Chapter 131

Chapter 131
 Allissa

I was losing the war with my own body.

Every contraction hit like a meteor, atomic and intense. My knees were up, my hands curled so tight I was gouging the tender skin of my own palms. Sweat slicked my scalp, pooled in the valley of my chest, and trickled down the sides of my face in slow, traitorous lines. I wanted to hang on as long as I could. I was hoping Darren would make it back in time, but it wasn’t looking good.

Eira was by my side with her cool hands and gentle whispers. She asked if I wanted the doctor, but I was in denial that I needed one already. She pressed a cold cloth to my forehead and brushed the sodden hair from my eyes. “Remember to breathe.”

I wanted to ask her if she could go look for Darren, but then everything outside went wrong. The light in the room stuttered, turning faint and blue. My vision blurred, then snapped into crystal focus as the world outside the glass froze, every leaf and bird and cloud locked in a moment of impossible silence. I could see a crow, black wings outstretched, hanging in the air like a slashed painting. The wind stopped moving. Even the dust motes in the shaft of sunlight over my bed hung there, like a thousand tiny satellites caught mid-orbit.

I gasped, tried to sit up, but the baby shoved me back down with another spasm. “Eira,” I said, and the word came out more whimper than speech. “What’s happening?”

Eira’s eyes widened, electric blue and huge in the weird light. She rose from the bedside, stepped to the window, and pressed a hand against the pane. Her breath fogged the glass in a perfect circle. “Everything is frozen,” she said, her voice a soft whisper as she looked around. “The whole world … stopped.”

“No, it didn’t,” I panted. “You’re moving. I’m talking. The baby—” I broke off, biting down on a grunt as the next contraction built.

“You’re right. It’s just us. Or rather, it’s just you. Or … no, it’s your baby.” Eira’s gaze dropped to my belly, which was lit from within, a faint blue-white pulse rippling through the stretched skin like moonlight under water.

Eira came over and knelt beside the bed, her face level with mine. She placed one palm flat over my stomach, and I felt the baby kick, so strong it nearly made me sick. “The baby is shielding you,” Eira said, her voice threaded with wonder. “It’s stopping whatever is happening out there from touching you. From touching us, while we’re with you.”

Another contraction hit, and I nearly blacked out. I saw spots, then whole constellations, blooming behind my eyelids. I bit down, rode the pain, tried to focus on anything except the knife-edged agony lancing up my spine and through my hips. The world outside was locked in a painting, but inside this little room, time still moved. I would have laughed, if I’d had the air. I was still in active labor, and Darren was frozen somewhere.

Eira wiped my face with a fresh cloth, softer this time, and whispered in my ear. “Do you want to move? I can help. Or do you want to stay here?”

I shook my head, throat burning. “We have to figure out what’s going on.”

Eira nodded, but didn’t let go of my hand. She squeezed hard as another pain rolled through me. “Breathe,” she said again. “The pup is coming soon. We have to focus on this.”

The world outside the window was still frozen, but it had shifted. The crow was gone, replaced by a hawk I hadn’t seen before. The sun was an inch higher in the sky. But everything else was just as frozen.

It wasn’t that time had stopped. It was skipping, like a broken record.

Eira saw it, too. “It’s changing. The outside, it’s … different now.” The world outside rewound. It wasn’t a metaphor, and it wasn’t a dream. I sat up so I could look out the window.

First, the hawk that had replaced the crow froze, then shuddered, its wings beating backward. It shot up, not down, vanishing into the high blue as if sucked by an invisible string. Clouds unstitched themselves in reverse, shredding apart and sliding back into shapes they’d already worn. Down below, people who were walking jerked from motionless to unnatural animation.

It was like watching a disaster in rewind. Eira and I stared, as a group of kitchen staff below spilled a basket of apples on the castle walk then watched in amazement as the apples zipped back into the basket. The group walked backwards into the kitchen, and a broken plate leaped whole from the ground into the hands of a woman who had been crying a second earlier.

Time wasn’t just broken. It was hostile.

“What in the gods’ names is going on?!” I felt my mind racing and could see Eira looked confused as well. But also something else … there was fear behind her eyes this time.

“I’ve never seen this,” she whispered, watching the world resume like normal.

The air in the room snapped from muggy to subzero. Frost feathered the window glass in a heartbeat. The sweat on my skin turned to tiny crystals, stinging like bee venom. Eira let out a startled hiss, her breath visible and white. She spun from the window and came back to my side, shoving her body between me and the door, one hand blazing with magic, the other ready to rip the throat from anything that tried to hurt us.

The cold wasn’t a temperature. It was a presence.

It started as a shimmer in the air, a cold mirage in the middle of a blizzard. The shimmer thickened, congealed, until it became a shape, a woman, impossibly beautiful, with skin like moonstone and a mane of black hair so long it nearly dusted the floor. She wore a dress of midnight blue, slashed through with lines of starlight, and her eyes were twin emeralds, cold as the void and twice as sharp.

I didn’t need to guess. I knew who she was … Angelica.

