Chapter 44

ChapterForty-Four

The cool rain had turned to ice in her veins. She couldn’t open her eyes. She had to focus on breathing or she would stop inhaling. Selene was alive, she was certain of that. And she was alone.

Nothing filtered through her mind as she felt the world passing her by. It was easy to think that no one wondered where she was. After all, she’d been here for centuries. Or maybe it was only a few moments.

She’d heard the screams. It was hard to avoid them as they ricocheted through the Tower and up to the highest peak. She heard them die, and she didn’t feel an ounce of sadness for them.

They’d left her here. Her sisters, those women who were supposed to love her more than anyone else, had left her here to die, with only the wind and the rain to keep her company.

Her lips parted, and the rainwater gathered on her tongue. Soon she couldn’t move in fear that she’d drown. It bubbled up around her lips, sliding down her cheeks and mingling with her tears. A cold, frozen way to die all on her own. Perhaps it was the right way to do it.

She’d been cold and frozen her entire life. Until him.

Selene thought she heard movement and then swore she could feel him. Lust’s magic brushed against her like a warm embrace. A bubble of air escaped through the water in her mouth and she choked.

All she wanted was to say she loved him. She’d never gotten to tell him herself and suddenly it felt very important that he know. He deserved to know how much he meant to her, and how thankful she was that he’d helped her change.

But the cold didn’t release its hold on her, no matter how hard she struggled.

And then her mind drifted through the good memories of her time with him. She dreamt of his first lingering touch that wasn’t there because he wanted her body, but because he had found her interesting. She thought about laughing on a balcony while he looked surprised that he even could laugh. She remembered the way dimples appeared on his cheeks because he never really smiled unless he was with her.

All his warmth pooled in her chest around her heart, and she felt the ice crack just a little. Not enough for her to move or to whisper a single word, hoping that the wind would carry it to him. No. It was only enough for her to not feel so much pain.

Something moved against her. Not the snakes that had settled in her veins or the whispers in her ear that sounded like Minerva. It was a real touch, and she wasn’t alone. She knew that now. She wasn’t.

If only she could open her eyes. She’d know who was here with her in her last moments. Was it him? He couldn’t come for her this quickly, but she wanted him to know where she was. She wanted him to find her.

Taking a deep breath, she struggled to the surface of her mind. She used the warmth he had gifted her to push back the curse enough to open her eyes.

Minerva planted her foot at her side and glared down at her. And then Selene felt herself shift, and she knew what was happening.

Her mother was kicking her off the Tower. Nothing below her would soften her blow, and she would die where she had been laid as a baby in the hopes that Minerva would save her. The beginning of her life and the end, meeting in one poetic moment.

But she wouldn’t go out without a fight.

The last bit of her magic popped free from her body in twin orbs that flew up into the air as she fell. They both landed over Minerva’s eyes and then burst into light, like the sun. Twin supernovas that burrowed into Minerva’s skull and seared her eyes from her head.

The satisfaction of revenge didn’t last long. Wind whistled through her ears and Selene felt weightless as she plummeted down the Tower. It seemed as though time slowed as the white walls flashed by her. She remembered how beautiful this world was. And how lovely it looked from so high up.

She tilted her head to the side and watched the kingdom she loved come up to meet her. That’s what she told herself. The land she had loved so fiercely since the moment she was born had come alive. It wanted to hold her one last time and she would not deny it. There was nothing she could do other than enjoy the feeling of the wind in her hair and the rain on her cheeks.

She looked back up at the storm raging overhead and swore she saw him. He stood at the top of the Tower instead of Minerva and launched himself into the air after her. As though he could save her from this fate, even though it had been written since the moment she was born.

Selene had never been meant to kill him. She’d never wanted to hurt anyone, and she certainly wouldn’t have given him up to these wicked women who wanted to harm him.

But right now, she would go back in time and do it all again. The deception. The lies. The secretive plots to end his life. If only she could hold him in her arms one last time.

And then the ground hit her.

The sickening crunch her body made was not nearly as bad as she thought. Perhaps one of her sisters had softened her blow, but she knew it wasn’t normal to feel this numb. She could feel nothing at all, just the cold and how limp her body was against the snow.

“Selene!” A shriek echoed through the air, and she knew it was Ursula. “Please tell me I didn’t... I caught her! I caught her, didn’t I?”

She didn’t know. She didn’t think so. This wasn’t right. Her body should have some sensation, not just... nothing. Like she wasn’t there at all.

Another thud echoed beyond her, but she couldn’t tilt her head to look. Tears slid out of her eyes because she couldn’t stop them.

“Get back,” a deep voice snarled as a monster leaned over her. Horns longer than her arms arched over his head. His face had changed into something angular and frightening, and black marks covered his hands and shoulders. It wasn’t him, but it was.

He looked like he was in pain. His mouth twisted and his brows furrowed. Why? Who had hurt him?

Selene wanted to pick up her hand and cup his sharp jaw. She wanted to drag him forward and press their foreheads together so she could breathe him in. But she didn’t want him to look at her like she was broken and he didn’t know what he could touch.

“Selene,” he whispered, his voice breaking on the word. “I don’t... I don’t know what to do.”

Nothing. He could do nothing but be here, and he was here. She wasn’t alone now. Didn’t he know how wonderful that was? How much easier that made all this?

Lust snapped his head up, parting his lips on a snarl. “What did I say? Get back.”

“She’s hurt.”

“Take one step closer, sorceress, and I will tear your spine from your body.”

“I can help.” That was a different voice. Was that Bathilda? No, Sibyl. It was Sibyl.

