I have met Dainn." She loved that. "And only you will, flamma," he promised. "I will become whatever I have to for everyone else. Not for you. For you, I am as I am, every damaged, deranged part of me."

"You will always be mine, flamma. My flamma. Names don't matter. They're clothes you can choose to wear one day and discard the next. You could be Lilith or Lily or Lina, Luna or Lyla, or completely nameless. It doesn't matter. What matters is who you are in your skin and bones. And all I see—" he held her hand, bringing it up to his lips "—is a woman who owns the world in her small, soft, sexy little hands and doesn't even know it."

"Because you're my flame, a little source of light and warmth in a void full of darkness and death, small but capable of becoming an inferno with the right fuel. And though I was always full of dark and death, for you, I have embraced it, become it, so you can keep flickering without fear. I am the void all monsters fear so you never have to be scared of anything. Not with me."

She was alive. She was real. They had found her. Tears escaped his eyes, for the first time in a long time, and her arms tightened around him. His baby sister. Finally.

“You did thirst for blood, and with blood, I fill you” —Dante Alighieri, Inferno

"What if… they are disappointed? I don't know how to… be. Who to be." He pressed a hard kiss to her lips. "You're perfect. You burn so bright you could blind a man, flamma." "What if others don't see it?" "I don't want anyone to see it," he stated plainly. "Man has tried to steal fire from the sun since before the dawn of time."

And then, without a word, seeing the moisture in her gaze, he went down on his knees before her. Suddenly, she was looking down at him while he was looking up at her.

The world could have ended, and they would have stayed locked there, both of them holding each other, crumbled on the ground, reuniting and restoring and repairing over twenty years of open wounds that had never stopped bleeding.

They stood there like that, siblings of the heart, watching siblings of the blood be reunited after twenty years.

She smiled up at him, wondering how she got lucky enough to fall in love with her enemy, how he had fallen in love with the only girl he'd hated. But that was their story, wasn't it? Tristan and Morana, inseparable existence and all.

"You're the beat to my heart." He gave her a quick kiss, which was interrupted by their daughter's loud, "Ew." They grinned, knowing life would be full of ups and downs, calm and chaos, but they would play it together with the same beats and the same hearts.

"How's the gray?" he asked her quietly, knowing her struggles better than anyone. She looked at the love, the family they'd made for themselves, and locked eyes with him. "Gone." It would return some days, but there was one truth she had learned. The grays never lasted forever. ***

"You'll keep them safe, won't you? All of them?" His eyes locked with hers. "For you, anything." Her eyes lingered on the born and unborn children who had good parents. "And they will never go through what we did?" she asked him. "It ended where it began," he stated. "This is a new era." The end of one era. The beginning of another. And this one was all of theirs.