CHAPTER 59

SLADE

A hoarse bellow shreds my chest and tears through Auren's throat. I look on in helpless horror as my mother's face contorts with shock and pain, eyes swiveling down to look at the weapon stabbed into her.

This isn't fucking happening. This isn't—

Auren falls to the ground. "No! No !"

My mother crumples to her knees, blood draining from her face, blood spilling through the front of her dress in terrifying blotches.

"That was your fault," my father sneers at Auren. "Now you can either try to attack me or save Elore. Your choice."

My heart falls right through my stomach.

Then my attention cracks as the soldier lands another blow to my dragon, and it feels like my own chest is being cleaved open.

A pained snarl rends the air and shakes the ground, bleating from the beast's throat as it thrashes. Its blood starts to heap onto the grass as soldiers rush forward and start ripping away gold-plated scales from its chest, like plucking leaves from a stem.

Adrenaline, pain, rage, and fear, it all floods me, my arms and hands so riddled with veins that I can't see the skin. Power tries to pump out, ready to rot the entire fucking world, but I'm rendered useless.

I snarl like a rabid animal as my father crouches next to Auren. When his hand wraps around her throat, my dragon and I rage. Fight. Even against the hacking at the beast's chest. Even as pain consumes and the net traps, we fucking rage because how dare he touch her .

"A broken-winged bird is nothing compared to a Cull dragon," he tells her. "Remember that. All winged creatures will bow to me . I'm looking forward to putting you in a pretty birdcage for all to see."

He tosses her aside, making her cry out before she tries to crawl toward my mother who's collapsed on the palace's steps.

My father is doing to Auren what he did to me as a child—breaking her bone by bone, emotion by emotion. Making her feel helpless. Powerless.

And he just threatened to cage her, just like Midas did.

Fury makes my spikes tremble. My breath heave.

I will tear his head from his fucking spine .

My father walks away while Auren drags herself toward my mother with the use of only one arm and one leg. Misery chokes me as I watch her pull herself forward, inch by painful inch. Stains of gold smear beneath her, her sobs a mix of agony and anger and fear.

And I'm trapped, unable to help. To get to them.

I have never felt so fucking helpless in all my life.

The dragon cries out again, and I look over with a stippled consciousness, and I finally see what these soldiers were after. Why they've been hacking at it.

Its heart now lies open and vulnerable in its gaping chest. The black, beating organ wrapped with gilded veins.

My father's boots stop in front of me. I look up through the netting, meeting his cold, callous gaze. He stares at me where I'm crouched on my knees, knuckles dug into the deadened dirt, arms shaking, veins leaking.

"Still too weak," he says with a shake of his head. "This is why I knew as soon as you sprouted those spikes and scales that you could never be a true king, even with a dragon."

"You are already dead," I pant out with dark menace. With vicious promise. "The second you touched her. The second you hurt Auren and my mother, you were done ."

"No, son. You are." He rolls up one of his sleeves and drags the dagger down his own arm, opening a vein.

"Culls cull the weak," he goes on. " I will be king of the skies. I will be king of Annwyn."

He crouches down in front of me then, his dark eye boring into mine as my mind spins. "I will take your dragon the same way our ancestors did when they knew another Cull didn't deserve the manifestation. And by doing so, I will finally divest you of your greatest weakness. Your heart."

I try to surge up, to launch myself at him, but I can't.

My dragon is dying, unable to even roar anymore. My mother bleeding, Auren threatened.

And I'm trapped. Fucking trapped .

His soldiers wait around my tortured dragon, while my father watches the blood seep from his arm before deigning to look back at me. " Pour the heartblood of the ward and its dragon into the veins of the victor…and the victor shall manifest anew ," he intones, his expression eager. The words sound like he's repeated them thousands of times to himself.

Cold realization freezes me and makes my stomach roil.

This is what he'd always planned. This is why he pushed me so hard as a boy. He wanted me to manifest a dragon…so that he could murder me and take it for himself.

"You've finally fulfilled your purpose," he tells me with a biting edge.

From my peripheral, I see soldiers pinning down my dragon's feet. See one of them positioning a sword right in front of its pulsing heart, ready to pierce it through.

And then my father lifts his dagger and arcs it up, aiming it straight at my heart.

Terror freezes me.

Clamorous anguish rips through my soul as I realize I'm about to die. There's nothing I can do but watch the killing strike come for me.

I couldn't protect her. Couldn't save my mother. And now I'm going to be killed at the hand of my father.

And I'm helpless to fucking stop it.

My father's blade comes for my heart at the same time that the soldier starts to plunge his blade into my dragon's heart too.

My dragon screams .

It's a horrifying sound that fractures the air as the soldier's blade pierces into its organ. I feel our shared agony, and then I feel our connection sever.

