Chapter 96 Assassin
Chapter 96 Assassin
Aria’s POV
The silence that followed the deaths of the guards outside was thick and suffocating, smelling of ancient dust and copper. Elara stood completely frozen by the stone fountain, her hands pressed against her mouth to stifle a sob, her eyes wide with terror as she stared at the glass doors of the conservatory.
Behind the glass, in the darkness of the master suite, shapes were moving.
Four figures drifted into the light of the twin moons. They didn't wear the silver armor of the Citadel or the heavy mantles of the traditional legions.
They were draped in tight, skin-like black leather that seemed to absorb the light around them, their faces covered in silver executioner masks etched with the violet runes of the Eastern High Council. They didn't breathe, and their hands were elongated into long, jagged bone daggers that dripped with a clear, paralyzing venom.
An elite Eastern extraction squad.
“Kael...” I called out through our blood-bond, but the golden highway in my mind felt stretched to the absolute breaking point, a distant, faint wire hum across the miles of mountains. He was too far away to blur-step back in time. He couldn't save me this time.
The central glass doors of the greenhouse shattered inward with a deafening crash, showering the pink winter blossoms and stone tiles with thousands of sharp, silver fragments. The lead assassin stepped through the ruin, his silver mask reflecting the pale light of the moons, his bone daggers raised as his dead, violet eyes locked directly onto the prominent curve of my stomach.
"The seed of the abomination," the assassin whispered, his voice a dry, rattling hiss that sounded like dead leaves scraping against stone. "The High Council orders the extraction of the core. Step away from the servant, hybrid, and your death will be swift."
"My Queen, run!" Elara screamed, throwing herself in front of me, her small hands shaking as she picked up a heavy bronze watering can from the floor to use as a weapon.
The assassin didn't even look at her. With a lazy, brutal flick of his wrist, a sudden bolt of violet shadow-eclipse magic shot from his fingers, hitting Elara square in the chest. She let out a sharp gasp, her body flying backward against the stone fountain, collapsing into the water as the dark venom began to rapidly freeze the skin around her throat.
"Elara!" I cried out, my heart taking a violent, terrifying leap against my ribs.
Inside me, the twins woke up.
It wasn't the frantic, helpless fluttering of a pregnancy anymore. It was a sudden, massive explosion of raw, ancient power that flooded my entire nervous system like liquid lightning. The silver Sage rune on the back of my right hand didn't just flare; it burned right through my skin, a blinding, colorless white starlight erupting from my palm with the force of a small sun.
The primitive, territorial beast that I had inherited from my hybrid transition took complete control of my mind. I looked at the four assassins, and for the first time in my life, I didn't feel fear. I felt a cold, deep, and absolute desire for slaughter.
"You think I'm a prize to be collected," I said, my voice dropping into a resonant, multi-layered harmony that made the remaining glass panels of the greenhouse vibrate until they cracked.
I stepped over the spilled lavender tonic, my bare feet completely unbothered by the sharp glass shards on the tiles. The white light from my hand traveled up my arm, turning the gold and emerald in my eyes into two blinding pools of colorless cosmic energy.
The second assassin launched himself at me, his preternatural speed a blur as his bone daggers aimed straight for my throat.
I didn't try to dodge. I simply reached out, my left hand catching his forearm mid-strike. The sheer physical strength of my awakened Sage-Void magic was absolute; his bone dagger slammed into my palm and instantly shattered into a hundred harmless pieces of white powder. Before he could even register the failure, I twisted my wrist, the bone in his arm snapping with a loud, sickening crack that echoed through the conservatory.
"My blood built the original walls of this world," I whispered, looking directly into his masked face as I slammed my right palm flat against his chest.
The Sage rune pulsed. A concentrated beam of white starlight tore straight through his leather armor and his chest, vaporizing his heart and soul container in a fraction of a millisecond. The assassin didn't even have time to scream; his body instantly dissolved into a pile of smoking, gray ash that scattered across the wet pink petals.
The remaining three assassins froze, their dead violet eyes widening in absolute, primitive shock. They had been trained to hunt down high-born vampire lords and wild Alphas, but they had never faced the raw, unadulterated wrath of a Creator's lineage.
"Kill her!" the leader roared, his voice losing its calm, clinical edge as all three launched a combined wave of violet shadow spikes straight at my stomach.
"Never," I snarled.
I brought both hands together in front of my waist, creating a massive, swirling shield of gold and white cosmic energy that caught the shadow spikes in mid-air, absorbing the dark magic and feeding it directly into my own core. The twins inside me gave a synchronized, heavy thump, driving the power back out through my arms.
With a violent roar of my own, I threw my hands outward, releasing the stored energy in a massive, circular shockwave of pure, colorless starlight.
BOOM.
The force of the blast tore the remaining glass roof of the greenhouse completely off its iron frames, sending a pillar of white fire into the night sky. The three remaining assassins were lifted off their feet, their silver masks shattering into dust as the white light peeled the flesh from their bones before they even hit the stone walls. They were dead before the debris could even settle, their remains turning into three neat piles of cinders in the snow drifts that were now pouring into the open conservatory.
Ten minutes later, the silence returned to the ruined greenhouse, broken only by the howling of the sub-zero mountain wind through the shattered roof.
I stood in the center of the destruction, my breathing slow and deliberate, my hand resting protectively over my tight, prominent second-trimester belly. The white light on my skin had slowly receded, leaving behind only the glowing silver brand on my right hand. I walked over to the fountain, dropping to my knees beside Elara, and pressed my glowing palm against her chest, funneling a steady stream of my warm Sage magic into her lungs to melt away the eastern violet poison. She let out a wet, gasping breath, her eyes opening in temporary relief as the color returned to her cheeks.
A sudden, catastrophic spatial crack echoed through the ruined master bedroom behind us.
Kael materialized out of the dark mist, his six-foot silver broadsword drawn, his obsidian battle armor covered in the blood of the northern scouts he had just slaughtered to get back to me. His face was a mask of absolute, primitive madness—the look of a Sovereign who believed he had just lost everything he lived for.
"Aria!" he roared, his voice a low, terrifying vibration that shook the foundations of the keep as he lunged through the shattered glass doors of the greenhouse.
But he stopped dead in his tracks.
He didn't find a bleeding, captured Queen. He found me standing tall amidst the smoking ashes and cinders of his enemies, the silver Sage rune glowing faintly on my hand, my gold and emerald eyes steady and unbroken as I looked at him through the falling snow.
"You're late, Kael," I said softly, a small, tired but fierce smile touching my lips. "But don't worry. I took care of the trash."
Kael dropped his broadsword into the snow, his golden and emerald eyes wide with a mixture of profound shock and absolute, worshipful devotion as he fell to his knees before his Queen.