23

A strong, unbearable presence twists around my body with each breath I take, like the air to my lungs is feeding the darkness. Each limb is entangled by Stygian power, a hunger that could drive any human mad with an addiction for more.

My body writhes against the intensity as my wrists and ankles are bound to the sacred slab of stone beneath me. My innermost self laughs at the danger, the potential death sentence as the space above me opens up like a giant eye full of blinding light.

I can’t scream—she won’t let me. But a huge part of me doesn’t want to. It aches for the energy to seek out more of my fractured soul, to devour it from the inside out. The gradual build-up of the swirling vortex calls to me like my master, praising me for all my hard work.

The veil between me and the monster is thrown up, and I gasp for air.

Thunder growls around me, flashes of lightning above my body doing nothing to help me see my surroundings.

The vortex grows in size as the monster within me battles to be freed once more. Only, I don’t want it free—I want it gone. I want to push it into an afterlife far from me and the ones I love.

Black tendrils of power burn through my veins, crawling up my arms and legs. The power whispers to me to let go, to allow the force to overwhelm me.

Blood seeps from wounds all over my body as I silently beg for mercy, not daring to say it aloud for the monster to hear. My mind slips, and the mask drops once more as a grin plasters over my face.

“Death to her. Death to all.” I utter it like a mantra, a witch’s spell, a curse. “Death to her. Death to all.”

I will not yield to these pitiful fools. I will slay them without a second thought.

They don’t deserve an apology or for me to be merciful. They deserve everything they have coming to them. They deserve the ruin of their damnation. The fall of their worlds.

No, they don’t.

I don’t want them to die.

“Her eyes are black,” a voice says to my left. “Do it now.”

The blade cuts through my gut, and I grit my teeth, welcoming the pain. I laugh without wanting to, but it doesn’t seem to sound the way it should. The noise coming from my throat is a loud rumble, a haunting echo around the cave as the knife cuts deeper.

The cave walls crack with the power I throw out, but the person wielding the blade doesn’t shift. He pushes it deeper, and the thunder gets louder, closer, and needier.

A snap goes off in my mind, and I fall from the cliff that I’ve been dangling from. I plummet for seconds, minutes, hours, maybe even years. I cry out for more. To end the suffering within me and my realms.

More.

I want more.

I need more.

Deeper.

Deadlier.

I want death. I need it. I need them to kill me before it gets worse—before it spreads to places within me that I can’t control. The Blade of the Gods needs to penetrate my cursed heart and destroy my soul.

Only in the living dead of Seraphine Winters can we be damned. All of us, to eternity. The wars are lost, but battles are won. But mine… As I fall into the abyss, I beg the gods above to keep my family safe from the rest of the darkness taking over the realms.

I mutter a mantra in my head and wait for the reaper to appear, to sweep me away from this carnage. I’m shoved aside by the grinning monster again as its claws plunge into my skin.

They don’t know what they’re doing by stopping me.

Their lives are in my hand, and I will clench my fist and drive it into their worlds. I’ll split the universe in two. I’ll alter timelines and destroy all the gods who try to stop me.

Realms will be no more.

Life as we know it will cease to exist.

He’ll try to stop me, but not even love can pin me down. He’s deluded to think the old me will break free. She’s trapped, falling into nothing, for as long as I allow.

Within the confines of my poisoned mind, I grab onto the talons of the monster and drive my fist into its face. The force pushes it back, and I take control.

I can’t hold on much longer. It’s much stronger than before, and soon, I will be gone, and she will take over. Soon, I will be nothing but someone who used to exist.

I grit my teeth and tug at the vines wrapping around each limb, pulling at the restraints with everything I have.

But I don’t want to be free. I want to die.

I need to.

I need them to plunge the Blade of the Gods deeper, through my muscle and flesh and drag it down—only then can I let the dark power exit my body. It thrashes within my bones, cracks them, and stretches my senses to a point of near no return.

But I need to finish what I started.

Green eyes appear before me, a soft hand on my cheek. “Fight it, my love. You have to fight it, or it will overcome you.”

“I’m trying.” The voice sounds like my own, but it seems distant. The monster within me is attempting to take over again. “Please. Kill me.”

Green eyes vanish, replaced by someone else.

I can’t see his face, but his voice is familiar, almost soothing. “You cannot let it control you, daughter. If you do, it will win. We’ll all cease to exist.”

Tears pool in my eyes as I fight, and I search for my father’s face, to see what he looks like. I forget. After all these years and being without him, I forget what he looks like. He’s a ghost, my shadow, my protector in the dark as I run into battle.

Father always came back for me, even in the afterlife. Even after the monster within me burned down our kingdom with everyone still inside.

But my mother remains a lost ghost. She’s trapped somewhere, but she doesn’t want to be saved. Not by me anyway. She’s terrified of the curse that was put upon me.

A blinding light explodes from my body as the blade sinks deeper into my gut—to the hilt—and instead of crying and begging for help, I close my eyes and let the power run away from me. It spills out of my wound and sinks into the stone beneath me. It whispers that it shall return, and when it does, death will greet me.

I open my eyes to see Dane holding the handle of the blade, his face filled with grief as he yanks out the knife and sinks it into my chest, crushing through my bones and flesh until it penetrates my heart.

The last words I hear are from him. They’re a sob within the screams gathering around us as the curse spirals from my body in a helix and smashes into the vortex above me.

“Come back to me, Seraphine. You must come back to me.”