Feel my dragon die .

My father's blade swings down.

A split second before my heart is pierced too, there's a flash of gold.

With the help of her ribbons, Auren suddenly flings herself in front of me.

And I watch in horror as the blade meant for me stabs into her chest instead.

She cries out, body slamming into me as the weapon sinks fully in, her ribbons collapsing. I lurch up and catch her clumsily through the net, holding her jerking body as shock courses through me.

I can't breathe.

I can't fucking breathe.

I can't fucking—

" You useless nuisance ," my father grinds out with aggravation. He grabs Auren and tears her away from me, tossing her aside like she's nothing, when she is fucking everything .

When he flings her viciously away, it makes the edge of my net lift. Just an inch.

But it's enough .

I exploit that single second of weakness, and my power blasts out like an eruption.

My rot seeps past the net's edge, and as soon as I have a foothold, the soil dissolves. Latching onto that gap with a frantic grip, I shove my hand under the weakened space.

Instantly, I feel my power strengthen, surging up from the breach.

The net can't pin me down anymore. My pulse blares in my ears as I tear it off before tossing it away. Its absence is like surging out from the ground after being buried alive.

My father doesn't even have time to blink.

I lunge and have him by the throat in an instant. Rot pours into his body, trapping him in rancid rage. My fury dominates every other thought as my hatred floods into him with vicious intent.

I rot his hands from his wrists, making the skin wither, the muscles melt, both limbs falling off to the ground. He screams in pain and tries to grapple at my hold, but his feet can't touch the ground, and he can no longer call up his power at the snap of his fingers.

I seethe into his face with bared teeth and dark hostility. Within my shaking, wrathful hold, his skin molders and greens, peeling away in painful strips. His teeth go black. His one good eye widens in fear as black veins leach into the white.

I fucking told him. He was done. He was dead .

There's so much savagery in me that his soldiers can't do a thing. They fall as one, starting with the one who stabbed my dragon's heart. I rot him through first, making him gasp with decomposing lungs as poisoned blood pours from his every orifice.

The other soldiers try to run, but their bones fester and crumble, death taking them to the ground with choked-off screams.

I squeeze my father's throat, trying to squeeze out every fucking inch of fear and pain that he's capable of. I want him to feel it. To suffer. To die in agony and terror.

"Culling the weak," I snarl as his tongue dries out, the blackened husk breaking off. "You spineless, heartless, evil piece of shit . May you rot for fucking eternity and know that you are nothing ."

His breath spills out with the shit and piss that seeps from his festering body. The last of his skin flakes away and his bones begin to decay. His nose shrinks into his skull, while muffled, tongueless screams scrape up his shredding throat as his useless heart blackens with its final beats.

I drop him to the ground, and his one eye follows me even as the lids peel back. Then I put one boot over his splintering skull, and I stomp . I grind his death into the yellowed soil like a killing sacrifice given to the land. Letting Annwyn soak up his poison, letting it digest him down so it can rid this world of him completely. Until he is nothing but dust and ash to forever be consumed by the earth.

I shake all over with fury. With hate. My body heaving with it.

And then, I hear her.

The smallest gasp that blares past my pounding rage and stabs me through.

In an instant, the violence and savagery is replaced with panic.

I spin around and run to Auren's side, instantly kneeling next to her, horror slashing through my insides and making my eyes go wide.

She's lying in a heap, with golden blood circling around her like a leaking star. The dagger is still pinned into her chest. Her eyes are wide as I pick her up to cradle her in my arms, my soul raging with defiance. With denial.

With utter fucking despair.

"Why did you do that?" I sob out. "You shouldn't have done that. It should've been me ."

Auren's gaze swings up to me, and her face crumples. Her ribbons jerk around the ground like writhing rays of fallen sunlight. "Slade…I'm s-sorry."

Misery wraps its hold around my throat and squeezes.

"No," I say.

One word, over and over again. Over and over.

Over and over.

No, don't be sorry.

No, don't let this be happening.

No, don't take her from me.

No .

"No, baby," I cry as I press my lips against her clammy forehead even as her head lolls.

I'm in shock. Shaking all over with it. Unable to stop this.

Gold blood seeps out, her heart clogging with every labored beat. "You're okay," I tell her, my voice fucking ravaged. "You're okay."

No.

But her bottom lip wobbles and she shakes her head. Admitting what I can't.

No .

Her aura is fading. Her lips paling, pulse slowing. With wild desperation, I look around, as if I can do something— anything —to make this not happen.

This can't fucking happen.

My mother crouches beside me. Her wound is plugged with gold, hand held over the spot, her face tracked with tears.

"Help her," I plead.