Her eyes flicked to my belly, and she smiled. Not the fake, social kind, but a real, teeth-bared, delightfully evil smile. She looked at the labor twisting my body and purred, “Oh, this is perfect. I won’t have to cut you open after all.” Angelica prowled closer, hips rolling, the predatory grace of a big cat stalking a half-dead rabbit.

“The celestial being growing inside you cannot be allowed to remain with you,” she said. Her voice was cold, clinical, but edged with a hunger that sent ice needles up my spine. “You were never the point, you know. You were just a vessel the gods designed to build the one thing capable of ending me.” She planted her foot and waved her hand. “But they forgot—” her lips curled up, showing her white teeth, “—that I was always better at this game.”

“Back the fuck off, psycho.” There was no way I was just going to sit here helplessly. There was still fight left in me, and I would give everything I had to protect my child.

She cocked her head, studying me. “Brave. Foolish. The family resemblance is strong. You look so much like Delilah … what a mistake.” Then she looked past me, and her smile twisted again. “And I see you brought a little fish.”

Eira stepped in closer between us, blue eyes lit like lightning, hands shimmering with twin spheres of water magic. She looked so much smaller than Angelica, but her fear was gone, replaced by a bright and perfect certainty.

“You will not touch her,” Eira said, voice shaking the air. The water around her hands steamed, hissing when it hit the ground.

Angelica laughed. “You’re adorable. But you’re not here to fight me, darling. You’re here to bear witness. You know, Allissa, you and I are more alike than you think. I’ve destroyed civilizations, toppled empires, orchestrated wars, all while the gods watched helplessly from their little altars. Do you know why they never interfered?”

I clenched my jaw and straightened, sweat pouring down my temples. “Because you’re their favorite monster?”

“Because they couldn’t touch me,” she hissed, eyes flashing. “Not directly. So instead, they created a breeding pair. Using my own daughter, who I couldn’t stand, against me. Of course, when that hellhound got involved, it made everything difficult. Damn blood of a hellhound. But no matter. I realized their plans and waited. The bloodline finally made you, and your mate. Another perfect breeding pair, matched so precisely, it took a thousand years of bloodlines to get it right. Twin flames molded back together, all so you could push out a single celestial child. My undoing, they hoped.” She grinned wider. “But I know their plans. And I have plans of my own.”

Eira’s magic glowed brighter, casting a blue halo over her face. “You’re afraid of the baby.”

Angelica stopped mid-step, eyes twitching. “You don’t even know what’s at stake.”

She turned on me again, the air crackling with her energy. “I’m going to take the child when it’s born. And then I’ll unmake the world, just to see if the gods can put it back together.” She held out her hands and magic began to pool in her palms, sickly green at first, then gold, then a color that was nothing I’d ever seen, like the universe had bled out all its meaning in one pulse.

My body rebelled. Another contraction, harder than anything so far, bent me in half. I held in a scream as I kept my focus on Angelica. Darren was nowhere. Eira was my only shield, and Angelica was trying to magically force the contractions along.

I forced my head up, glaring at Angelica. “You’re not taking my child. Not while I’m alive.”

“Oh? But what fun would that be if you were dead? However …” She tapped her chin. “We can’t allow your mate to live. We can’t have you going and creating another abomination now, can we?”

Shit. Darren being lured away was a trap?! I could see it in her eyes … it was. And she intended for me to live through my mate being killed and our child being taken so she could see me suffer!

Eira flung her arms up, a wall of water snapping into place between us. It sizzled where Angelica’s magic hit it, the impact shaking the ground. Angelica didn’t even blink. She just walked straight into the barrage, shattering the water with a flick of her hand.

Eira staggered back but didn’t fall. Instead, she brought her beast to the surface, pulling more power from within. The air filled with pressure, the kind that said something enormous was about to break.

Angelica’s voice cut through. “You think you can defend her? You’re up against the goddess of chaos herself.” She spat the words with a scoff, then lashed out with a spike of magic that sent Eira slamming into the stone wall.

“No!” I screamed. I moved to my feet to go to her.

“You don’t get to choose what happens next, Allissa. You never did.” She reached out, brushing her hand over my sweat-soaked cheek. “But I’ll let you watch. Consider it a gift.” She shoved my shoulders down as her eyes glowed. “Now. Push.”

Contractions seized my body, but I could feel my baby building a power of her own, soothing them, as if it was taking the forceful pain away. It seemed to me that my child was planning something.

Eira, barely conscious, forced herself to her knees, blood streaming down her face. “You … will not … win.”

Angelica laughed, head thrown back. “But I already have. Haven’t you heard, child? The future is written in flesh and pain and loss. It’s only ever been about who writes the last line.”

A ripple … no, a shockwave—erupted from my body, slamming Angelica to the far side of the wall. For the first time, I could see fear in her eyes as she moved back to her feet.

“No. I guess I can’t allow you to live at all. I’ll just kill you both now.” She wiped her brow and straightened up. Holding her hand out, she sent a surge of gold power right at me.