Epilogue

INCUBUS

I couldn't stop looking at her broken body.

The blood was still dripping on the floor from the open cavity of her chest, creating a pool that spilled out into a small stream searching for a pathway along the floor. Her bones jutted out into the air as she hung there by her wrists, like a demented symbol of a religion that gloried death as a pathway to redemption.

Her eyes were empty, vacant.

A mirror to the state of my own soul.

It felt like my own heart had been ripped out of my chest.

"Your name is Magnus?" a soft voice asked from behind me.

"Magnus is dead," I replied, my own voice sounding so very far away from me.

"What do you want us to call you?" An elf, pointy ears and all, crouched down in front of me to block the sight of her body. He had long purple hair and purple eyes that stared back at me as if he could see through me to the core of my being.

"I don't care," I replied. "Call me nothing. I'm nothing."

"Then your name is Galeron," the elf said. "It means ‘The Guardian of Love'."

The absurdity of it pulled a single, painful laugh from my chest. My chest that held a heart that still beat strong in the face of the end of everything I knew. All the years together, gone. All the moments we spent together were left for only me to remember.

"That is the worst name for me," I replied. "The absolute worst."

"Good," the elf replied. "You can hate your name just as much as you hate yourself at this moment. Now stand up, Galeron."

He rose to his feet.

I put my hands on the ground, pushing myself upright and noticing for the first time the state of the room around me - the broken chairs and tables, the cracks in the marble floor where I had punched it.

"Why am I so strong?" I asked, the weight of the empty hole inside of me not fully suppressing the small thread of curiosity that wove itself through the horror of my new existence.

"You're an incubus," the elf said. "They make excellent tanks, and my group needs one."

His words were absurd.

This entire place was absurd.

No, it wasn't absurd - it was a nightmare.

"Who are you?" I asked, focusing back on him.

"I am Dominic Stormchaser, Aos sí Unseelie Prince," he replied.

"You're a prince and you couldn't stop this?" I asked, gesturing at the floating corpse I couldn't look at anymore. My voice broke as I said the next words that weren't really a question. "You couldn't save her, or you didn't want to?"

I didn't want to know the answer.

Hatred had taken up residence in the void inside of me, and I couldn't point it at this elf in front of me. It was the only thing keeping me on my feet, and I couldn't spend it on the wrong person. I needed to save my hatred, keep it coiled in my heart like a serpent desperate to strike at the right moment.

"We are all prisoners here," Dominic replied. "We have been prisoners far longer than you. I've seen more people die in more ways than I can count. We are stronger together. Join my group. We will train you. We will help you grow stronger until you are ready to seek what you need."

"What are you offering?" I asked.

"I'm offering a pathway to strength," he said. "And with real strength comes vengeance."

"Vengeance," I replied, looking at the glossy reflection of the floating corpse in the pool of blood that had settled into the massive metal bowl.

What a strange concept.

I'd never wanted vengeance before. The person I was before, a boy scrambling at the confines of a society that insisted I be a certain way, that I perform a certain function, that I learn and work and marry and do what I was suppose to do - that person was gone, burnt away in the fire of a pain that cut so sharp I couldn't feel the edges of the wound.

The only thing I wanted before I came here was love.

All I wanted was to feel love.

Now I knew that I had.

It had been there in every moment, and I had been so used to the feeling I didn't think it was anything special. It had been comfortable, there for me when I needed it, there for me when I had blood on my hands but when I had the moment to speak the truth of words out loud I had shied away from them, choosing to deny the warmth that used to exist within me, because how could love be so easy to find?

I looked up at Lumi's body one last time.

That was where love had been, right in front of me, offering what I wanted with a fragile vulnerability that didn't ask anything from me, that didn't demand anything, that just was there. She had given me a trust that she didn't hand out to just anyone, and I couldn't save her from the life she tried to run away from.

I couldn't protect her from what she thought was her escape.

My heart was torn out of my chest the moment hers was.

The boy I was before had burnt to ashes.

Love was dead to me.