Chapter Twenty-Three

Rune takes a step toward me, then another. While I'm frozen, reckoning with the weight of the truth, he stalks toward me like an animal on the hunt. He wears a handsome face, but good looks can't hide the poison in his soul.

"Finally, she gets it," Rune speaks with a smirk that's strong enough to knock anyone off their feet. Closer yet he comes, and the closer he gets, the bigger he is. Turns out, having a bit of distance between us skewed my perception of him.

He's tall. Like, too fucking tall. Six and a half feet, easily, like a freaking basketball player, except his muscle is proportional and therefore he can probably squash me like a bug with his pinky finger.

Rune stops only when he's two feet in front of me, his stare sharper than daggers. "Took you long enough, honestly." He moves to the side and starts to circle me like a vulture, like a predator that has finally cornered its prey.

"You resisted my attempts at controlling you, so I had to find other ways to make you…" He chuckles behind me. "…compliant. For someone who claims she's not a hero, you sure do have a hero complex, don't you?"

I'm speechless. I'm speechless and that shit doesn't ever happen.

"A little death here and there and you go running to save the day while complaining about it the entire time." The same annoyed tone he'd take with me all those times, he uses here as he finishes circling me. He now stands directly before me, his head angled down so he can meet my stare. "You are the most vexing, infuriating, irritating human I have ever met—though I will admit I don't often stop to have chats while I'm ravaging the land."

"Rune—"

He must not like that, because his hand grabs my bottom jaw and hoists me up in the air easily, as if I weigh nothing. The action catches me off-guard, and the moment his skin grazes mine, my tattoo itches. I struggle, my feet dangling in the air. It's not a comfortable position—kind of hurts, actually—so Rune or not, I need to fight this bastard.

I bring down a yellow bolt of sizzling magic right into his neck—only what should've killed him doesn't do a thing.

The magical bolt fades into him, and in doing so, the blueness of his eyes light up a golden, beautiful hue. Molten gold. "Still don't grasp the magnitude of it all, I see," he hisses out and he tosses me back. I roll until I stop myself, and I glance up just in time to see him storming toward me.

Fuck that. Fuck him. Fuck all of this.

I lift my hand to send more magic his way—everything I have in me—but he grabs my wrist, his grip steel, inescapable. The black tattoo on my arm lights up a flowing, yellowish color with speckles of intense white, and it feels like everything I am is pulled out of me. My soul. My strength. My power.

"You foolish girl. This power was never yours." The tattoo fades from my skin and flows into him, but it feels like parts of my body are being ripped away, my skin cut off. I cry out from the pain, unable to keep myself together.

I'm on my knees, but I collapse once it's gone, once he took it all from me.

Rune bends his tall frame down, grabs my neck, and forces me to look at him. His eyes glow a bright, metallic gold, his skin awash with tattoos that look similar to the one that used to be on me. The tattoos glow the same color, as if they're moving on his flesh.

"It's mine," he breathes out the words in a sneer. "It was always my power. You were a tool to be used and nothing more." The warmth radiating from him is a false one, a lie, deceiving in its own right. "For twenty years I was broken. For twenty long years I have waited, biding my time while watching Laconia shrivel and rot."

His hand tightens around my neck so hard I gasp and grab his wrist in an effort to peel him off me. It's useless, though. He's too strong.

He kneels with me, and he brings his face so close to mine the tip of his nose brushes against mine. "And now, after twenty years of waiting, I can finally realize my purpose—and it's all thanks to you, Rey. Because of you I am whole again. Because of you I will finish what I began."

"Rune," I manage to croak out his name. "You don't have to do this. Please."

His eyes flash a brighter gold. "Begging only delays the inevitable. I am the inevitable… and my name is not Rune." He lets me go with a push, and I fall onto my back as I cough and reach for my neck.

God, my neck hurts, and even though I'm powerless and I should get up and run, I just can't take my eyes off him as he stands to his true height, his skin glowing with tattoos, his eyes alight with liquid gold.

He is beautiful, and he is everything I hate.

With a flash of light inside him, I'm blinded. I squeeze my eyes shut and look away, but even with my eyes closed, that light still gets inside. It's warm. It's enticing. It's everything any person would surrender to.

But it's wrong. He's wrong.