To her, to Annwyn, to the goddesses. Anybody .

Help her.

"Slade…" Auren whispers, and my eyes lock on hers. My heart locked on too. "I…love you."

Her ribbons drift against my arms limply. Barely able to hold themselves up.

"You can't leave," I plead again, but this time, to her.

Because she is the only prayer I ever needed answered.

But her aura darkens more. The black tendrils muting, her shining gold fading. I want to wrap my fist around it and keep it here. Keep it glowing. But I can't.

I can't .

My heart is breaking while hers bleeds out.

And there's nothing I can do about it. No trick with rot could ever make her heart repair. I am death—not life.

She is life, and yet…she's dying. Right here in my arms.

Auren looks so scared. So forlorn, and I hate it. I have to help her. My pair bond demands that I save her, but all I can do is hold her and try to take away her fear.

Try to protect her in the only way I still can.

"I have to tell you something," I say.

My hands stroke her sweat-slicked hair away from her face, my tone urging her to keep looking at me.

When her eyes focus again, my thumb drags across her wet cheek, though I can't stop my fingers from shaking. "I knew you were my pair even without your aura."

Her brow furrows and she blinks slowly, like she's trying to hold on to my words.

Trying to hold on to her life.

And I need her to, because I fucking need her .

"I knew you were mine the second I laid eyes on you. Because someone told me. Someone who hasn't spoken to me ever since," I explain, my confession rattled and grieved. "One word. One single word. Spoken from the lips…of my mother."

Auren's eyes widen ever so slightly.

When I ripped the world and brought my mother with me to Orea, I think I tore her in half just as much as I tore myself. Because she stopped speaking. Her voice went mostly mute. Her mind, mostly muddled.

But it was there and then, beside a poisoned rip, in a foreign cave, where she said the last word she's ever spoken to me.

Just one.

I had been pressing a cool cloth to her fevered forehead, trying to care for her after how sick she became from traveling through the rip. When suddenly, her hand snatched out and gripped my wrist with surprising strength, fingernails digging into my skin.

When I met her gaze, I saw how her green irises disappeared and were replaced with churning milky pools caught in a sightless stare. Saw an ancient scrawl drag across them, the language indecipherable, the size far too small.

That milky gaze held me hostage, and then she opened her mouth and spoke a single word, in a voice that was not entirely her own.

"Goldfinch."

That one word, torn from a diviner's lips. And right now, it's pulled from my own mouth and laid at Auren's feet like an offering.

I was fifteen years old when I first heard it, and back then, that word meant nothing to me. It frustrated me. Confused me. It was a word I agonized over. A word I tried to ask my mother about over and over again, to no avail.

But then…after twenty years, I found the meaning.

Found what was foretold.

Auren's breaths saw out of her as I brush away another tear and swallow hard. "With skin of gold and wearing feathers of a finch, I knew right then that you were mine. I realized what that divined word had meant," I tell her, emotion cracking through my constricted throat. "While I was broken and ripped and utterly lost, my mother gifted me with the promise of you , Auren. The promise of my p?yur."

A tear stabs through the corner of my eye and slices down my cheek, while Auren's eyes overflow. Love and misery carried in each drop and drowning out my existence.

"My foretelling, my life's prophecy, my purpose, my divined was you ," I choke out. "Always you."

A sob bubbles up with blood that gilds her paling lips.

"Goldfinch," I murmur miserably before I gently place my lips at her cheek, fingers still cradling her face.

Trying to cradle her fading soul.

"You were always mine, and I was always meant to love you with every single part of my existence."

Always.

She weeps as she bleeds. I rock as I hold her. And still, I plead no .

Please, no.

Auren looks up at me with heartbreak, her expression in agony. "We…we won't g-get our one days , Slade," she says with anguish.

My heart fucking disintegrates, but I manage to shake my head. I curl around her, offering her shivering body every ounce of warmth I have.

"Yes we will, baby," I rasp out as I stroke her tortured expression. "Don't you remember? I will find you in any life . So just wait for me, okay?" My breath snaps off, but I force my voice to keep working. "I will find you wherever you go, and we will have endless one days of happiness. Won't we? Won't we, Auren?"

She nods, though we both know the truth.

No.

Her failing body is fraught with a sob. With heartbreak. With fractured despair.

And I rage against it, but still, the veil of death comes.

"I love you, Goldfinch. In every life," I choke out, my tears falling onto her cheek.

"I love you…in them…all," she says back, her voice a struggled whisper. A shaken breath.

Then her golden eyes close, her aura goes dark, her ribbons fall, and her heart beats no more. Her pulse silences, right beneath my grip.

And my mother opens her mouth and speaks one single word just as my soul shatters.

"Goldfinch."