Chapter Twenty

Something shifts around me, causing me to open my eyes. I'm not in the aether anymore, not in the great chasm. I'm in a world of white, where you can't tell where the ground ends and the sky begins. And I'm not alone.

Someone else stands twenty feet away with his back to me. Based on the regal clothes he wears, not to mention the blond hair, I can tell who it is. A body that's not his, though perhaps the tallness and general wideness of that body's frame does belong to him.

He must sense me, because he turns around with a deliberate slowness that makes something inside me tense up. His mouth pulls into a line, his jaw grinding, and his bright blue eyes narrow in my direction. He wears what he wore when I first saw him sitting on that throne in Acadia, minus the golden circlet around his head.

I didn't know then who he was, but looking back, I felt drawn to him, just like I felt at ease with Rune. A part of him is inside me… as much as I don't want to believe it, it would explain why I still feel the way I feel.

How I can hate him and at the same time not.

"What is this?" Invictis asks, his voice that same accented voice that nagged me constantly when he was nothing more than a glowing tattoo on my wrist. Not so unnatural like it is when he's got six wings and no face.

I take a step forward, and he mimics the action. Step after step we both take until there's only two feet of space between us. An arm's reach, barely. I have to crane my head back to look up at him, and he has to bend his neck down to look at me.

"This," Invictis whispers, "is not a dream. This is… different. What is this?"

"Sounds to me you're confused. That's funny. I never knew a weapon of mass destruction could be so confused."

"You mock me," he growls out.

"I state the obvious," I correct him. "I learned so much." I take a tiny step toward him, and this time he doesn't match the step. "So much that even you don't know." I can practically feel his hands twitching at his sides; he's itching to grab me, barely holding himself back. "It was always going to be you and me, wasn't it?"

A muscle in his jaw tenses. He does not say a word.

"All my life I never really felt right. I was on my own. I thought I felt that way because I lost the only person who ever gave a shit about me, but looking back, I was wrong. Even when my dad was alive, I was missing something. I—" I pause after the words come rushing out of me in a jumbled mess. "—I wasn't whole."

I shake my head softly as I whisper, "I thought it was my mommy issues, but it turns out it's not that. Well, not just that. It was always you." It feels strange to me, admitting this to Invictis when, by all accounts, I should want to tear him apart.

But past empresses tried that already. My approach has to be a little different.

A hard breath flushes out of his lungs before he whispers, "Me?"

"This whole time you knew Krotas was my mom. You knew, and you killed her, just like you killed everyone else."

"It is my purpose. I am the end. It was always so."

"You're right. Even before those… agents from another kingdom came and unleashed you, your purpose was always death." I carefully lift a hand to his face, and the moment my fingertips touch his jaw, a rush of energy, magic and power surge through me.

His eyes close, and his rigid posture bends just a little. Enough for me to notice.

"But you're not a machine," I tell him. "Your purpose can change."

This time, when he exhales, it's a haggard breath I feel in my core. "I am bound to destroy every living creature in Laconia. I am the end and the beginning. The inevitable downfall of all mortal kind."

The first high empress bound him when she separated him, casted a spell on him so he would be forced to do bidding that was not his own. She hoped it wouldn't be more mass death. It was the only thing she could think of at the time—just as tying her possessed son to the throne in Acadia was all Morimento could do. If Invictis could be bound…

He could be unbound—or bound to another purpose.

"You cannot stop me," Invictis whispers as he opens his eyes. Their blueness has been replaced by a shimmery gold, a sign of his true nature, his true self. The color in those eyes seems to move and glow, both a warning and a welcoming.

My hand falls away from his face, resting on his chest as I grin up at him. "You wanna bet?"

"Bet?"

"Yeah, you know, make a bet. You think you'll win, so you put something down that you'll give me if I win."

"And if I win?" Invictis's chest growls as he catches himself: "When I win?"

"I guess I'll be dead. Isn't that victory enough for you, or do you want something more? Something else?" When he doesn't say anything, I go on, "There's a whole world out there, and, spoiler alert, it's not just death. There's so much more to being alive than dying."

