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My breath freezes. Everything strangled, lost to this moment. As if Merikh himself is the deepest trench of the sea while I am a ghostly cocoon in his waters.
“Do it, little dove,” he summons me. He commands me, urging me to stab him. Stab him right through the heart!
“M-merikh, no. No…” I whimper, shaking my head back and forth.
He strengthens his grip and winces. “I can’t hold him back much longer. Losing you to him is a fate worse than death.”
“H-how—you know I c-can’t. Please…” My voice breaks as my vision blurs beneath my tears. I’m drowning in them, drowning in him. “The Curse will never be broken. I can’t lose you.Wecan’t lose you, Merikh.”
“I have hope, Quintessa. And hope makes you do reckless things.”
I choke on a gasp. It’s the second time all my internal organs catch fire with the memory of my words, ones he uses now. He deepens his gaze upon mine. Not sharper but darker—consuming, eroding, owning.
I claimed him then. He’s claiming me here. This is what will truly break me. Through tears, I train the tip of that knife upon his chest and whisper, “Wewill become...together.”
“Break me, Quintessa. Break everything you need.” He is hauntingly still. Like beauty and tragedy in one. Beauty in hisbrokenness. “Because my heart is strong enough to keep beating until you hold my soul in your hands.”
This is what will take everything. This is my all-consuming, all-wrecking, all-shattering love for Merikh’s scars and demons. I can’t let them win. Even if it means destroying him...and myself.
“Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray my heart you’ll ever keep...” Merikh breaks for me inside the dark eternity of those words I once spoke to him. Loving me harder, stronger, deeper. “Don’t let me die before I wake. But wash my sin with the blood you take.” He pats his chest, then seizes my wrist just below the hilt, commanding me again.
His sacrifice. His surrender. His submission. All in one. Because blood...is everything.
“Until I become the salvation of your soul,” I whisper.
Heart seizing in my chest, I breathe for one second, then see his eyes blink to familiar evil slits. And I plunge the dagger into his chest, driving it deep into his heart. A quiet gasp leaves his parted lips.
My heart stops at that moment. A surge of dark energy bound to that fateful dagger, a dagger that once housed Malachor’s blood and soul, radiates into the wound. His blood pools onto me right before he staggers back. And drops.
I fall with him. I swear the crypt itself shudders as he convulses beneath me. My soul itself trembles in the aftermath of what I’ve done. Tremors rip through my body as I wrench the blade from his chest and press my hands to the wound, desperate to stem the blood even as his eyes turn hollow.
His life slips away like water, like blood.
But so does something else. I narrow my eyes, sensing the dark life force ripping itself free from Merikh’s being.
A malevolent Shadow, the former God of Blood stalks the corner of the crypt before he makes a sound like the gnashingof teeth. Like a voiceless vow to return someday and take his revenge upon me for robbing him of his host. I meet the shadowy eyes with my burning silver ones, staring him down, daring him to fucking try.
And then...Malachor disappears.
Ice plagues my hands. Ice in the blood where it should be warm.
My throat constricts as I peer down at the gaping hole left by the dagger. Something colder than death itself pulsates against my fingertips. And when I dare to lift my hands from the wound, my breath hitches in my throat from the otherworldly luminescence splintering through the wound.
What is it? It’s beautiful and spine-chilling and strange and dark and wondrous! It reminds me of those sea creatures in Merikh’s great depths. It reminds me of the melted moonlight in his eyes after he’s loved me and taken my blood.
The awe crashes against my chest like a tidal wave. Hope swirls a whirlpool in my chest. Because I knowexactlywhat hides within his chest, embedded or wrapped around his very heart. The heart that is dying.
“After all this time...” I whisper, remembering how Kyan’s soul hid inside his very wings. “But how...?”
Panic and desperation have me lurching, grabbing the blade again. Without hesitation, I dig the knife into his chest, pulling and wrenching it, careful to avoid his heart this time. Blood splatters my face, but I don’t stop. More moonlight shines like narrow, smoldering beams. With feminine, crazed screams, I hack through flesh, muscle, and bone with more light emanating with every passing moment.
I don’t stop until I’ve peeled back his chest to find the heart itself. A heart that is not beating. Its life has shredded to little more than a subtle hum of a life force. Weeping blood from
But. His. Soul...!
“It’s sobeautiful,” I whisper. I glance at his lifeless face before moving back to the vision of his soul that is wrapped around the dark abyss of his heart. Like luminous currents of water, it pulses and ebbs, but it’s growing weaker.
No sooner do I plunge my hand into the wound, my instincts taking over, my soul itself driving me, than I hear the crypt door opening behind me. Air rushes inside.
