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“An ancient power…loosed…from thrall. Two worlds smothered…by a pestilent…pall.” The Lyverian mother’s words were broken by her dying breaths. “From the tree of rot…the insects…crawl. Decay and blight…unslain by steel…will bring…the strongest men…to kneel.”
“Clearly, you have no idea how irresistible you are if you imagine I can lie next to you even one night without the longing to touch you.”
“How can I convince you that the only thing that could possibly force me away from you is death? And even then, I’d find a way to get back to you.”
“It isn’t staying to protect you that’s going to kill me. It’s staying away from you.”
She was his mate. His destiny. The more time he spent with her, the stronger the pull in his blood, like gravity shifting the tides. An unbreakable thread tied to his chest. And the fiercer his need to protect her.
“To be fair, your chivalry, however dark and morbid and brimming with lunacy it may have been, warmed my heart. No one has ever offered to destroy the world for me.” “I’m nothing if not fiendishly and soullessly chivalrous.”
“Yours is not derived from the sun or moon. It lives in the heart of Aethyria. It is the molten blackness that pumps through the veins of our world. Few gods take physical form, but this one lives within you.” Zevander puzzled his words. “Who?” “Deimos. The god of sablefyre and destruction.”
“I’m starving for you,” he said in a ragged voice, then dragged a chair close and fell into the seat. “But I’m going to take my time and savor it. Every drop of you.”
“Always quick with the wit. Tell me, is it a requirement for men to relate all conversations back to that?”
We finally reached the entrance of the village and the wide stone archway topped with Foxglove Parish written in bold, black letters. The dirt path we’d traveled converged with the once-bustling cobblestone road that ran through the center of the village, flanked on either side by long stretches of shops and homes, their steep roofs blanketed in fresh snow. Gas lamps stood cracked and unused, and at the center of the town, the frozen fountain, whose statues once spouted water, remained quiet and still. Haunting. On the left, we passed the village apothecary, where I’d sometimes dropped off
vials of morumberry oil, its broken window and hollow interior reminding me of an empty eye socket. The usually-busy bakery to the right had clearly been plundered, given the broken glass, spilled jars of spices, and discarded, cracked baking stones lying about. And looming over the village in the distance, an ever-watchful eye, stood the Red Temple, a dark silhouette with its pointed spires that pierced the low lying clouds. Like a frozen corpse, the village slumbered in perpetual darkness.
“I have…no fight…left.” Shame chewed at him with the confession. “You do. Beneath your suffering lives a flame that cannot be extinguished. A strength that will not break. This pain is temporary, but what burns within you is everlasting.”
“The pain…is all there is.” “Then, embrace it. Do not let it consume you. Bend, if you must. And fight. Until they’ve taken all but your breath.”
“I will never be worthy of your light, the purity of your heart, but I’m too selfish to spare you from this darkness I carry. Godsblood, I would follow you to the edge of existence and into the black void.”
“You’re a fate I never dared to dream, moon witch. The stars I was never meant to grasp. But seeing how this gluttonous world devours the unclaimed, I’m calling you mine.”
Fate is not a flitting rope, but a knot that grows tighter with time. Bound by twists and loops not easily unraveled.
“My precious daughter. You were not meant to become a delicate flower, but the frost that wilts the vine. It is your strength
in a world that seeks warmth and frailty in a woman. Steel your bones, and do not bend, or break to their will. Accept what you are and what you will become.”
“I would call you the soft glow of moonlight in a pitch-black world. A prayer I never spoke aloud, but somehow the gods answered anyway. The strike of lightning I dare to behold without flinching.” His brow flickered as he ran his thumb over my bottom lip. “The reason I breathe.”
“You’re implying King Sagaerin is supplying the city with vivicantem?” Kazhimyr poured himself another glass of water in hopes of drowning his hunger. “Why wouldn’t he?” Ravezio sneered. “Starves his own people to feed his allies.”
Zevander gnashed his teeth, refusing to relent. He’d spent years at the mercy of vicious hands that longed to break him. Had pieced himself together through sheer will.
“You hoped to cure her. That was your intent.” “We all begin with good intentions, don’t we? Even the darkest of souls.”
“You’ve had your heart ripped open by brutal hands. And even if you threw me into the darkest abyss, tore me limb from limb, I would find my way back to her. If I had to
crawl through the cold and hollow belly of death itself, I would find a way to return to her.”
“Through every…thread of fate, I have loved you. Please … live.” He let out a grunt and his hand slipped from Dravien’s. Then mine. A single brush of our fingertips like smoke across my skin. Time slowed around me, my heart caught in my throat.