His voice rose into a roar. “I said get away from her!”

They needed to stop arguing. They were fighting over the same thing. They all wanted to help her. And she wanted them to know that it didn’t matter. They couldn’t help her, so would they all just gather round so she could see their faces one more time?

She forgave her sisters. She forgave them for what they had no choice in and what they had to do. They deserved to know that before she left them forever.

Lust looked back down at her, and she realized it wasn’t rain tracking down his cheeks. Tears leaked out of his eyes as he hovered his hands over her body, never touching her with those dangerously sharp claws.

“Oh,” he breathed, the sound shuddering and sharp. “What did they do to you? Selene, my moon.”

His moon? She’d always been little moon, not his. Her thoughts were scattered.

“Why didn’t you wait for me?” He slid his hands underneath her shoulders, carefully dragging her into his lap. “I figured it out. I figured out how to save you and if you had just waited just a few more minutes, I could have…”

He didn’t have to be so careful with her. She couldn’t feel anything, after all. Even the cold snow wasn’t sinking through the pain of the snakes wriggling underneath her skin.

She stared up at him with love in her eyes and struggled through the pain. “I—“

“Shh, don’t talk.” He pressed his lips to her forehead and her head rolled as though he were cupping it with his hand. “This is going to hurt, my moon. I cannot change how much it hurts, and I do not wish to harm you more. But we are running out of time.”

“Wa-it,” she swallowed, trying to tell him those three words that meant everything. Because he couldn’t save her. It wasn’t possible, and he had to know.

“She’s trying to say something,” Ursula called out, the crunch of ice suggesting she took another step forward.

His eyes flashed as he glared at her. “Take another step, sorceress. Your blood will stain this snow.”

“Let her speak. What if she doesn’t want you to heal her?” Another crunch. “What if Minerva was right?”

Those words apparently got through to him. What had her mother said to make his eyes look so hollow?

“Is that the way of it then?” he asked, brushing the back of his fingers against her cheek. “Did you flee here to leave me? Was I so terrible that you found yourself trapped in my castle, and the only way to leave was this ruse of a curse? They want me to believe that, Selene. They want me to believe you did not want me.”

Oh, her love.

He had nothing to fear. Channeling all of her energy into the words, she whispered slowly, enunciating every word so he would not mishear her.

“I-“

Lust leaned closer, pressing his ear to her lips.

“Love-“

He reared back, his eyes wild and something dangerous flickering in their depths.

“You.”

He bared his teeth in a horrible snarl, but it was a victorious look. As though he had saved the world and somehow been handed her soul at the same time.

“That’s what I thought,” he said, and she felt his magic twist around her. It pulled at her heart, her soul, her very being, and a bubble of magic seared around them.

Like a shield, it grew, stretching in a wave of lavender light. Streaks of brighter patches glowed over her head and she had never seen anything so beautiful. She could hear her sisters pounding on the edges as though it were made of glass.

“They will not bother us now,” he whispered.

Her head lolled again as he shifted her in his arms. He turned her face to him, so he was all that she could see. And Selene was glad for it. She’d never wanted to stare at someone more than him.

Some of that terrible visage bled away, leaving in its wake a different man. Or perhaps she simply didn’t remember how softened his face could be.

Deeper laugh lines framed his face. Small crow’s feet spread around his eyes that suggested he’d smiled too much recently and marred that usually beautiful face. And those eyes, ah, those soft eyes that stared at her with so much emotion it made her heart ache.

“You are everything,” he whispered. “My beginning and my end. I thought I was living before I met you, and my darling, I was merely surviving. You walked into my life and set my entire world ablaze. How could I ever let you go?”

She had no idea. But she didn’t want him to.

A wheeze of air filled her lungs, enough for her to say, “Death nips at my heels.”

Another flash burned in his eyes, perhaps in recognition of the words. He pressed his lips to hers, gently, oh so gently. “Then it’s time we run.”

Something twisted at the back of her skull. And she could feel him moving now, his long claws reaching through her skin as her warm blood dripped onto the snow beneath them.

“There has to be a weak point,” he muttered, his claws dragging along her body as his magic poured through her.

It hurt, she wanted to scream. He was hurting her, but she couldn’t say a single word through it. The snakes, which had been so quiet, suddenly revolted. They wriggled and writhed and tore her body apart from the inside.

“A weak point,” he said again, his eyes meeting hers. “Selene?”

The spell. She had to focus on the spell.

The snakes moved again, all of them suddenly focusing on turning her skull into a bonfire that would destroy her. She had to think fast.

When her mother had first laced the spell through her, she’d touched it with her finger. The back of her hand, wasn’t it? A small hole in the web.

Selene struggled against the curse hardening her veins and then held up her hand.

Lust looked at her with pride and then grabbed onto her. A single claw speared through the weak point, and then she felt blood at the back of her neck.

She arched in his arms, her back bowing against the pain that seared through her body. But worse was that she could feel it inside her soul. It pulled and tugged as though he were trying to rip her out of her body and she couldn’t... she couldn’t...

He pulled something important out. She felt the dark tendrils hanging onto her, digging inside her skin and inside her skull, and the blinding pain wouldn’t stop.

She opened her mouth in a scream that could not come out.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered over and over again, his biceps bulging as he tried desperately to yank whatever it was out of her. “I’m almost done. I have it, Selene. Hold on for just a few more moments.”

“You’re killing her!” The scream came from outside the bubble at the same moment she felt a pop.

A rip, a tear, a sudden void of the lack of something, and then her world went dark.