I soared above the battlefield with my flesh on fire and fury coursing through my veins as I took in the death that surrounded me, the last of the rebel survivors long gone and the Nymphs all fighting to break through into the tunnels.
I looked around for any sign of Lavinia or Lionel and frowned as I failed to spot them. In fact, the Dragons and Fae who had been fighting alongside them had gone too, not a single soul in sight surrounding me aside from the Nymphs who shrieked and howled for my blood. They reached up towards me from the ground with their probes as if their desire for my magic alone might be enough to pull me from the sky and into their embrace where my death would await me.
Fear speared through my flesh as I hunted for any sign of the people I loved, wondering if it was a fool’s hope to believe that they might have made it back into the tunnels while failing to spot them anywhere out here.
The end of the battle had been chaos. I’d barely been able to keep track of the people right beside me, let alone anyone further out, and now I was left in the grip of terror as I hunted for any sign of my family and friends.
What had happened with Darcy and Orion? Had he gotten her away from the fight? Had he managed to return her to herself again?
My chest ached with concern for my other half and my pulse raced as I scoured the battlefield from above, my gaze moving over the dead and the bloodstained, trampled ground in search of any clue to her whereabouts, but there was nothing.
Where were Gabriel, Geraldine, Sofia, Tyler and Xavier? This frantic pounding in my chest was getting harder and harder to bear as my heart thundered in anticipation of an attack I couldn’t see coming, like it already knew something I didn’t and I was just struggling to catch up to it.
I hunted the land and sky for the sight of two warring Dragons, for a flash of golden scales or a powerful roar. A frenzied kind of panic was building within me as I beat my wings hard and swept across the battlefield, searching for Darius as my heart began to tremble in my chest, the lines of a fissure I refused to let burst open forming all around it.
A sudden sense of foreboding struck me deep in my soul at the emptiness I found in in the sky and fear chased through me so potently that my hands shook with it.
“Darius?” I cried, adrenaline blazing through me hotter than my Phoenix fire as I hunted the battlefield for any sign of him, flying fast and searching with a desperation that made my skin prickle as I sensed the stars turning their eyes on me to watch. They knew. They fucking knew what fate awaited me once I found him, and they were creeping closer to feast on my destruction once it came for me.
My heart stalled in my chest as I spotted him, a breath sticking in my throat as ice tumbled through my veins and immobilised me. There he was, the man who had taken possession of my heart and ownership of my being, lying endlessly still on a hilltop far below me.
I dropped from the sky like a stone, the fire of my Order form extinguishing across my body as I free fell towards him with my heart in my throat and pain gripping me like a vice.
I hit the ground hard and dropped to my knees, a sob catching in my chest as I took in the sight of the sun steel blade which was lodged in his heart, and I shook my head in refusal of what I could see with my own two eyes.
“No,” I breathed, the denial a curse on my tongue that tasted like agony as I reached for his cheek, the rough bite of his stubble grazing my palm and the cold touch of his skin sinking into my limbs and drowning me with a certainty which I refused to allow.
Pain shuddered through me so viscerally that I felt it like a tremor tumbling through my core, sending shockwaves out into the sky and throughout the entire world in its wake as it ruined me.
Tears pricked the backs of my eyes as I shook my head, refusing to accept this, leaning down to press a kiss to his unresponsive lips, the coldness in him sinking into my skin too and whispering goodbye on the wings of fate.
I pressed my lips to his harder, tasting blood on them and pain and an endless expanse of nothing, because I couldn’t taste him. The reckless, brutal, beautiful man of mine who had taken all the worst in me and found a way to see it as his deepest desire. The creature who lit me up all the way to my core, who saw every piece of me and made it burn brighter for him while offering all of himself in return. My dark nightmare, my beautiful daydream, my stolen fate.
“Please,” I begged, knowing the stars could hear me and falling back on their mercy as I kissed him again, willing him to return the pressure of his lips against mine, for his eyes of open and for him to be looking back at me when I broke this kiss. “Please, not him.”
The weight of the stars’ eyes on my back felt like it was trying to crush me into the dirt as they continued to watch my ruin with rapt attention and cold discard. They made no offer to me though. No words sounded in response to my plea, and the man I loved so desperately didn’t stir beneath me.
My fingers brushed against his arm and a sob caught in my throat as I felt the cool metal of the Phoenix Kiss I’d gifted him there, returned to its bangle form following his passage from this world, another nail in the coffin of this unjust destiny.
