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The moment you pass through these gates, you can do so knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt that your life has come to an end. There is not a single path in which the Fates let you leave here without knowing the touch of death.”
“Sometimes death is a mercy, but if you live, not even you can outrun the Fates forever.”
My knees threatened to cave with every step. But I took them anyway. Just as I always had.
The pain of the unknown was so much worse than witnessing it for myself.
She was a great and terrible beauty in a timeless way, the kind of breathtaking that men waged wars for.
In death, we were all the same.
They could argue that my life had made me stronger, but that was bullshit. I’d made me stronger. I’d survived what was done to me and come out the other side in spite of the hardships of my life, not because of them. Suffering to gain strength was a ridiculous excuse crafted by abusers and the privileged.
You cannot fear what you’ve already overcome,”
Loyalty to the faith above all else became far, far easier to achieve if they could limit the people we cared about and turn us against one another. It was easier to keep us subservient if we were stranded islands living in proximity to one another, rather than a community that looked after our own.
She might think that she could break me, but she wouldn’t. I’d been created of flesh and bone, forged in the fires of abuse and tyrants.
“A storm is coming for us all, and with it will come a shifting of the Fates. I wonder who will be owned when it is all said and done,”
It never failed to shock me, the influence of fate in our lives and the way every piece of who we were lined up with the path that had already been chosen for us. It was easy to forget sometimes, to pretend that we had any sway in our destiny—until reality came sweeping in and took our legs out from under us.
The woman in front of me was crafted from darkness and something wild, a destiny written in the stars and trapped within the galaxies of her eyes.
“Then I guess we will burn, but at least we’ll burn together,”
“You are the master of your magic, my love. Do not ever doubt that or let it control you,”
In this, I would be his wife. He would see inside of me as well as outside, claiming the last parts of me as his.
My soul searched for hers, colliding so suddenly it blinded me. The shimmering edges of where we’d been torn apart healed over with a slow progression of golden light in the dark abyss that existed within her.
“Every monster is the hero of their own story, and every hero the villain of someone else’s.
I could have just as easily descended into the cruelty of the world as a result of my suffering, but I hadn’t.
The perfect fit, all of her hills and valleys nestled into mine to create a single being. Two bodies. One soul.
I’d give her anything she needed, anything she wanted to take, if it meant that I would never have to leave this moment or this feeling.
His pain brought me peace. His suffering filled a karmic void that I hadn’t known existed within me.
There was a reason those who had power, and respected that power for what it was, didn’t want to keep it forever. There was a reason Kings and Queens who lived forever would one day pass on their rule to their heirs—a reason the Primordials had retreated from our world and given it to their children. Nobody should bear the weight of that responsibility forever.
Together, we were formidable. Together, we would be enough.
If my time came, I would die in a blaze of glory and do everything in my power to take my enemies down with me. That meant I needed to escape the pit of Tartarus. That meant I needed to survive whatever they put forth for me.
They believe that one experience can alter two unique people in such profoundly different ways, changing one for the better and altering the other for the worst,”
I will not be a man’s weapon to be used at will.”
There is beauty in knowing who you are.
She’d been brave enough to know herself. She’d been brave enough to look at the adversity of her past and face life with her head held high. To do anything less would have been a disservice to her memory now that the life had been stripped from her too soon.
For the first time in my life, I had someone that I knew would always be by my side. Someone who would stand beside me no matter what I did. Even when the Fates forced us to separate as they’d warned the time would come, he would still support me from a distance and be the part of me I could not deny.
“There is not a trial in this world that you could not defeat if you so much as dared to try. It has been my honor to stand at your side while you discover yourself and your heart after all of this time. I have waited centuries for you, and I would have waited centuries more, because there is no one in this world or the one that we will create who could ever inspire me the way you do. You make me want to be better. You make me want more than I have ever dared to dream of, and you make me believe in light, when all I’ve known is night.”
He was a song of beauty in the wind, a harmony moving enough to make listeners cry.
“I vow to be the sword at your back, to protect you from those who would stand in your way or make moves behind your back. I vow to support you in all you do, and to believe in the world you see for our future and our children’s future. My sword and my life are yours, min asteren. In this life and the afterlife, in this world and what comes next, you are my guiding light—the answer to the questions I didn’t know to ask.”
If it hadn’t been for the incommunicable way that I knew nothing in this world would be worth having if I didn’t have him at my side. Freedom would not matter. Friends would no longer appeal to me. Life for me would simply cease to be.
“You are everything, my star. None of this matters if I do not have you.”
It was oddly refreshing—satisfying in a way—to have the only expectation of me be to smile and look pretty.
The massive, long tables they’d pulled into the edge of the woods were decorated with vines that sprawled down the center. Flowers were dispersed through the vines, candles lit to offer dim lighting as darkness descended. Pieces of tree trunks were cut in perfectly uniform pieces, forming stools where people would sit. The plates were simple and white, crafted with painstaking precision to keep them as close to a perfect circle as possible. The same white fabric that Estrella and I wore was draped through the trees at the edge of the forest, cascading and framing the tables flawlessly. The
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It would have been stupid, and it wouldn’t have taken even a flick of my finger to knock him on his ass, but sometimes, you just wanted to punch another man in the fucking throat and watch him choke.
If my life was always going to end in flames, if I was always going to be destined to die, then why was I fighting so hard to stay in the world of the living? The only answer I had was love.
“Sometimes a monster is exactly what the world needs to right the wrongs that have been committed for centuries.
Your fear of yourself is your greatest weakness.
Be the fucking monster, Estrella. For they will judge you as one either way.”
Every hero is a villain of someone else’s story.
Age hardened you. It tore the kindness from your soul and ripped the care from your bones.
Age tore the innocence away. Age took your ability to be hurt and morphed it into a fever dream, a breathing, tangible thing that you could never seem to shake. Age made it so that you anticipated the pain of that betrayal with every step you took.
If there was one thing I knew about my mate, it was that her ability to survive anything life threw at her was her true magic. She would adapt and change as she needed, serving whatever purpose was necessary so that she could come back to me. She’d live through sheer determination alone, bending the will of the Fates to hers.
“How am I to say if I am worthy when I do not know what it is I will become? I don’t think there is anyone who is worthy of the kind of power the Primordials and Gods possess. All I can do is endeavor to be fair and just, to give those around me the best life possible and not allow my magic to corrupt me in the same way it has so many others. Does that make me worthy, or does that make me blinded by my own idealism that I might be different than those who came before me?”