He doesn't say anything to that, but he still stares down at me like there's more he wants to say.

"Well? What are you going to give me if I win?" I pause and let my grin grow. "Sorry, when I win? Let's not forget you had multiple opportunities to finish this before. You wanted me at my best, so that's what you're going to get. I hope you're ready for it, Invictis."

"You," he whispers. "You are… I will not be so easily swayed. These mind games of yours prove nothing. You are nothing."

I inch closer to him as my fingers tap on his chest. "Now, we both know that's not true, but you can keep telling yourself that, if it helps you sleep at night."

"I don't sleep." I swear I feel the tips of his fingers brushing on my waist, but it could be in my imagination. I'm not going to glance down and check.

"Oh, that's sad. You're missing out. There's nothing better than a good night's sleep—well, there might be one or two things, but it's definitely up there."

Standing there, so close to him, feeling the slight brush of his fingertips on my waist, with my hand still resting comfortably upon his chest, it's easy for me to forget what he is and what he's done. I don't know his beginning; I don't know when he first came alive. I don't know why he seems to be tied to Laconia, even before the first high empress was banished here thousands of years ago.

There are so many things I don't know, but none of that matters right now. The only thing that matters is that I'm here—and that means everything is going to change.

But before I go, there's something I am curious to know, so I ask him, "Why did you heal me?" It had to be him. Had to be. If I was going to heal myself somehow, I would've done it when I was hobbling through Magnysia's castle.

"I—" It seems like that's the only word he can say, because his brows furrow after that, and all he does is stare down at me with those unnatural, shimmery eyes.

"You don't know, do you? You don't know why we're here, why it's so easy for us to connect." I chuckle in disbelief. I mean, I thought that high empress was full of shit, but how else can any of this be explained? "It must be the tiniest piece ever, if you can't even feel it."

"What… what are you talking about?" Invictis shakes his head. "No. It does not matter."

"No, it doesn't," I agree, and I pull away from him, taking one step back, then another. The look he gives me as I back away is one of conflict, inner turmoil, and slight confusion. Almost like he's in pain.

Ditto. This is going to hurt like a bitch. It's not going to be fun. Don't need to be a psychic to know it.

"Tomorrow at dawn," I tell him. "See you on the battlefield, Rune." Before he can argue with me, before he has the chance to remind me that his name is not Rune, that it was never Rune, the white world around me fades, and the last thing I see before I'm back in my real body is his golden, sparkling eyes.

A hard gasp escapes me when I jerk back to reality, and I stand in the library staring at the stone wall, Frederick's and his father's voices behind me. It's like I never left, like I never went inside.

I glance down at my hands and flex them. It's not visible, but I can feel it: the magic inside me. The magic of not only the three empresses, but all of it. Every single woman who came before Krotas, Gladus, and Morimento, all the way back to the first high empress. The threads of magic have never been so tangible.

"Combining them could be dangerous," Frederick says. "We don't know what'll happen. What if it sets off a reaction we're not prepared for? What if we need to evacuate the entire city? The people have nowhere to go."

"I don't know what'll happen, son, but I know it in my soul. It must be done. It is the only way—" Fred's voice halts the moment I turn around and face them, and his eyes study me. "You… you did it. It's done."

"What?" Frederick sounds stunned, and he turns toward me, examining me in much the same way as his dad. "How did you—you never left."

My silence is enough of an answer, but it's obvious Fred has put on his thinking cap and is full of questions, because he pushes his son aside so he can stand directly before me and get a better look. "What happened? What was it like? How did you fare in the chasm? Remarkable." I think the man would gladly study me for years, if I let him.

"I saw the first high empress. She… she told me a lot of things," I whisper.

"Tell me everything," Fred says.

"Father, I doubt she wants to answer every one of your countless questions." Frederick looks to me for reassurance.

I tell Fred, "After. We can play twenty questions after it's done. For now, we need to get the word out, let everyone know to stay inside tomorrow. Lock their doors, barricade their windows, everything they can. I'm meeting Invictis tomorrow at dawn."

Tomorrow's the day. It's the final countdown.