The sound of the Nymphs screaming in excitement punctuated my grief as they came for me, seeing me vulnerable on the ground at last and racing each other to claim the prize of my power as my heart shattered into more pieces than could possibly be reunited.
They fell like grains of sand from my chest and scattered on the cold wind, hurtling out to find him beyond the Veil and beg him to return to me.
Rage rose within me with every passing second that I held his unmoving hand in mine, that I drowned in the agony of his death and refused to consider a future where I was forced to stand and leave him lying dead beneath me. The furious energy rose and rose until it was burning the tears from my cheeks and scouring the pain from my heart, leaving me consumed with anger unlike anything I had ever experienced before.
“This isn’t our fate,” I growled against his lips, my hand moving to grasp the sun steel blade which was lodged in his chest, the cold bite of the metal searing my palm with the sharp bite of reality as it mocked my requests of the stars and reminded me of what it had stolen.
I ripped the blade free with a growl of rage, breaking my kiss with the empty vessel which should have housed the man I loved as I turned my furious gaze upon the stars who continued to watch my destruction play out like it was nothing to them. Nothing at all in their eternal existence.
But they were wrong about that.
I wasn’t nothing. I was fury and agony and untold power combined into a soul which they had tried to cleave apart too many fucking times already.
My sister was lost to me somewhere in the dark, my friends were all missing and facing their own fates with the odds stacked against them as always and this man of mine, this keeper of my heart and possessor of my entire being lay dead in my arms like a sacrifice to their cruel designs.
I shifted my hold on the weapon that had ripped from my arms and felt the cold kiss of the sun steel blade cutting into my palm as I gripped it tightly. I looked down at it as I felt my blood mixing with his along its sharp edge, my broken heart thrashing with the thought of a life lived without him.
Blood dripped between my fingers, his, mine, ours. There was magic in that. Ancient magic which I could feel thrumming through the air all around me and power built inside me unlike anything I’d ever felt before as I leaned into it. This wasn’t my Elements or my Phoenix or any kind of magic I knew. It was raw, savage, the essence of all we were and all we’d ever be.
I looked up at the heartless sky with a curse on my lips and slit the blade deeper into my flesh, knowing that it would scar and welcoming the pain as I dropped the weapon and held my fist up to the stars for them to see the mixture of my mate’s blood and my own running down my arm.
“I will tear the heavens apart for this,” I snarled, flicking my free hand and using my air and water magic to send the droplets of our blood flying up into the sky for them to feast on. “I will shred your world to pieces and rip your hold on destiny from your fucking fists with blood and fire and vengeance for this,” I screamed at them, power whipping all around me and making my hair billow in the force of it as more and more blood raced up towards the heavens. “On my life, I curse you. On his life, I curse you. And for our fate, I’ll end you!”
The darkness rose within me as I fell into the despair of this end for us, Darius’s body so cold and limp beneath me, his blood staining my flesh and his strong and powerful presence gone where I couldn’t follow.
The Nymphs cried out in victory as they crested the hill, countless numbers of them descending on me with a hunger that went beyond all reason and a thirst for my death which I met with the rage of my grief.
The first of them reached us and as its probes brushed against the chest of the man who had owned my entire being, I lost the thin hold I’d been keeping on my restraint and an agonised roar of pain ripped from my throat. I tipped my head back and all of that unbridled power I’d felt building all around us exploded from my chest and echoed out across the entire battlefield and beyond.
A shockwave of red and blue fire exploded from me as I screamed my grief to the stars and the shrieks of the Nymphs rose in answer to me as they died beneath the full force of my power.
The blast tore from me like a supernova, leaving nothing but death and ash in its wake and I arched my spine as it spilled through me and into the world, carrying an endless echo of my pain with it to touch every corner of this star cursed earth and make sure that everyone residing on it felt it too.
I fell forward as the last of it burned its way free of me, sobs cutting from my body in harsh waves which wouldn’t be denied as I fell over the body of the man I’d stolen back from the stars and pressed my ear against the heart which would never beat for me again, begging fate to change its mind while my tears were the only answer I was gifted.
But as I broke over the loss of the only man I’d ever loved, a deep, golden glow appeared before me, forcing me to raise my head and look at the prophecy which was painted for me across the sky.
When all hope is lost, and the darkest night descends, remember the promises that bind.
When the dove bleeds for love, the shadow will meet the warrior.
A hound will bay for vengeance where the rift drinks deep.
One chance awaits. The king may fall on the day the Hydra bellows in a spiteful palace.