"I am the undefeated. I am madness brought to life." The voice he uses now is different, lower, monstrous in its depravity… the same voice I've heard in my dreams. Haunting, unnatural in its smooth, deep timbre. "I am everything you will never comprehend. I am rot, disease, insanity. I am death itself."

The light dies down, and I hesitantly open my eyes to see he's transformed before me. He no longer looks human. Humanoid, sure, as in he has two legs and two arms along with a torso, but not human in the least.

For one, he's floating, possibly because of the six wings arranged behind him. Secondly, he's got no face. No face beyond an outline of gold with light shining from inside, where his face should be. He must be over eight feet tall in this form, a winged, human-shaped creature that is no human.

And every single part of him—body, wings, and all—is made of gold. Brilliant, untarnished, beautiful gold.

"I am transcendent," the dark, monstrous voice proclaims, emanating from nowhere since he does not have a mouth, his arms open wide. His hands appear more like talons and his feet look more like metal boots built into his form. His metallic chest is flat and yet sculpted with muscles, down to his abdomen. "I am that which you cannot grasp. I…" His metallic chest rumbles. "…am Invictis."As he speaks his name, his six wings stretch out, blocking out my view of the room, a wingspan to put every other wingspan to shame.

Invictis. His name sends a ripple through me. Rune never existed. He was always a part of Invictis. Rune was always Invictis.

I was never religious, but kneeling before him, feeling so helpless, so powerless—he looks like a goddamned angel. An angel of death and destruction, deceiving in his beauty, blinding in his light.

"The empresses believed they could contain me. They were wrong. I was brought forth to end Laconia—and I will do so, after I end you." Even though he has no face, I can feel him staring at me, watching me, waiting for me to do something, to say something.

What is there to say? He tricked me, got me to do his dirty work. I am at his mercy, and I have the nagging feeling something like him has no mercy to speak of. What magic I thought I had never belonged to me. It was always his, and now I'm powerless in the face of something so strong, so overwhelming.

His metal feet meet the floor as he no longer hovers in the air. His monstrous nature is undeniable, and yet I can't look away. He sweeps down before me, his transcended figure even larger than his human one. Eight feet tall, maybe, with golden, clawed hands to match.

One of those golden hands grips my jaw, and he angles my head back so I gaze into the void that is his head. "Any final words, Rey?" His deep, inhuman voice echoes out of nowhere, creeping inside me with power of their own. "Any conversations you wish to finish, now that you have seen the truth of your destiny?"

A low sound emanates from him, a chuckle, maybe, though it's hard to tell. "Do you wish to speak more of what I'd do if I had a body again?" He might not have a face, but I can hear the dark amusement in his tone.

Ancient weapon of destruction he might be, but he's mocking me all the same. Mocking me. Asshole.

When I don't say a word, he hisses out, "Pitiful, useless girl." His golden hand is so large it engulfs my entire jaw. I don't dare move lest he decide to pull it off or something. "You thought we were friends, perhaps more. You were so desperate, so willing to believe every lie I fed you. You were too easy to fool. Pathetic, truly."

"Maybe I am pathetic," I whisper, hoping my hatred is plain on my face, "but at least I'm not a big, golden dick like you."

Okay, the sound he makes after that is definitely a chuckle. He releases my jaw and stands tall above me, his six-winged figure dwarfing mine utterly. "You infuriate me, Rey, but you also amuse me. I think I will make your death last. Laconia can wait a bit longer while I focus on you. It's already waited twenty years. What's a few more?"

Years?

He's going to take years to kill me? Fuck that. Fuck no.

That's exactly what I tell him: "Fuck you."

"There's that mouth of yours. It must be a trait of your world. It matters not. You are here now, and with no empresses to save you, you are mine." His golden aura glows a brighter before he says, "I think I will enjoy this more than I should."

I get to my feet, unsteady, but I manage. Shooting a glare his way, I tell him, "Give me your best shot, bitch." Before my taunt is spoken, the world around us fades to black. Everything turns dark until I can only see myself and Invictis.

Surrounded by darkness, his golden image pierces my mind's eye as the shadows work to worm their way inside me.

The last thing I hear before my world turns completely black is his dark, demonic voice whispering, "Surrender to me, Rey. Give in to the inevitable. Become one with eternity, as all mortal beings do. You're mine now. Your life belongs to me."

And then it's nothing but pure, sweet blackness.